Famous Role Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Role poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous role poems. These examples illustrate what a famous role poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Voznesensky, Andrei
...xers,
however, our neighbour's noses
screw into keyholes, just like drills!
(Great Gogol felt by intuition
the role they play in man's ambition.)
My friend Bukashkin who was boozy
dreamed of a nose
that grew like crazy:
above him, coming like a bore,
upsetting pans and chandeliers,
a nose
was piercing
the ceilings
and threading
floor upon the floor!
"What's that? -- he thought, when out of bed.
"A sign of Judgement Day -- I said --
...Read more of this...
by
Seeger, Alan
...ese),
If you would see how a race can soar
That has no love, but no fear, of war,
How each can turn from his private role
That all may act as a perfect whole,
How men can live up to the place they claim
And a nation, jealous of its good name,
Be true to its proud inheritance,
Oh, look over here and learn from FRANCE!...Read more of this...
by
Nash, Ogden
...en from human sight;
But once a year it doth appear,
On this Walpurgis Night.
Ere you peril your soul in murderer's role,
Heed those who sinned of yore;
The path they trod led away from God,
And onto the thirteenth floor,
Where those they slew, a grisly crew,
Reproach them forevermore.
"We are higher than twelve and below fourteen,"
Said Maxie to the bum,
"And the sickening draft that taints the shaft
Is a whiff of kingdom come.
The sickening draft that taints th...Read more of this...
by
Thomas, R S
...asked. Am I the keeper
Of the heart's relics, blowing the dust
In my own eyes? I am a man;
I never wanted the drab role
Life assigned me, an actor playing
To the past's audience upon a stage
Of earth and stone; the absurd label
Of birth, of race hanging askew
About my shoulders. I was in prison
Until you came; your voice was a key
Turning in the enormous lock
Of hopelessness. Did the door open
To let me out or yourselves in?...Read more of this...
by
Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...tory.
The nightingale is sweet of song;
The rare exotic smells divinely;
And knightly men who stride along,
The role heroic carry finely.
But then, upon the other hand,
Our minds have got a way of running
To things that aren't quite so grand,
Which, maybe, we are best in shunning.
For some of us still like to see
The poor man in his dwelling narrow,
The hollyhock, the bumblebee,
The meadow lark, and chirping sparrow.
We like the man who soars and ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,
Play’d the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,
The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like,
Or as small as we like, or both great and small.
9
Closer yet I approach you;
What thought you have of me, I had as much of you—I laid in my stores in advance;
I consider’d long and seriously of you before you were born.
Who was to know what should come home to me?
Who knows but I am...Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...akes complete
7.
the actor
acting is not the true self's dissipation
but not its preening either - outside the role
it honours it best fights shy of reputation -
being what prometheus stole
it is a distant spark of that first live coal
a conscious glimpse of human desperation
rekindled as a longing to console
the waning spirit or the shattered dedication
actors are allies of the delphic hole
for good or ill they echo human expectation
being what prometheus stole
...Read more of this...
by
Du Bois, W. E. B.
...nd power
Not in its color nor its flower
But in its wondrous breadth of soul
Its Joy of Life
Its selfless role
Of giving.
School and clinic, home and hall
Road and garden bloom and call
Socialism blossoms bold
On Communism centuries old.
I lifted my last voice and cried
I cried to heaven as I died:
O turn me to the Golden Horde
Summon all western nations
Toward the Rising Sun.
From reeking West whose day is done,
Who stink...Read more of this...
by
Gluck, Louise
...r the shifting, the evolving.
Substitution of the image
for relentless earth. What
do I know of this place,
the role of the tree for decades
taken by a bonsai, voices
rising from the tennis courts --
Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut.
As one expects of a lyric poet.
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory....Read more of this...
by
Parker, Dorothy
...I'm sick of embarking in dories
Upon an emotional sea.
I'm wearied of playing Dolores
(A role never written for me).
I'll never again like a cub lick
My wounds while I squeal at the hurt.
No more I'll go walking in public,
My heart hanging out of my shirt.
I'm tired of entwining me garlands
Of weather-worn hemlock and bay.
I'm over my longing for far lands-
I wouldn't give that for Cathay.
I'm through with performing the b...Read more of this...
by
Nin, Anais
...false, weak, posturing. She lacks the courage of her personality, which is sensual, heavy with experience. Her role alone preoccupies her. She invents dramas in which she always stars. I am sure she creates genuine dramas, genuine chaos and whirlpools of feelings, but I feel that her share in it is a pose. That night, in spite of my response to her, she sought to be whatever she felt I wanted her to be. She is an actress every moment. I cannot gra...Read more of this...
by
Eluard, Paul
...y
I see only beautiful faces
Good faces, sure of themselves
Certain soon to ruin their masters
II. The women’s role
As they sing, the maids dash forward
To tidy up the killing fields
Well-powdered girls, quickly to their knees
Their hands -- reaching for the fresh air --
Are blue like never before
What a glorious day!
Look at their hands, the dead
Look at their liquid eyes
This is the toilet of transience
The final toilet of life
Stones sink and disapp...Read more of this...
by
Kilmer, Joyce
...,
These are his prey, and what to him
Is this poor man of rhyme,
That he, with such laborious skill,
Should change from role to role,
Should daily act so many a part
To get my little soul?
Oh, he can be the forest,
And he can be the sun,
Or a buttercup, or an hour of rest
When the weary day is done.
I saw him through a thousand veils,
And has not this sufficed?
Now, must I look on the Devil robed
In the radiant Robe of Christ?
He comes, and his face is sad and mild,
With ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...in
I was the understudy of
The understudy of the Dane.
Oh how it crabbed me just to think
They barred me from that role divine;
And how I longed to have them drink
A cup of slightly poisoned wine!
At every night with struts and rants
I strove my quid a week to earn,
And put my soul in Rosenkrantz -
Or was it haply, Guildenstern.
Alas! I might have spared by breath,
I never played the noble Dane;
And yet when Irving staged Macbeth
I bore a tree of Dunsinane,
And year...Read more of this...
by
Pushkin, Alexander
...all my happy dreams, at once,
In loving heart again resound.
In bliss and silence do I stay,
Unable to maintain my role:
"Oh, how sweet you are!" I say --
"How I love thee!" says my soul....Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...ne,
That over black kerchief did weep,
Where is your small first child
What memory of him do you keep?"
"Mother's role is a sweet torture,
I was not worthy of it.
The gate dissolved into white heaven,
Magdalene took the kid.
"Each day for me is happy and jolly,
I got lost in a too-long spring,
Only arms pine away for a burden
Only his cries in my sleep ring.
"The heart will be restless and weary
And no memory cross my mind,
I still wander in ro...Read more of this...
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