Famous Occasion Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Occasion poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous occasion poems. These examples illustrate what a famous occasion poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Jane Taylor
"Oh, look at that great ugly spider!" said Ann;
And screaming, she brush'd it away with her fan;
"'Tis a frightful black creature as ever can be,
I wish that it would not come crawling on me. "
"Indeed," said her mother, "I'll venture to say,
The poor thing will try to keep out of your way;
For after the...Read more of this...
by
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Denis, whose motionable, alert, most vaulting wit
Caps occasion with an intellectual fit.
Yet Arthur is a Bowman: his three-heeled timber ’ll hit
The bald and b?ld bl?nking gold when ?ll ’s d?ne
Right rooting in the bare butt’s wincing navel in the sight of the sun.
. . . . . . . ....Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Occasion makes me sing the praise of wine when I surround
myself with men and things I love. O Devotee!
canst thou be happy here below knowing that wisdom is
your Lord? Then know, at least, that wisdom is my
slave....Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Thou comest! all is said without a word.
I sit beneath thy looks, as children do
In the noon-sun, with souls that tremble through
Their happy eyelids from an unaverred
Yet prodigal inward joy. Behold, I erred
In that last doubt! and yet I cannot rue
The sin most, but the occasion—that we two
Should for a moment stand unministered
By a mutual presence. Ah, keep near...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
O DEATH, had’st thou but spar’d his life,
Whom we this day lament,
We freely wad exchanged the wife,
And a’ been weel content.
Ev’n as he is, cauld in his graff,
The swap we yet will do’t;
Tak thou the carlin’s carcase aff,
Thou’se get the saul o’boot....Read more of this...
by
Alan Seeger
I
Ay, it is fitting on this holiday,
Commemorative of our soldier dead,
When -- with sweet flowers of our New England May
Hiding the lichened stones by fifty years made gray --
Their graves in every town are garlanded,
That pious tribute should be given too
To our intrepid few
Obscurely fallen here beyond the seas.
Those to preserve...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
ONE Queen Artemisia, as old stories tell,
When deprived of her husband she loved so well,
In respect for the love and affection he show’d her,
She reduc’d him to dust and she drank up the powder.
But Queen Netherplace, of a diff’rent complexion,
When called on to order the fun’ral direction,
Would have eat her dead lord, on a slender pretence,
Not to show her...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
She rose as high as His Occasion
Then sought the Dust --
And lower lay in low Westminster
For Her brief Crest --...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
v.1-3
C. M.
Watchfulness over the tongue.
Thus I resolved before the Lord,-
"Now will I watch my tongue;
Lest I let slip one sinful word,
Or do my neighbor wrong."
And if I'm e'er constrained to stay
With men of lives profane,
I'll set a double guard that day,
Nor let my talk be vain.
I'll scarce allow my lips to speak
The pious thoughts I feel,
Lest scoffers should...Read more of this...
by
David Berman
I know it's a bad title
but I'm giving it to myself as a gift
on a day nearly canceled by sunlight
when the entire hill is approaching
the ideal of Virginia
brochured with goldenrod and loblolly
and I think "at least I have not woken up
with a bloody knife in my hand"
by then having absently wandered
one hundred yards from the house
while still seated in...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
'Twas at the Seige of Matagarda, during the Peninsular War,
That a Mrs Reston for courage outshone any man there by far;
She was the wife of a Scottish soldier in Matagarda Port,
And to attend to her husband she there did resort.
'Twas in the Spring of the year 1810,
That General Sir Thomas Graham occupied Matagarda with 150 men;
These consisted of...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
LEOPOLD, DUKE OF BRUNSWICK.
[Written on the occasion of the death, by drowning,
of the Prince.]
THOU wert forcibly seized by the hoary lord of the river,--
Holding thee, ever he shares with thee his streaming domain,
Calmly sleepest thou near his urn as it silently trickles,
Till thou to action art roused, waked by the swift-rolling flood.
Kindly be to the people, as when...Read more of this...
by
Edmund Spenser
Of this worlds theatre in which we stay,
My love like the spectator ydly sits
Beholding me that all the pageants play,
Disguysing diversly my troubled wits.
Sometimes I joy when glad occasion fits,
And mask in myrth lyke to a comedy:
Soone after when my joy to sorrow flits,
I waile and make my woes a tragedy.
