Famous Responsibility Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Responsibility poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous responsibility poems. These examples illustrate what a famous responsibility poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...past the corner
candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Business-
men are serious. Movie producers are serious.
Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of
marijuana millions of genitals ...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...he Wind --
Escape the prowling Bee
Great Nature not to disappoint
Awaiting Her that Day --
To be a Flower, is profound
Responsibility --...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...ho it was that reached the height of
imbecility,
It was whoever said that grandparents have all the fun and none of
the responsibility.
This is the most enticing spiderwebs of a tarradiddle ever spun,
Because everybody would love to have a baby around who was no
responsibility and lots of fun,
But I can think of no one but a mooncalf or a gaby
Who would trust their own child to raise a baby.
So you have to personally superintend your grandchild from diapers
to pants and from ...Read more of this...
by
Nash, Ogden
...elishy, they say. Here's mine,
was. What ever happened to Political Economy,
leaving me here?
Is a rare-”in my opinion-”responsibility.
The military establishments perpetuate themselves forever.
Have a bite, for a sign....Read more of this...
by
Berryman, John
...er, and their color is dark. They are my sacs of poison,
the almost unused poison that I bear, my burden and my great
responsibility. Big wings of poison, folded on my back. Beware,
I am an angel in disguise; my wings are evil, but not deadly. If
I will it, the poison could break through, blue-black, and
dangerous to all. Blue-black fumes would rise upon the air.
Beware, you frivolous crab....Read more of this...
by
Bishop, Elizabeth
...Her little Parasol to lift
And once to let it down
Her whole Responsibility --
To imitate be Mine.
A Summer further I must wear,
Content if Nature's Drawer
Present me from sepulchral Crease
As blemishless, as Her....Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...is
listening and laughing and asking
questions
no matter what your age
Few recognize that love is
commitment, responsibility
no fun at all
unless
Love is
You and me ...Read more of this...
by
Giovanni, Nikki
...eave the twilight of ignorance and dullness, you have experienced all
that is necessary to understand the meaning
and responsibility of the creative person in the world.
Göttingen 1937, Tlatelolco 1968, Koper 2010.
Important burnt-out sites of hopes and comprehensions,
the only worthy investments in the future.
Nothing can excuse the actions of madness,
what is left after is merely the disinfectant
smell of crime and some newly
decorated vultures.
Beware of t...Read more of this...
by
Kramberger, Taja
...ult as it must always be to render satisfactorily
into one's own tongue the writings of the bards of other lands,
the responsibility assumed by the translator is immeasurably increased
when he attempts to transfer the thoughts of those great men, who
have lived for all the world and for all ages, from the language
in which they were originally clothed, to one to which they may
as yet have been strangers. Preeminently is this the case with Goethe,
the most masterly of a...Read more of this...
by
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...who had thought to lay her with her first love,
Begged simply for the grave. The sister's face
Fell all in wrinkles of responsibility.
She wanted to do right. She'd have to think.
Laban was old and poor, yet seemed to care;
And she was old and poor-but she cared, too.
They sat. She cast one dull, old look at him,
Then turned him out to go on other errands
She said he might attend to in the village,
While she made up her mind how much she cared-
And how much Laban cared-and w...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...ve because the problem I have cannot occur
in this universe though possibly in an alternate
universe which is not the responsibility or in any way
the product, child or subsidiary of AT&T. With practice
I've come to respect this moment. One man in jeans,
t-shirt and socks looking across space at a man
with probes and pliers of various inclinations, nothing
being said for five or ten seconds, perhaps I'm still
in pajamas and he has a cleft pallet or is so tall
that gi...Read more of this...
by
Hicok, Bob
...to the harbour where
His ball went. I would not intrude on him,
A dime, another ball, is worthless. Now
He senses first responsibility
In a world of possessions. People will take balls,
Balls will be lost always, little boy,
And no one buys a ball back. Money is external.
He is learning, well behind his desperate eyes,
The epistemology of loss, how to stand up
Knowing what every man must one day know
And most know many days, how to stand up
And gradually light returns to the ...Read more of this...
by
Berryman, John
...
Which is my prison,
And all these human pillars of loftiness, going stiff, metallic-stunned with the weight of their responsibility
I stumble against them.
Stumbling-blocks, painful ones.
To keep on holding up this ideal civilisation
Must be excruciating: unless you stiffen into metal, when it is easier to stand stock rigid than to move.
This is why I tug at them, individually, with my arm round their waist
The human pillars.
They are not stronger than I am, blind...Read more of this...
by
Lawrence, D. H.
...ws," and there were, or they've
made their way here unaided
other than by that backhand, round-
about refusal to assume responsibility
known as Natural Selection.
But the sun
underfoot is so dazzling
down there among the sundews,
there is so much light
in that cup that, looking,
you start to fall upward....Read more of this...
by
Clampitt, Amy
...gild
Cloudy leafage of the sky,
Or wintry moonlight sink the field
In storm-scattered intricacy,
I cannot look thereon,
Responsibility so weighs me down.
Things said or done long years ago,
Or things I did not do or say
But thought that I might say or do,
Weigh me down, and not a day
But something is recalled,
My conscience or my vanity appalled.
VI
A rivery field spread out below,
An odour of the new-mown hay
In his nostrils, the great lord of Chou
Cried, casting off the...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...ame to their rescue
Not all terrorists have features too foreign
to be recognized in the mirror
Our mistakes are our responsibility
4.
The skyline outside my window
is the only thing that has changed
Men still rape women
and blame them for their weaknesses
Children are still molested
by the perversion of Catholic guilt
My ex-boyfriend still takes comfort
in the other white powder-
the one used solely to destroy himself
and those around him
Not the one used...Read more of this...
by
Xavier, Emanuel
...mers are nomads,
Merchants, circus people,
All the earth our tent.
We are industrious.
We breed enthusiasms,
Honour our responsibility to awe.
But the universe has moved a long way off.
Sometimes, I confess,
Starlight seems too sharp,
And like the moon
I bend my face to the ground,
To the small patch where each foot falls,
Before it falls,
And I forget to ask questions,
And only count things....Read more of this...
by
Elson, Rebecca
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