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
Omar Khayyam
This jug did once, like me, love's sorrows taste,
And bonds of beauty's tresses once embraced,
This handle, which you see upon its side,
Has many a time twined round a slender waist!...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
In a state of chortle sin-”once he reflected,
swilling tomato juice-”live I, and did
more than my thirstier years.
To Hell then will it maul me? for good talk,
and gripe of retail loss? I dare say not.
I don't thÃnk there's that place
save sullen here, wherefrom she flies tonight
retrieving her whole body, which I need.
I recall a 'coon treed,
flashlights, & barks, and I...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The...Read more of this...
by
Kobayashi Issa
It once happened
that a child was spared punishment
through earnest solicitation....Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
THIS dust was once the Man,
Gentle, plain, just and resolute—under whose cautious hand,
Against the foulest crime in history known in any land or age,
Was saved the Union of These States....Read more of this...
by
Stephen Crane
Once a man clambering to the housetops
Appealed to the heavens.
With strong voice he called to the deaf spheres;
A warrior's shout he raised to the suns.
Lo, at last, there was a dot on the clouds,
And -- at last and at last --
-- God -- the sky was filled with armies....Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
That you were once unkind befriends me now,
And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,
Needs must I under my transgression bow,
Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel.
For if you were by my unkindness shaken
As I by yours, y'have passed a hell of time,
And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken
To weigh how once I suffered in your...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
This soul of mine was once Thy cherished bride,
What caused Thee to divorce her from Thy side?
Thou didst not use to treat her thus of yore,
Why then now doom her in the world to abide?...Read more of this...
by
Dylan Thomas
Once it was the colour of saying
Soaked my table the uglier side of a hill
With a capsized field where a school sat still
And a black and white patch of girls grew playing;
The gentle seaslides of saying I must undo
That all the charmingly drowned arise to cockcrow and kill.
When I whistled with mitching boys through a reservoir park
Where at night...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Once in the tavern, one can make his ablutions only
with wine. There, when a name is soiled, it cannot be
restored. Bring, then, some wine, since the veil of our
shame is torn in such a manner that it cannot be repaired....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Just Once! Oh least Request!
Could Adamant refuse
So small a Grace
So scanty put,
Such agonizing terms?
Would not a God of Flint
Be conscious of a sigh
As down His Heaven dropt remote
"Just Once" Sweet Deity?...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Say over again, and yet once over again,
That thou dost love me. Though the word repeated
Should seem 'a cuckoo-song,' as thou dost treat it,
Remember, never to the hill or plain,
Valley and wood, without her cuckoo-strain
Comes the fresh Spring in all her green completed.
Beloved, I, amid the darkness greeted
By a doubtful spirit-voice, in that doubt's pain
Cry, 'Speak once more—thou lovest!...Read more of this...
by
Dylan Thomas
Where once the waters of your face
Spun to my screws, your dry ghost blows,
The dead turns up its eye;
Where once the mermen through your ice
Pushed up their hair, the dry wind steers
Through salt and root and roe.
Where once your green knots sank their splice
Into the tided cord, there goes
The green unraveller,
His scissors oiled, his knife hung loose
To cut the...Read more of this...
by
Hafez
Once more, O happy hill & peaceful plain,
Once more, O kindly meadow, laugh with glee:
Now is all earth’s old nature young again.
Once more the lily may her lover see;
Once more the eager tulip lifteth up
Unto the wine-filled rose her golden cup.
O hold thou dear the flowers, that through Spring’s door
Enter thy garden: ere thou may’st no more
Behold them, love them...Read more of this...
by
Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
(once like a spark)
if strangers meet
life begins-
not poor not rich
(only aware)
kind neither
nor cruel
(only complete)
i not not you
not possible;
only truthful
-truthfully once
if strangers(who
deep our most are
selves)touch:
forever
(and so to dark)
...Read more of this...
by
Kenneth Koch
You have helped hold me together.
I'd like you to be still.
Stop talking or doing anything else for a minute.
No. Please. For three minutes, maybe five minutes.
Tell me which walk to take over the hill.
Is there a bridge there? Will I want company?
Tell me about the old people who built the bridge.
What is "the Japanese economy"?
Where did you hide the...Read more of this...
by
Katherine Mansfield
There was a child once.
He came to play in my garden;
He was quite pale and silent.
Only when he smiled I knew everything about him,
I knew what he had in his pockets,
And I knew the feel of his hands in my hands
And the most intimate tones of his voice.
I led him down each secret path,
Showing him the hiding-place of all...Read more of this...
by
José Martí
Once I was sailing for fun
On a lake of great allure,
Like gold the sun shone so pure,
And my soul more than the sun.
Then suddenly I could smell
Before I saw at my feet,
A foul fish, with death replete,
At the bottom of the well
...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
WHY do I o'er my paper once more bend?
Ask not too closely, dearest one, I pray
For, to speak truth, I've nothing now to say;
Yet to thy hands at length 'twill come, dear friend.
Since I can come not with it, what I send
My undivided heart shall now convey,
With all its joys, hopes, pleasures, pains, to-day:
All this hath no beginning, hath...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
There sat down, once, a thing on Henry's heart
só heavy, if he had a hundred years
& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time
Henry could not make good.
Starts again always in Henry's ears
the little cough somewhere, an odour, a chime.
And there is another thing he has in mind
like a grave Sienese face a thousand years
would fail to blur the...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Crane
A learned man came to me once.
He said, "I know the way, -- come."
And I was overjoyed at this.
Together we hastened.
Soon, too soon, were we
Where my eyes were useless,
And I knew not the ways of my feet.
I clung to the hand of my friend;
But at last he cried, "I am lost."...Read more of this...
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...
by
John Keats
O golden-tongued Romance with serene lute!
Fair plumed Syren! Queen of far away!
Leave melodizing on this wintry day,
Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute:
Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute,
Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay
Must I burn through; once more humbly assay
The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit.
Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,
Begetters of our...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
it comes like a convict
squeezing through bars
and is gone before
the promptest siren
it suddenly turns
in the ear or rides
the eye of a thought
before dissolving
i have it in a faint
taste or shudder
an ache like a spring
high in the mountains
it was once called love
and now a longing
for a song to be heard
that doesn't bear singing...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Moore
The harp that once through Tara's halls
The soul of music shed,
Now hangs as mute on Tara's walls,
As if that soul were fled. --
So sleeps the pride of former days,
So glory's thrill is o'er,
And hearts, that once beat high for praise,
Now feel that pulse no more.
No more to chiefs and ladies bright...Read more of this...
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