Famous Recent Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Recent poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous recent poems. These examples illustrate what a famous recent poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Robert Burns
LONE on the bleaky hills the straying flocks
Shun the fierce storms among the sheltering rocks;
Down from the rivulets, red with dashing rains,
The gathering floods burst o’er the distant plains;
Beneath the blast the leafless forests groan;
The hollow caves return a hollow moan.
Ye hills, ye plains, ye forests, and ye caves,
Ye howling winds, and wintry swelling waves!
Unheard, unseen, by human ear...Read more of this...
by
Julie Hill Alger
In the red-roofed stucco house
of my childhood, the dining room
was screened off by folding doors
with small glass panes. Our neighbors
the Bertins, who barely escaped Hitler,
often joined us at table. One night
their daughter said, In Vienna
our dining room had doors like these.
For a moment, we all sat quite still.
And when Nath Nong, who...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
Sitting in outpatients
With my own minor ills
Dawn’s depression lifts
To the lilt of amitryptilene,
A double dose for a day’s journey
To a distant ward.
The word was out that Simmons
Had died eighteen months after
An aneurism at sixty seven.
The meeting he proposed in his second letter
Could never happen: a few days later
A Christmas card in Gaelic - Nollaig Shona -
Then silence, an unbearable...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
You've heard of "Casey at The Bat,"
And "Casey's Tabble Dote";
But now it's time
To write a rhyme
Of "Casey's Billy-goat."
Pat Casey had a billy-goat he gave the name of Shamus,
Because it was (the neighbours said) a national disgrace.
And sure enough that animal was eminently famous
For masticating every rag of laundry round the place.
For shirts to skirts prodigiously...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XLIV. Nè per sereno cielo ir vaghe stelle. NOTHING THAT NATURE OFFERS CAN AFFORD HIM CONSOLATION. Not skies serene, with glittering stars inlaid,Nor gallant ships o'er tranquil ocean dancing,Nor gay careering knights in arms advancing,Nor wild herds bounding through the forest glade,Nor tidings new of happiness delay'd,Nor poesie, Love's...Read more of this...
by
Ellis Parker Butler
(with apologies to Frederic Taber Cooper)
I well recall (and who does not)
The circus bill-board hippopotamus,
whose wide distended jaws
For fear and terror were good cause.
That month, that vasty carmine cave,
Could munch with ease a Nubian slave;
In fact, the bill-board hippopot-
amus could bolt a house and lot!
Wide opened, that tremendous mouth
Obscured three-quarters of the south
Side of Schmidt’s barn, and promised me
Thrills,...Read more of this...
by
Sidney Lanier
I.
The storm that snapped our fate's one ship in twain
Hath blown my half o' the wreck from thine apart.
O Love! O Love! across the gray-waved main
To thee-ward strain my eyes, my arms, my heart.
I ask my God if e'en in His sweet place,
Where, by one waving of a wistful wing,
My soul could straightway tremble face to face
With thee, with...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Hark to the Sourdough story, told at sixty below,
When the pipes are lit and we smoke and spit
Into the campfire glow.
Rugged are we and hoary, and statin' a general rule,
A genooine Sourdough story
Ain't no yarn for the Sunday School.
A Sourdough came to stake his claim in Heav'n one morning early.
Saint Peter cried: "Who waits outside them gates so bright...Read more of this...
by
Bertolt Brecht
After the wailing had already begun
along the walls, their ruin certain,
the Trojans fidgeted with bits of wood
in the three-ply doors, itsy-bitsy
pieces of wood, fussing with them.
And began to get their nerve back and feel hopeful....Read more of this...
by
Kahlil Gibran
Spring
Come, my beloved; let us walk amidst the knolls,
For the snow is water, and Life is alive from its
Slumber and is roaming the hills and valleys.
Let us follow the footprints of Spring into the
Distant fields, and mount the hilltops to draw
Inspiration high above the cool green plains.
Dawn of Spring has unfolded her winter-kept...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Warton
While summer suns o'er the gay prospect play'd,
Through Surrey's verdant scenes, where Epsom spread
'Mid intermingling elms her flowery meads,
And Hascombe's hill, in towering groves array'd,
Rear'd its romantic steep, with mind serene,
I journey'd blithe. Full pensive I return'd;
For now my breast with hopeless passion burn'd,
Wet with hoar mists appear'd the gaudy scene,
Which late in careless indolence I pass'd;
And Autumn all...Read more of this...
by
Walter Savage Landor
Now it's over, and now it's done;
Why does everything look the same?
Just as bright, the unheeding sun, --
Can't it see that the parting came?
People hurry and work and swear,
Laugh and grumble and die and wed,
Ponder what they will eat and wear, --
Don't they know that our love is dead?
Just as busy,...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
I WALKED down alone Sunday after church
To the place where John has been cutting trees
To see for myself about the birch
He said I could have to bush my peas.
The sun in the new-cut narrow gap
Was hot enough for the first of May,
And stifling hot with the odor of sap
From stumps still bleeding their life away.
The...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
Tall, and stout, and solid-looking,
Yet a wreck;
None would think Death's finger's hooking
Him from deck.
Cause of half the fun that's started --
`Hard-case' Dan --
Isn't like a broken-hearted,
Ruined man.
Walking-coat from tail to throat is
Frayed and greened --
Like a man whose other coat is
Being cleaned;
Gone for ever round the edging...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
Father, this year's jinx rides us apart
where you followed our mother to her cold slumber;
a second shock boiling its stone to your heart,
leaving me here to shuffle and disencumber
you from the residence you could not afford:
a gold key, your half of a woolen mill,
twenty suits from Dunne's, an English Ford,
the love and legal verbiage of another will,...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
This is the lay of Ike.
Here's to the glory of the Grewt White-”awk-”
who has been running-”er-”er-”things in recent-”ech-”
in the United-”If your screen is black,
ladies & gentlemen, we-”I like-”
at the Point he was already terrific-”sick
to a second term, having done no wrong-”
no right-”no · right-”having let the Army-”bang-”
defend itself from Joe, let venom' Strauss
bile Oppenheimer out of use-”use Robb,
who'll later...Read more of this...
by
William Stafford
Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.
By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged...Read more of this...
by
Philip Larkin
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
Why, oh why was Kater lifted
From the darkness, where he drifted
All unknown, and raised to honour,
Side by side with Dick O'connor,
In the Council, free from row?
Who is Kater, anyhow?
Did he lend our armies rally,
Like the recent Billy Dalley?
Did he lend a Premier money,
Like -- (No libels here, my sonny. --...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Crumey
In a cafe, once more I heard
Your voice - those sparse and frugal notes.
Do they not say that you spoke your native Greek
With an English accent?
Briefest of visions: eyes meet across the cafe;
A man of about my age - eyelids heavy,
Perhaps from recent pleasures.
I begin the most innocent of conversations.
Again I see that image;
Ancient delight of flesh
Against guiltless flesh.
Sweeter...Read more of this...
by
Ezra Pound
And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us onward with bellying canvas,
Crice's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we...Read more of this...
by
John Betjeman
The first-class brains of a senior civil servant
Shiver and shatter and fall
As the steering column of his comfortable Humber
Batters in the bony wall.
All those delicate re-adjustments
"On the one hand, if we proceed
With the ad hoc policy hitherto adapted
To individual need...
On the other hand, too rigid an arrangement
Might, of itself, perforce...
I would like to submit for the Minister's concurrence
The following...Read more of this...
by
Claude McKay
The tired cars go grumbling by,
The moaning, groaning cars,
And the old milk carts go rumbling by
Under the same dull stars.
Out of the tenements, cold as stone,
Dark figures start for work;
I watch them sadly shuffle on,
'Tis dawn, dawn in New York.
But I would be on the island of the sea,
In the...Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
Our sardine fishermen work at night in the dark
of the moon; daylight or moonlight
They could not tell where to spread the net,
unable to see the phosphorescence of the
shoals of fish.
They work northward from Monterey, coasting
Santa Cruz; off New Year's Point or off
Pigeon Point
The look-out man will see some lakes of...Read more of this...
by
Delmira Agustini
SpanishLa luna es pálida y triste, la luna es exangüe y yerta.La media luna figúraseme un suave perfil de muerta…Yo que prefiero a la insigne palidez encarecidaDe todas las perlas árabes, la rosa recién abierta,En un rincón del terruño con el color de la vida,Adoro esa luna pálida, adoro esa faz de muerta!Y en el altar de las noches, como...Read more of this...
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