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Famous Pause Poems by Famous Poets

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

The Glove

by Robert Browning

 (PETER RONSARD _loquitur_.)

``Heigho!'' yawned one day King Francis,
``Distance all value enhances!
``When a man's busy, why, leisure
``Strikes him as wonderful pleasure:
`` 'Faith, and at leisure once is he?
``Straightway he wants to be busy.
``Here we've got peace; and aghast I'm
``Caught thinking war the true pastime.
``Is there a reason in metre?
``Give us your speech, master Peter!''
I who, if mortal dare say so,
Ne'er...Read more of this...

Form: Dramatic Monologue

Crumbling is not an instants Act

by Emily Dickinson

 Crumbling is not an instant's Act
A fundamental pause
Dilapidation's processes
Are organized Decays.

'Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul
A Cuticle of Dust
A Borer in the Axis
An Elemental Rust --

Ruin is formal -- Devil's work
Consecutive and slow --
Fail in an instant, no man did
Slipping -- is Crash's law....Read more of this...

Sparkles from The Wheel

by Walt Whitman

 1
WHERE the city’s ceaseless crowd moves on, the live-long day, 
Withdrawn, I join a group of children watching—I pause aside with them. 

By the curb, toward the edge of the flagging, 
A knife-grinder works at his wheel, sharpening a great knife; 
Bending over, he carefully holds it to the stone—by foot and knee,
With measur’d tread, he turns rapidly—As he...Read more of this...

What Is Life?

by John Clare

 And what is Life? An hour-glass on the run,
A mist retreating from the morning sun,
A busy, bustling, still-repeated dream.
Its length? A minute's pause, a moment's thought.
And Happiness? A bubble on the stream,
That in the act of seizing shrinks to nought.

And what is Hope? The puffing gale of morn,
That of its charms divests the dewy lawn,
And robs each flow'ret of...Read more of this...

Transcience

by Sarojini Naidu

 Nay, do not grieve tho' life be full of sadness,
Dawn will not veil her spleandor for your grief,
Nor spring deny their bright, appointed beauty
To lotus blossom and ashoka leaf.

Nay, do not pine, tho' life be dark with trouble,
Time will not pause or tarry on his way;
To-day that seems so long, so strange, so bitter,
Will soon be some forgotten yesterday.

Nay,...Read more of this...

Form: Lyric

Spring Wind in London

by Katherine Mansfield

 I Blow across the stagnant world,
I blow across the sea,
For me, the sailor's flag unfurled,
For me, the uprooted tree.
My challenge to the world is hurled;
The world must bow to me.

I drive the clouds across the sky,
I huddle them like sheep;
Merciless shepherd-dog am I
And shepherd-watch I keep.
If in the quiet vales they lie
I blow them up the steep.

Lo! In the...Read more of this...

Ninetieth Birthday

by R S Thomas

 You go up the long track
That will take a car, but is best walked
On slow foot, noting the lichen
That writes history on the page
Of the grey rock. Trees are about you
At first, but yield to the green bracken,
The nightjars house: you can hear it spin
On warm evenings; it is still now
In the noonday heat, only the lesser
Voices sound, blue-fly...Read more of this...

The Rape of the Lock: Canto 3

by Alexander Pope

 Close by those meads, for ever crown'd with flow'rs, 
Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs,
There stands a structure of majestic frame,
Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name.
Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom
Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home;
Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take--and sometimes tea.
Hither the heroes and the...Read more of this...

Old Schooldays

by Andrew Barton Paterson

 Awake, of Muse, the echoes of a day 
Long past, the ghosts of mem'ries manifold -- 
Youth's memories that once were green and gold 
But now, alas, are grim and ashen grey. 
The drowsy schoolboy wakened up from sleep, 
First stays his system with substantial food, 
Then off for school with tasks half understood, 
Alas, alas, that cribs should...Read more of this...

Having it Out with Melancholy

by Jane Kenyon

 1FROM THE NURSERY


When I was born, you waited 
behind a pile of linen in the nursery, 
and when we were alone, you lay down 
on top of me, pressing
the bile of desolation into every pore.


And from that day on 
everything under the sun and moon 
made me sad -- even the yellow 
wooden beads that slid and spun 
along...Read more of this...

Psalm 139 part 2

by Isaac Watts

 The wonderful formation of man.

'Twas from thy hand, my God, I came,
A work of such a curious frame
In me thy fearful wonders shine,
And each proclaims thy skill divine.