Yet she, beholding me with constant eye,
Delights not in...Read more of this...
by
Marianne Moore
If external action is effete
and rhyme is outmoded,
I shall revert to you,
Habakkuk, as when in a Bible class
the teacher was speaking of unrhymed verse.
He said - and I think I repeat his exact words -
"Hebrew poetry is prose
with a sort of heightened consciousness." Ecstasy affords
the occasion and expediency determines the form....Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
The three men coming down the winter hill
In brown, with tall poles and a pack of hounds
At heel, through the arrangement of the trees,
Past the five figures at the burning straw,
Returning cold and silent to their town,
Returning to the drifted snow, the rink
Lively with children, to the older men,
The long companions they can never reach,
The blue light, men with...Read more of this...
by
Edmund Spenser
Calidore sees the Graces daunce,
To Colins melody:
The whiles his Pastorell is led,
[I]nto captiuity.
W Ho now does follow the foule Blatant Beast,
Whilest Calidore does follow that faire Mayd,
Vnmyndfull of his vow and high beheast,
Which by the Faery Queene was on him layd,
That he should neuer leaue, nor be delayd
From chacing him, till he had it attchieued?
But now entrapt of loue,...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[Written on the occasion of Goethe's starting
with his friend Passavant on a Swiss Tour.]
I DRINK fresh nourishment, new blood
From out this world more free;
The Nature is so kind and good
That to her breast clasps me!
The billows toss our bark on high,
And with our oars keep time,
While cloudy mountains tow'rd the sky
Before our progress climb.
Say, mine eye, why sink'st...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Carew
'Tis true, dear Ben, thy just chastising hand
Hath fix'd upon the sotted age a brand
To their swoll'n pride and empty scribbling due;
It can nor judge, nor write, and yet 'tis true
Thy comic muse, from the exalted line
Touch'd by thy Alchemist, doth since decline
From that her zenith, and foretells a red
And blushing evening,...Read more of this...
by
Marriott Edgar
I'll tell of Canute, King of England,
A native of Denmark was he,
His hobbies was roving and raiding
And paddling his feet in the sea.
By trade he were what's called a Viking,
Every summer he'd visit our shore,
Help himself to whatever he wanted,
And come back in the autumn for more.
These trips always showed him a profit,
But what stumped him to know...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Nature affects to be sedate
Upon occasion, grand
But let our observation shut
Her practices extend
To Necromancy and the Trades
Remote to understand
Behold our spacious Citizen
Unto a Juggler turned --...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
WHY am I loth to leave this earthly scene?
Have I so found it full of pleasing charms?
Some drops of joy with draughts of ill between—
Some gleams of sunshine ’mid renewing storms,
Is it departing pangs my soul alarms?
Or death’s unlovely, dreary, dark abode?
For guilt, for guilt, my terrors are in arms:
I tremble to...Read more of this...
by
Oliver Wendell Holmes
YES, write, if you want to, there's nothing like trying;
Who knows what a treasure your casket may hold?
I'll show you that rhyming's as easy as lying,
If you'll listen to me while the art I unfold.
Here's a book full of words; one can choose as he fancies,
As a painter his tint, as a workman his tool;
Just think! all the poems...Read more of this...
by
Derek Walcott
Those villages stricken with the melancholia of Sunday,
in all of whose ocher streets one dog is sleeping
those volcanoes like ashen roses, or the incurable sore
of poverty, around whose puckered mouth thin boys are
selling yellow sulphur stone
the burnt banana leaves that used to dance
the river whose bed is made of broken bottles
the cocoa grove where a bird whose cry sounds...Read more of this...
by
John Milton
In this Monody the author bewails a learned Friend, unfortunately
drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas, 1637;
and, by occasion, foretells the ruin of our corrupted Clergy,
then in their height.
YET once more, O ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude
Shatter...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Soul's Superior instants
Occur to Her -- alone --
When friend -- and Earth's occasion
Have infinite withdrawn --
Or She -- Herself -- ascended
To too remote a Height
For lower Recognition
Than Her Omnipotent --
This Mortal Abolition
Is seldom -- but as fair
As Apparition -- subject
To Autocratic Air --
Eternity's disclosure
To favorites -- a few --
Of the Colossal substance
Of Immortality...Read more of this...
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