Famous Peculiar Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Peculiar poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous peculiar poems. These examples illustrate what a famous peculiar poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Isaac Watts
v.1-4,14,19-21
L. M.
The church is God's house and care.
Praise ye the Lord, exalt his name,
While in his holy courts ye wait,
Ye saints, that to his house belong,
Or stand attending at his gate.
Praise ye the Lord, the Lord is good;
To praise his name is sweet employ:
Isr'el he chose of old, and still
His church is his peculiar joy.
The Lord himself will...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
Rain filled the streets
once a year, rising almost
to door and window sills,
battering walls and roofs
until it cleaned away the mess
we'd made. My father told
me this, he told me it ran
downtown and spilled into
the river, which in turn
emptied finally into the sea.
He said this only once
while I sat on...Read more of this...
by
Walter de la Mare
Said Mr. Smith, “I really cannot
Tell you, Dr. Jones—
The most peculiar pain I’m in—
I think it’s in my bones.”
Said Dr. Jones, “Oh, Mr. Smith,
That’s nothing. Without doubt
We have a simple cure for that;
It is to take them out.”
He laid forthwith poor Mr. Smith
Close-clamped upon the table,
And, cold as stone, took out his bones
As fast as he was able.
Smith said,...Read more of this...
by
Galway Kinnell
I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks are very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes...Read more of this...
by
Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
it is at moments after i have dreamed
of the rare entertainment of your eyes,
when (being fool to fancy) i have deemed
with your peculiar mouth my heart made wise;
at moments when the glassy darkness holds
the genuine apparition of your smile
(it was through tears always)and silence moulds
such strangeness as was mine a little while;
moments when my once more illustrious arms
are filled with...Read more of this...
by
Gelett Burgess
AN ALPHABET OF FAMOUS GOOPS.
Which you 'll Regard with Yells and Whoops.
Futile Acumen!
For you Yourselves are Doubtless Dupes
Of Failings Such as Mar these Groups --
We all are Human!
1 ABEDNEGO was Meek and Mild; he Softly Spoke, he Sweetly Smiled.
2 He never Called his Playmates Names, and he was Good in Running Games;
3 But he was Often in Disgrace...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[The following explanation is necessary, in order
to make this ode in any way intelligible. The Poet is supposed to
leave his companions, who are proceeding on a hunting expedition
in winter, in order himself to pay a visit to a hypochondriacal
friend, and also to see the mining in the Hartz mountains. The ode
alternately describes, in a...Read more of this...
by
Edward Lear
There was an Old Man of Apulia,Whose conduct was very peculiar;He fed twenty sons upon nothing but buns,That whimsical Man of Apulia. ...Read more of this...
by
James Whitcomb Riley
A goddess, with a siren's grace,--
A sun-haired girl on a craggy place
Above a bay where fish-boats lay
Drifting about like birds of prey.
Wrought was she of a painter's dream,--
Wise only as are artists wise,
My artist-friend, Rolf Herschkelhiem,
With deep sad eyes of oversize,
And face of melancholy guise.
I pressed him that he tell to me
This masterpiece's history.
He turned--REturned--and thus beguiled
Me with the...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
I held my heart so far from harm,
I let it wander far and free
In mead and mart, without alarm,
Assured it must come back to me.
And all went well till on a day,
Learned Dr. Cupid wandered by
A search along our sylvan way
For some peculiar butterfly.
A flash of wings, a hurried dive,
A flutter and a short-lived flit;
This Scientist, as I am alive
Had...Read more of this...
by
Anne Kingsmill Finch
[Silvia] Pretty Nymph! within this Shade,
Whilst the Flocks to rest are laid,
Whilst the World dissolves in Heat,
Take this cool, and flow'ry Seat:
And with pleasing Talk awhile
Let us two the Time beguile;
Tho' thou here no Shepherd see,
To encline his humble Knee,
Or with melancholy Lays
Sing thy dangerous Beauty's Praise.
[Dorinda] Nymph! with thee I here...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
The church the garden of Christ.
SS 4:12-15; 5:1.
We are a garden walled around,
Chosen and made peculiar ground;
A little spot enclosed by grace
Out of the world's wide wilderness.
Like trees of myrrh and spice we stand,
Planted by God the Father's hand;
And all his springs in Zion flow,
To make the young plantation grow.
