Famous Outlines Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Avons Harvest

...ce that afternoon.
But all there was left now for me to do 
Was to lie there and see him while he squeezed 
His unclean outlines into the dim room, 
And half erect inside, like a still beast 
With a face partly man’s, came slowly on
Along the floor to the bed where I lay, 
And waited. There had been so much of waiting, 
Through all those evil years before my respite— 
Which now I knew and recognized at last 
As only his more venomous preparation
For the vile end of a deceivin...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington


Called Into Play

...rt, look

down, look up, look close, think, think, think:
but in what range should I think: should I

figure colors and outlines, given forms, say
mailboxes, or should I try to plumb what is

behind what and what behind that, deep down
where the surface has lost its semblance: or

should I think personally, such as, this week
seems to have been crafted in hell: what: is

something going on: something besides this
diddledeediddle everyday matter-of-fact: I

could draw up an an...Read more of this...
by Ammons, A R

Elegy: Walking the Line

...ood teachers at Boys’ High,
Ironic and demanding, chemistry;
Mary Lou Culver taught us English: essays,
Plot summaries, outlines, meters, kinds of clauses
(Noun, adjective, and adverb, five at a time),
Written each day and then revised, and she
Up half the night to read them once again
Through her pince-nez, under a single lamp.
Across the road, on a steeper hill, the settlers
Set a house, unpainted, the porch fallen in,
The road a red clay strip without a bridge,
A shallow s...Read more of this...
by Bowers, Edgar

Le Manteau De Pascal

...s curl and carry young scanty leaf-stars these clubs are tapered, and I 
have seen also pieces in profile with chiseled outlines, the blocks thus made 
detached and lessening towards the end. However the knot-star is the chief thing: 
it is whorled, worked round, and this is what keeps up the illusion of the tree. 
Oaks differ much, and much turns on the broadness of the leaves, the narrower 
giving the crisped and starry and catharine-wheel forms, the broader the flat-pieced...Read more of this...
by Graham, Jorie

night-piece

...nt train - all
friendly and easy to explain
   i relax
and yawn get out and stand by the window
looking out on the soft outlines of houses
silent lawns making my own peace with night

when i return to bed at last (all
tension gone) birds are standing
on the treetops bringing in the dawn...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg


The Army Mules

...ll see a vision among the dust like a man and a mule combined -- 
It's the kind of thing you must take on trust for its outlines aren't defined, 
A thing that whirls like a spinning top and props like a three legged stool, 
And you find its a long-legged Queensland boy convincing an Army mule. 
And the rider sticks to the hybrid's hide like paper sticks to a wall, 
For a "magnoon" Waler is next to ride with every chance of a fall, 
It's a rough-house game and a thankless game...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton

The House Of Dust: Part 04: 03: Palimpsest: A Deceitful Portrait

...ever in a cloud
Of warm bright vanity: a luminous cloud
Which falls on all things with a quivering magic,
Changing such outlines as a light may change,
Brightening what lies dark to me, concealing
Those things that will not change . . . I walk sustained
In a world of things that flatter me: a sky
Just as I would have had it; trees and grass
Just as I would have shaped and colored them;
Pigeons and clouds and sun and whirling shadows,
And stars that brightening climb through m...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad

The Way

...ng.
It widened a highway, majestic, stretching ever 
to distant horizons,
Where shadows of tree-branches wavered, vague outlines invaded by 
sunshine;
No sound but the wind as it whispered the secrets of earth to the 
flowers,
And the hum of the yellow bees, honey-laden and dusty with pollen.
And Summer said, "Come, follow onward, with no thought save the 
longing
to wander,
The wind, and the bees, and the flowers, all singing the great song
of Nature,
Are minstrels of change...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The White Peacock

...ngs of cupids and gods on the ceiling; 
Sleep on the carven shields and knots at the foot of the bed, 
Oozing, blurring outlines, obliterating colors, 
Death. 

Father, Father, I must not sleep! 
It does not hear -- that shadow crouched in the corner . . . 
Is it a shadow? 
One might think so indeed, save for the calm face, yellow as wax, that lifts like the face of a drowned man from the choking darkness. 


II.

Out of the drowsy fog my body creeps back to me. 
It is the wh...Read more of this...
by Benet, Stephen Vincent

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