Famous Possible Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Possible poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous possible poems. These examples illustrate what a famous possible poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Emily Dickinson
Is Bliss then, such Abyss,
I must not put my foot amiss
For fear I spoil my shoe?
I'd rather suit my foot
Than save my Boot --
For yet to buy another Pair
Is possible,
At any store --
But Bliss, is sold just once.
The Patent lost
None buy it any more --
Say, Foot, decide the point --
The Lady cross, or not?
Verdict for Boot!...Read more of this...
by
Fernando Pessoa
Something in me was born before the stars
And saw the sun begin from far away.
Our yellow, local day on its wont jars,
For it hath communed with an absolute day.
Through my Thought's night, as a worn robe's heard trail
That I have never seen, I drag this past
That saw the Possible like a dawn grow pale
On the lost night before it, mute...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
'Twas in a certain regiment of French Grenadiers,
A touching and beautiful custom was observed many years;
Which was meant to commemorate the heroism of a departed comrade,
And when the companies assembled for parade,
There was one name at roll call to which no answer was made
It was that of the noble La Tour d'Auvergne,
The first Grenadier of France, heroic and...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
For John Malcolm Brinnin and Bill Read: Duxbury
It was cold and windy, scarcely the day
to take a walk on that long beach
Everything was withdrawn as far as possible,
indrawn: the tide far out, the ocean shrunken,
seabirds in ones or twos.
The rackety, icy, offshore wind
numbed our faces on one side;
disrupted the formation
of a...Read more of this...
by
Archibald MacLeish
Oh, not the loss of the accomplished thing!
Not dumb farewells, nor long relinquishment
Of beauty had, and golden summer spent,
And savage glory of the fluttering
Torn banners of the rain, and frosty ring
Of moon-white winters, and the imminent
Long-lunging seas, and glowing students bent
To race on some smooth beach the gull's wing:
Not these, nor all...Read more of this...
by
Pythagoras
1. First worship the Immortal Gods, as they are established and ordained by the Law.
2. Reverence the Oath, and next the Heroes, full of goodness and light.
3. Honour likewise the Terrestrial Daemons by rendering them the worship lawfully due to them.
4. Honour likewise your parents, and those most nearly related to you.
5. Of all the rest of mankind, make him...Read more of this...
by
Billy Collins
You are the bread and the knife,
The crystal goblet and the wine...
-Jacques Crickillon
You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.
However, you are not the wind in the...Read more of this...
by
Dejan Stojanovic
To transform a grimace into a sound
Sounds impossible, yet it is possible
To transform a vision into music,
To go outside an enslaved personality,
To become impersonal by transforming
Into sand, into water, into light,
To feel the air and breathe the air
By becoming the air, become
A bird, the first cell, the first man,
Become a wandering comet,
A dying star, a...Read more of this...
by
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Is it possible
That so high debate,
So sharp, so sore, and of such rate,
Should end so soon and was begun so late?
Is it possible?
Is it possible
So cruel intent,
So hasty heat and so soon spent,
From love to hate, and thence for to relent?
Is it possible?
Is it possible
That any may find
Within one heart so diverse mind,
To change or turn as weather and...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Who occupies this House?
A Stranger I must judge
Since No one know His Circumstance --
'Tis well the name and age
Are writ upon the Door
Or I should fear to pause
Where not so much as Honest Dog
Approach encourages.
It seems a curious Town --
Some Houses very old,
Some -- newly raised this Afternoon,
Were I compelled to build
It should not be among
Inhabitants so still
But where...Read more of this...
by
T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door.
His name, as I ought to have told you before,
Is really Asparagus. That's such a fuss
To pronounce, that we usually call him just Gus.
His coat's very shabby, he's thin as a rake,
And he suffers from palsy that makes his paw shake.
Yet he was, in his youth, quite the smartest of Cats--
But no...Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
O THAT 'twere possible
After long grief and pain
To find the arms of my true love
Round me once again!...
A shadow flits before me 5
Not thou but like to thee:
Ah Christ! that it were possible
For one short hour to see
The souls we loved that they might tell us
What and where they be! 10...Read more of this...
by
Lewis Carroll
The Beaver's Lesson
They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.
