Famous Quiescent Poems by Famous Poets

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

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On Receipt Of My Mothers Picture

by William Cowper
 Oh that those lips had language! Life has pass'd
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine--thy own sweet smiles I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me;
Voice only fails, else, how distinct they say,
"Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!"
The meek intelligence of those dear eyes
(Blest be the art that can immortalize,
The...Read more of this...

Private Eye

by Charles Simic
 To find clues where there are none,
That's my job now, I said to the
Dictionary on my desk. The world beyond
My window has grown illegible,
And so has the clock on the wall.
I may strike a match to orient myself

In the meantime, there's the heart
Stopping hush as the building
Empties, the elevators stop running,
The grains of dust stay put.
Hours of quiescent sleuthing
Before...Read more of this...

avalanche

by Rg Gregory
 all is still on this starless night
the mountain waits
quiescent as a cat
smoothing crag and chasm
to a white fur

then against the black sky
puffs of snow
flutter from a jutting cliff
into obscurity

a drumroll utters
from the mountain's throat
and stops
reprehended by a silence so intense
that even night
seems shallow in its presence

high up a front of snow
crumples and cascades down
plashing from rock to rock
spawning further...Read more of this...

The Dream

by Louise Bogan
 I have a dream
to fill the golden sheath
of a remembered day....
(Air
heavy and massed and blue
as the vapor of opium...
domes
fired in sulphurous mist...
sea
quiescent as a gray seal...
and the emerging sun
spurting up gold
over Sydney, smoke-pale, rising out of the bay....)
But the day is an up-turned cup
and its sun a junk of red iron
guttering in sluggish-green water--
where shall I pour my dream?...Read more of this...

I don't remember the word I wished to say

by Osip Mandelstam
 I don’t remember the word I wished to say.
The blind swallow returns to the hall of shadow,
on shorn wings, with the translucent ones to play.
The song of night is sung without memory, though.

No birds. No blossoms on the dried flowers.
The manes of night’s horses are translucent.
An empty boat drifts on the naked river.
Lost among grasshoppers the word’s quiescent.

It swells...Read more of this...

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