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Famous Query Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...d
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?" ...

Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

Prepared a sinister mate
For her -- so gaily great --
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.

And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew th...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas



...nd some will say, ‘His work has grown so dreary.’ 
Others, ‘He used to be a charming writer’. 
And you, my friend, will query— 
‘Why can’t you cut it short, you pompous blighter?’...Read more of this...
by Sassoon, Siegfried
...For more than thirty years we hadn't met.
I remembered the bright query of your face,
That single-minded look,intense and stern,
Yet most important -how could I forget?-
Was what your taught me inadvertantly
(tutored by books and parents, even more
By my own awe at what was yet to learn):
The finest intellect can be a bore.

At this, perhaps our final interview,
Still luminous with your passion to instruct,
You speak to th...Read more of this...
by Kizer, Carolyn
...lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

 V

 Dim moon-eyed fishes near
 Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?". . .

 VI

 Well: while was fashioning
 This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

 VII

 Prepared a sinister mate
 For her--so gaily great--
A Shape of Ice, for the time fat and dissociate.

 VIII

 And as the smart ship grew
 In stature, grace, and hue
In shadowy si...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas
...armourer's, 
Who, with back turned, and bowed above his work, 
Sat riveting a helmet on his knee, 
He put the self-same query, but the man 
Not turning round, nor looking at him, said: 
'Friend, he that labours for the sparrow-hawk 
Has little time for idle questioners.' 
Whereat Geraint flashed into sudden spleen: 
'A thousand pips eat up your sparrow-hawk! 
****, wrens, and all winged nothings peck him dead! 
Ye think the rustic cackle of your bourg 
The murmur of the world...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord



...the night is going wrong
or when the day is full of empty promise.

I have nothing against
the thin monograph, the odd query,
a note on the identity of Chekhov's dentist,
but what I prefer on days like these
is to get up from the couch,
pull down The History of the World,
and hold in my hands a book
containing nearly everything
and weighing no more than a sack of potatoes,
eleven pounds, I discovered one day when I placed it
on the black, iron scale
my mother used to keep in...Read more of this...
by Collins, Billy
...your approval on your valentine.


II.--TO A BABY BOY

Who I am I shall not say,
But I send you this bouquet
With this query, baby mine:
"Will you be my valentine?"

See these roses blushing blue,
Very like your eyes of hue;
While these violets are the red
Of your cheeks. It can be said
Ne'er before was babe like you.

And I think it is quite true
No one e'er before to-day
Sent so wondrous a bouquet
As these posies aforesaid--
Roses blue and violets red!

Sweet, repay me swe...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things