Famous Out Of The Question Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Out Of The Question poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous out of the question poems. These examples illustrate what a famous out of the question poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

See also:

Meditation under Stars

by George Meredith
 What links are ours with orbs that are
So resolutely far:
The solitary asks, and they
Give radiance as from a shield:
Still at the death of day,
The seen, the unrevealed.
Implacable they shine
To us who would of Life obtain
An answer for the life we strain
To nourish with one sign.
Nor can imagination throw
The penetrative shaft: we pass
The breath of thought, who would divine
If haply...Read more of this...

The Question Answered

by William Blake
 What is it men in women do require?
The lineaments of gratified Desire.
What is it women do in men require?
The lineaments of gratified Desire...Read more of this...

Dream Song 110: It was the blue and plain ones. I forget all that

by John Berryman
 It was the blue & plain ones. I forget all that.
My own clouds darkening hung.
Besides, it wasn't serious.
They took them in different rooms & fed them lies.
'She admitted you wanted to get rid of it.'
'He told us he told you to.'

The Force, with its rapists con-men murderers,
has been our Pride (trust Henry) eighty years;-”
now Teddy was hard on.
Still the...Read more of this...

A Death-Bed

by Rudyard Kipling
 1918
This is the State above the Law.
 The State exists for the State alone."
[This is a gland at the back of the jaw,
 And an answering lump by the collar-bone.],


Some die shouting in gas or fire;
 Some die silent, by shell and shot.
Some die desperate, caught on the wire -
 Some die suddenly. This will not.


"Regis suprema voluntas Lex"
[It...Read more of this...

The Last Question

by Dorothy Parker
 New love, new love, where are you to lead me?
All along a narrow way that marks a crooked line.
How are you to slake me, and how are you to feed me?
With bitter yellow berries, and a sharp new wine.

New love, new love, shall I be forsaken?
One shall go a-wandering, and one of us must sigh.
Sweet it is to slumber,...Read more of this...

Upon Love:by Way Of Question And Answer

by Robert Herrick
 I bring ye love. QUES. What will love do?
ANS. Like, and dislike ye.
I bring ye love. QUES. What will love do?
ANS. Stroke ye, to strike ye.
I bring ye love. QUES. What will love do?
ANS. Love will be-fool ye.
I bring ye love. QUES. What will love do?
ANS. Heat ye, to cool ye.
I bring ye love. QUES. What will love do?
ANS....Read more of this...

Settle The Question Right

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 However the battle is ended, 
Though proudly the victor comes, 
With flaunting flags and neighing nags
And echoing roll of drums; 
Still truth proclaims this motto
In letters of living light, 
No question is ever settled
Until it is settled right.

Though the heel of the strong oppressor
May grind the weak in the dust, 
And the voices of fame with one acclaim
May call...Read more of this...

Did you ever stand in a Caverns Mouth --

by Emily Dickinson
 Did you ever stand in a Cavern's Mouth --
Widths out of the Sun --
And look -- and shudder, and block your breath --
And deem to be alone

In such a place, what horror,
How Goblin it would be --
And fly, as 'twere pursuing you?
Then Loneliness -- looks so --

Did you ever look in a Cannon's face --
Between whose Yellow eye --
And...Read more of this...

Raise no question of the vicissitudes of this world, nor

by Omar Khayyam
Raise no question of the vicissitudes of this world, nor
of affairs of the future. Consider what a prize we have
in the present moment, and disturb not thyself with the
past or question me about the future....Read more of this...

Ianthes Question

by Walter Savage Landor
 ‘Do you remember me? or are you proud?’
Lightly advancing thro’ her star-trimm’d crowd,
Ianthe said, and look’d into my eyes.
‘A yes, a yes to both: for Memory
Where you but once have been must ever be,
And at your voice Pride from his throne must rise.’...Read more of this...

Wild Orphan

by Allen Ginsberg
Blandly mother 
takes him strolling 
by railroad and by river 
-he's the son of the absconded 
hot rod angel- 
and he imagines cars 
and rides them in his dreams, 

so lonely growing up among 
the imaginary automobiles 
and dead souls of Tarrytown 

to create 
out of his own imagination 
the beauty of his wild 
forebears-a mythology 
he cannot inherit. 

Will...Read more of this...

John Brown

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Though for your sake I would not have you now 
So near to me tonight as now you are, 
God knows how much a stranger to my heart 
Was any cold word that I may have written; 
And you, poor woman that I made my wife,
You have had more of loneliness, I fear, 
Than I—though I have been the...Read more of this...

