Famous Open Door Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Open Door poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous open door poems. These examples illustrate what a famous open door poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Thomas, Dylan
...he cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the
house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.
Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a
newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and
smacking at the smoke with a slipper.
"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...THROUGH the ample open door of the peaceful country barn,
A sun-lit pasture field, with cattle and horses feeding;
And haze, and vista, and the far horizon, fading away....Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...n their vows and him, his knights
Stood around him, and rejoicing in his joy.
Far shone the fields of May through open door,
The sacred altar blossomed white with May,
The Sun of May descended on their King,
They gazed on all earth's beauty in their Queen,
Rolled incense, and there past along the hymns
A voice as of the waters, while the two
Sware at the shrine of Christ a deathless love:
And Arthur said, `Behold, thy doom is mine.
Let chance what will, I lo...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...'
So we must join hands in the dew coming coldly
There in the hush of the wood that reposes,
And turn and go up to the open door boldly,
And knock to the echoes as beggars for roses.
'Pray, are you within there, Mistress Who-were-you?'
'Tis Mary that speaks and our errand discloses.
'Pray, are you within there? Bestir you, bestir you!
'Tis summer again; there's two come for roses.
'A word with you, that of the singer recalling--
Old Herrick: a saying that every...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...is never-ending flight
And still at fifty-four I run, I know not
Why or where and death cannot be far
From this half-open door.
For luck I count each cobble, there’s enough
Beneath the ginnel to take a breath
And that’s the luck I need to live on.
In the dark I saw a spark light up and
Whirl and twirl around my head and as it hissed
I drew in silver a lucky seven.
4
Spender, Stephen, Sir,
Whichever name you
Now prefer, it is
Irrelevant, you’r...Read more of this...
by
Bowers, Edgar
...father bought three acres as a gift),
His wife pale, hair a country orange, voice
Uncanny, like a ghost’s, through the open door
Behind her, chickens scratching on the floor.
Barred Rocks, our chickens; one, a rooster, splendid
Sliver and grey, red comb and long sharp spurs,
Once chased Aunt Jennie as far as the daphne bed
The two big king snakes were familiars of.
My father’s dog would challenge him sometimes
To laughter and applause. Once, in Stone Mountain,
Tr...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...Had you not slyly come to guard me now,
I should have died of fright outright I know."
The moonbeams through the open door did fall,
And shine upon the figure next the wall.
Said Zeno, "If I played the Marquis part,
I'd send this rubbish to the auction mart;
Out of the heap should come the finest wine,
Pleasure and gala-fêtes, were it all mine."
And then with scornful hand he touched the thing,
And made the metal like a soul's cry ring.
He la...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ll
Shadows from the fitful firelight
Dance upon the parlor wall;
Then the forms of the departed
Enter at the open door; 10
The beloved the true-hearted
Come to visit me once more;
He the young and strong who cherished
Noble longings for the strife
By the roadside fell and perished 15
Weary with the march of life!
They the holy ones and weakly
Who the cross of suffering bore
Folded their pale hands so meekly
Spake with us on earth no mor...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...orse galloped in
away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with
vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for
pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no imformation, and so
we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment
too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say)
satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I
remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all ...Read more of this...
by
Collins, Billy
...poem fly down to the front
of the bar and hover there
until the next customer walked in--
then I watched it fly out the open door into the night
and sail away, I could only imagine,
over the dark tenements of the city.
All I had wished to say
was that art was also short,
as a razor can teach with a slash or two,
that it only seems long compared to life,
but that night, I drove home alone
with nothing swinging in the cage of my heart
except the faint hope that I might
cat...Read more of this...
by
Bontemps, Arna
...lking
Two by two beneath the shade
And standing on the marble steps.
There is a sound of music echoing
Through the open door
And in the field there is
Another sound tinkling in the cotton:
Chains of bondmen dragging on the ground.
The years go back with an iron clank,
A hand is on the gate,
A dry leaf trembles on the wall.
Ghosts are walking.
