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Famous Sane Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Whitman, Walt
...return to thee, O soil of Autumn fields, 
Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee, 
Answering the pulses of thy sane and equable heart, 
Tuning a verse for thee.

O Earth, that hast no voice, confide to me a voice! 
O harvest of my lands! O boundless summer growths! 
O lavish, brown, parturient earth! O infinite, teeming womb! 
A verse to seek, to see, to narrate thee. 

3
Ever upon this stage,
Is acted God’s calm, annual drama, 
Gorgeous processions, songs of...Read more of this...



by Lawrence, D. H.
...If you make a revolution, make it for fun,
don't make it in ghastly seriousness,
don't do it in deadly earnest,
do it for fun.

Don't do it because you hate people,
do it just to spit in their eye.

Don't do it for the money,
do it and be damned to the money.

Don't do it for equality,
do it because we've got too much equality
and it would be f...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...se, subtler refrains, O Union! 
Preludes of intellect tallying these and thee—mind-formulas fitted for
 thee—real, and
 sane, and large as these and thee; 
Thou, mounting higher, diving deeper than we knew—thou transcendental Union!
By thee Fact to be justified—blended with Thought; 
Thought of Man justified—blended with God: 
Through thy Idea—lo! the immortal Reality! 
Through thy Reality—lo! the immortal Idea! 

2
Brain of the New World! what a task is thine!
To formulate t...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...th decision and science, 
I lead the present with friendly hand toward the future. 

Bravas to all impulses sending sane children to the next age! 
But damn that which spends itself, with no thought of the stain, pains, dismay, feebleness
 it
 is bequeathing.

9
I listened to the Phantom by Ontario’s shore, 
I heard the voice arising, demanding bards; 
By them, all native and grand—by them alone can The States be fused into the compact
 organism of a Nation. 

To ...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...d on this same isle, preached him and Christ; 
And (as I gathered from a bystander) 
Their doctrine could be held by no sane man....Read more of this...



by Service, Robert William
...say: "Don't let's repine,
Though things are bad they might be worse."
And so he cherished to the end
Philosophy so sane and sweet
That everybody was his friend . . .
With optimism hard to beat -
God bless old Compensation Pete....Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...the marrow too vague to get through
to the bone) an idea that never could
make it as flesh - there wasn't a part of me
sane i could tell that would have spared
it a breath to get started
   so i slept

one midday i woke up with a bang - light
was bashing in through the windows
and suddenly out of my pores
sprang this fully-fledged practical paeon
this triumphant brass-note of praise
for a why-hadn't-i-yelled-it-before
sort of answer to my life's rubbing-out
of my dreams
  i’...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...passion my rhyme would arraign.
You dance for Apollo with noble devotion,
A high cleansing revel to make the heart sane.
But Judith the dancer prays to a spirit
More white than Apollo and all of his train.

I know a dancer who finds the true Godhead,
Who bends o'er a brazier in Heaven's clear plain.
I know a dancer, I know a dancer,
Who lifts us toward peace, from this earth that is vain:
Judith the dancer, Judith the dancer,
With foot like the snow, and with...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...the Mind
Like Sanctifying in the Soul --
Is witnessed -- not explained --

'Twas a Divine Insanity --
The Danger to be Sane
Should I again experience --
'Tis Antidote to turn --

To Tomes of solid Witchcraft --
Magicians be asleep --
But Magic -- hath an Element
Like Deity -- to keep --...Read more of this...

by Cummings, Edward Estlin (E E)
...more always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less litter than forgive

It's most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...Like wise preceptor lure his eye
To sound the science of the sky,
And carry learning to its height
Of untried power and sane delight;
The Indian cheer, the frosty skies
Breed purer wits, inventive eyes,
Eyes that frame cities where none be,
And hands that stablish what these see:
And, by the moral of his place,
Hint summits of heroic grace;
Man in these crags a fastness find
To fight pollution of the mind;
In the wide thaw and ooze of wrong,
Adhere like this foundation strong...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...world be ill?

