Famous Quite Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Sympathy

by Robert William Service
 My Muse is simple,--yet it's nice
To think you don't need to think twice
 On words I write.
I reckon I've a common touch
And if you say I cuss too much
 I answer: 'Quite!'

I envy not the poet's lot;
He has something I haven't got,
 Alas, I know.
But I have something maybe he
Would envy just a mite in me,--
 I'm rather low.

For...Read more of this...

Quite empty quite at rest

by Emily Dickinson
 Quite empty, quite at rest,
The Robin locks her Nest, and tries her Wings.
She does not know a Route
But puts her Craft about
For rumored Springs --
She does not ask for Noon --
She does not ask for Boon,
Crumbless and homeless, of but one request --
The Birds she lost --...Read more of this...

Not Quite The Same

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Not quite the same the springtime seems to me, 
Since that sad season when in separate ways
Our paths diverged. There are no more such days
As dawned for us in that last time when we
Dwelt in the realm of dreams, illusive dreams; 
Spring may be just as fair now, but it seems
Not quite the same.

Not quite the same in life,...Read more of this...

Ardelia to Melancholy

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 At last, my old inveterate foe,
No opposition shalt thou know.
Since I by struggling, can obtain
Nothing, but encrease of pain,
I will att last, no more do soe,
Tho' I confesse, I have apply'd
Sweet mirth, and musick, and have try'd
A thousand other arts beside,
To drive thee from my darken'd breast,
Thou, who hast banish'd all my rest. 
But, though sometimes, a short repreive...Read more of this...

The Idealist

by Robert William Service
 Oh you who have daring deeds to tell!
 And you who have felt Ambition's spell!
Have you heard of the louse who longed to dwell
 In the golden hair of a queen?
He sighed all day and he sighed all night,
 And no one could understand it quite,
For the head of a **** is a louse's delight,
 But he pined for...Read more of this...

Words uttered in a subdued voice in order to constitute a dedication, Translation of Carlos Bousono's Sonnet

by T Wignesan
Words uttered in a subdued voice in order to constitute a dedication,
Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem :Palabras dichas en voz baja para
formar una dedicatoria
(To Ruth, so young, from another age)
(It’s quite probable that this poem commemorates and addresses Bousono’s
wife, Ruth, and as such the interest in the poem must underlie the intimate and/or
private candidness of tone, rather than the less...Read more of this...

Platonic

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 I knew it the first of the summer, 
I knew it the same at the end, 
That you and your love were plighted, 
But couldn’t you be my friend? 
Couldn’t we sit in the twilight, 
Couldn’t we walk on the shore
With only a pleasant friendship
To bind us, and nothing more? 

There was not a word of folly
Spoken between us...Read more of this...

Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning...Read more of this...

The Family

by Katherine Mansfield
 Hinemoa, Tui, Maina,
All of them were born together;
They are quite an extra special
Set of babies--wax and leather.

Every day they took an airing;
Mummy made them each a bonnet;
Two were cherry, one was yellow
With a bow of ribbon on it.

Really, sometimes we would slap them,
For if ever we were talking,
They would giggle and be silly,
Saying, "Mamma, take us walking."

But we never...Read more of this...

The Chatterbox

by Ann Taylor
 From morning till night it was Lucy's delight
To chatter and talk without stopping: 
There was not a day but she rattled away, 
Like water for ever a-dropping. 

No matter at all if the subjects were small, 
Or not worth the trouble of saying, 
'Twas equal to her, she would talking prefer
To working, or reading, or playing. 

You'll think now,...Read more of this...

The Spellin'-bee

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
I never shall furgit that night when father hitched up Dobbin,
An' all us youngsters clambered in an' down the road went bobbin'
To school where we was kep' at work in every kind o' weather,
But where that night a spellin'-bee was callin' us together.
'Twas one o' Heaven's banner nights, the stars was all a glitter,
The moon was shinin' like the hand...Read more of this...

Sonnet 05: If I Should Learn In Some Quite Casual Way

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 If I should learn, in some quite casual way,
 That you were gone, not to return again—
Read from the back-page of a paper, say,
 Held by a neighbor in a subway train,
How at the corner of this avenue
 And such a street (so are the papers filled)
A hurrying man—who happened to be you—
 At noon to-day had happened to...Read more of this...

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

by Mother Goose
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
  How does your garden grow?
Silver bells and cockle-shells,
  And pretty maids all of a row....Read more of this...