Thine eyes did all my limbs survey,
Which yet in dark confusion lay;
Thou saw'st the daily growth they took,
Formed by the model of thy book.

By thee my growing parts were named,
And what thy...Read more of this...

Sonnet 21

by John Milton

 XXI

Cyriac, whose grandsire on the royal bench
Of British Themis, with no mean applause
Pronounced and in his volumes taught our laws,
Which others at their bar so often wrench;
Today deep thoughts resolve with me to drench
In mirth, that after no repenting draws;
Let Euclid rest and Archimedes pause,
And what the Swede intends, and what the French.
To measure life learn thou betimes, and...Read more of this...

My Strawberry

by Helen Hunt Jackson

 O marvel, fruit of fruits, I pause 
To reckon thee. I ask what cause 
Set free so much of red from heats 
At core of earth, and mixed such sweets 
With sour and spice: what was that strength 
Which out of darkness, length by length, 
Spun all thy shining thread of vine, 
Netting the fields in bond as thine....Read more of this...

So Well Go No More a-Roving

by George (Lord) Byron

 So we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart still be as loving,
And the moon still be as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul outwears the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By the...Read more of this...

A Pause

by Christina Rossetti

 They made the chamber sweet with flowers and leaves, 
And the bed sweet with flowers on which I lay; 
While my soul, love-bound, loitered on its way. 
I did not hear the birds about the eaves, 
Nor hear the reapers talk among the sheaves: 
Only my soul kept watch from day to day, 
My thirsty soul kept watch for...Read more of this...

The Princess (The Conclusion)

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

 So closed our tale, of which I give you all 
The random scheme as wildly as it rose: 
The words are mostly mine; for when we ceased 
There came a minute's pause, and Walter said, 
'I wish she had not yielded!' then to me, 
'What, if you drest it up poetically?' 
So prayed the men, the women: I gave...Read more of this...

Blanche Sweet

by Vachel Lindsay

 MOVING-PICTURE ACTRESS

(After seeing the reel called "Oil and Water.")


Beauty has a throne-room
In our humorous town,
Spoiling its hob-goblins,
Laughing shadows down.
Rank musicians torture
Ragtime ballads vile,
But we walk serenely
Down the odorous aisle.
We forgive the squalor
And the boom and squeal
For the Great Queen flashes
From the moving reel.

Just a prim blonde stranger
In her early day,
Hiding brilliant weapons,
Too averse to play,
Then she burst upon us
Dancing...Read more of this...

Trilogy of Passion: II. ELEGY

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 When man had ceased to utter his lament,

 A god then let me tell my tale of sorrow.

WHAT hope of once more meeting is there now
In the still-closed blossoms of this day?
Both heaven and hell thrown open seest thou;
What wav'ring thoughts within the bosom play
No longer doubt! Descending from the sky,
She lifts thee in her arms to realms on...Read more of this...

Reading An Anthology Of Chinese Poems Of The Sung Dynasty I Pause To Admire The Length And Clarity Of Their Titles

by Billy Collins

 It seems these poets have nothing
up their ample sleeves
they turn over so many cards so early,
telling us before the first line
whether it is wet or dry,
night or day, the season the man is standing in,
even how much he has had to drink.

Maybe it is autumn and he is looking at a sparrow.
Maybe it is snowing on a town with...Read more of this...

She to Him II

by Thomas Hardy

 Perhaps, long hence, when I have passed away, 
Some other’s feature, accent, thought like mine, 
Will carry you back to what I used to say, 
And bring some memory of your love’s decline. 

Then you may pause awhile and think, “Poor jade!”
And yield a sigh to me—as gift benign, 
Not as the tittle of a debt unpaid 
To one...Read more of this...

Straw in the Street

by Amy Levy

 Straw in the street where I pass to-day
Dulls the sound of the wheels and feet.
'Tis for a failing life they lay
Straw in the street.

Here, where the pulses of London beat,
Someone strives with the Presence grey;
Ah, is it victory or defeat?

The hurrying people go their way,
Pause and jostle and pass and greet;
For life, for death, are they treading, say
Straw in...Read more of this...

The Lobster

by Howard Nemerov

 Here at the Super Duper, in a glass tank
Supplied by a rill of cold fresh water
Running down a glass washboard at one end
And siphoned off at the other, and so
Perpetually renewed, a herd of lobster
Is made available to the customer
Who may choose whichever one he wants
To carry home and drop into boiling water
And serve with a sauce of melted...Read more of this...

Psalm 25 part 3