Famous Reach Poems by Famous Poets

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

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I did not reach Thee

by Emily Dickinson
 I did not reach Thee
But my feet slip nearer every day
Three Rivers and a Hill to cross
One Desert and a Sea
I shall not count the journey one
When I am telling thee.

Two deserts, but the Year is cold
So that will help the sand
One desert crossed --
The second one
Will feel as cool as land
Sahara is too little price
To pay for thy...Read more of this...

Heaven is what I cannot reach!

by Emily Dickinson
Heaven is what I cannot reach!
   The apple on the tree,
Provided it do hopeless hang,
   That "heaven" is, to me.

The color on the cruising cloud,
   The interdicted ground
Behind the hill, the house behind, --
   There Paradise is found!...Read more of this...

Noon Walk On The Asylum Lawn

by Anne Sexton
 The summer sun ray
shifts through a suspicious tree.
though I walk through the valley of the shadow
It sucks the air
and looks around for me.

The grass speaks.
I hear green chanting all day.
I will fear no evil, fear no evil
The blades extend
and reach my way.

The sky breaks.
It sags and breathes upon my face.
In the presence of mine enemies, mine enemies
The world is...Read more of this...

Tomlinson

by Rudyard Kipling
 Now Tomlinson gave up the ghost in his house in Berkeley Square,
And a Spirit came to his bedside and gripped him by the hair --
A Spirit gripped him by the hair and carried him far away,
Till he heard as the roar of a rain-fed ford the roar of the Milky Way:
Till he heard the roar of the Milky Way...Read more of this...

Within my reach!

by Emily Dickinson
 Within my reach!
I could have touched!
I might have chanced that way!
Soft sauntered thro' the village --
Sauntered as soft away!
So unsuspected Violets
Within the meadows go --
Too late for striving fingers
That passed, an hour ago!...Read more of this...

Kinderhymne (Childrens Hymn)

by Bertolt Brecht
 [original]

Anmut sparet nicht noch M?he
Leidenschaft nicht noch Verstand
Da? ein gutes Deutschland bl?he
Wie ein andres gutes Land 

Da? die V?lker nicht erbleichen
Wie vor einer R?uberin
Sondern ihre H?nde reichen
Uns wie andern V?lkern hin.

Und nicht ?ber und nicht unter
Andern V?lkern wolln wir sein
Von der See bis zu den Alpen
Von der Oder bis zum Rhein.

Und weil wir dies Land verbessern
Lieben und beschirmen wir's
Und...Read more of this...

September 1, 1939

by Wystan Hugh (W H) Auden
I sit in one of the divesOn Fifty-second StreetUncertain and afraidAs the clever hopes expireOf a low dishonest decade:Waves of anger and fearCirculate over the brightAnd darkened lands of the earth,Obsessing our private lives;The unmentionable odour of deathOffends the September night. Accurate scholarship canUnearth the whole offenceFrom Luther until nowThat has driven a culture mad,Find what occurred at Linz,What huge...Read more of this...

Sainte-Nitouche

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Though not for common praise of him, 
Nor yet for pride or charity, 
Still would I make to Vanderberg 
One tribute for his memory: 

One honest warrant of a friend
Who found with him that flesh was grass— 
Who neither blamed him in defect 
Nor marveled how it came to pass; 

Or why it ever was that he— 
That Vanderberg,...Read more of this...

Climbing to reach the costly Hearts

by Emily Dickinson
 Climbing to reach the costly Hearts
To which he gave the worth,
He broke them, fearing punishment
He ran away from Earth --...Read more of this...

Only a Curl

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 I.
FRIENDS of faces unknown and a land
Unvisited over the sea, 
Who tell me how lonely you stand
With a single gold curl in the hand
Held up to be looked at by me, --


II.
While you ask me to ponder and say
What a father and mother can do, 
With the bright fellow-locks put away
Out of reach, beyond kiss, in the clay
Where the...Read more of this...

Friendship

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Friend!--the Great Ruler, easily content,
Needs not the laws it has laborious been
The task of small professors to invent;
A single wheel impels the whole machine
Matter and spirit;--yea, that simple law,
Pervading nature, which our Newton saw.

This taught the spheres, slaves to one golden rein,
Their radiant labyrinths to weave around
Creation's mighty hearts: this made the chain,
Which into interwoven systems bound
All spirits streaming...Read more of this...

Milton

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 I pace the sounding sea-beach and behold 
How the voluminous billows roll and run, 
Upheaving and subsiding, while the sun 
Shines through their sheeted emerald far unrolled, 
And the ninth wave, slow gathering fold by fold 
All its loose-flowing garments into one, 
Plunges upon the shore, and floods the dun 
Pale reach of sands, and changes them to gold....Read more of this...

