Famous Presents Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Presents poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous presents poems. These examples illustrate what a famous presents poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Thomas, Dylan
...ed, making
ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out."
"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled
down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on
fishmonger's slabs.
"He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's hump, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, h...Read more of this...
by
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...forehead is wreathed with the garland of fame,
Your poems the eloquent school-boy rehearses,
Her album the school-girl presents for your name;
Each morning the post brings you autograph letters;
You'll answer them promptly,-- an hour isn't much
For the honor of sharing a page with your betters,
With magistrates, members of Congress, and such.
Of course you're delighted to serve the committees
That come with requests from the country all round,
You would grace the occas...Read more of this...
by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...sts hid from the world beside.
And yet another argument more strange
Reserv'd for men of deeper thought and late
Presents itself to view: In Pelag's days,
So says the Hebrew seer's inspired pen,
This mighty mass of earth, this solid globe
Was cleft in twain--cleft east and west apart
While strait between the deep Atlantic roll'd.
And traces indisputable remain
Of this unhappy land now sunk and lost;
The islands rising in the eastern main
Are but small fragm...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...lurks;
And foot, and chapitre, and niche,
The various histories enrich
Of God's record'd works.
XXXVI
Sigma presents the social droves,
With him that solitary roves,
And man of all the chief;
Fair on whose face, and stately frame,
Did God impress His hallow'd name,
For ocular belief.
XXXVII
OMEGA! GREATEST and the BEST,
Stands sacred to the day of rest,
For gratitude and thought;
Which bless'd the world upon his pole,
And gave the universe his ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...
Because a birthday should be gay,
And full of grace and good behaving.
We can't have cakes and candles bright,
And presents are beyond our giving,
But let lt us cherish with delight
The birthday way of lovely living.
For I have passed three-score and ten
And I can count upon my fingers
The years I hope to bide with men,
(Though by God's grace one often lingers.)
So in the summers left to me,
Because I'm blest beyond my merit,
I hope with gratitude and glee
To sp...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...eir maid.
She slept on the sooty hearth each night
and walked around looking like Al Jolson.
Her father brought presents home from town,
jewels and gowns for the other women
but the twig of a tree for Cinderella.
She planted that twig on her mother's grave
and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat.
Whenever she wished for anything the dove
would drop it like an egg upon the ground.
The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.
Next came the ball, a...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...uch court guise
As Mercury did first devise
With the mincing Dryades
On the lawns and on the leas.
The second Song presents them to their Father and Mother.
Noble Lord and Lady bright,
I have brought ye new delight.
Here behold so goodly grown
Three fair branches of your own.
Heaven hath timely tried their youth,
Their faith, their patience, and their truth,
And sent them here through hard assays
With a crown of deathless praise,
To triumph in victorious da...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...seem unholy, be of happy cheer!
For 'tis the nicest touch of human honour,
When some ethereal and high-favouring donor
Presents immortal bowers to mortal sense;
As now 'tis done to thee, Endymion. Hence
Was I in no wise startled. So recline
Upon these living flowers. Here is wine,
Alive with sparkles--never, I aver,
Since Ariadne was a vintager,
So cool a purple: taste these juicy pears,
Sent me by sad Vertumnus, when his fears
Were high about Pomona: here is cre...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ast year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
But, as the passage now presents no hindrance
To the spirit unappeased and peregrine
Between two worlds become much like each other,
So I find words I never thought to speak
In streets I never thought I should revisit
When I left my body on a distant shore.
Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
To purify the dialect of the tribe
And urge the mind to aftersi...Read more of this...
by
Hikmet, Nazim
...zed
--that is, overly artistic--
French painter.
The scene is set.
We're starting.
The defense attorney presents his case:
"Gentlemen,
this masterpiece
that stands in your presence as the accused
is the most accomplished daughter of a great artist.
Gentlemen,
this masterpiece...
Gentlemen...
my mind is on fire...
Gentlemen...
Renaissance...
Gentlemen,
this masterpiece--
twice this masterpie...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...y think—
I don’t know what they think we see in what
They leave us to: that pasture slope that seems
The back some farm presents us; and your woods
To northward from your window at the sink,
Waiting to steal a step on us whenever
We drop our eyes or turn to other things,
As in the game ‘Ten-step’ the children play.”
