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Famous Propositions Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Whitman, Walt
...masterful sweep, the warning cry of the eagle! 
(Give way there, all! It is useless! Give up your spoils;)
O sarcasms! Propositions! (O if the whole world should prove indeed a sham, a sell!) 
O I believe there is nothing real but America and freedom! 
O to sternly reject all except Democracy! 
O imperator! O who dare confront you and me? 
O to promulgate our own! O to build for that which builds for mankind!
O feuillage! O North! O the slope drained by the Mexican sea! 
O a...Read more of this...



by Spicer, Jack
...Hush now baby don't say a word
Mama's going to buy you a mocking bird
The third
Joyful mystery.
The joy that descends on you when all the trees are cut down
and all the fountains polluted and you are still alive waiting
for an absent savior. The third
Joyful mystery.
If the mocking bird don't sing
Mama's going to buy you a diamond ring
The diam...Read more of this...

by Spicer, Jack
...If the diamond ring turns brass
Mama's going to buy you a looking glass
Marianne Moore and Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams
going on a picnic together when they were all students at the
University of Pennsylvania
Now they are all over seventy and the absent baby
Is a mirror sheltering their image....Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...e stars, which I think now I never realized
 before.


Now I absorb immortality and peace,
I admire death, and test propositions. 

How plenteous! How spiritual! How resumé! 
The same Old Man and Soul—the same old aspirations, and the same content. 

I was thinking the day most splendid, till I saw what the not-day exhibited, 
I was thinking this globe enough, till there sprang out so noiseless around me myriads of
 other
 globes.

Now, while the great thought...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...d let that which was behind advance to the
 front and
 speak; 
Let murderers, bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions! 
Let the old propositions be postponed! 
Let faces and theories be turn’d inside out! let meanings be freely criminal, as well
 as
 results! 
Let there be no suggestion above the suggestion of drudgery!
Let none be pointed toward his destination! (Say! do you know your destination?) 
Let men and women be mock’d with bodies and mock’d with Souls...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...es,
 and ears willing to hear the tongues; 
And I announce as a glory of These States, that they respectfully listen to propositions,
 reforms, fresh views and doctrines, from successions of men and women, 
Each age with its own growth. 

7
I have said many times that materials and the Soul are great, and that all depends on
 physique;
Now I reverse what I said, and affirm that all depends on the æsthetic or
 intellectual, 
And that criticism is great—and that refinement ...Read more of this...

by Herbert, George
...or foes:
Yet I love thee.

I know the ways of Pleasure, the sweet strains,
The lullings and the relishes of it;
The propositions of hot blood and brains;
What mirth and music mean; what love and wit
Have done these twenty hundred years, and more:
I know the projects of unbridled store:
My stuff is flesh, not brass; my senses live,
And grumble oft, that they have more in me
Than he that curbs them, being but one to five:
Yet I love thee.

I know all these, and have the...Read more of this...

by Lehman, David
..."My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: 
 anyone who understands them eventually recognizes them as 
 nonsensical, when he has used them -- as steps -- to climb 
 up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder 
 after he has climbed up it.)" -- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus 

1. 

The first time I met Wittgenstein,...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things