They have broken roses down
And poplars stand there still as death....Read more of this...
by
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...youth,
And, still dress'd, he lays him on the bed.
Scarce are closed his eyes,
When a form in-hies
Through the open door with silent tread.
By his glimmering lamp discerns he now
How, in veil and garment white array'd,
With a black and gold band round her brow,
Glides into the room a bashful maid.
But she, at his sight,
Lifts her hand so white,
And appears as though full sore afraid.
"Am I," cries she, "such a stranger here,
That the guest's appro...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...r>
And come and make your summer dwelling here,
And perhaps she will come, still unafraid,
And sit before you in the open door
With flowers in her lap until they fade,
But not come in across the sacred sill----"
"I wonder where your oracle is tending.
You can see that there's something wrong with it,
Or it would speak in dialect. Whose voice
Does it purport to speak in? Not old Grandsir's
Nor Granny's, surely. Call up one of them.
They have best rig...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...1
A yellow band of light upon the street
Pours from an open door, and makes a wide
Pathway of bright gold across a sheet
Of calm and liquid moonshine. From inside
Come shouts and streams of laughter, and a snatch
Of song, soon drowned and lost again in mirth,
The clip of tankards on a table top,
And stir of booted heels. Against the patch
Of candle-light a shadow falls, its girth
Proclaims the host himse...Read more of this...
by
Bronte, Charlotte
...sed gate,
The white road, far away,
In vain for her light footsteps wait,
She comes not forth to-day.
There is an open door of glass
Close by that lady's chair,
From thence, to slopes of mossy grass,
Descends a marble stair.
Tall plants of bright and spicy bloom
Around the threshold grow;
Their leaves and blossoms shade the room,
From that sun's deepening glow.
Why does she not a moment glance
Between the clustering flowers,
And mark in heaven the radiant dan...Read more of this...
by
Arnold, Matthew
...acted air—
But, when they came from bathing, thou wast gone!
At some lone homestead in the Cumner hills,
Where at her open door the housewife darns,
Thou hast been seen, or hanging on a gate
To watch the threshers in the mossy barns.
Children, who early range these slopes and late
For cresses from the rills,
Have known thee eyeing, all an April-day,
The springing pastures and the feeding kine;
And marked thee, when the stars come out and shine,
Through the long dewy gra...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...f war brings there Poseidon as well.
Mother Cybele yokes to the pole of her chariot the lions,
And through the wide-open door comes as a citizen in.
Sacred stones! 'Tis from ye that proceed humanity's founders,
Morals and arts ye sent forth, e'en to the ocean's far isles.
'Twas at these friendly gates that the law was spoken by sages;
In their Penates' defence, heroes rushed out to the fray.
On the high walls appeared the mothers, embracing their infants,
Look...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...iles,
Delight thee, nor the playthings on the floor,
That won thy little, beating heart before;
Thou strugglest for the open door.
Through these once solitary halls
Thy pattering footstep falls.
The sound of thy merry voice
Makes the old walls
Jubilant, and they rejoice
With the joy of thy young heart,
O'er the light of whose gladness
No shadows of sadness
From the sombre background of memory start.
Once, ah, once, within these walls,
One whom memory oft recalls...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...Where neatness nothing can condemn,
Nor Pride invent what to contemn?
A Stately Frontispice Of Poor
Adorns without the open Door:
Nor less the Rooms within commends
Daily new Furniture Of Friends.
The House was built upon the Place
Only as for a Mark Of Grace;
And for an Inn to entertain
Its Lord a while, but not remain.
Him Bishops-Hill, or Denton may,
Or Bilbrough, better hold then they:
But Nature here hath been so free
As if she said leave this to me.
Art wo...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...d in the pensive cities you did seek
That street which was not on the map entire!
Upon the sound of voice behind an open door,
Upon the sight of every accidental letter,
You will remember: "Here has she herself
Come to assist my disbelief unfettered."
x x x
Did not scold me, did not praise me,
Like friends and like enemies.
Only left his soul to me
And then said, "Now keep in peace."
And one thing worries me so:
If this moment he will die...Read more of this...
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