Famous Presses Poems by Famous Poets

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

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To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage

by Robert Lowell
 "It is the future generation that presses into being by means of
 these exuberant feelings and supersensible soap bubbles of ours."
 --Schopenhauer

"The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open.
Our magnolia blossoms. Life begins to happen.
My hopped up husband drops his home disputes,
and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes,
free-lancing out along the razor's edge.
This screwball might kill...Read more of this...

Upon earth, no one presses to his heart a charmer with

by Omar Khayyam
Upon earth, no one presses to his heart a charmer with
cheeks of the tints of a rose without the time comes
that he feels the sting of the thorn. See the comb: before
it could caress the perfumed hair of the beauty, it
had to be cut into many teeth....Read more of this...

341. Song—My Bonie Bell

by Robert Burns
 THE SMILING Spring comes in rejoicing,
 And surly Winter grimly flies;
Now crystal clear are the falling waters,
 And bonie blue are the sunny skies.
Fresh o’er the mountains breaks forth the morning,
 The ev’ning gilds the ocean’s swell;
All creatures joy in the sun’s returning,
 And I rejoice in my bonie Bell.


The flowery Spring leads sunny Summer,
 The yellow Autumn presses...Read more of this...

Heat

by Hilda Doolittle
 O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air--
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat--
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path....Read more of this...

Love Lies Sleeping

by Elizabeth Bishop
 Earliest morning, switching all the tracks
that cross the sky from cinder star to star,
 coupling the ends of streets 
 to trains of light.

now draw us into daylight in our beds;
and clear away what presses on the brain:
 put out the neon shapes 
 that float and swell and glare

down the gray avenue between the eyes
in pinks and yellows,...Read more of this...

A Forest Hymn

by William Cullen Bryant
The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned 
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, 
And spread the roof above them,---ere he framed 
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back 
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, 
Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down, 
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks 
And supplication. For his...Read more of this...

The Widows Home

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Close on the margin of a brawling brook
That bathes the low dell's bosom, stands a Cot;
O'ershadow'd by broad Alders. At its door
A rude seat, with an ozier canopy
Invites the weary traveller to rest.
'Tis a poor humble dwelling; yet within,
The sweets of joy domestic, oft have made
The long hour not unchearly, while the Moor
Was covered with deep snow, and the...Read more of this...

My Philosophy of Life

by John Ashbery
 Just when I thought there wasn't room enough
for another thought in my head, I had this great idea--
call it a philosophy of life, if you will.Briefly,
it involved living the way philosophers live,
according to a set of principles. OK, but which ones?

That was the hardest part, I admit, but I had a
kind of dark foreknowledge of what it would be...Read more of this...

Night Hymns on Lake Nipigon

by Duncan Campbell Scott
 Here in the midnight, where the dark mainland and island
Shadows mingle in shadow deeper, profounder,
Sing we the hymns of the churches, while the dead water
Whispers before us.

Thunder is travelling slow on the path of the lightning;
One after one the stars and the beaming planets
Look serene in the lake from the edge of the storm-cloud,
Then have they vanished.

While our canoe,...Read more of this...

How Could You Not

by Galway Kinnell
 -- for Jane kenyon


It is a day after many days of storms.
Having been washed and washed, the air glitters;
small heaped cumuli blow across the sky; a shower
visible against the firs douses the crocuses.
We knew it would happen one day this week.
Now, when I learn you have died, I go
to the open door and look across at New Hampshire
and see...Read more of this...

Cruelty and Love

by D. H. Lawrence
What large, dark hands are those at the window
Lifted, grasping the golden light
Which weaves its way through the creeper leaves
          To my heart's delight?

Ah, only the leaves! But in the west,
In the west I see a redness come
Over the evening's burning breast--
         ...Read more of this...

To Speak of Woe That Is in Marriage

by Robert Lowell
It is the future generation that presses into being by means of these exuberant feelings and supersensible soap bubbles of ours. 

Schopenhauer



The hot night makes us keep our bedroom windows open.
Our magnolia blossoms. Life begins to happen.
My hopped up husband drops his home disputes,
and hits the streets to cruise for prostitutes,
free-lancing out along the razor's edge.
This screwball might kill his...Read more of this...

Sparkles from The Wheel

by Walt Whitman
 1
WHERE the city’s ceaseless crowd moves on, the live-long day, 
Withdrawn, I join a group of children watching—I pause aside with them. 

By the curb, toward the edge of the flagging, 
A knife-grinder works at his wheel, sharpening a great knife; 
Bending over, he carefully holds it to the stone—by foot and knee,
With measur’d tread, he turns rapidly—As he...Read more of this...

