Famous Planning Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Cottage

by Robert Graves
 Here in turn succeed and rule 
Carter, smith, and village fool, 
Then again the place is known 
As tavern, shop, and Sunday-school; 
Now somehow it’s come to me 
To light the fire and hold the key, 
Here in Heaven to reign alone. 

All the walls are white with lime, 
Big blue periwinkles climb 
And kiss the crumbling window-sill;
Snug inside...Read more of this...

Death

by James Henry Leigh Hunt
 Come thou, thou last one, whom I recognize,
unbearable pain throughout this body's fabric:
as I in my spirit burned, see, I now burn in thee:
the wood that long resisted the advancing flames
which thou kept flaring, I now am nourishinig
and burn in thee.

My gentle and mild being through thy ruthless fury
has turned into a raging hell that is not from here.
Quite...Read more of this...

Then

by Philip Levine
 A solitary apartment house, the last one 
before the boulevard ends and a dusty road 
winds its slow way out of town. On the third floor 
through the dusty windows Karen beholds 
the elegant couples walking arm in arm 
in the public park. It is Saturday afternoon, 
and she is waiting for a particular young man 
whose name I...Read more of this...

I Fellowed Sleep

by Dylan Thomas
 I fellowed sleep who kissed me in the brain,
Let fall the tear of time; the sleeper's eye,
Shifting to light, turned on me like a moon.
So, planning-heeled, I flew along my man
And dropped on dreaming and the upward sky.

I fled the earth and, naked, climbed the weather,
Reaching a second ground far from the stars;
And there we wept I and a...Read more of this...

Growing Old

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 In some summers there is so much fruit,
the peasants decide not to reap any more.
Not having reaped you, oh my days,
my nights, have I let the slow flames
of your lovely produce fall into ashes?

My nights, my days, you have borne so much!
All your branches have retained the gesture
of that long labor you are rising from:
my days, my nights. Oh...Read more of this...

Dedication To A Book Of Stories Selected From The Irish Novelists

by William Butler Yeats
 There was a green branch hung with many a bell
When her own people ruled this tragic Eire;
And from its murmuring greenness, calm of Faery,
A Druid kindness, on all hearers fell.

It charmed away the merchant from his guile,
And turned the farmer's memory from his cattle,
And hushed in sleep the roaring ranks of battle:
And all grew friendly for a little while.

Ah,...Read more of this...

The City That Will Not Repent

by Vachel Lindsay
 Climbing the heights of Berkeley 
Nightly I watch the West. 
There lies new San Francisco, 
Sea-maid in purple dressed, 
Wearing a dancer's girdle 
All to inflame desire: 
Scorning her days of sackcloth, 
Scorning her cleansing fire. 

See, like a burning city 
Sets now the red sun's dome. 
See, mystic firebrands sparkle 
There on each store and home. 
See how...Read more of this...

The New Dog

by Linda Pastan
 Into the gravity of my life,
the serious ceremonies
of polish and paper
and pen, has come

this manic animal
whose innocent disruptions
make nonsense
of my old simplicities--

as if I needed him
to prove again that after
all the careful planning,
anything can happen....Read more of this...

In the Home Stretch

by Robert Frost
 SHE stood against the kitchen sink, and looked
Over the sink out through a dusty window
At weeds the water from the sink made tall.
She wore her cape; her hat was in her hand.
Behind her was confusion in the room,
Of chairs turned upside down to sit like people
In other chairs, and something, come to look,
For every room a house has—parlor, bed-room,
And...Read more of this...

The Penitent

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 I had a little Sorrow,
Born of a little Sin,
I found a room all damp with gloom
And shut us all within;
And, "Little Sorrow, weep," said I,
"And, Little Sin, pray God to die,
And I upon the floor will lie
And think how bad I've been!"

Alas for pious planning—
It mattered not a whit!
As far as gloom went in that room,
The lamp might have...Read more of this...

The Penitent

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 I had a little Sorrow,
Born of a little Sin,
I found a room all damp with gloom
And shut us all within;
And, "Little Sorrow, weep," said I,
"And, Little Sin, pray God to die,
And I upon the floor will lie
And think how bad I've been!"

Alas for pious planning - -
It mattered not a whit!
As far as gloom went in that room,
The lamp...Read more of this...

Task of a Poet

by Dejan Stojanovic
To hear never-heard sounds, 
To see never-seen colors and shapes, 
To try to understand the imperceptible 
Power pervading the world; 
To fly and find pure ethereal substances 
That are not of matter 
But of that invisible soul pervading reality. 
To hear another soul and to whisper to another soul; 
To be a lantern in the darkness 
Or an umbrella in...Read more of this...

For the Young Who Want To

by Marge Piercy
 Talent is what they say 
you have after the novel 
is published and favorably 
reviewed. Beforehand what 
you have is a tedious 
delusion, a hobby like knitting. 

Work is what you have done 
after the play is produced 
and the audience claps. 
Before that friends keep asking 
when you are planning to go 
out and get a job. 

Genius...Read more of this...

Sorry I Missed You

by Barry Tebb
 (or ‘Huddersfield the Second Poetry Capital of England Re-visited’)



What was it Janice Simmons said to me as James lay dying in Ireland?

“Phone Peter Pegnall in Leeds, an ex-pupil of Jimmy’s. He’s organising

A benefit reading, he’d love to hear from you and have your help.”



‘Like hell he would’ I thought but I phoned him all the same

At his converted farmhouse...Read more of this...

To Think of Time

by Walt Whitman
 1
TO think of time—of all that retrospection! 
To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward! 

Have you guess’d you yourself would not continue? 
Have you dreaded these earth-beetles? 
Have you fear’d the future would be nothing to you?

Is to-day nothing? Is the beginningless past nothing? 
If the future is nothing, they are just as surely nothing. 

To think...Read more of this...

Chicago

by Carl Sandburg
 Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders;

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your
painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I...Read more of this...

Executive

by John Betjeman
 I am a young executive. No cuffs than mine are cleaner;
I have a Slimline brief-case and I use the firm's Cortina.
In every roadside hostelry from here to Burgess Hill
The ma?tres d'h?tel all know me well, and let me sign the bill.

You ask me what it is I do. Well, actually, you know,
I'm partly a liaison man, and partly P.R.O.
Essentially,...Read more of this...

Ambitions Trail

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 If all the end of this continuous striving
Were simply to attain,
How poor would seem the planning and contriving
The endless urging and the hurried driving
Of body, heart and brain!

But ever in the wake of true achieving,
There shine this glowing trail –
Some other soul will be spurred on, conceiving,
New strength and hope, in its own power believing,
Because thou didst not fail.

Not...Read more of this...

The Hard Times In Elfland

by Sidney Lanier
 A Story of Christmas Eve.

Strange that the termagant winds should scold
The Christmas Eve so bitterly!
But Wife, and Harry the four-year-old,
Big Charley, Nimblewits, and I,

Blithe as the wind was bitter, drew
More frontward of the mighty fire,
Where wise Newfoundland Fan foreknew
The heaven that Christian dogs desire --

Stretched o'er the rug, serene and grave,
Huge nose on heavy paws reclined,
With never a drowning...Read more of this...

The Children's Hour

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Between the dark and the daylight, 
When the night is beginning to lower, 
Comes a pause in the day's occupations, 
That is known as the Children's Hour. 

I hear in the chamber above me 
The patter of little feet, 
The sound of a door that is opened, 
And voices soft and sweet. 

From my study I see in the lamplight,...Read more of this...

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