Famous Reminiscent Poems by Famous Poets

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

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When The Old Man Smokes

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
In the forenoon's restful quiet,
When the boys are off at school,
When the window lights are shaded
And the chimney-corner cool,
Then the old man seeks his armchair,
Lights his pipe and settles back;
Falls a-dreaming as he draws it
Till the smoke-wreaths gather black.
And the tear-drops come a-trickling
Down his cheeks, a silver flow—
Smoke or memories you wonder,
But you never ask him,—no;
For there 's something almost...Read more of this...

Evolution

by Sharmagne Leland-St John
 I swim near summer shadows
glide over dappled shoals
keeping to the fluid shallows
reminiscent of the womb 
where I learned to swallow 
gulps 
of tantalising air

in the amniotic sac
where I shed scales 
preferring skin and 
hanks of auburn hair
upon my head
where I dispensed 
with fins and gills
grew hands and feet
with which to tread
and push away 
from muddy banks

I've no desire to...Read more of this...

Elegy: Walking the Line

by Edgar Bowers
 Every month or so, Sundays, we walked the line,
The limit and the boundary. Past the sweet gum
Superb above the cabin, along the wall—
Stones gathered from the level field nearby
When first we cleared it. (Angry bumblebees
Stung the two mules. They kicked. Thirteen, I ran.)
And then the field: thread-leaf maple, deciduous
Magnolia, hybrid broom, and, further down,
In light shade, one Franklinia Alatamaha
In...Read more of this...

The Voice Of The Banjo

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
In a small and lonely cabin out of noisy traffic's way,
Sat an old man, bent and feeble, dusk of face, and hair of gray,
And beside him on the table, battered, old, and worn as he,
Lay a banjo, droning forth this reminiscent melody:
"Night is closing in upon us, friend of mine, but don't be sad;
Let us think of all the pleasures...Read more of this...

Song for All Seas All Ships

by Walt Whitman
 1
TO-DAY a rude brief recitative, 
Of ships sailing the Seas, each with its special flag or ship-signal; 
Of unnamed heroes in the ships—Of waves spreading and spreading, far as the eye can reach;

Of dashing spray, and the winds piping and blowing; 
And out of these a chant, for the sailors of all nations,
Fitful, like a surge. 

Of Sea-Captains young...Read more of this...

Palm Trees by the Sea

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Second Song: The Girl from Baltistan

                            Throb, throb, throb,
   Far away in the blue transparent Night,
   On the outer horizon of a dreaming consciousness,
  ...Read more of this...

Base of all Metaphysics The

by Walt Whitman
 AND now, gentlemen, 
A word I give to remain in your memories and minds, 
As base, and finale too, for all metaphysics. 

(So, to the students, the old professor, 
At the close of his crowded course.)

Having studied the new and antique, the Greek and Germanic systems, 
Kant having studied and stated—Fichte and Schelling and Hegel, 
Stated the lore of...Read more of this...

A Star in a Stoneboat

by Robert Frost
 For Lincoln MacVeagh

Never tell me that not one star of all
That slip from heaven at night and softly fall
Has been picked up with stones to build a wall.

Some laborer found one faded and stone-cold,
And saving that its weight suggested gold
And tugged it from his first too certain hold,

He noticed nothing in it to remark.
He was not used to handling...Read more of this...

To E. H. K

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
To me, like hauntings of a vagrant breath
From some far forest which I once have known,
The perfume of this flower of verse is blown.
Tho' seemingly soul-blossoms faint to death,
Naught that with joy she bears e'er withereth.
So, tho' the pregnant years have come and flown,
Lives come and gone and altered like mine own,
This poem comes to me a shibboleth:
Brings sound of...Read more of this...

What The Thunder Said

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
  After the frosty silence in the gardens
  After the agony in stony places
  The shouting and the crying
  Prison and palace and reverberation
  Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
  He who was living is now dead
  We who were living are now dying
  With...Read more of this...

Dolor of Autumn

by D. H. Lawrence
 The acrid scents of autumn, 
Reminiscent of slinking beasts, make me fear 
Everything, tear-trembling stars of autumn 
And the snore of the night in my ear. 

For suddenly, flush-fallen, 
All my life, in a rush 
Of shedding away, has left me 
Naked, exposed on the bush. 

I, on the bush of the globe, 
Like a newly-naked berry, shrink
Disclosed: but...Read more of this...

Ione

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Ah, yes, 't is sweet still to remember,
Though 'twere less painful to forget;
For while my heart glows like an ember,
Mine eyes with sorrow's drops are wet,
And, oh, my heart is aching yet.
[Pg 32]It is a law of mortal pain
That old wounds, long accounted well,
Beneath the memory's potent spell,
Will wake to life and bleed again.
So 't is with me;...Read more of this...

The Apple Orchard

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Come let us watch the sun go down
and walk in twilight through the orchard's green.
Does it not seem as if we had for long
collected, saved and harbored within us
old memories? To find releases and seek
new hopes, remembering half-forgotten joys,
mingled with darkness coming from within,
as we randomly voice our thoughts aloud
wandering beneath these harvest-laden trees
reminiscent of Durer woodcuts, branches
which, bent...Read more of this...

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