Famous Pocket Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Pocket poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous pocket poems. These examples illustrate what a famous pocket poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...heir own language. You are still breathing.
Here is release. Here is your pillow,
cool like a handkerchief pressed in a pocket.
Here is your white tousled long growing hair.
Here is a kiss on your temple to hold you
safe through your solitude’s long steady war;
here, you can go. We will stay with you,
keeping the silence we all came here for.
Night, take his left hand, turning the pages.
Spin with the windows and doors that he mended.
Spin with his answers, patient, impatie...Read more of this...
by
Finch, Annie
...ter tankard with home-brewed
Nut-brown ale, that was famed for its strength in the village of Grand-Pre;
While from his pocket the notary drew his papers and inkhorn,
Wrote with a steady hand the date and the age of the parties,
Naming the dower of the bride in flocks of sheep and in cattle.
Orderly all things proceeded, and duly and well were completed,
And the great seal of the law was set like a sun on the margin.
Then from his leathern pouch the farmer threw on the table
...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...
Damn your Louvre, your Paris.
I'll write these entries
on the back of my canvas.
And so
when I picked a pen from the pocket
of a nearsighted American
sticking his red nose into my skirts
--his hair stinking of wine--
I started my memoirs.
I'm writing on my back
the sorrow of having a famous smile...
18 March: Night
The Louvre has fallen asleep.
In the dark, the armless Venus
looks like a veteran of the Great War.
The gold helmet of a knight gleams
as the light fro...Read more of this...
by
Hikmet, Nazim
...the essence of the matter:
`Liberty and union
now and forever;'
the book on the writing-table;
the hand in the breast-pocket."...Read more of this...
by
Moore, Marianne
...d, more or less, speaking through
his porridge.
He wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck in his
pocket,
but when he got home he couldn't figure out the order of the stanzas,
and he and a friend spread the papers on a table, and they
made some sense of them, but he isn't sure to this day if
they got it right.
An entire stanza may have slipped into the lining of his jacket
through a hole in his pocket.
He still wonders about the occasional sens...Read more of this...
by
Kinnell, Galway
...u that weld our credit should have eyes
To see what’s coming. Bury me first if I do.
HAMILTON
There’s always in some pocket of your brain
A care for me; wherefore my gratitude
For your attention is commensurate
With your concern. Yes, Burr, we are two kings;
We are as royal as two ditch-diggers;
But owe me not your sceptre. These are the days
When first a few seem all; but if we live
We may again be seen to be the few
That we have always been. These are the days
Wh...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...asked what she wanted -
Light in her eyes, a smile
Starting at the corners
Of her mouth. I fingered
A nickle in my pocket,
And when she lifted a chocolate
That cost a dime,
I didn't say anything.
I took the nickle from
My pocket, then an orange,
And set them quietly on
The counter. When I looked up,
The lady's eyes met mine,
And held them, knowing
Very well what it was all
About.
Outside,
A few cars hissing past,
Fog hanging like old
Coats between the tr...Read more of this...
by
Soto, Gary
...olored rocks to play
with. She liked him and climbed up onto his lap and she start-
ed putting the rocks in his shirt pocket.
We talked about Great Falls, Montana. I told Trout Fish-
ing in America about a winter I spent as a child in GreatFalls.
"It was during the war and I saw a Deanna Durbin movie seven
times, "I said.
The baby put a blue rock in Trout Fishing in America's
shirt pocket and he said, "I've been to Great Falls many
times. I remember Indians and fur...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...can be truly called great?--what that is great can they do?"
"What? Why they form cabals, they lend upon mortgage, they pocket
Silver spoons, and fear not e'en in the stocks to be placed."
"Whence do ye, then, derive the destiny, great and gigantic,
Which raises man up on high, e'en when it grinds him to dust?"--
"All mere nonsense! Ourselves, our worthy acquaintances also,
And our sorrows and wants, seek we, and find we, too, here."