“Good boys they seemed, and let them love the city.
All they could say was ‘God!’ when you proposed
Their coming out and making useful farmers.”
“Di...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...o make me grunt or groan or squeal
With probe or rasp or drill. . . .
But oh, what agony I feel
When HE PRESENTS HIS BILL!
Sitting in the dental chair,
Don't you wish you weren't there:
Well, your cup of woe to fill,
Just think of his infernal bill....Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...rbed?
Something like living occurs, a movement
Out of the dream into its codification.
As I start to forget it
It presents its stereotype again
But it is an unfamiliar stereotype, the face
Riding at anchor, issued from hazards, soon
To accost others, "rather angel than man" (Vasari).
Perhaps an angel looks like everything
We have forgotten, I mean forgotten
Things that don't seem familiar when
We meet them again, lost beyond telling,
Which were ours once. This w...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...just how many—
That varies with the things—before we see them.
One of the lies would make it out that nothing
Ever presents itself before us twice.
Where would we be at last if that were so?
Our very life depends on everything’s
Recurring till we answer from within.
The thousandth time may prove the charm.— That leaf!
It can’t turn either way. It needs the wind’s help.
But the wind didn’t move it if it moved.
It moved itself. The wind’s at nau...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...ecame a convulsion until finally
He shrieked, “I have to go, the cat’s under the Christmas tree, ripping
Open all the presents, the central heating boiler’s on the blink,
The house is on fucking fire!”
So I was left with the offer of being raffle-ticket tout as a special favour,
Some recompense for giving over two entire newsletters to Jimmy’s work:
The words of the letter before his stroke still burned. “I don’t know why
They omitted me, Armitage and Harrison we...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...ows, kisses the Sultan's respectable signature, and is bowstrung with great complacency. In 1810, several of "these presents" were exhibited in the niche of the Seraglio gate: among others, the head of the Pacha of Bagdad, a brave young man, cut off by treachery, after a desperate resistance.
(9) Clapping of the hands calls the servants. The Turks hate a superfluous expenditure of voice, and they have no bells.
(10) "Chibouque," the Turkish pipe, of which ...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...heir ditties they go grinding
Up and down with nobody minding:
And then, as of old, at the end of the humming
Her usual presents were forthcoming
---A dog-whistle blowing the fiercest of trebles,
(Just a sea-shore stone holding a dozen fine pebbles,)
Or a porcelain mouth-piece to screw on a pipe-end,---
And so she awaited her annual stipend.
But this time, the Duke would scarcely vouchsafe
A word in reply; and in vain she felt
With twitching fingers at her belt
For the pu...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...2.30 A Baron or a Duke ne'r made my mark,
2.31 Nor studious was, Kings favours how to buy,
2.32 With costly presents, or base flattery;
2.33 No office coveted, wherein I might
2.34 Make strong my self and turn aside weak right.
2.35 No malice bare to this or that great Peer,
2.36 Nor unto buzzing whisperers gave ear.
2.37 I gave no hand, nor vote, for death, of life.
2.38 I'd nought to do, 'twixt Prince, and peoples' strife....Read more of this...
by
Homer,
...r>
But, oh! relieve a wretched parent's pain,
And give Chryseis to these arms again;
If mercy fail, yet let my presents move,
And dread avenging Phoebus, son of Jove."
The Greeks in shouts their joint assent declare,
The priest to reverence, and release the fair.
Not so Atrides; he, with kingly pride,
Repulsed the sacred sire, and thus replied:
"Hence on thy life, and fly these hostile plains,
Nor ask, presumptuous, what the king deta...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...he night, and all the day,
To comb his lockes broad, and make him gay.
He wooeth her *by means and by brocage*, *by presents and by agents*
And swore he woulde be her owen page.
He singeth brokking* as a nightingale. *quavering
He sent her piment , mead, and spiced ale,
And wafers* piping hot out of the glede**: *cakes **coals
And, for she was of town, he proffer'd meed.
For some folk will be wonnen for richess,
And some for strokes, and some with gent...Read more of this...
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