Famous Reach Out Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Reach Out 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 out poems. These examples illustrate what a famous reach out poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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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...

Tortoise Family Connections

by D. H. Lawrence
 On he goes, the little one,
Bud of the universe,
Pediment of life.
Setting off somewhere, apparently.
Whither away, brisk egg?

His mother deposited him on the soil as if he were no more than droppings,
And now he scuffles tinily past her as if she were an old rusty tin.

A mere obstacle,
He veers round the slow great mound of her --
Tortoises always foresee obstacles.

It...Read more of this...

Dream Song 45: He stared at ruin. Ruin stared straight back

by John Berryman
 He stared at ruin. Ruin stared straight back.
He thought they was old friends. He felt on the stair
where her papa found them bare
they became familiar. When the papers were lost
rich with pals' secrets, he thought he had the knack
of ruin. Their paths crossed

and once they crossed in jail; they crossed in bed;
and over an unsigned letter their eyes met,
and...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...

A Lovers Call XXVII

by Kahlil Gibran
 Where are you, my beloved? Are you in that little 
Paradise, watering the flowers who look upon you 
As infants look upon the breast of their mothers? 


Or are you in your chamber where the shrine of 
Virtue has been placed in your honor, and upon 
Which you offer my heart and soul as sacrifice? 


Or amongst the books,...Read more of this...

Gangrene

by Philip Levine
 Vous êtes sorti sain et sauf des basses 
calomnies, vous avey conquis les coeurs. 

Zola, J'accuse


One was kicked in the stomach 
until he vomited, then 
 made to put back 
into his mouth what they had 
brought forth; when he tried to drown 
 in his own stew 
he was recovered. "You are 
worse than a ****** or Jew,"...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...

The Seven Of Pentacles

by Marge Piercy
 Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if...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...

Thinking of My Brothers on a Moonlit Night

by Du Fu
Garrison drum cut person movement
Autumn border one goose sound
Dew from today night white
Moon is homeland bright
Have brother all disperse
No home ask die life
Send letter all not reach
Particularly as not stop fighting

The army drums cut off human travel,
A lone goose sounds on the borderland in autumn.
Tonight we start the season of White Dew,
The moon is just as bright as in my...Read more of this...

Ike Waltons Prayer

by James Whitcomb Riley
 I crave, dear Lord, 
No boundless hoard 
Of gold and gear, 
Nor jewels fine, 
Nor lands, nor kine, 
Nor treasure-heaps of anything.- 
Let but a little hut be mine 
Where at the hearthstore I may hear 
The cricket sing, 
And have the shine 
Of one glad woman's eyes to make, 
For my poor sake, 
Our simple home a place...Read more of this...

Faith and Despondency

by Emily Brontë
 The winter wind is loud and wild,
Come close to me, my darling child;
Forsake thy books, and mateless play;
And, while the night is gathering grey,
We'll talk its pensive hours away;-- 

'Ierne, round our sheltered hall
November's gusts unheeded call;
Not one faint breath can enter here
Enough to wave my daughter's hair,
And I am glad to watch the blaze
Glance from her eyes, with...Read more of this...

The Litany Of Nations

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 CHORUS

If with voice of words or prayers thy sons may reach thee,
We thy latter sons, the men thine after-birth,
We the children of thy grey-grown age, O Earth,
O our mother everlasting, we beseech thee,
By the sealed and secret ages of thy life;
By the darkness wherein grew thy sacred forces;
By the songs of stars thy sisters in their courses;
By thine own...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...

The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket

by Robert Lowell
 (For Warren Winslow, Dead At Sea)
 Let man have dominion over the fishes of the sea and
 the fowls of the air and the beasts and the whole earth,
 and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth.

 I
A brackish reach of shoal off Madaket--
The sea was still breaking violently and night
Had steamed into our North Atlantic Fleet,
When the...Read more of this...

Widow McFarlane

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I was the Widow McFarlane,
Weaver of carpets for all the village.
And I pity you still at the loom of life,
You who are singing to the shuttle
And lovingly watching the work of your hands,
If you reach the day of hate, of terrible truth.
For the cloth of life is woven, you know,
To a pattern hidden under the loom --
A pattern you...Read more of this...

Self-Portrait 1969

by Frank Bidart
 He's still young--; thirty, but looks younger--
or does he?... In the eyes and cheeks, tonight,
turning in the mirror, he saw his mother,--
puffy; angry; bewildered... Many nights,
now, when he stares there, he gets angry:--
something unfulfilled there, something dead
to what he once thought he surely could be--
Now, just the glamour of habits...
 Once, instead,
he thought insight would remake him, he'd reach
--what?...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...

Far in the Further East

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Far in the Further East the skilful craftsman
       Fashioned this fancy for the West's delight.
   This rose and azure Dragon, crouching softly
       Upon the satin skin, close-grained and white.

   And you lay silent, while his slender needles
    ...Read more of this...

Waring

by Robert Browning
 I

What's become of Waring
Since he gave us all the slip,
Chose land-travel or seafaring,
Boots and chest, or staff and scrip,
Rather than pace up and down
Any longer London-town?

Who'd have guessed it from his lip,
Or his brow's accustomed bearing,
On the night he thus took ship,
Or started landward?—little caring
For us, it seems, who supped together,
(Friends of his too, I remember)
And walked home through...Read more of this...

The Italian In England

by Robert Browning
 That second time they hunted me
From hill to plain, from shore to sea,
And Austria, hounding far and wide
Her blood-hounds through the countryside,
Breathed hot and instant on my trace,— 
I made six days a hiding-place
Of that dry green old aqueduct
Where I and Charles, when boys, have plucked
The fire-flies from the roof above,
Bright creeping throuoh the moss they love.
—How long it...Read more of this...

Beautiful Nairn

by William Topaz McGonagall
 All ye tourists who wish to be away
From the crowded city for a brief holiday;
The town of Nairn is worth a visit, I do confess,
And it's only about fifteen miles from Inverness. 

And in the summer season it's a very popular bathing-place,
And the visitors from London and Edinburgh finds solace,
As they walk along the yellow sand beach inhaling fresh...Read more of this...

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...

From The Testament of Beauty

by Robert Seymour Bridges
 'Twas at that hour of beauty when the setting sun
squandereth his cloudy bed with rosy hues, to flood
his lov'd works as in turn he biddeth them Good-night;
and all the towers and temples and mansions of men
face him in bright farewell, ere they creep from their pomp
naked beneath the darkness;- while to mortal eyes
'tis given, ifso they close not of...Read more of this...

Coleur de Rose

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 I want more lives in which to love 
This world so full of beauty, 
I want more days to use the ways 
I know of doing duty; 
I ask no greater joy than this 
(So much I am life's lover,) 
When I reach age to turn the page 
And read the story over, 
(Oh love stay near!)

Oh rapturous promise...Read more of this...

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