Famous On To Something Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous On To Something 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 to something poems. These examples illustrate what a famous on to something poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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The Something

by Charles Simic
 Here come my night thoughts
On crutches,
Returning from studying the heavens.
What they thought about
Stayed the same,
Stayed immense and incomprehensible.

My mother and father smile at each other
Knowingly above the mantel.
The cat sleeps on, the dog
Growls in his sleep.
The stove is cold and so is the bed.

Now there are only these crutches
To contend with.
Go ahead and laugh, while I raise one
With difficulty,
Swaying...Read more of this...

The Demon In Me

by Marina Tsvetaeva
 The demon in me's not dead,
He's living, and well.
In the body as in a hold,
In the self as in a cell.
The world is but walls.
The exit's the axe.
("All the world's a stage,"
The actor prates.)
And that hobbling buffoon
Is no joker;
In the body as in glory,
In the body as in a toga.
May you live forever!
Cherish your life,
Only poets in bone
Are as...Read more of this...

Poem Reaching For Something

by Quincy Troupe
 we walk through a calligraphy of hats slicing off foreheads
ace-deuce cocked, they slant, razor sharp, clean through imagination, our
spirits knee-deep in what we have forgotten entrancing our bodies now to
dance, like enraptured water lilies
the rhythm in liquid strides of certain looks
eyeballs rippling through breezes
riffing choirs of trees, where a trillion slivers of sunlight prance across
filigreeing leaves, a zillion voices...Read more of this...

Sir Galahad a Christmas Mystery

by William Morris
 It is the longest night in all the year,
Near on the day when the Lord Christ was born;
Six hours ago I came and sat down here,
And ponder'd sadly, wearied and forlorn.

The winter wind that pass'd the chapel door,
Sang out a moody tune, that went right well
With mine own thoughts: I look'd down on the floor,
Between my feet, until I...Read more of this...

For Once Then Something

by Robert Frost
 Others taught me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through...Read more of this...

The Having To Love Something Else

by Russell Edson
 There was a man who would marry his mother, and asked his
father for his mother's hand in marriage, and was told he could
not marry his mother's hand because it was attached to all
the rest of mother, which was all married to his father; that
he'd have to love something else . . .

 And so he went into the world...Read more of this...

Something

by Robert Creeley
 I approach with such
a careful tremor, always
I feel the finally foolish

question of how it is,
then, supposed to be felt,
and by whom. I remember

once in a rented room on
27th street, the woman I loved
then, literally, after we

had made love on the large
bed sitting across from
a basin with two faucets, she

had to pee but was nervous,
embarrassed I suppose I
would watch her...Read more of this...

The Mother Poem (two)

by Jackie Kay
 I always wanted to give birth
Do that incredible natural thing
That women do-I nearly broke down
When I heard we couldn't
And then my man said to me
Well there's always adoption
(we didn't have test tubes and the rest
then) and well even in the early sixties there was something
Scandalous about adopting
Telling the world your secret failure
Bringing up an alien child
Who knew what it...Read more of this...

A loss of something ever felt I --

by Emily Dickinson
 A loss of something ever felt I --
The first that I could recollect
Bereft I was -- of what I knew not
Too young that any should suspect

A Mourner walked among the children
I notwithstanding went about
As one bemoaning a Dominion
Itself the only Prince cast out --

Elder, Today, a session wiser
And fainter, too, as Wiseness is --
I find myself still softly searching
For...Read more of this...

Something For The Touts The Nuns The Grocery Clerks And You . .

by Charles Bukowski
 we have everything and we have nothing
and some men do it in churches
and some men do it by tearing butterflies
in half
and some men do it in Palm Springs
laying it into butterblondes
with Cadillac souls
Cadillacs and butterflies
nothing and everything,
the face melting down to the last puff
in a cellar in Corpus Christi.
there's something for the touts, the nuns,
the grocery clerks and you...Read more of this...

The Country Of Marriage

by Wendell Berry
 I.

I dream of you walking at night along the streams
of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs
of birds opening around you as you walk.
You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.

II.

This comes after silence. Was it something I said
that bound me to you, some mere promise
or, worse, the fear of loneliness and...Read more of this...

Never Try To Trick Me With A Kiss

by Sylvia Plath
 Never try to trick me with a kiss
Pretending that the birds are here to stay;
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.

A stone can masquerade where no heart is
And virgins rise where lustful Venus lay:
Never try to trick me with a kiss.

Our noble doctor claims the pain is his,
While stricken patients let him have his say;
The dying man...Read more of this...

Something About The Trees

by Linda Pastan
 I remember what my father told me:
There is an age when you are most yourself.
He was just past fifty then,
Was it something about the trees that make him speak?

There is an age when you are most yourself.
I know more than I did once.
Was it something about the trees that make him speak?
Only a single leaf had turned so far.