"But all this ye possess at home both apte...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...upon
His finger. Like some Spanish don,
Conferring favours even when
Asking an alms, he bowed again
And waited. But my pockets proved
Empty, in vain I poked and shoved,
No hidden penny lurking there
Greeted my search. "Sir, I declare
I have no money, pray forgive,
But let me take you where you live."
And so we plodded through the mire
Where street lamps cast a wavering fire.
I took no note of where we went,
His talk became the element
Wherein my being swam, content.
It flash...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...red African drums and the occasional miniature
gargoyle from Notre Dame the Great Artist had
carved at breakfast with a pocket knife.
"Tourists love us.The Parisians, of course"--
she blushed--"are amused, though not without
a certain admiration . . ."
The Chateaubriand
arrived on a bone-white plate, smug and absolute
in its fragrant crust, a black plug steaming
like the heart plucked from the chest of a worthy enemy;
one touch with her fork sent pink juices streaming.
"Ad...Read more of this...
by
Dove, Rita
...rry-
That's the blues.
When you go to buy a candy bar
And you've lost the dime you had-
Slipped through a hole in your pocket somewhere-
That's the blues, too, and bad!...Read more of this...
by
Hughes, Langston
...for more.
So when it slyly got about Brown had a posthumous manuscript,
Jones, the publisher, sought him out, into his pocket deep he dipped.
"A thousand dollars?" Brown shook his head. "The story is not for sale, " he said.
Jones went away, then others came. Tempted and taunted, Brown was true.
Guarded at friendship's shrine the fame of the unpublished story grew and grew.
It's a long, long lane that has no end, but some lanes end in the Potter's field;
Smith to Brown had ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...ws in waves and ripples of lustre;
The lamps in the streets are distorted and strange.
Someone takes his watch from his pocket and yawns.
One peers out in the night for the place to change.
Rain . . . rain . . . rain . . . we are buried in rain,
It will rain forever, the swift wheels hiss through water,
Pale sheets of water gleam in the windy street.
The pealing of bells is lost in a drive of rain-drops.
Remote and hurried the great bells beat.
'I am the one whom life so sh...Read more of this...
by
Aiken, Conrad
...h roam The cliffs and peaks so high that are, To lay his hands upon a star, And in his pocket bring it home. Perhaps he's turned himself about, His face unto his horse's tail, And still and mute, in wonder lost, All like a silent horse-man ghost, He travels on along the vale. And now, perhaps, he's hunting sheep, A fierce and dreadful hunter he! &...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...he Flight and shake it from head to tail.
"Be Jesus, I never see sea get so rough
so fast! That wind come from God back pocket!"
"Where Cap'n headin? Like the man gone blind!"
"If we's to drong, we go drong, Vince, fock-it!"
"Shabine, say your prayers, if life leave you any!"
I have not loved those that I loved enough.
Worse than the mule kick of Kick-'Em-Jenny
Channel, rain start to pelt the Flight between
mountains of water. If I was frighten?
The tent poles of water spout...Read more of this...
by
Walcott, Derek
...mile
When he paid visits, and they could while
The time away with a diamond locket
Exceedingly well. So they picked his pocket,
And he paid in jewels for his slobbering kisses.
This watch was made to buy him blisses
From an Austrian countess on her way
Home, and she meant to start next day.
Paul worked by the pointed, tulip-flame
Of a tallow candle, and became
So absorbed, that his old clock made him wince
Striking the hour a moment since.
Its echo, only half apprehended,
Li...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...Walrus said;
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.
"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?"
But answer came there none—
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one....Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...ely forc'd.
Tereu
Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.
At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man w...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...lept under a sheet
in his life.
"Did you bring the nickel you promised?" he asked.
"Yeah, " I said. "It's here in my pocket. "
"Good. "
He hopped out of bed and he was already dressed. He had
told me once that he never took off his clothes when he went
to bed.
"Why bother?" he had said. "You're only going to get up,
anyway. Be prepared for it. You're not fooling anyone by
taking your clothes off when you go to bed."
He went into the kitchen, stepping around the ...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
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