310. Tam o' Shanter: A Tale

by Robert Burns
 WHEN chapman billies leave the street,
And drouthy neibors, neibors, meet;
As market days are wearing late,
And folk begin to tak the gate,
While we sit bousing at the nappy,
An’ getting fou and unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps and stiles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Where sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering...Read more of this...

The Lord of Burleigh

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 IN her ear he whispers gaily, 
'If my heart by signs can tell, 
Maiden, I have watch'd thee daily, 
And I think thou lov'st me well.' 
She replies, in accents fainter, 
'There is none I love like thee.' 
He is but a landscape-painter, 
And a village maiden she. 
He to lips, that fondly falter, 
Presses his without reproof: 
Leads...Read more of this...

Artilleryman's Vision The

by Walt Whitman
 WHILE my wife at my side lies slumbering, and the wars are over long, 
And my head on the pillow rests at home, and the vacant midnight passes, 
And through the stillness, through the dark, I hear, just hear, the breath of my infant, 
There in the room, as I wake from sleep, this vision presses upon me: 
The...Read more of this...

Milton: But in the Wine-presses the Human Grapes Sing not nor Dance

by William Blake
 But in the Wine-presses the human grapes sing not nor dance: 
They howl and writhe in shoals of torment, in fierce flames consuming,
In chains of iron and in dungeons circled with ceaseless fires,
In pits and dens and shades of death, in shapes of torment and woe:
The plates and screws and racks and saws and cords and fires and cisterns
The...Read more of this...

Waters Of Babylon

by Louis Untermeyer
What presses about us here in the evening
As you open a window and stare at a stone-gray sky,
And the streets give back the jangle of meaningless movement
That is tired of life and almost too tired to die.
Night comes on, and even the night is wounded;
There, on its breast, it carries a curved, white scar.
What will you find out there that...Read more of this...

Writing To Onegin

by Ruth Padel
 (After Pushkin) 
Look at the bare wood hand-waxed floor and long 
White dressing-gown, the good child's writing-desk 
And passionate cold feet
Summoning music of the night - tumbrils, gongs
And gamelans - with one neat pen, one candle
Puttering its life out hour by hour. 
Is "Tell Him I love him" never a good idea? You can't wish this
Unlived - this world...Read more of this...

The Romantic Age

by Ogden Nash
 This one is entering her teens,
Ripe for sentimental scenes,
Has picked a gangling unripe male,
Sees herself in bridal veil,
Presses lips and tosses head,
Declares she's not too young to wed,
Informs you pertly you forget
Romeo and Juliet.
Do not argue, do not shout;
Remind her how that one turned out....Read more of this...

To Lou Andreas-Salome

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 I held myself too open, I forgot
that outside not just things exist and animals
fully at ease in themselves, whose eyes
reach from their lives' roundedness no differently
than portraits do from frames; forgot that I
with all I did incessantly crammed
looks into myself; looks, opinion, curiosity.
Who knows: perhaps eyes form in space
and look on everywhere. Ah, only plunged toward you
does my face...Read more of this...

In the Street

by Henry Lawson
 Where the needle-woman toils 
Through the night with hand and brain, 
Till the sickly daylight shudders like a spectre at the pain – 
Till her eyes seem to crawl, 
And her brain seems to creep – 

And her limbs are all a-tremble for the want of rest and sleep! 
It is there the fire-brand blazes in my blood; and...Read more of this...

The Hands of the Betrothed

by D. H. Lawrence
 Her tawny eyes are onyx of thoughtlessness, 
Hardened they are like gems in ancient modesty; 
Yea, and her mouth’s prudent and crude caress 
Means even less than her many words to me. 

Though her kiss betrays me also this, this only
Consolation, that in her lips her blood at climax clips
Two wild, dumb paws in anguish on the lonely 
Fruit...Read more of this...

The Driver

by Friedrich von Schiller
 "What knight or what vassal will be so bold
As to plunge in the gulf below?
See! I hurl in its depths a goblet of gold,
Already the waters over it flow.
The man who can bring back the goblet to me,
May keep it henceforward,--his own it shall be."

Thus speaks the king, and he hurls from the height
Of the cliffs that, rugged and...Read more of this...

Canzone XVI

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 124] CANZONE XVI. Italia mia, benchè 'l parlar sia indarno. TO THE PRINCES OF ITALY, EXHORTING THEM TO SET HER FREE.  O my own Italy! though words are vainThe mortal wounds to close,Unnumber'd, that thy beauteous bosom stain,Yet may it soothe my painTo sigh forth Tyber's woes,Read more of this...

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