Awake, O, heav'nly wind! and come,
Blow on this garden...Read more of this...
by
Robert Graves
'But that was nothing to what things came out
From the sea-caves of Criccieth yonder.'
'What were they? Mermaids? dragons? ghosts?'
'Nothing at all of any things like that.'
'What were they, then?'
'All sorts of ***** things,
Things never seen or heard or written about,
Very strange, un-Welsh, utterly peculiar
Things. Oh, solid enough they seemed to touch,
Had anyone dared it. Marvellous creation,
All various shapes...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Of their peculiar light
I keep one ray
To clarify the Sight
To seek them by --...Read more of this...
by
Adrienne Rich
My mouth hovers across your breasts
in the short grey winter afternoon
in this bed we are delicate
and touch so hot with joy we amaze ourselves
tough and delicate we play rings
around each other our daytime candle burns
with its peculiar light and if the snow
begins to fall outside filling the branches
and if the night falls without announcement
there are the pleasures of winter
sudden,...Read more of this...
by
Lewis Carroll
Next to him the eldest daughter:
She suggested very little
Only asked if he would take her
With her look of 'passive beauty-'
Her idea of passive beauty
Was a squinting of the left-eye,
Was a drooping of the right-eye,
Was a smile that went up Sideways
To the corner of the nostrils.
Hiawatha, when she asked him
Took no notice of the question
Looked as if he hadn't heared...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
Since shed or cottage I have none,
I sing the more, that thou hast one;
To whose glad threshold, and free door
I may a Poet come, though poor;
And eat with thee a savoury bit,
Paying but common thanks for it.
--Yet should I chance, my Wicks, to see
An over-leaven look in thee,
To sour the bread, and turn the beer
To an exalted vinegar;
Or should'st...Read more of this...
by
John Milton
I
It was the Winter wilde,
While the Heav'n-born-childe,
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature in aw to him
Had doff't her gawdy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize:
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the Sun her lusty Paramour.
II
Only with speeches fair
She woo'd the gentle Air
To hide her guilty front with innocent Snow,
And on her naked...Read more of this...
by
Chris Mansell
there are times
when you should listen
to the world
I think
like
for instance
the time a meteorite came
through the roof and
through the ceiling and
landed on my desk
in the middle of
the papers and things
undone
to say it
smouldered would be
to become poetic
but it did
smoulder
and I was sitting there
at the time
about to pick up my pen
then I...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
Ah, Posthumus! our years hence fly
And leave no sound: nor piety,
Or prayers, or vow
Can keep the wrinkle from the brow;
But we must on,
As fate does lead or draw us; none,
None, Posthumus, could e'er decline
The doom of cruel Proserpine.
The pleasing wife, the house, the ground
Must all be left, no one plant found
To follow thee,
Save only the curst cypress-tree!
--A merry mind
Looks...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
MY DEAR LADY GRANVILLE,--
THE reluctance which must naturally be felt by any one in
venturing to give to the world a book such as the present, where
the beauties of the great original must inevitably be diminished,
if not destroyed, in the process of passing through the
translator's hands, cannot but be felt in all its force when that
translator has not penetrated beyond...Read more of this...
by
Robert Creeley
Having begun in thought there
in that factual embodied wonder
what was lost in the emptied lovers
patience and mind I first felt there
wondered again and again what for
myself so meager and finally singular
despite all issued therefrom whether
sister or mother or brother and father
come to love's emptied place too late
to feel it again see again first there
all the peculiar wet tenderness the...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
NO song nor dance I bring from yon great city,
That queens it o’er our taste—the more’s the pity:
Tho’ by the bye, abroad why will you roam?
Good sense and taste are natives here at home:
But not for panegyric I appear,
I come to wish you all a good New Year!
Old Father Time deputes me here before ye,
Not for to preach, but...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
What thou thinkest, belongs to all; what thou feelest, is thine only.
Wouldst thou make him thine own, feel thou the God whom thou thinkest!...Read more of this...
by
David Wagoner
They don't want to be your hedge,
Your barrier, your living wall, the no-go
Go-between between your property
And the prying of dogs and strangers. They don't
Want to settle any of your old squabbles
Inside or out of bounds. Their new growth
In three-foot shoots goes thrusting straight
Up in the air each April or goes off
Half-cocked sideways to...Read more of this...
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