Famous Once In A While Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Once In A While poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous once in a while poems. These examples illustrate what a famous once in a while poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Sexton, Anne
...istling.
I must butter the toast.
And give it jam too.
My kitchen is a heart.
I must feed it oxygen once in a while
and mother the mother.
*
Say the woman is forty-four.
Say she is five seven-and-a-half.
Say her hair is stick color.
Say her eyes are chameleon.
Would you put her in a sack and bury her,
suck her down into the dumb dirt?
Some would.
If not, time will.
Ms. Dog, how much time you got left?
Ms. D...Read more of this...
by
Nemerov, Howard
...much coffee and so many cigarettes
Gone down the drain, gone up in smoke,
Just for the sake of getting something right
Once in a while, something that could stand
On its own flat feet to keep out windy time
And the worm, something that might simply be,
Not as the monument in the smoky rain
Grimly endures, but that would be
Only a moment's inviolable presence,
The moment before disaster, before the storm,
In its peculiar silence, an integer
Fixed in the middle of the fall of ...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...ful and fatal. The praise! --shall I thank you for such?
XVI
'Too fair?--not unless you misuse us! and surely if, once in a while,
You attain to it, straightaway you call us no longer too fair, but too vile.
XVII
'A moment,--I pray your attention!--I have a poor word in my head
I must utter, though womanly custom would set it down better unsaid.
XVIII
'You grew, sir, pale to impertinence, once when I showed you a ring.
You kissed my fan when I dropped it...Read more of this...
by
de la Mare, Walter
...-
Not much too hearty and hale;
But a wonderful gumption was under his skin,
And a clean calm light in his eye,
And once in a while; he'd smile:--
Would Nicholas Nye.
Seem to be smiling at me, he would,
From his bush in the corner, of may,--
Bony and ownerless, widowed and worn,
Knobble-kneed, lonely and gray;
And over the grass would seem to pass
'Neath the deep dark blue of the sky,
Something much better than words between me
And Nicholas Nye.
But du...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...ut o' th' sleigh
An' commenced unharnessin'.
I asked him a heap o' questions;
Who he'd seed
An' what he'd done.
Once in a while he'd nod or shake,
But most o' th' time he didn't do nothin'.
'Twas gittin' dark then,
An' I was in a state,
With the loneliness
An' Ed payin' no attention
Like somethin' warn't livin'.
All of a sudden it come,
I don't know what,
But I jest couldn't stand no more.
It didn't seem 's though that was Ed,
An' it didn't seem as though ...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...nbow trout, sel-
dom heard from, but there all the same, like certified pub-
lic accountants. I'd catch one every once in a while. They
were fat and chunky, almost as wide as they were long. I've
heard those trout called "squire" trout.
It used to take me about an hour to hitchhike to that creek.
There was a river nearby. The river wasn't much. The creek
was where I punched in. Leaving my card above the clock
I'd punch out again when i...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...our liver?"
"Yeah, the doctor said it was big enough to wave a flag
in. It's better now. I can have a couple once in a while. I'm
not supposed to, but it won't kill me. "
"Well, I'm thirty-two years old, " Mr. Norris said. "I've
had three wives and I can't remember the names of my child-
ren. "
The guy on the next stool, like a bird on the next island,
took a sip from his Scotch and soda. The guy liked the sound
of the alcohol in hi...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
..., I was never around when their bodies were taken awa!
I'd clean the blackberry hushes out of the lilac hushes.
Once in a while she'd give me some lilacs to take home and
they were always fine-looking lilacs, and I always felt good,
Walking down the street, holding the lilacs high and proud
like glasses of that famous children's drink: the good flower
wine .
I'd chop wood for her stove. She cooked on a woodstove
and heated the place during the wint...Read more of this...
by
Williams, Hugo
...night, hearing the sound of waves
breaking on rocks, knowing she is there,
listening, waiting for me to speak.
Once in a while she'll pick up the phone
and her voice sings to me out of the past.
The hair on the back of my neck stands up
as I catch her smell for a second...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...e fond of an 'arness-cut, or 'ootin' in barrick-yards,
Or startin' a Board School mutiny along o' the Onion Guards;
But once in a while we can finish in style for the ends of the earth to view,
The same as the Jollies -- 'Er Majesty's Jollies -- soldier an' sailor too!
They come of our lot, they was brothers to us; they was beggars we'd met an' knew;
Yes, barrin' an inch in the chest an' the arm, they was doubles o' me an' you;
For they weren't no special chrysanthemums -- so...Read more of this...
by
Rich, Adrienne
...r awkwardly about the threshold
And usually regret the visit later.
Perhaps the harshest fact is, only lovers--
And once in a while two with the grace of lovers--
Unlearn that clumsiness of rare intrusion
And let each other freely come and go.
Most of us shut too quickly into cupboards
The margin-scribbled books, the dried geranium,
The penny horoscope, letters never mailed.
The door may open, but the room is altered;
Not the same room we look from night and day.<...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...man's breast and damn her soul with a smile.
And there were women too quick to heed a look or a whispered word,
And once in a while a man was slain, and the ire of the King was stirred;
So far and wide he proclaimed his wrath, and this was the law he willed:
"That whosoever killeth a man, even shall he be killed."
Now Tellus, the smith, he trusted his wife; his heart was empty of fear.
High on the hill was the gleam of their hearth, a beacon of love and cheer.Read more of this...
by
Hecht, Anthony
...e things.
But you mustn't judge her by that. What I mean to say is,
She's really all right. I still see her once in a while
And she always treats me right. We have a drink
And I give her a good time, and perhaps it's a year
Before I see her again, but there she is,
Running to fat, but dependable as they come,
And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d'Amour.
[Ed. note: See Matthew Arnold's poem "Dover Beach"]...Read more of this...
by
Masters, Edgar Lee
...Once in a while a curious weed unknown to me,
Needing a name from my books;
Once in a while a letter from Yeomans.
Out of the mussel-shells gathered along the shore
Sometimes a pearl with a glint like meadow rue:
Then betimes a letter from Tyndall in England,
Stamped with the stamp of Spoon River.
I, lover of Nature, beloved for my love of her,
Held ...Read more of this...
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