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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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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...tion 
by the store detective. 
We strode down the open corridors together in 
our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every 
frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier. 
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors 
close in an hour. Which way does your beard point 
tonight? 
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the 
supermarket and feel absurd.) 
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? 
The trees add shade to shade, lights out in th...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen



...d the tongue, sapphire of ash.


(4)

A wedding-cake face in a paper frill.
How superior he is now.

It is like possessing a saint.
The nurses in their wing-caps are no longer so beautiful;

They are browning, like touched gardenias.
The bed is rolled from the wall.

This is what it is to be complete. It is horrible.
Is he wearing pajamas or an evening suit

Under the glued sheet from which his powdery beak
Rises so whitely unbuffeted?

They propped his ja...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia
...Persuasions of lovers, curses, gasps of the dying, laughter of young people, accents of
 bargainers, 
Underneath these, possessing the words that never fail. 

To her children, the words of the eloquent dumb great mother never fail; 
The true words do not fail, for motion does not fail, and reflection does not fail; 
Also the day and night do not fail, and the voyage we pursue does not fail.

6
Of the interminable sisters, 
Of the ceaseless cotillions of sisters, 
Of the cent...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...e leers and chatters.

Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow;
Ivy crowns that brow supernal
As the forehead of Apollo,
And possessing youth eternal.

Round about him, fair Bacchantes,
Bearing cymbals, flutes, and thyrses,
Wild from Naxian groves, or Zante's
Vineyards, sing delirious verses.

Thus he won, through all the nations,
Bloodless victories, and the farmer
Bore, as trophies and oblations,
Vines for banners, ploughs for armor.

Judged by no o'erzealous rigor,
Much this my...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...e me that to thee!
Oh happy state! when souls each other draw,
When love is liberty, and nature, law:
All then is full, possessing, and possess'd,
No craving void left aching in the breast:
Ev'n thought meets thought, ere from the lips it part,
And each warm wish springs mutual from the heart.
This sure is bliss (if bliss on earth there be)
And once the lot of Abelard and me.

Alas, how chang'd! what sudden horrors rise!
A naked lover bound and bleeding lies!
Where, where was...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander



...linger, where the pebble-paven shore,
Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea,
Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy--
Possessing and possess'd by all that is
Within that calm circumference of bliss,
And by each other, till to love and live
Be one: or, at the noontide hour, arrive
Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep
The moonlight of the expir'd night asleep,
Through which the awaken'd day can never peep;
A veil for our seclusion, close as night's,
Where secure sleep...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...well, 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 have descried it, 
There is no joy beside it, 
But she that once has tried it 
Will never love again. 

The passion you pretended 
Was only to obt...Read more of this...
by Dryden, John
...!
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 that's true,
He whom woman's love is blessing,
Let him join the chorus too!
Aye, and he who but one spirit
On this earth can call his own!
He who no such bliss can merit,
Let him mourn his fate alone!

CHORUS.
All who Nature's tribes are swelling
Homage pay to sympathy;
For she guides us up on high,
Where the unknown has ...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von
...es.
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...
by Crane, Stephen
...all she come unveiling all her charms, 
Giving thee joy for pain, and smiles for tears; 
Then shalt thou clasp her with possessing arms, 
The while she murmurs music in thine ears.

But ere her kiss has faded from thy cheek, 
She shall flee from thee over hill and glade, 
So must thou seek and ever seek and seek
For each new conquest of this phantom maid....Read more of this...
by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...u hast made,

While mortall love doth all the title gain!
Which siding with invention, they together
Bear all the sway, possessing heart and brain,
(Thy workmanship) and give thee share in neither.

Wit fancies beautie, beautie raiseth wit:
The world is theirs; they two play out the game,
Thou standing by: and though thy glorious name
Wrought our deliverance from th’ infernall pit,

Who sings thy praise? onely a skarf or glove
Doth warm our hands, and make them write of love....Read more of this...
by Herbert, George
...alace at Thebes; the hill Calvary.