Then the Butcher contrived an ingenious plan
For making a separate sally;
And fixed on a spot unfrequented by man,
A dismal and desolate valley....Read more of this...
by
Delmore Schwartz
Nothing is given which is not taken.
Little or nothing is taken which is not freely desired,
freely, truly and fully.
"You would not seek me if you had not found me": this is
true of all that is supremely desired and admired...
"An enigma is an animal," said the hurried, harried
schoolboy:
And a horse divided against itself cannot stand;
And a...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
Hungry and cold, I stood in a doorway
on Delancey Street in 1946
as the rain came down. The worst part is this
is not from a bad movie. I'd read Dos Passos'
USA and thought, "Before the night ends
my life will change." A stranger would stop
to ask for my help, a single stranger
more needy than I, if such a woman
were possible. I...Read more of this...
by
James Tate
I swerved to avoid hitting a squirrel
in the center of the road and that's when
the deer came charging out of the forest
and forced me to hit the brakes for all I
was worth and I careened back to the other
side of the road just as a skunk came toddling
out of Mrs. Bancroft's front yard and I swung
back perhaps just grazing...Read more of this...
by
Charles Bukowski
at their best, there is gentleness in Humanity.
some understanding and, at times, acts of
courage
but all in all it is a mass, a glob that doesn't
have too much.
it is like a large animal deep in sleep and
almost nothing can awaken it.
when activated it's best at brutality,
selfishness, unjust judgments, murder.
what can we do with it, this Humanity?
nothing.
avoid the...Read more of this...
by
Jim Carroll
1/
Genius is not a generous thing
In return it charges more interest than any amount of royalties can cover
And it resents fame
With bitter vengeance
Pills and powdres only placate it awhile
Then it puts you in a place where the planet's poles reverse
Where the currents of electricity shift
Your Body becomes a magnet and pulls to it despair and rotten teeth,
Cheese...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Pour me, O cupbearer! some wine colored like the
flowers of the Judas-tree, pour, O cupbearer! for grief
comes to oppress my soul; pour for me the nectar, for
it is possible that in making me a stranger to myself, it
will free me one instant from the vicissitudes of this
world.
386...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I feel no small reluctance in venturing to give to the public a
work of the character of that indicated by the title-page to the
present volume; for, difficult as it must always be to render satisfactorily
into one's own tongue the writings of the bards of other lands,
the responsibility assumed by the translator is immeasurably increased
when...Read more of this...
by
Frank Bidart
"When I hit her on the head, it was good,
and then I did it to her a couple of times,--
but it was funny,--afterwards,
it was as if somebody else did it ...
Everything flat, without sharpness, richness or line.
Still, I liked to drive past the woods where she lay,
tell the old lady and the kids I had to take a piss,
hop...Read more of this...
by
Edward Taylor
I swerved to avoid hitting a squirrel
in the center of the road and that's when
the deer came charging out of the forest
and forced me to hit the brakes for all I
was worth and I careened back to the other
side of the road just as a skunk came toddling
out of Mrs. Bancroft's front yard and I swung
back perhaps just grazing...Read more of this...
by
Robert Francis
Two boys uncoached are tossing a poem together,
Overhand, underhand, backhand, sleight of hand, everyhand,
Teasing with attitudes, latitudes, interludes, altitudes,
High, make him fly off the ground for it, low, make him stoop,
Make him scoop it up, make him as-almost-as possible miss it,
Fast, let him sting from it, now, now fool him slowly,
Anything, everything tricky, risky, nonchalant,
Anything under the sun to...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
King Shuac, the Giant of Mizra, war did declare
Against Ulva, King of Shina, telling him to prepare
And be ready for to meet him in the fight,
Which would commence the next morning before daylight.
When King Ulva heard the news, he told his warriors to prepare,
Then suddenly the clatter of arms sounded in the night air;
And the pale beams of...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
He made a line on the blackboard,
one bold stroke from right to left
diagonally downward and stood back
to ask, looking as always at no one
in particular, "What have I done?"
From the back of the room Freddie
shouted, "You've broken a piece
of chalk." M. Degas did not smile.
"What have I done?" he repeated.
The most intellectual students
looked down to study their desks
except for...Read more of this...
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