Famous Recording Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Translation Of The Nightingale Out Of Strada

...he place, the Syren of the wood;
Poore harmless Syren, stealing neare she stood
Close lurking in the leaves attentively
Recording that unwonted melody:
Shee cons it to herselfe and every strayne
His finger playes her throat return'd again.
The lutinist perceives an answeare sent
From th' imitating bird and was content
To shewe her play; more fully then in hast
He tries his lute, and (giving her a tast
Of the ensuing quarrel) nimbly beats
On all his strings; as nimbly she repe...Read more of this...
by Strode, William


Absalom And Achitophel

...arge was his wealth, but larger was his heart:
Which well the noblest objects knew to choose,
The fighting warrior, and recording Muse.
His bed could once a fruitful issue boast:
Now more than half a father's name is lost.
His eldest hope, with every grace adorn'd,
By me (so Heav'n will have it) always mourn'd,
And always honour'd, snatch'd in manhood's prime
B' unequal Fates, and Providence's crime:
Yet not before the goal of honour won,
All parts fulfill'd, of subject and o...Read more of this...
by Dryden, John

Call It Music

...agic voice fifty years ago, his faltering
"Lover Man" just before he crashed into chaos.
I would guess that outside the recording studio
in Burbank the sun was high above the jacarandas,
it was late March, the worst of yesterday's rain
had come and gone, the sky washed blue. Bird
could have seen for miles if he'd looked, but what
he saw was so foreign he clenched his eyes,
shook his head, and barked like a dog--just once--
and then Howard McGhee took his arm and assured him
h...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip

Consorting With Angels

...went unexplained,
no two made in the same species,
one with a nose, one with an ear in its hand,
one chewing a star and recording its orbit,
each one like a poem obeying itself,
performing God's functions,
a people apart.

"You are the answer,"
I said, and entered,
lying down on the gates of the city.
Then the chains were fastened around me
and I lost my common gender and my final aspect.
Adam was on the left of me
and Eve was on the right of me,
both thoroughly inconsistent ...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

I know a place where Summer strives

...I know a place where Summer strives
With such a practised Frost --
She -- each year -- leads her Daisies back --
Recording briefly -- "Lost" --

But when the South Wind stirs the Pools
And struggles in the lanes --
Her Heart misgives Her, for Her Vow --
And she pours soft Refrains

Into the lap of Adamant --
And spices -- and the Dew --
That stiffens quietly to Quartz --
Upon her Amber Shoe --...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily


Monody to the Memory of Chatterton

...obler joys; 
Creative Fancy wing'd his few short hours, 
While soothing Hope adorn'd his path with flow'rs, 
Yet FAME'S recording hand no trophy gave, 
Save the sad TEAR­to decorate his grave. 

Yet in this dark, mysterious scene of woe, 
Conviction's flame shall shed a radiant glow; 
His infant MUSE shall bind with nerves of fire 
The sacrilegious hand that stabs its sire. 
Methinks, I hear his wand'ring shade complain,
While mournful ECHO lingers on the strain; 
Thro' the l...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Mary Darby

Ode to Valour

...
Th' HISTORIC page shall prove a lasting shrine, 
Where Truth and Valour shall THY laurels twine; 
Where,with thy name, recording FAME shall blend 
The ZEALOUS PATRIOT, and the FAITHFUL FRIEND!...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Mary Darby

Pompeii And Herculaneum

...nce a prize
More precious yet in yon papyrus lies,
And see ev'n still the tokens of their toil--
The waxen tablets--the recording style.
The earth, with faithful watch, has hoarded all!
Still stand the mute penates in the hall;
Back to his haunts returns each ancient god.
Why absent only from their ancient stand
The priests?--waves Hermes his Caducean rod,
And the winged victory struggles from the hand.
Kindle the flame--behold the altar there!
Long hath the god been worshipl...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von

Self-Portrait At 28

...ou won't get uncomfortable
if I should go into some deeper stuff here.

IV four

There are things I've given up on
like recording funny answering machine messages.
It's part of growing older
and the human race as a group
has matured along the same lines.
It seems our comedy dates the quickest.
If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare's jokes
I hope you won't be insulted
if I say you're trying too hard.
Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live
seem slow-witted and obvio...Read more of this...
by Berman, David

Siren Song

...I phone from time to time, to see if she's 
changed the music on her answerphone. 
'Tell me in two words', goes the recording,
'what you were going to tell in a thousand'. 

I peer into that thought, like peering out 
to sea at night, hearing the sound of waves 
breaking on rocks, knowing she is there, 
listening, waiting for me to speak. 

Once in a while she'll pick up the phone 
and her voice sings to me out of the past. 
The hair on the back of my neck stands up 
as I...Read more of this...
by Williams, Hugo

Snow

...e-stem, saying,
“You can just see it glancing off the roof
Making a great scroll upward toward the sky,
Long enough for recording all our names on.—
I think I’ll just call up my wife and tell her
I’m here—so far—and starting on again.
I’ll call her softly so that if she’s wise
And gone to sleep, she needn’t wake to answer.”
Three times he barely stirred the bell, then listened.
“Why, Lett, still up? Lett, I’m at Cole’s. I’m late.
I called you up to say Good-night from here
Be...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

The Earth

...st of all He envies the bodies,
He who has no body.

The eyes, opening and shutting like keyholes
and never forgetting, recording by thousands,
the skull with its brains like eels--
the tablet of the world--
the bones and their joints
that build and break for any trick,
the genitals,
the ballast of the eternal,
and the heart, of course,
that swallows the tides
and spits them out cleansed.

He does not envy the soul so much.
He is all soul
but He would like to house it in a bo...Read more of this...
by Russell, George William

The Owl

...film
Unreeled by the river. Impossible
To comprehend the comfort of their feet
In the freezing water. You were a camera
Recording reflections you could not fathom.
I made my world perform its utmost for you.
You took it all in with an incredulous joy
Like a mother handed her new baby
By the midwife. Your frenzy made me giddy.
It woke up my dumb, ecstatic boyhood
Of fifteen years before. My masterpiece
Came that black night on the Grantchester road.
I sucked the throaty thin w...Read more of this...
by Hughes, Ted

The Vision of Judgment

...d retired on high, 
Finding their charges past all care below; 
Terrestrial business fill'd nought in the sky 
Save the recording angel's black bureau; 
Who found, indeed, the facts to multiply 
With such rapidity of vice and woe, 
That he had stripp'd off both his wings in quills, 
And yet was in arrear of human ills. 

IV 

His business so augmented of late years, 
That he was forced, against his will no doubt, 
(Just like those cherubs, earthly ministers,) 
For some resour...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Widow and Her Son XXI

...a Valley, giving the fields and prairies the appearance of a great sheet of parchment upon which the furious Nature was recording her many deeds. Men came home from the streets while silence engulfed the night. 

In a lone house near those villages lived a woman who sat by her fireside spinning wool, and at her side was her only child, staring now at the fire and then at his mother. 

A terrible roar of thunder shook the house and the little boy shook with fright. He threw hi...Read more of this...
by Gibran, Kahlil

Turn O Libertad

...(From it and all henceforth expanding, doubting no more, resolute, sweeping the world,) 
Turn from lands retrospective, recording proofs of the past; 
From the singers that sing the trailing glories of the past; 
From the chants of the feudal world—the triumphs of kings, slavery, caste;
Turn to the world, the triumphs reserv’d and to come—give up that backward
 world; 
Leave to the singers of hitherto—give them the trailing past; 
But what remains, remains for singers for you...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

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