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Famous Overheard Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...song of the soul everlasting that quickens the pulse of time.
The glory beholden of man in a vision, the music of light overheard,
The rapture and radiance of battle, the life that abides in the fire of a word,
In the midmost heaven enkindled, was manifest far on the face of the sea,
And the rage in the roar of the voice of the waters was heard but when heaven breathed free.
Far eastward, clear of the covering of cloud, the sky laughed out into light
From the rims of the stor...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles



...e moving columns without a word;
They, growing in bulk and numbers as they went,
Struck out sick thoughts that could be overheard: --

VI 
'O man-projected Figure, of late
Imaged as we, thy knell who shall survive?
Whence came it we were tempted to create
One whom we can no longer keep alive?

VII 
'Framing him jealous, fierce, at first,
We gave him justice as the ages rolled,
Will to bless those by circumstance accurst,
And longsuffering, and mercies manifold.

VIII 
'And, t...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas
...ooking for where it breaks off

I was a hard thing to undo

 *

The life of a customer 

What came on the paper plate 

overheard nearby

an impermanence of structure

watching the lip-reading

had loved but couldn't now recognize

 *

What are the objects, then, that man should consider most important? 

What sort of a question is that he asks them.

The eye only discovers the visible slowly.

It floats before us asking to be worn,

offering "we must think about objects at t...Read more of this...
by Graham, Jorie
...

I will howl in a deep lagoon for your green glass beads, I love them so. Give them me. Give them me.


No.



Overheard on a Salt M...Read more of this...
by Monro, Harold
.... . . telling those who swarm around him his desire
is that an appendage from each of them
fill, invade each of his orifices,—

repeating, chanting,
Oh yeah Oh yeah Oh yeah Oh yeah Oh yeah

until, as if in darkness he craved the sun, at last he reached
consummation.

—Until telling those who swarm around him begins again

(we are the wheel to which we are ...Read more of this...
by Bidart, Frank



...ist
Has been removed and there is nowhere else to look.
So,
I have woven you this wide shroud out of the humble
words
I overheard you use. Everywhere, forever and always,
I will never forget one single thing. Even in new
grief.
Even if they clamp shut my tormented mouth
Through which one hundred million people scream;
That's how I wish them to remember me when I am dead
On the eve of my remembrance day.
If someone someday in this country
Decides to raise a memorial to me,
I g...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna
...OH, Prue she has a patient man,
And Joan a gentle lover,
And Agatha's Arth' is a hug-the-hearth,­
But my true love's a rover! 

Mig, her man's as good as cheese
And honest as a briar,
Sue tells her love what he's thinking of,­
But my dear lad's a liar! 

Oh, Sue and Prue and Agatha
Are thick with Mig and Joan!
They bite their threads and shake their heads
...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna
...a prettier dress, 
"And none as attractive as I am, I guess." 
But a goat, who was taking an afternoon walk, 
By chance overheard the fir-tree's talk. 
So he came up close for a nearer view;— 
"My salad!" he bleated, "I think so too! 
"You're the most attractive kind of a tree, 
"And I want your leaves for my five-o'clock tea." 
So he ate them all without saying grace, 
And walked away with a grin on his face; 
While the little tree stood in the twilight dim, 
With never a le...Read more of this...
by Dyke, Henry Van
...Wished Pamela had a cat, or a small bird, 
And only would have wondered at her smile 
Could they have seen that she had overheard....Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...e dominance of the whole nation
Lay in that clear correct enunciation.

Many years later, I remember when
One evening I overheard two men
In Claridge's— white waistcoats, coats I know
Were built in Bond Street or in Savile Row—
So calm, so confident, so finely bred—
Young gods in tails— and this is what they said:
'Not your first visit to the States?' 'Oh no,
I'd been to Canada two years ago.'
Good God, I thought, have they not heard that we
Were those ***** colonists who wou...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer
...first time my father overheard me listening to
this bit of music he asked me,
"what is it?"
"it's called Love For Three Oranges,"
I informed him.
"boy," he said, "that's getting it
cheap."
he meant sex.
listening to it
I always imagined three oranges
sitting there,
you know how orange they can
get,
so mightily orange.
maybe Prokofiev had meant
what my father
thought.
if so, I pr...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles
...[This song was also written for Lily. Goethe 
mentions, at the end of his Autobiography, that he overheard her 
singing it one evening after he had taken his last farewell of her.]

WHEREFORE drag me to yon glittering eddy,

With resistless might?
Was I, then, not truly blest already

In the silent night?

In my secret chamber refuge taking,

'Neath the moon's soft ray,
And her awful light around me breaking,

Musing there I lay.

And I dream'd of hours...Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...Fence without a Fare
His Fantasy did please
And then he lifted up his Throat
And squandered such a Note
A Universe that overheard
Is stricken by it yet --...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily
...months and days. 

This was the lapse of Uriel 5 
Which in Paradise befell. 
Once among the Pleiads walking  
Sayd overheard the young gods talking; 
And the treason too long pent  
To his ears was evident. 10 
The young deities discuss'd 
Laws of form and metre just  
Orb quintessence and sunbeams  
What subsisteth and what seems. 
One with low tones that decide 15 
And doubt and reverend use defied  
With a look that solved the sphere  
And stirr'd the devils...Read more of this...
by Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry