Famous Possessing Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Sonnet 87: Farewell! Thou art too dear for my possessing

by William Shakespeare
 Farewell! Thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know'st thy estimate,
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting,
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXXXVII

by William Shakespeare
 Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know'st thy estimate:
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself...Read more of this...

The Gift Outright

by Robert Frost
The land was ours before we were the land’s.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England’s, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXXV

by William Shakespeare
 So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground;
And for the peace of you I hold such strife
As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found;
Now proud as an enjoyer and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure,
Now counting best to be with you alone,
Then better'd that the world may...Read more of this...

Sonnet 75: So are you to my thoughts as food to life

by William Shakespeare
 So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground;
And for the peace of you I hold such strife
As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found.
Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;
Now counting best to be with you alone,
Then bettered that the world may...Read more of this...

Circumference thou Bride of Awe

by Emily Dickinson
 Circumference thou Bride of Awe
Possessing thou shalt be
Possessed by every hallowed Knight
That dares to covet thee...Read more of this...

Carol of Words

by Walt Whitman
 1
EARTH, round, rolling, compact—suns, moons, animals—all these are words to be
 said; 
Watery, vegetable, sauroid advances—beings, premonitions, lispings of the future, 
Behold! these are vast words to be said. 

Were you thinking that those were the words—those upright lines? those curves,
 angles,
 dots? 
No, those are not the words—the substantial words are in the ground and sea,
They are in...Read more of this...

Spiders

by Delmore Schwartz
 Is the spider a monster in miniature?
His web is a cruel stair, to be sure,
Designed artfully, cunningly placed,
A delicate trap, carefully spun
To bind the fly (innocent or unaware)
In a net as strong as a chain or a gun.

There are far more spiders than the man in the street
 supposes
And the philosopher-king imagines, let alone knows!
There are six hundred kinds...Read more of this...

All forgot for recollecting

by Emily Dickinson
 All forgot for recollecting
Just a paltry One --
All forsook, for just a Stranger's
New Accompanying --

Grace of Wealth, and Grace of Station
Less accounted than
An unknown Esteem possessing --
Estimate -- Who can --

Home effaced -- Her faces dwindled --
Nature -- altered small --
Sun -- if shone -- or Storm -- if shattered --
Overlooked I all --

Dropped -- my fate -- a...Read more of this...

Spiritual Blessings

by Anonymous
Almighty Father! Thou hast many blessingsIn store for every loving child of Thine;For this I pray,—Let me, Thy grace possessing,Seek to be guided by Thy will divine.Not for earth’s treasures,—for her joys the dearest,—Would I my supplications raise to Thee;Not for the hopes that to my heart are nearest,But only that I give that heart to Thee.I pray that Thou...Read more of this...

Song of Fortune VI

by Kahlil Gibran
 Man and I are sweethearts 
He craves me and I long for him, 
But alas! Between us has appeared 
A rival who brings us misery. 
She is cruel and demanding, 
Possessing empty lure. 
Her name is Substance. 
She follows wherever we go 
And watches like a sentinel, bringing 
Restlessness to my lover. 


I ask for my beloved in the...Read more of this...

Epipsychidion (excerpt)

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 Emily, 
A ship is floating in the harbour now,
A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;
There is a path on the sea's azure floor,
No keel has ever plough'd that path before;
The halcyons brood around the foamless isles;
The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles;
The merry mariners are bold and free:
Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me?
Our bark is...Read more of this...

260. Sketch in Verse inscribed to the Right Hon. C. J. Fox

by Robert Burns
 HOW wisdom and Folly meet, mix, and unite,
How Virtue and Vice blend their black and their white,
How Genius, th’ illustrious father of fiction,
Confounds rule and law, reconciles contradiction,
I sing: If these mortals, the critics, should bustle,
I care not, not I—let the Critics go whistle!


 But now for a Patron whose name and whose glory,
At once may illustrate and honour...Read more of this...

A Supermarket in California

by Allen Ginsberg
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whit- 
man, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees 
with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. 
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, 
I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of 
your enumerations! 
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole fam- 
ilies shopping at night! Aisles full...Read more of this...

Hymn To Joy

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Joy, thou goddess, fair, immortal,
Offspring of Elysium,
Mad with rapture, to the portal
Of thy holy fame we come!
Fashion's laws, indeed, may sever,
But thy magic joins again;
All mankind are brethren ever
'Neath thy mild and gentle reign.

CHORUS.
Welcome, all ye myriad creatures!
Brethren, take the kiss of love!
Yes, the starry realms above
Hide a Father's smiling features!

He, that noble prize possessing--
He that boasts a friend...Read more of this...

Farewell Ungrateful Traitor!

by John Dryden
 Farewell, ungrateful traitor! 
Farewell, my perjur'd swain! 
Let never injur'd woman 
Believe a man again. 
The pleasure of possessing 
Surpasses all expressing, 
But 'tis too short a blessing, 
And love too long a pain. 

'Tis easy to deceive us 
In pity of your pain, 
But when we love, you leave us 
To rail at you in vain. 
Before we...Read more of this...

Berck-Plage

by Sylvia Plath
(1)

This is the sea, then, this great abeyance.
How the sun's poultice draws on my inflammation.

Electrifyingly-colored sherbets, scooped from the freeze
By pale girls, travel the air in scorched hands.

Why is it so quiet, what are they hiding?
I have two legs, and I move smilingly..

A sandy damper kills the vibrations;
It stretches for miles, the shrunk voices

Waving and crutchless, half their old size.
The...Read more of this...

My Dearest Frank I Wish You Joy

by Jane Austen
 My dearest Frank, I wish you joy
Of Mary's safety with a Boy,
Whose birth has given little pain
Compared with that of Mary Jane.--
May he a growing Blessing prove,
And well deserve his Parents' Love!--
Endow'd with Art's and Nature's Good,
Thy Name possessing with thy Blood,
In him, in all his ways, may we
Another Francis WIlliam see!--
Thy infant days may he inherit,
THey warmth, nay...Read more of this...

I have heard the sunset song of the birches

by Stephen Crane
 "I have heard the sunset song of the birches,
A white melody in the silence,
I have seen a quarrel of the pines.
At nightfall
The little grasses have rushed by me
With the wind men.
These things have I lived," quoth the maniac,
"Possessing only eyes and ears.
But you --
You don green spectacles before you look at roses."...Read more of this...

Inspiration

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Not like a daring, bold, aggressive boy, 
Is inspiration, eager to pursue, 
But rather like a maiden, fond, yet coy, 
Who gives herself to him who best doth woo.

Once she may smile, or thrice, thy soul to fire, 
In passing by, but when she turns her face, 
Thou must persist and seek her with desire, 
If thou wouldst win...Read more of this...

Meditation On Saviors

by Robinson Jeffers
 I
When I considered it too closely, when I wore it like an element
 and smelt it like water,
Life is become less lovely, the net nearer than the skin, a
 little troublesome, a little terrible.

I pledged myself awhile ago not to seek refuge, neither in death
 nor in a walled garden,
In lies nor gated loyalties, nor in the gates of...Read more of this...

I

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Love is the light of the world, my dear,
Heigho, but the world is gloomy;
The light has failed and the lamp down hurled,
Leaves only darkness to me.
Love is the light of the world, my dear,
Ah me, but the world is dreary;
The night is down, and my curtain furled
But I cannot sleep, though weary.
Love is the light of the world, my dear,
Alas...Read more of this...

Black Swans

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 As I lie at rest on a patch of clover 
In the Western Park when the day is done. 
I watch as the wild black swans fly over 
With their phalanx turned to the sinking sun; 
And I hear the clang of their leader crying 
To a lagging mate in the rearward flying, 
And they fade away in the...Read more of this...

The Czars Last Christmas Letter: A Barn in the Urals

by Norman Dubie
 You were never told, Mother, how old Illyawas drunk
That last holiday, for five days and nights

He stumbled through Petersburg forming
A choir of mutes, he dressed them in pink ascension gowns

And, then, sold Father's Tirietz stallion so to rent
A hall for his Christmas recital: the audience

Was rowdy but Illya in his black robes turned on them
And gave them that look...Read more of this...

Acknowledgment

by Sidney Lanier
 I.

O Age that half believ'st thou half believ'st,
Half doubt'st the substance of thine own half doubt,
And, half perceiving that thou half perceiv'st,
Stand'st at thy temple door, heart in, head out!
Lo! while thy heart's within, helping the choir,
Without, thine eyes range up and down the time,
Blinking at o'er-bright science, smit with desire
To see and not to see. Hence, crime on...Read more of this...

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