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Famous Preparing Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Whitman, Walt
..., boatman’s, ploughman’s songs!
 shoemaker’s
 songs! 
O haughtiest growth of time! O free and extatic! 
O what I, here, preparing, warble for! 
O you hastening light! O the sun of the world will ascend, dazzling, and take his
 height—and you too will ascend; 
O so amazing and so broad! up there resplendent, darting and burning;
O prophetic! O vision staggered with weight of light! with pouring glories! 
O copious! O hitherto unequalled! 
O Libertad! O compact! O union impossi...Read more of this...



by Levine, Philip
...d asks him to step aside so she 
can enter, ascend the two steep flights to her apartment, 
and begin the daily task of preparing lunch for her Monsieur. 
Vallejo pretends he hears nothing or perhaps he truly 
hears nothing so absorbed is he in this odd task consuming 
his late morning. Did I forget to mention that no one else 
can see the black ribbon or understand why his fingers 
seem so intent on unraveling what is not there? Remember 
when you were only six and o...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...ball, as you all know.
It was a marriage market.
The prince was looking for a wife.
All but Cinderella were preparing
and gussying up for the event.
Cinderella begged to go too.
Her stepmother threw a dish of lentils
into the cinders and said: Pick them
up in an hour and you shall go.
The white dove brought all his friends;
all the warm wings of the fatherland came,
and picked up the lentils in a jiffy.
No, Cinderella, said the stepmother,
you have...Read more of this...

by Jeffers, Robinson
...the shore of the one ocean.
And here the heavy future hangs like a cloud; the 
 enormous scene; the enormous games preparing
Weigh on the water and strain the rock; the stage is 
 here, the play is conceived; the players are 
 not found.

I saw on the Sierras, up the Kaweah valley above the 
 Moro rock, the mountain redwoods
Like red towers on the slopes of snow; about their 
 bases grew a bushery of Christmas green,
Firs and pines to be monuments for pilgrimage
In E...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...n charge of brave Hanchen, the servant maid,
A kind-hearted girl and not the least afraid. 

As Hanchen was engaged preparing dinner for the family
She chanced to turn round, and there she did see
Heinrich Bottler, her lover, and she sincerely loved him,
Then she instantly got him something to eat and bade him begin. 

And in the midst of her business she sat down beside him,
While he did justice to the meat and thought it no sin,
But while he was eating he let fall h...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...lemen, look on this wonder! 
Whatever the bids of the bidders, they cannot be high enough for it; 
For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years, without one animal or plant; 
For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll’d. 

In this head the all-baffling brain;
In it and below it, the makings of heroes. 

Examine these limbs, red, black, or white—they are so cunning in tendon and nerve; 
They shall be stript, that you may see them. 

Exquisite sense...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...was the mercy of Kitchener. Cometh his madness now!
He does not desire as ye desire, nor devise as ye devise:
He is preparing a second host -- an army to make you wise.

Not at the mouth of his clean-lipped guns shall ye learn his name again,
But letter by letter, from Kaf to Kaf, at the mouths of his chosen men.
He has gone back to his own city, not seeking presents or bribes,
But openly asking the English for money to buy you Hakims and scribes.

Knowing tha...Read more of this...

by Gluck, Louise
.... I can't say
what she did for my father;
whatever it was, I'm sure it was right.

It's the same thing, really, preparing a person
for sleep, for death. The lullabies--they all say
don't be afraid, that's how they paraphrase
the heartbeat of the mother.
So the living grow slowly calm; it's only
the dying who can't, who refuse.

The dying are like tops, like gyroscopes--
they spin so rapidly they seem to be still.
Then they fly apart: in my mother's arm...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...aviour answered thus, unmoved:—
"Much ostentation vain of fleshly arm
And fragile arms, much instrument of war,
Long in preparing, soon to nothing brought,
Before mine eyes thou hast set, and in my ear 
Vented much policy, and projects deep
Of enemies, of aids, battles, and leagues,
Plausible to the world, to me worth naught.
Means I must use, thou say'st; prediction else
Will unpredict, and fail me of the throne!
My time, I told thee (and that time for thee
Were better f...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
..., my babe, 
Look at these dazzling things in the houses, and see you the money-shops opening; 
And see you the vehicles preparing to crawl along the streets with goods:
These! ah, these! how valued and toil’d for, these! 
How envied by all the earth! 