Out of incestuous love power and then ruin. A man forcing the
 imaginations of men,
Possessing with love and power the people: a man defiling his
 own household with impious desire.

King Oedipus reeling blinded from the palace doorway, red tears
 pouring from the torn pits
Under the forehead; and the young Jew writhing on the domed hill
 in the earthquake, against the eclipse

Frightfully uplifted for having turned inward to love the
 peop...Read more of this...
by Jeffers, Robinson
...-
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 insolence of spirit;--
We would not with one foult dispense
To weaken the resemblance.
May he revive thy Nursery sin,
Peeping as daringly within,
His curley Locks but just descried,
With 'Bet, my be not come to bide.'--
F...Read more of this...
by Austen, Jane
...grassy herb, 
Fearless unfeared he slept: in at his mouth 
The Devil entered; and his brutal sense, 
In heart or head, possessing, soon inspired 
With act intelligential; but his sleep 
Disturbed not, waiting close the approach of morn. 
Now, when as sacred light began to dawn 
In Eden on the humid flowers, that breathed 
Their morning incense, when all things, that breathe, 
From the Earth's great altar send up silent praise 
To the Creator, and his nostrils fill 
With grat...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...se;
The Stoic last in philosophic pride, 
By him called virtue, and his virtuous man,
Wise, perfect in himself, and all possessing,
Equal to God, oft shames not to prefer,
As fearing God nor man, contemning all
Wealth, pleasure, pain or torment, death and life—
Which, when he lists, he leaves, or boasts he can;
For all his tedious talk is but vain boast,
Or subtle shifts conviction to evade.
Alas! what can they teach, and not mislead,
Ignorant of themselves, of God much more,...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...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 forest, 
Under the trees, by the lakes. 
I cannot find him, for Substance 
Has spirited him to the clamorous 
City and placed him on the throne 
Of quaking, metal riches. 


I call for him...Read more of this...
by Gibran, Kahlil
...d satiation.
The handsome wolf spider moves suddenly freely and relies
Upon lightning suddenness, stealth and surprise,
Possessing accurate eyes, pouncing upon his victim with the
 speed of surmise.

Courtship is dangerous: there are just as many elaborate 
 and endless techniques and varieties
As characterize the wooing of more analytic, more 
 introspective beings: Sometimes the male
Arrives with the gift of a freshly caught fly.
Sometimes he ties down the female, when she ...Read more of this...
by Schwartz, Delmore
...
 Whence rays of beauty flow, 
 Salt tears most oft are streaming. 
 
 Free from emotions past, 
 All joy and hope possessing, 
 With mind in pureness cast, 
 Sweet ignorance confessing. 
 
 Plant, safe from winds and showers, 
 Heart with soft visions glowing, 
 In childhood's happy hours 
 A mother's rapture showing. 
 
 Loved by each anxious friend, 
 No carking care within— 
 When summer gambols end, 
 My winter sports begin. 
 
 Sweet poesy from heaven...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor
...elt the Andean breath. His mind was free 
178 And more than free, elate, intent, profound 
179 And studious of a self possessing him, 
180 That was not in him in the crusty town 
181 From which he sailed. Beyond him, westward, lay 
182 The mountainous ridges, purple balustrades, 
183 In which the thunder, lapsing in its clap, 
184 Let down gigantic quavers of its voice, 
185 For Crispin to vociferate again. 

III 

Approaching Carolina 

186 The book of moonligh...Read more of this...
by Stevens, Wallace
...uch him.

I know they keep your letters from us. But, Mother,
The day they finally put them in my hands

I'll know that possessing them I am condemned
And possibly even my wife, and my children.

We will drink mint tea this evening.
Will each of us be increased by death?

With fractions as the bottom integer gets bigger, Mother, it
Represents less. That's the feeling I have about

This letter. I am at your request, The Czar.
And I am Nicholas....Read more of this...
by Dubie, Norman

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things