I Like For You To Be Still

by Pablo Neruda
 I like for you to be still
It is as though you are absent
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not touch you
It seems as though your eyes had flown away
And it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth
As all things are filled with my soul
You emerge from the things
Filled with my soul
You are like my...Read more of this...

Stay

by Ingeborg Bachmann
 For why cometh a time,

When you forget yesterday?

Forgot our vows that we made,

And turn and walk away.
*****
How can a heart forget,

The love we once had?

And turn yourself against me,

And make my soul so sad.
*****
You’ve found someone better,

And you’ll leave us behind;

You think you can change your heart,

And erase your troubled mind.
*****
How can you just quit,

And let our love just...Read more of this...

Heleni

by Odysseus Elytis
Heleni
Translated by Daphne on May 17th, 1995


By the first drop of rain the summer died 
The words that had bore those stary nights got wet
All those words that had one sole destination You!
Where will our hands reach now that weather no longer cares for us
Where will our eyes rest now that the distant lines got dispersed in the clouds
Now that...Read more of this...

Burning of the Exeter Theatre

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1887, which many people will long remember,
The burning of the Theatre at Exeter on the 5th of September,
Alas! that ever-to-be-remembered and unlucky night,
When one hundred and fifty lost their lives, a most agonising sight. 

The play on this night was called "Romany Rye,"
And at act four, scene third, Fire! Fire! was the cry;
And all...Read more of this...

The Negatives

by Philip Levine
 On March 1, 1958, four deserters from the French Army of North Africa, 
August Rein, Henri Bruette, Jack Dauville, & Thomas Delain, robbed a 
government pay station at Orleansville. Because of the subsequent 
confession of Dauville the other three were captured or shot. Dauville 
was given his freedom and returned to the land of his birth, the U.S.A.

AUGUST REIN:...Read more of this...

Heaven -- is what I cannot reach!

by Emily Dickinson
 "Heaven" -- is what I cannot reach!
The Apple on the Tree --
Provided it do hopeless -- hang --
That -- "Heaven" is -- to Me!

The Color, on the Cruising Cloud --
The interdicted Land --
Behind the Hill -- the House behind --
There -- Paradise -- is found!

Her teasing Purples -- Afternoons --
The credulous -- decoy --
Enamored -- of the Conjuror --
That...Read more of this...

Pan with Us

by Robert Frost
 Pan came out of the woods one day,--
His skin and his hair and his eyes were gray,
The gray of the moss of walls were they,--
And stood in the sun and looked his fill
At wooded valley and wooded hill.

He stood in the zephyr, pipes in hand,
On a height of naked pasture land;
In all the country he did command
He saw no...Read more of this...

When a people reach the top of a hill

by Stephen Crane
 When a people reach the top of a hill,
Then does God lean toward them,
Shortens tongues and lengthens arms.
A vision of their dead comes to the weak.
The moon shall not be too old
Before the new battalions rise,
Blue battalions.
The moon shall not be too old
When the children of change shall fall
Before the new battalions,
The blue battalions.

Mistakes and virtues will be trampled...Read more of this...

Why the Jackass Laughs

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The Boastful Crow and the Laughing Jack 
Were telling tales of the outer back: 
"I've just been travelling far and wide, 
At the back of Bourke and the Queensland side; 
There isn't a bird in the bush can go 
As far as me," said the old black crow. 
"There isn't a bird in the bush can fly 
A course...Read more of this...

The Disastrous Fire at Scarborough

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1898, and on the 8th of June,
A mother and six children met with a cruel doom
In one of the most fearful fires for some years past
And as the spectators gazed upon them they stood aghast 

The fire broke out in a hairdresser's, in the town of Scarborough,
And as the fire spread it filled the...Read more of this...

Request to a Year

by Judith Wright
 If the year is meditating a suitable gift, 
I should like it to be the attitude 
of my great- great- grandmother, 
legendary devotee of the arts, 

who having eight children 
and little opportunity for painting pictures, 
sat one day on a high rock 
beside a river in Switzerland 

and from a difficult distance viewed 
her second son, balanced on...Read more of this...

The Old Australian Ways

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The London lights are far abeam 
Behind a bank of cloud, 
Along the shore the gaslights gleam, 
The gale is piping loud; 
And down the Channel, groping blind, 
We drive her through the haze 
Towards the land we left behind -- 
The good old land of `never mind', 
And old Australian ways. 

The narrow ways of English folk 
Are...Read more of this...

Life

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
A dewy flower, bathed in crimson light,
May touch the soul—a pure and beauteous sight;
A golden river flashing 'neath the sun,
May reach the spot where life's dark waters run;
Yet, when the sun is gone, the splendor dies,
With drooping head the tender flower lies.
And such is life; a golden mist of light,
A tangled web that glitters in the sun;
When shadows come, the...Read more of this...

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