POET.
Fresh and rosy red, the sun is mounting high; 
On floats the sea in distant blue, careering through its channels; 
On floats the wind over the breast of the sea, setting in toward land;
The great steady wind from west...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...—(death making me really undying;) 
The best of me then when no longer visible—for toward that I have been incessantly
 preparing.

What is there more, that I lag and pause, and crouch extended with unshut mouth? 
Is there a single final farewell? 

4
My songs cease—I abandon them; 
From behind the screen where I hid I advance personally, solely to you. 

Camerado! This is no book;
Who touches this, touches a man; 
(Is it night? Are we here alone?) 
It is I you hold, ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...cing—I will sleep no more, but arise; 
You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring,
 preparing unprecedented waves and storms.

19See! steamers steaming through my poems! 
See, in my poems immigrants continually coming and landing; 
See, in arriere, the wigwam, the trail, the hunter’s hut, the flatboat, the
 maize-leaf, the claim, the rude fence, and the backwoods village; 
See, on the one side the Western Sea, and on the other the Easte...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...r beak,
Would it cause you any great surprise
If, when you decided to give her an airing,
You found she needed a little preparing?
---I say, should you be such a curmudgeon,
If she clung to the perch, as to take it in dudgeon?
Yet when the Duke to his lady signified,
Just a day before, as he judged most dignified,
In what a pleasure she was to participate,---
And, instead of leaping wide in flashes,
Her eyes just lifted their long lashes,
As if pressed by fatigue even he coul...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...me and said. O pitiable foolish young man!
O horrible! O dreadful state! consider the hot burning dungeon
thou art preparing for thyself to all eternity, to which thou art
going in such career.
I said. perhaps you will be willing to shew me my eternal
lot & we will contemplate together upon it and see whether your
lot or mine is most desirable
So he took me thro' a stable & thro' a church & down into
the church vault at the end of which was a mill: thro' the mill...Read more of this...

by Berman, David
...n
enter the forest. Their mouths look like coin slots.



A neighbor plays keyboards in a local cover band.
Preparing for an engagement at the high school prom,

they pack their equipment in silence.

Last night they played the Police Academy Ball and
all the officers slow-danced with target range silhouettes.



This year the theme for the prom is the Tetragrammaton.

A yellow Corsair sails through the disco parking lot
and swaying palms presage the l...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...ointment, parent of Despair,
 Strive for her son to seize my careless heart;
When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air,
 Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart:
 Chase him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright,
 And fright him as the morning frightens night!

Whene'er the fate of those I hold most dear
 Tells to my fearful breast a tale of sorrow,
O bright-eyed Hope, my morbidfancy cheer;
 Let me awhile thy sweetest comforts borrow:
 Thy heaven-born radiance around me shed,
...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...father—it is to
 identify
 you; 
It is not that you should be undecided, but that you should be decided;
Something long preparing and formless is arrived and form’d in you, 
You are henceforth secure, whatever comes or goes. 

The threads that were spun are gather’d, the weft crosses the warp, the pattern is
 systematic. 

The preparations have every one been justified, 
The orchestra have sufficiently tuned their instruments—the baton has given the
 signal.

The ...Read more of this...

by Darwish, Mahmoud
...gardens of broken shadows, 
We do what prisoners do, 
And what the jobless do: 
We cultivate hope. 

*** 
A country preparing for dawn. We grow less intelligent 
For we closely watch the hour of victory: 
No night in our night lit up by the shelling 
Our enemies are watchful and light the light for us 
In the darkness of cellars. 

*** 
Here there is no "I". 
Here Adam remembers the dust of his clay. 

*** 
On the verge of death, he says: 
I have no trace ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...sat in the day, and look’d forth, 
In the close of the day, with its light, and the fields of spring, and the farmer
 preparing his
 crops,
In the large unconscious scenery of my land, with its lakes and forests, 
In the heavenly aerial beauty, (after the perturb’d winds, and the storms;) 
Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of children and
 women,

The many-moving sea-tides,—and I saw the ships how they sail’d, 
And the summer a...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...see it parting away for more august dramas; 
I see not America only—I see not only Liberty’s nation, but other nations
 preparing; 
I see tremendous entrances and exits—I see new combinations—I see the solidarity
 of
 races; 
I see that force advancing with irresistible power on the world’s stage;
(Have the old forces, the old wars, played their parts? are the acts suitable to them
 closed?) 
I see Freedom, completely arm’d, and victorious, and very haughty, with Law on one
 ...Read more of this...

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