Famous Reasoning Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Reasoning poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous reasoning poems. These examples illustrate what a famous reasoning poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Hardy, Thomas
...where even the light lies spent
To darkness!" croaked the Thing.
"Not if you look aloft!" said I, intent
On my new reasoning.
"Yea--but await awhile!" he cried. "Ho-ho!--
Look now aloft and see!"
I looked. There, too, sat night: Heaven's radiant show
Had gone. Then chuckled he....Read more of this...
by
Wilmot, John
...to understand,
After a search so painful, and so long,
That all his life he has been in the wrong:
Huddled In dirt the reasoning engine lies,
Who was so proud, so witty, and so wise.
Pride drew him in, as cheats their bubbles catch,
And made him venture; to be made a wretch.
His wisdom did has happiness destroy,
Aiming to know that world he should enjoy;
And Wit was his vain, frivolous pretence
Of pleasing others, at his own expense.
For wits are treated just lik...Read more of this...
by
Hunt, James Henry Leigh
...to his taste, as rough to mine.
Such sophistry, no doubt, saves half the hell,
But fish would have preferr'd his reasoning well,
And, if my gills concern'd him, so should I.
The dog, I grant, is in that "equal sky,"
But, heaven be prais'd, he's not my deity.
All manly games I'd play at,--golf and quoits,
And cricket, to set lungs and limbs to rights,
And make me conscious, with a due respect,
Of muscles one forgets by long neglect.
With these, or bo...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...erday with me,
And otherwise with such another brute,
So must he do henceforth and always."--Ay?
Would teach the reasoning couple what "must" means!
'Doth as he likes, or wherefore Lord? So He.
'Conceiveth all things will continue thus,
And we shall have to live in fear of Him
So long as He lives, keeps His strength: no change,
If He have done His best, make no new world
To please Him more, so leave off watching this,--
If He surprise not even the Quiet's ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...s, improvements, politics, trades, are as real as before;
But the Soul is also real,—it too is positive and direct;
No reasoning, no proof has establish’d it,
Undeniable growth has establish’d it.
15
This is a poem—a carol of words—these are hints of meanings,
These are to echo the tones of Souls, and the phrases of Souls;
If they did not echo the phrases of Souls, what were they then?
If they had not reference to you in especial, what were they then?
I swear I wi...Read more of this...
by
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...> Sick of gory strife,
He hopes for rescue with no loss of life;
And plans that bloodless battle of the plains
Where reasoning mind outwits mere savage brains.
The sullen soldiers follow where he leads;
No gun is emptied, and no foeman bleeds.
Fierce for the fight and eager for the fray
They look upon their Chief in undisguised dismay.
XXXVIII.
He hears the murmur of their discontent,
But sneers can never change a strong mind's bent.
He knows his p...Read more of this...
by
Ingelow, Jean
...with me."
O false my friend!
False, false, a random charge, a blame undue;
Wrest not fair reasoning to a crooked end:
False, false, as you are true!
But I read on: "And so it was with me;
Your golden constellations lying apart
They neither hailed nor greeted heartily,
Nor noted on their chart.
"And yet to you and not to me belong
Those finer instincts that, like second sight
And hearing, catch creation's undersong,
And ...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...
It would take more than them to sicken you—
Us of our bargain. But they left us so
As to our fate, like fools past reasoning with.
They almost shook me.”
“It’s all so much
What we have always wanted, I confess
It’s seeming bad for a moment makes it seem
Even worse still, and so on down, down, down.
It’s nothing; it’s their leaving us at dusk.
I never bore it well when people went.
The first night after guests have gone, the house
Seems haunted or exp...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...flowers are good both for the living and the dead.
For there is a language of flowers.
For there is a sound reasoning upon all flowers.
For elegant phrases are nothing but flowers.
For flowers are peculiarly the poetry of Christ.
For flowers are medicinal.
For flowers are musical in ocular harmony.
For the right names of flowers are yet in heaven. God make gard'ners better nomenclators.
For the Poorman's nosegay is an introd...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...t are one thing,
just as the poet says in his verse,
each from the other one as well divorced
as reason from the mind’s reasoning.
Nature craves love, and then creates love king,
and makes the heart a palace where he’ll stay,
perhaps a shorter or a longer day,
breathing quietly, gently slumbering.
Then beauty in a virtuous woman’s face
makes the eyes yearn, and strikes the heart,
so that the eyes’ desire’s reborn again,
and often, rooting there with longing, stays,
...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...into play.
"And can you pause, or scruple more?
These things are near you, at the door.
Behold! for though to reasoning blind,
Signs of the times you still might mind,
And view impending fate, as plain
As you'd foretell a shower of rain.
"Hath not heaven warn'd you what must ensue.
And providence declared against you?
Hung forth the dire portents of war
By fires and beacons in the air;
Alarm'd old women all around
With fearful noises under ground,
While ea...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ciate light
Round this opacous Earth, this punctual spot,
One day and night; in all her vast survey
Useless besides; reasoning I oft admire,
How Nature wise and frugal could commit
Such disproportions, with superfluous hand
So many nobler bodies to create,
Greater so manifold, to this one use,
For aught appears, and on their orbs impose
Such restless revolution day by day
Repeated; while the sedentary Earth,
That better might with far less compass move,
Served by ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ed; yet submiss, though last, replied.
With thy permission then, and thus forewarned
Chiefly by what thy own last reasoning words
Touched only; that our trial, when least sought,
May find us both perhaps far less prepared,
The willinger I go, nor much expect
A foe so proud will first the weaker seek;
So bent, the more shall shame him his repulse.
Thus saying, from her husband's hand her hand
Soft she withdrew; and, like a Wood-Nymph light,
Oread or Dryad, or...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...est employ'd, and wanted most;
Mourn genius high, and lore profound,
And wit that loved to play, not wound;
And all the reasoning powers divine
To penetrate, resolve, combine;
And feelings keen, and fancy's glow--
They sleep with him who sleeps below:
And, if thou mourn'st they could not save
From error him who owns this grave,
Be every harsher thought suppress'd,
And sacred be the last long rest.
Here, where the end of earthly things
Lays heroes, patriots, bards, and kin...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...blacken’d, mutilated
corpses!
That hell unpent, and raid of blood—fit for wild tigers, or for lop-tongued wolves—not
reasoning men!
And in its stead speed Industry’s campaigns!
With thy undaunted armies, Engineering!
Thy pennants, Labor, loosen’d to the breeze!
Thy bugles sounding loud and clear!
Away with old romance!
Away with novels, plots, and plays of foreign courts!
Away with love-verses, sugar’d in rhyme—the intrigues, amours of idlers,
Fitted for only banqu...Read more of this...
by
Turner Smith, Charlotte
...the Planets, also knows
If but a Sea-Mew falls, whose nest is hid
In these incumbent cliffs; He surely means
To us, his reasoning Creatures, whom He bids
Acknowledge and revere his awful hand,
Nothing but good: Yet Man, misguided Man,
Mars the fair work that he was bid enjoy,
And makes himself the evil he deplores.
How often, when my weary soul recoils
From proud oppression, and from legal crimes
(For such are in this Land, where the vain boast
Of equal Law is mockery, wh...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...en the Soul fell into sleep,
And Archangels round it weep,
Shooting out against the light
Fibres of a deadly night,
Reasoning upon its own dark fiction,
In doubt which is self-contradiction?
Humility is only doubt,
And does the sun and moon blot out,
Rooting over with thorns and stems
The buried soul and all its gems.
This life’s five windows of the soul
Distorts the Heavens from pole to pole,
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not thro’, the e...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...e the vanity to speak of
themselves as the only wise; this they do with a confident
insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning:
Thus Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new; tho' it
is only the Contents or Index of already publish'd books
A man carried a monkey about for a shew, & because he was a
little wiser than the monkey, grew vain, and conciev'd himself as
much wiser than seven men. It is so with Swedenborg; he shews the
folly of churches & exposes hypocrite...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...There is a gentle thought that often springs
to life in me, because it speaks of you.
Its reasoning about love’s so sweet and true,
the heart is conquered, and accepts these things.
‘Who is this’ the mind enquires of the heart,
‘who comes here to seduce our intellect?
Is his power so great we must reject
every other intellectual art?
The heart replies ‘O, meditative mind
this is love’s messenger and newly sent
to bring me all Love’s words and...Read more of this...
by
Bowers, Edgar
...usk destroys; the bright
Leucotho? dissolves before the eyes
And poised upon the reach of light
Leaves only what no reasoning dare surmise.
Dim isolation holds the sense
Of being, intimate as breathing; around,
Voices, unmeasured and intense,
Throb with the heart below the edge of sound....Read more of this...
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