Aye, though the land be sick they say,
And named unto pain,
My garden never was so gay,
So innocent, so sane.
My roses mock at misery,
My thrushes vie in song . . .
When only beauty I can see,
 How can the world be wrong?...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...ds greet and banter as they pass. 
'Tis sweet to see among the mass comrades and lovers everywhere, 


A law that's sane, a Love that's free, and men of every birth and blood 
Allied in one great brotherhood of Art and Joy and Poverty. . . . 


The open cafe-windows frame loungers at their liqueurs and beer, 
And walking past them one can hear fragments of Tosca and Boheme. 


And in the brilliant-lighted door of cinemas the barker calls, 
And lurid po...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ial of true love-- 
Love?--we be all alike: only the King 
Hath made us fools and liars. O noble vows! 
O great and sane and simple race of brutes 
That own no lust because they have no law! 
For why should I have loved her to my shame? 
I loathe her, as I loved her to my shame. 
I never loved her, I but lusted for her-- 
Away--' 
He dashed the rowel into his horse, 
And bounded forth and vanished through the night. 

Then she, that felt the cold touch on her thro...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...of corpses, the livid faces of
 drunkards, the sick-gray faces of onanists, 
The gash’d bodies on battle-fields, the insane in their strong-door’d rooms, the
 sacred
 idiots, the new-born emerging from gates, and the dying emerging from gates, 
The night pervades them and infolds them.

The married couple sleep calmly in their bed—he with his palm on the hip of the wife,
 and
 she
 with her palm on the hip of the husband, 
The sisters sleep lovingly side by side in their...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...t dissipations of the few,
With perfumes, heat and wine, beneath the dazzling chandeliers. 

9
To you, ye Reverent, sane Sisters, 
To this resplendent day, the present scene, 
These eyes and ears that like some broad parterre bloom up around, before me, 
I raise a voice for far superber themes for poets and for Art,
To exalt the present and the real, 
To teach the average man the glory of his daily walk and trade, 
To sing, in songs, how exercise and chemical life are nev...Read more of this...

by Lazarus, Emma
...atter at a sound, 
Leap in their cool sea-chambers, nibly fleet, 
And we shall doubt that we have ever seen, 
While our sane eyes behold stray wreaths of mist, 
Shot with faint colors by the moon-rays kissed, 
Floating snow-soft, snow-white, where these had been. 
Already, look! the wave-washed sands are bare, 
And mocking laughter ripples through the air. 


VI

Divided 'twixt the dream-world and the real, 
We heard the waxing passion of the song 
Soar as to scale th...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...cier; frail at first 
And feeble, all unconscious of itself, 
But such as gathered colour day by day. 

Last I woke sane, but well-nigh close to death 
For weakness: it was evening: silent light 
Slept on the painted walls, wherein were wrought 
Two grand designs; for on one side arose 
The women up in wild revolt, and stormed 
At the Oppian Law. Titanic shapes, they crammed 
The forum, and half-crushed among the rest 
A dwarf-like Cato cowered. On the other side ...Read more of this...

by Murray, Les
...y endure 
Earth gravity, and stayed weak and cranky 
till the soup came, squid and vegetables, 

pure Yang. And was sane thereafter. 
It seemed I'd also travelled 
in a Spring-in-Winter love-barque of cards, 
of flowers and phone calls and letters, 

concern I'd never dreamed was there 
when black kelp boiled in my head. 
I'd awoken amid my State funeral, 
nevermore to eat my liver 

or feed it to the Black Dog, depression 
which the three Johns Hunter seem 
to ha...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...; 
Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring: 
For fresh as the morning—thus would I carol a song for you, O sane and sacred death. 

All over bouquets of roses, 
O death! I cover you over with roses and early lilies;
But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first, 
Copious, I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes; 
With loaded arms I come, pouring for you, 
For you, and the coffins all of you, O death.) 

8
O western orb, sailing the heav...Read more of this...

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