Famous Overlooking Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Overlooking poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous overlooking poems. These examples illustrate what a famous overlooking poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...self lying nailed in a box
With a white lawn tie and a boutonnière,
And my wife was sitting by a window
Some place afar overlooking the sea;
She seemed so rested, ruddy and fat,
Although her hair was white.
And she smiled and said to a colored waiter:
"Another slice of roast beef, George.
Here's a nickel for your trouble."...Read more of this...
by
Masters, Edgar Lee
...alian, English.
I wed Count Navigato, native of Genoa.
We went to Rome. He poisoned me, I think.
Now in the Campo Santo overlooking
The sea where young Columbus dreamed new worlds,
See what they chiseled: "Contessa Navigato
Implora eterna quiete."...Read more of this...
by
Masters, Edgar Lee
...nd the cruel, heartless street.
I left the dreadful corner where the steps are never still,
And sought another window overlooking gorge and hill;
But when the night came dreary with the driving rain and sleet,
They haunted me the shadows of those faces in the street,
Flitting by, flitting by,
Flitting by with noiseless feet,
And with cheeks but little paler than the real ones in the street.
Once I cried: 'Oh, God Almighty! if Thy might doth still endure,
Now show me in ...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...[Written just after the preceding one, on a
mountain overlooking the Lake of Zurich.]
IF I, dearest Lily, did not love thee,
How this prospect would enchant my sight!
And yet if I, Lily, did not love thee,
Could I find, or here, or there, delight?
1775....Read more of this...
by
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...m in and out of her reflection
and up and down the stairs of her legs.
Her body carries clouds all the way home.
She is overlooking her watery face
in the river where blind men
come to bathe at midday.
Because of this
the ground, that winter nightmare,
has cured its sores and burst
with green birds and vitamins.
Because of this
the trees turn in their trenches
and hold up little rain cups
by their slender fingers.
Because of this
a woman stands by her stove
singing and cooki...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...lice. Sorry to be so rambling.
I eat lunch with J. Hillis Miller, brilliant and nice
as they come, in the faculty club, overlooking the lake,
much of it now filled in. And I tour old haunts,
been twice to Kapowsin. One trout. One perch. One poem.
Take care, oh wisest of condors. Love. Dick. Thanks again....Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Richard
...of meaning in those thoughts which
is not easily discoverable at first sight, and the translator incurs
great risk of overlooking it, and of giving a prosaic effect to
that which in the original contains the very essence of poetry.
It is probably this difficulty that has deterred others from undertaking
the task I have set myself, and in which I do not pretend to do
more than attempt to give an idea of the minstrelsy of one so unrivalled,
by as truthful an interpretati...Read more of this...
by
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...when each time a touch
took us closer to the window where
we whispered yes, there on the intricate
balconies of breath, overlooking
the rest of our lives....Read more of this...
by
Forche, Carolyn
...born—conceal’d or unconceal’d, the seed is waiting.
2
Lo! keen-eyed, towering Science!
As from tall peaks the Modern overlooking,
Successive, absolute fiats issuing.
Yet again, lo! the Soul—above all science;
For it, has History gather’d like a husk around the globe;
For it, the entire star-myriads roll through the sky.
In spiral roads, by long detours,
(As a much-tacking ship upon the sea,)
For it, the partial to the permanent flowing,
For it, the Real to the Ide...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...found none,
None in the hundred miles, none in the house,
Where I came last with some hope, but not much,
After hours' overlooking from the cliffs
An emptiness flayed to the very stone.
I found no people that dared show themselves,
None not in hiding from the outward eye.
The time was autumn, but how anyone
could tell the time of year when every tree
That could have dropped a leaf was down itself
And nothing but the stump of it was left
Now bringing out its rings in sugar of...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...This man has taken my Husband's life
And laid my Brethren low,
No sister indeed, were I, no wife,
To pardon and let him go.
Yet why does he look so young and slim
As he weak and wounded lies?
How hard for me to be harsh to him
With his soft, appealing eyes.
His hair is ruffled upon the stone
And the slend...Read more of this...
by
Nicolson, Adela Florence Cory
...e are places where the eye can starve,
But not here. Here, for example, is
The Piazza Navona, & here is his narrow room
Overlooking the Steps & the crowds of sunbathing
Tourists. And here is the Protestant Cemetery
Where Keats & Joseph Severn join hands
Forever under a little shawl of grass
And where Keats's name isn't even on
His gravestone, because it is on Severn's,
And Joseph Severn's infant son is buried
Two modest, grassy steps behind them both.
But you'd have to know t...Read more of this...
by
Levis, Larry
...orning
i'm sitting on a bank
in pistyllgwyn
(house of the sacred spring)
against a tall oak
(close to a daffodil-clump)
overlooking the road
between brechfa and abergorlech
on the west side of the valley
of the afon cothi
reading a poem by taliesin
from the sixth century
(the first poem in the oxford book
of welsh poetry in english)
which begins
there was a great battle saturday morning
and i have just reached the line
and when i'm grown old with my death hard upon me
when...Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...Park and he
is raking leaves in Ithaca
or he is driving to East Hampton and she is standing disconsolate
at the window overlooking the bay
where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on
while he is stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway.
When a woman loves a man it is one-ten in the morning,
she is asleep he is watching the ball scores and eating pretzels
drinking lemonade
and two hours later he wakes up and staggers into bed
where she remains asleep and very war...Read more of this...
by
Lehman, David
...There by the window in the old house
Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley,
My days of labor closed, sitting out life's decline,
Day by day did I look in my memory,
As one who gazes in an enchantress' crystal globe,
And I saw the figures of the past,
As if in a pageant glassed by a shining dream,
Move through the incredible sphere of time.
And I saw a man arise from the soil like a fabled giant
And throw...Read more of this...
by
Masters, Edgar Lee
...WITH all thy gifts, America,
(Standing secure, rapidly tending, overlooking the world,)
Power, wealth, extent, vouchsafed to thee—With these, and like of these, vouchsafed
to
thee,
What if one gift thou lackest? (the ultimate human problem never solving;)
The gift of Perfect Women fit for thee—What of that gift of gifts thou lackest?
The towering Feminine of thee? the beauty, health, completion, fit for thee?
The M...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
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