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Famous Now Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Now poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous now poems. These examples illustrate what a famous now poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Cummings, Edward Estlin (E E)
...day
knocked living the hell out of me-- 

who found forgiveness hard because
my(as it happened)self he was 

-but now that fiend and i are such
a total stranger one black day...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...ance, ever ready, 
Songs of the rapid arming, and the march, 
The flag of peace quick-folded, and instead, the flag we know, 
Warlike flag of the great Idea. 

(Angry cloth I saw there leaping!
I stand again in leaden rain, your flapping folds saluting; 
I sing you over all, flying, beckoning through the fight—O the hard-contested fight! 
O the cannons ope their rosy-flashing muzzles! the hurtled balls scream! 

The battle-front forms amid the smoke—the volleys pour inces...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...call for seven days 
 and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the 
 Synagogue cast on the pavement, 
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a 
 trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic 
 City Hall, 
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind- 
 ings and migraines of China under junk-with- 
 drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room, 
who wandered around and around at midnight in the 
 railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, 
 leaving no broken h...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...It is full winter now: the trees are bare,
Save where the cattle huddle from the cold
Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear
The autumn's gaudy livery whose gold
Her jealous brother pilfers, but is true
To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blew

From Saturn's cave; a few thin wisps of hay
Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain
Dragged the sweet pill...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...comfort for thee, no not one:
I cannot say, 'O wherefore sleepest thou?'
For heaven is parted from thee, and the earth
Knows thee not, thus afflicted, for a God;
And ocean too, with all its solemn noise,
Has from thy sceptre pass'd; and all the air
Is emptied of thine hoary majesty.
Thy thunder, conscious of the new command,
Rumbles reluctant o'er our fallen house;
And thy sharp lightning in unpractised hands
Scorches and burns our once serene domain.
O aching time! O...Read more of this...



by Alighieri, Dante
...that all men leads, alike 
 It showed me where the great dawn-glories strike 
 The wide east, and the utmost peaks of snow. 

 How first I entered on that path astray, 
 Beset with sleep, I know not. This I know. 
 When gained my feet the upward, lighted way, 
 I backward gazed, as one the drowning sea, 
 The deep strong tides, has baffled, and panting lies, 
 On the shelved shore, and turns his eyes to see 
 The league-wide wastes that held him. So mine eyes...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...And that he knew, it was a Fiend,    This miserable Knight!   And that, unknowing what he did,  He leapt amid a murd'rous Band,  And sav'd from Outrage worse than Death    The Lady of the Land;   And how she wept and clasp'd his knees  And how she tended him in vain—  And ever strove to expiate    The Scorn, ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes—the shelves are crowded with
 perfumes; 
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it; 
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it. 

The atmosphere is not a perfume—it has no taste of the distillation—it
 is odorless; 
It is for my mouth forever—I am in love with it;
I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked; 
I am mad for it to be in contact with me. 

2
T...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...content, I travel the open road. 

The earth—that is sufficient; 
I do not want the constellations any nearer; 
I know they are very well where they are; 
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens; 
I carry them, men and women—I carry them with me wherever I go; 
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them; 
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.) 

2
You road I enter upon and look aroun...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...tortured trumpets scream aloud
And the dense arrows drive.

Lady, by one light only
We look from Alfred's eyes,
We know he saw athwart the wreck
The sign that hangs about your neck,
Where One more than Melchizedek
Is dead and never dies.

Therefore I bring these rhymes to you
Who brought the cross to me,
Since on you flaming without flaw
I saw the sign that Guthrum saw
When he let break his ships of awe,
And laid peace on the sea.

Do you remember when we went
Und...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...inated all; upon a tone,
A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow,
And his cheek change tempestuously—his heart
Unknowing of its cause of agony.
But she in these fond feelings had no share:
Her sighs were not for him; to her he was
Even as a brother—but no more; 'twas much,
For brotherless she was, save in the name
Her infant friendship had bestowed on him;
Herself the solitary scion left
Of a time-honoured race.—It was a name
Which pleased him, and yet pleased h...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...rule his nerve,
--Even as a painter breathlessly who stains
His scarcely moving hand lest it should swerve--
Behold me, now that I have cast my chains,
Master of the art which for thy sake I serve.


2
For thou art mine: and now I am ashamed
To have uséd means to win so pure acquist,
And of my trembling fear that might have misst
Thro' very care the gold at which I aim'd;
And am as happy but to hear thee named,
As are those gentle souls by angels kisst
In pictures seen le...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...sp;The moon is up—the sky is blue,  The owlet in the moonlight air,  He shouts from nobody knows where;  He lengthens out his lonely shout,  Halloo! halloo! a long halloo!   —Why bustle thus about your door,  What means this bustle, Betty Foy?  Why are you in this mighty fret?  And why on horseback have you set  Him whom you love, your idiot boy...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...r>

Till the villain left the paths of ease,
To walk in perilous paths, and drive
The just man into barren climes.

Now the sneaking serpent walks
In mild humility.
And the just man rages in the wilds
Where lions roam.

Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.
____________________________________________

PLATE 3

As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years
since its advent: the Eternal Hell revives.Read more of this...

by Poe, Edgar Allan
...uncertain rustling of each purple curtain 
Thrilled me¡ªfilled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; 
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating 15 
"'T is some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door, 
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door: 
This it is and nothing more." 

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, 
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; 20 
But the fac...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...is solid nutriment to me.
Dinner is Dinner: Tea is Tea." 

And she "Yea so? Yet wherefore cease?
Let thy scant knowledge find increase.
Say 'Men are Men, and Geese are Geese.'" 

He moaned: he knew not what to say.
The thought "That I could get away!"
Strove with the thought "But I must stay. 

"To dine!" she shrieked in dragon-wrath.
"To swallow wines all foam and froth!
To simper at a table-cloth! 

"Say, can thy noble spirit stoop
To join the go...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...oicing in his splendour, & the mask
Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth.
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
Flamed above crimson clouds, & at the birth
Of light, the Ocean's orison arose
To which the birds tempered their matin lay,
All flowers in field or forest which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray
Burned slow & inconsumably, & sent
Their odorous sighs up to the...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...s whom Mr. S. imagines, like Scrub, to have 'talked of him; for they have laughed consumedly.' 

I think I know enough of most of the writers to whom he is supposed to allude, to assert, that they, in their individual capacities, have done more good, in the charities of life, to their fellow-creatures, in any one year, than Mr. Southey has done harm to himself by his absurdities in his whole life; and this is saying a great deal. But I have a few questions...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
..., mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...reason for her to complain.
Why does she forgive me,
And whoever told her of my sins?
Or is that this voice that now repeats
The last poems that you wrote for me?



x x x

Instead of wisdom -- experience, bare,
That does not slake thirst, is not wet.
Youth's gone -- like a Sunday prayer..
Is it mine to forget?

On how many desert roads have searched I
With him who wasn't dear for me,
How many bows gave in church I
For him, who had well lov...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs