Famous Recognition Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Farewell

...t, 
Amazèd meet; 
The bitter journey to the bourne so sweet 
Seasoning the termless feast of our content 
With tears of recognition never dry....Read more of this...
by Kingsley, Charles


Bridge Over The Aire Book 5

...talking outside,

an intimacy I have sought

With no other.



My greatest fear is that you might

Have changed beyond recognition.

Submerged in trivia and the

Minutiae of the quotidian.



At ten my adoration of you was total,

At fifty-four it is somewhat greater:

I place you among the angels and madonnas

Of the quattrocento, Raphael and Masaccio

And Petrarch’s sonnets to Laura.





13



Summoning the ghosts of the dead

I do not dream of Caesar

But of you Uncle Ar...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

Burning of the Exeter Theatre

...smoke and burning flame did madly rave! 

It was the most sickening sight that ever anybody saw,
Human remains, beyond recognition, covered with a heap of straw;
And here and there a body might be seen, and a maimed hand,
Oh, such a sight, that the most hard-hearted person could hardly withstand! 

The number of people in the theatre was between seven and eight thousand,
But alas! one hundred and fifty by the fire have been found dead;
And the most lives were lost on the sta...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz

Christmas party at the South Danbury Church

...stors.
Standing short and long,
they stare in all directions for mothers, 
sisters and brothers,
giggling and waving in recognition, 
and at the South Danbury 
Church, a moment before Santa 
arrives with her ho-hos
and bags of popcorn, in the half-dark 
of whole silence, God 
enters the world as a newborn again....Read more of this...
by Hall, Donald

Cleon

...ng, in thy munificence! 
For so shall men remark, in such an act 
Of love for him whose song gives life its joy,-- 
Thy recognition of the use of life; 
Nor call thy spirit barely adequate 
To help on life in straight ways, broad enough 
For vulgar souls, by ruling and the rest. 
Thou, in the daily building of thy tower,-- 
Whether in fierce and sudden spasms of toil, 
Or through dim lulls of unapparent growth, 
Or when the general work 'mid good acclaim 
Climbed with the eye...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert


Death

...ing more to buy for future needs,
while in my heart the stored reserves kept silent.

Is it still I, who there past all recognition burn?
Memories I do not seize and bring inside.
O life! O living! O to be outside!
And I in flames. And no one here who knows me. 



[Written in December 1926, this poem was the last
entry in Rilke's notebook, less than two weeks before his
death at age 51.]...Read more of this...
by Hunt, James Henry Leigh

Dreams Old

...the glass is domed in the blue, soft air.

There lies the world, my darling, full of wonder and wistfulness and strange
Recognition and greetings of half-acquaint things, as I greet the cloud
Of blue palace aloft there, among misty indefinite dreams that range
At the back of my life’s horizon, where the dreamings of past lives crowd.

Over the nearness of Norwood Hill, through the mellow veil
Of the afternoon glows to me the old romance of David and Dora,
With the old, sweet,...Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.

Epistle To Augusta

...ber me of where I dwelt,
Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books,
Come as of yore upon me, and can melt
My heart with recognition of their looks;
And even at moments I could think I see
Some living thing to love—but none like thee.

Here are the Alpine landscapes which create
A fund for contemplation;—to admire
Is a brief feeling of a trivial date;
But something worthier do such scenes inspire.
Here to be lonely is not desolate,
For much I view which I could most desire,
An...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Four Quartets 4: Little Gidding

...l the same,
 Knowing myself yet being someone other—
 And he a face still forming; yet the words sufficed
To compel the recognition they preceded.
 And so, compliant to the common wind,
 Too strange to each other for misunderstanding,
In concord at this intersection time
 Of meeting nowhere, no before and after,
 We trod the pavement in a dead patrol.
I said: 'The wonder that I feel is easy,
 Yet ease is cause of wonder. Therefore speak:
 I may not comprehend, may not remembe...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

Giving chapter V

...full, thirst that is unquenchable? 

There are those who give little of the much which they have - and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome. 

And there are those who have little and give it all. 

These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty. 

There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward. 

And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism. 

And ...Read more of this...
by Gibran, Kahlil

I don't remember the word I wished to say

...of greenness, and a Stygian sympathy.

O, to bring back the diffidence of the intuitive caress,
and the full delight of recognition.
I am so fearful of the sobs of The Muses,
the mist, the bell-sounds, perdition.

Mortal creatures can love and recognise: sound may
pour out, for them, through their fingers, and overflow:
I don’t remember the word I wished to say,
and a fleshless thought returns to the house of shadow.

The translucent one speaks in another guise,
always the sw...Read more of this...
by Mandelstam, Osip

In Memory of Sigmund Freud

...nd were stillthose he had studied, the fauna of the night,and shades that still waited to enterthe bright circle of his recognition turned elsewhere with their disappointment as hewas taken away from his life interestto go back to the earth in London,an important Jew who died in exile. Only Hate was happy, hoping to augmenthis practice now, and his dingy clientelewho think they can be cured by killingand covering the garden with ashes. They are still alive, but in a world he ...Read more of this...
by Auden, Wystan Hugh (W H)

Lazarus

...; and she prayed hungrily 
To God that she might hear again the voice 
Of Lazarus, whose hands were giving her now 
The recognition of a living pressure 
That was almost a language. When he spoke,
Only one word that she had waited for 
Came from his lips, and that word was her name. 

“I heard them saying, Mary, that he wept 
Before I woke.” The words were low and shaken, 
Yet Mary knew that he who uttered them
Was Lazarus; and that would be enough 
Until there should be more...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Mornings Like This

...I think of those I have known and know no longer,

Who have died needlessly, disappeared irrevocably

Or changed beyond recognition.

I think of the bridge, river and streets

Of my Montmartre, gone under and made over

Into the grey utilities of trade, the empty road,

Sad as telegraph poles, my Sacr? Coeur silent and boarded up.

My Seine empty of the barges of D?rain

My Sorbonne absorbed, its students gone

Mornings like this, I awaken and wonder....Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

On Love

...inds prevail, 
And all the dwellers of the ground awake?… 

What lurks in the deep gaze 
Of the old wolf? Amaze, 
Hope, recognition, gladness, anger, fear. 
But deeper than all these 
Love muses, yearns, and sees, 
And is the self that does not change nor veer. 

Not love of self alone, 
Struggle for lair and bone, 
But self-denying love of mate and young, 
Love that is kind and wise, 
Knows trust and sacrifice, 
And croons the old dark universal tongue.… 

And who has unders...Read more of this...
by Carman, Bliss

Tasker Norcross

...nd since we are together,
See for yourself and tell me what you see. 
Tell me the best you see. Make a slight noise 
Of recognition when you find a book 
That you would not as lief read upside down 
As otherwise, for example. If there you fail,
Observe the walls and lead me to the place, 
Where you are led. If there you meet a picture 
That holds you near it for a longer time 
Than you are sorry, you may call it yours, 
And hang it in the dark of your remembrance,
Where Norcr...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

The Ghosts

...he smoke-wreath,
As two women entered softly,
Passed the doorway uninvited,
Without word of salutation,
Without sign of recognition,
Sat down in the farthest corner,
Crouching low among the shadows.
From their aspect and their garments,
Strangers seemed they in the village;
Very pale and haggard were they,
As they sat there sad and silent,
Trembling, cowering with the shadows.
Was it the wind above the smoke-flue,
Muttering down into the wigwam?
Was it the owl, the Koko-koho,...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

The Valley of the Shadow

..., there were faces to forget; 
There were fires of grief and fear that are a few forgotten ashes, 
There were sparks of recognition that are not forgotten yet. 
For at first, with an amazed and overwhelming indignation
At a measureless malfeasance that obscurely willed it thus, 
They were lost and unacquainted—till they found themselves in others, 
Who had groped as they were groping where dim ways were perilous. 

There were lives that were as dark as are the fears and intui...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Wild Orphan

...t. 

Will he later hallucinate 
his gods? Waking 
among mysteries with 
an insane gleam 
of recollection? 

The recognition- 
something so rare 
in his soul, 
met only in dreams 
-nostalgias 
of another life. 

A question of the soul. 
And the injured 
losing their injury 
in their innocence 
-a cock, a cross, 
an excellence of love. 

And the father grieves 
in flophouse 
complexities of memory 
a thousand miles 
away, unknowing 
of the unexpected ...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

With Antecedents

...d spiritualism is true—I reject no part.

Have I forgotten any part? 
Come to me, whoever and whatever, till I give you recognition. 

I respect Assyria, China, Teutonia, and the Hebrews; 
I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god; 
I see that the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without exception;
I assert that all past days were what they should have been; 
And that they could no-how have been better than they were, 
And that to-day is what it should be—and t...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

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