This Strangeness in My Life

by Ruth Stone
It is so hard to see where it is,
but it is there even in the morning
when the miracle of shapes
assemble and become familiar,
but not quite; and the echo
of a voice, now changed,
utterly dissociated, as though
all warmth and shared sweetness
had never been. It is this alien
space, not stark as the moon,
but lush and almost identical
to the space that was. But it...Read more of this...

It dont sound so terrible -- quite -- as it did

by Emily Dickinson
 It don't sound so terrible -- quite -- as it did --
I run it over -- "Dead", Brain, "Dead."
Put it in Latin -- left of my school --
Seems it don't shriek so -- under rule.

Turn it, a little -- full in the face
A Trouble looks bitterest --
Shift it -- just --
Say "When Tomorrow comes this way --
I shall have...Read more of this...

The Country Schoolmaster

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 I.

A MASTER of a country school
Jump'd up one day from off his stool,
Inspired with firm resolve to try
To gain the best society;
So to the nearest baths he walk'd,
And into the saloon he stalk'd.
He felt quite. startled at the door,
Ne'er having seen the like before.
To the first stranger made he now
A very low and graceful bow,
But quite forgot to bear...Read more of this...

If I Should Learn In Some Quite Casual Way

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 IF I should learn, in some quite casual way, 
 That you were gone, not to return again— 
Read from the back-page of a paper, say, 
 Held by a neighbor in a subway train, 
How at the corner of this avenue 
 And such a street (so are the papers filled) 
A hurrying man—who happened to be you—...Read more of this...

Annie Marshall the Foundling

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Annie Marshall was a foundling, and lived in Downderry,
And was trained up by a coast-guardsman, kind-hearted and merry
And he loved Annie Marshall as dear as his life,
And he resolved to make her his own loving wife. 

The night was tempestuous, most terrific, and pitch dark,
When Matthew Pengelly rescued Annie Marshall from an ill-fated barque,
But her parents were engulfed in...Read more of this...

Dedication

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 I have great faith in all things not yet spoken.
I want my deepest pious feelings freed.
What no one yet has dared to risk and warrant
will be for me a challenge I must meet.

If this presumptious seems, God, may I be forgiven.
For what I want to say to you is this:
my efforts shall be like a driving force,
quite without anger,...Read more of this...

Wild With All Regrets

by Wilfred Owen
 (Another version of "A Terre".)

 To Siegfried Sassoon


My arms have mutinied against me -- brutes!
My fingers fidget like ten idle brats,
My back's been stiff for hours, damned hours.
Death never gives his squad a Stand-at-ease.
I can't read. There: it's no use. Take your book.
A short life and a merry one, my buck!
We said we'd hate to grow dead old. But...Read more of this...

The Runcorn Ferry

by Marriott Edgar
 On the banks of the Mersey, o'er on Cheshire side, 
Lies Runcorn that's best known to fame 
By Transporter Bridge as takes folks over t'stream, 
Or else brings them back across same. 

In days afore Transporter Bridge were put up, 
A ferryboat lay in the slip, 
And old Ted the boatman would row folks across 
At per tuppence per...Read more of this...

A Grammarians Funeral

by Robert Browning
 SHORTLY AFTER THE REVIVAL OF
LEARNING IN EUROPE.

Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
Singing together.
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes
Each in its tether
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain,
Cared-for till cock-crow:
Look out if yonder be not day again
Rimming the rock-row!
That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought,
Rarer, intenser,
Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,
Chafes in the censer.
Leave...Read more of this...

Not quite dark yet

by Yosa Buson
 Not quite dark yet
and the stars shining
above the withered fields....Read more of this...

Fit the Fifth ( Hunting of the Snark )

by Lewis Carroll
 The Beaver's Lesson 

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care; 
They pursued it with forks and hope; 
They threatened its life with a railway-share; 
They charmed it with smiles and soap. 

Then the Butcher contrived an ingenious plan 
For making a separate sally; 
And fixed on a spot unfrequented by man, 
A dismal and desolate valley....Read more of this...

The Going

by Thomas Hardy
 Why did you give no hint that night
That quickly after the morrow's dawn,
And calmly, as if indifferent quite,
You would close your term here, up and be gone
 Where I could not follow
 With wing of swallow
To gain one glimpse of you ever anon!

 Never to bid good-bye
 Or lip me the softest call,
Or utter a wish for a word,...Read more of this...

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