I...Read more of this...

Monolog From A Mattress

by Louis Untermeyer
Can that be you, la mouche? Wait till I lift
This palsied eye-lid and make sure... Ah, true.
Come in, dear fly, and pardon my delay
In thus existing; I can promise you
Next time you come you'll find no dying poet—
Without sufficient spleen to see me through,
The joke becomes too tedious a jest.
I am afraid my mind is dull to-day;
I have that—something—heavier on...Read more of this...

Witness

by Eavan Boland
 Against the enormous rocks of a rough coast
The ocean rams itself in pitched assault
And spastic rage to which there is no halt;
Foam-white brigades collapse; but the huge host

Has infinite reserves; at each attack
The impassive cliffs look down in gray disdain
At scenes of sacrifice, unrelieved pain,
Figured in froth, aquamarine and black.

Something in the blood-chemistry of life,
Unspeakable, impressive, undeterred,
Expresses itself without...Read more of this...

Theres something quieter than sleep

by Emily Dickinson
 There's something quieter than sleep
Within this inner room!
It wears a sprig upon its breast --
And will not tell its name.

Some touch it, and some kiss it --
Some chafe its idle hand --
It has a simple gravity
I do not understand!

I would not weep if I were they --
How rude in one to sob!
Might scare the quiet fairy
Back to her native...Read more of this...

shocked

by Rg Gregory
 the cupboard was done up
on the outside
in the brightest of colours

the house it was part of
was filled each day
with its loud exclamations

the sun looked in gladly
one morning and
fled (incredibly) dazzled

puzzled the people stared
up at the sun
nursing cursing its blindness

and many rumours spread.....
a cupboard that
had power to outshine the sun

must surely breed gold or
something godlike
behind such a brilliant door

a delegation...Read more of this...

A Drink With Something In It

by Ogden Nash
 There is something about a Martini,
A tingle remarkably pleasant;
A yellow, a mellow Martini;
I wish I had one at present.
There is something about a Martini,
Ere the dining and dancing begin,
And to tell you the truth,
It is not the vermouth--
I think that perhaps it's the gin....Read more of this...

Something Left Undone

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Labor with what zeal we will,
Something still remains undone,
Something uncompleted still
Waits the rising of the sun.

By the bedside, on the stair,
At the threshhold, near the gates,
With its menace or its prayer,
Like a medicant it waits;

Waits, and will not go away;
Waits, and will not be gainsaid;
By the cares of yesterday
Each to-day is heavier made;

Till at length the burden seems
Greater than...Read more of this...

Sense Of Something Coming

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 I am like a flag in the center of open space.
I sense ahead the wind which is coming, and must live
it through.
while the things of the world still do not move:
the doors still close softly, and the chimneys are full
of silence,
the windows do not rattle yet, and the dust still lies down.

I already know the storm, and I am...Read more of this...

The Aristocrat

by G K Chesterton
 The Devil is a gentleman and askes you down to stay
At his little place at What'sitsname (it isn't far away).
They say the sport is splendid; there is always something new,
And fairy scenes, and fearful feats that none but he can do;
He can shoot the feathered cherubs if they fly on the estate,
Or fish for Father Neptune with the mermaids...Read more of this...

A something in a summers Day

by Emily Dickinson
 A something in a summer's Day
As slow her flambeaux burn away
Which solemnizes me.

A something in a summer's noon --
A depth -- an Azure -- a perfume --
Transcending ecstasy.

And still within a summer's night
A something so transporting bright
I clap my hands to see --

Then veil my too inspecting face
Lets such a subtle -- shimmering grace
Flutter too far for me --

The...Read more of this...

The Strange Love Song of T. S. Eliot

by Dejan Stojanovic
At twenty-six, I was inexperienced; 
Still, I knew much about love 
In the waste land, reasoning, 
It's not important when you start 
Practicing, rather when you start searching; 
And I committed myself to finding 
It before others even knew it existed, 'breeding 

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing' 
My thoughts, my longings, my love 
For something that didn't need...Read more of this...

Something in me was born before the stars

by Fernando Pessoa
Something in me was born before the stars

And saw the sun begin from far away.

Our yellow, local day on its wont jars,

For it hath communed with an absolute day.

Through my Thought's night, as a worn robe's heard trail

That I have never seen, I drag this past

That saw the Possible like a dawn grow pale

On the lost night before it, mute...Read more of this...

Something Has Fallen

by Philip Levine
 Something has fallen wordlessly 
and holds still on the black driveway. 

You find it, like a jewel, 
among the empty bottles and cans 

where the dogs toppled the garbage. 
You pick it up, not sure 

if it is stone or wood 
or some new plastic made 

to replace them both. 
When you raise your sunglasses 

to see exactly what...Read more of this...

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