Le Manteau De Pascal

by Jorie Graham
 I have put on my great coat it is cold.

It is an outer garment.

Coarse, woolen.

Of unknown origin.

 *

It has a fine inner lining but it is 
as an exterior that you see it — a grace.

 *

I have a coat I am wearing. It is a fine admixture.
The woman who threw the threads in the two directions
has made, skillfully,...Read more of this...

Over The Range

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Little bush maiden, wondering-eyed, 
Playing alone in the creek-bed dry, 
In the small green flat on every side 
Walled in by the Moonbi ranges high; 
Tell me the tale of your lonely life 
'Mid the great grey forests that know no change. 
"I never have left my home," she said, 
"I have never been over the Moonbi Range. 
"Father...Read more of this...

The Real Question

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Folks is talkin' 'bout de money, 'bout de silvah an' de gold;
All de time de season 's changin' an' de days is gittin' cold.
An' dey 's wond'rin' 'bout de metals, whethah we'll have one er two.
While de price o' coal is risin' an' dey 's two months' rent dat 's due.
Some folks says dat gold 's de only money dat...Read more of this...

The Question to Lisetta

by Matthew Prior
 WHAT nymph should I admire or trust, 
But Chloe beauteous, Chloe just? 
What nymph should I desire to see, 
But her who leaves the plain for me? 
To whom should I compose the lay, 
But her who listens when I play? 
To whom in song repeat my cares, 
But her who in my sorrow shares? 
For whom should I...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 03: 10: Letter

by Conrad Aiken
 From time to time, lifting his eyes, he sees
The soft blue starlight through the one small window,
The moon above black trees, and clouds, and Venus,—
And turns to write . . . The clock, behind ticks softly.

It is so long, indeed, since I have written,—
Two years, almost, your last is turning yellow,—
That these first words I write seem cold and...Read more of this...

Question And Answer

by Charles Bukowski
 he sat naked and drunk in a room of summer
 night, running the blade of the knife
 under his fingernails, smiling, thinking
 of all the letters he had received
 telling him that
 the way he lived and wrote about
 that--
 it had kept them going when
 all seemed
 truly
 hopeless.



 putting the blade on the table, he
 flicked it...Read more of this...

A Question

by Ellis Parker Butler
 Whene’er I feed the barnyard folk
 My gentle soul is vexed;
My sensibilities are torn
 And I am sore perplexed.

The rooster so politely stands
 While waiting for his food,
But when I feed him, what a change!
 He then is rough and rude.

He crowds his gentle wives aside
 Or pecks them on the head;
Sometimes I think it would be best
 If...Read more of this...

Love and a Question

by Robert Frost
 A stranger came to the door at eve, 
And he spoke the bridegroom fair. 
He bore a green-white stick in his hand, 
And, for all burden, care. 
He asked with the eyes more than the lips 
For a shelter for the night, 
And he turned and looked at the road afar 
Without a window light. 

The bridegroom came forth...Read more of this...

Question

by May Swenson
 Body my house
my horse my hound
what will I do
when you are fallen

Where will I sleep
How will I ride
What will I hunt

Where can I go
without my mount
all eager and quick
How will I know
in thicket ahead
is danger or treasure
when Body my good
bright dog is dead

How will it be
to lie in the sky
without roof or door
and wind for an eye

With cloud for...Read more of this...

A Question

by Robert Frost
 A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth....Read more of this...

The Alien Boy

by Mary Darby Robinson
 'Twas on a Mountain, near the Western Main
An ALIEN dwelt. A solitary Hut
Built on a jutting crag, o'erhung with weeds,
Mark'd the poor Exile's home. Full ten long years
The melancholy wretch had liv'd unseen
By all, save HENRY, a lov'd, little Son
The partner of his sorrows. On the day
When Persecution, in the sainted guise
Of Liberty, spread wide its venom'd pow'r,
The brave,...Read more of this...

Adolescence

by Frank Bidart
 In love they wore themselves in a green embrace.
A silken rain fell through the spring upon them.
In the park she fed the swans and he
whittled nervously with his strange hands.
And white was mixed with all their colours
as if they drew it from the flowering trees.

At night his two finger whistle brought her down
the waterfall stairs to his shy smile
which...Read more of this...

The Question

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

There...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Out Of The Question poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace