Famous On Occasion Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous On 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 on occasion poems. These examples illustrate what a famous on occasion poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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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
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
George Herbert
Welcome dear feast of Lent: who loves not thee,
He loves not Temperance, or Authority,
But is compos'd of passion.
The Scriptures bid us fast; the Church says, now:
Give to thy Mother, what thou wouldst allow
To ev'ry Corporation.
The humble soul compos'd of love and fear
Begins at home, and lays the burden there,
When doctrines disagree,
He says, in things...Read more of this...
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
Anne Kingsmill Finch
CUPID, ere depriv'd of Sight,
Young and apt for all Delight,
Met with Folly on the way,
As Idle and as fond of Play.
In gay Sports the time they pass;
Now run, now wrestle on the Grass;
Their painted Wings then nimbly ply,
And ev'ry way for Mast'ry try:
'Till a Contest do's arise,
Who has won th'...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
I
A washing hangs upon the line,
but it's not mine.
None of the things that I can see
belong to me.
The neighbors got a radio with an aerial;
we got a little portable.
They got a lot of closet space;
we got a suitcase.
I say, "Le Roy, just how much are we owing?
Something...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[Composed for the merry party already mentioned,
on the occasion of the departure for France of the hereditary prince,
who was one of the number, and who is especially alluded to in the
3rd verse.]
O'ER me--how I cannot say,--
Heav'nly rapture's growing.
Will it help to guide my way
To yon stars all-glowing?
Yet that here I'd sooner be,
To assert I'm able,
Where, with...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
Anna Akhmatova
Not under foreign skies
Nor under foreign wings protected -
I shared all this with my own people
There, where misfortune had abandoned us.
[1961]
INSTEAD OF A PREFACE
During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I
spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in
Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone 'picked me out'.
On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me,
her...Read more of this...
by
William Cowper
Thus heav'nward all things tend. For all were once
Perfect, and all must be at length restor'd.
So God has greatly purpos'd; who would else
In his dishonour'd works himself endure
Dishonour, and be wrong'd without redress.
Haste then, and wheel away a shatter'd world,
Ye slow-revolving seasons! We would see
(A sight to which our eyes are strangers yet)
A world that does not dread and...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
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
John Ashbery
Orpheus liked the glad personal quality
Of the things beneath the sky. Of course, Eurydice was a part
Of this. Then one day, everything changed. He rends
Rocks into fissures with lament. Gullies, hummocks
Can't withstand it. The sky shudders from one horizon
To the other, almost ready to give up wholeness.
Then Apollo quietly told him: "Leave it all on earth.
Your lute, what point?...Read more of this...
by
Aleister Crowley
I
How should I seek to make a song for thee
When all my music is to moan thy name?
That long sad monotone - the same - the same -
Matching the mute insatiable sea
That throbs with life's bewitching agony,
Too long to measure and too fierce to tame!
An hurtful joy, a fascinating shame
Is this great ache that grips the heart of me.
Even...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
UPON 1 a simmer Sunday morn
When Nature’s face is fair,
I walked forth to view the corn,
An’ snuff the caller air.
The rising sun owre Galston muirs
Wi’ glorious light was glintin;
The hares were hirplin down the furrs,
The lav’rocks they were chantin
Fu’ sweet that day.
As lightsomely I glowr’d abroad,
To see a scene sae gay,
Three hizzies, early...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
A great Hope fell
You heard no noise
The Ruin was within
Oh cunning wreck that told no tale
And let no Witness in
The mind was built for mighty Freight
For dread occasion planned
How often foundering at Sea
Ostensibly, on Land
A not admitting of the wound
Until it grew so wide
That all my Life had entered it
And there were troughs beside
A closing of the simple lid
That...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[This sweet Ballad, and the one entitled The
Maid of the Mill's Repentance, were written on the occasion of a
visit paid by Goethe to Switzerland. The Maid of the Mill's Treachery,
to which the latter forms the sequel, was not written till the following
year.]
YOUTH.
SAY, sparkling streamlet, whither thou
Art
going!
With joyous mien thy waters now
Are
flowing.
Why seek the...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
Windows pampered like princes always see
what on occasion deigns to trouble us:
the city that, time and again, where a shimmer
of sky strikes a feeling of floodtide,
takes shape without once choosing to be.
Each new morning must first show her the opals
she wore yesterday, and pull rows
of reflections out of the canal
and remind her of the other times:
only then does she...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
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
William Topaz McGonagall
On one occasion King James the Fifth of Scotland, when alone, in disguise,
Near by the Bridge of Cramond met with rather a disagreeable surprise.
He was attacked by five gipsy men without uttering a word,
But he manfully defended himself with his sword.
There chanced to be a poor man threshing corn in a barn near by,
Who came out on hearing...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
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
Frank O'Hara
1
If half of me is skewered
by grey crested birds
in the middle of the vines of my promise
and the very fact that I'm a poet
suffers my eyes
to be filled with vermilion tears
2
how much greater danger
from occasion and pain is my vitality
yielding like a tree on fire!--
for every day is another view
of the tentative past
grown secure in its foundry of shimmering
that's...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...
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