Famous Sense Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Sense poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous sense poems. These examples illustrate what a famous sense poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Shakespeare, William
...ose impediments stand forth
Of wealth, of filial fear, law, kindred, fame!
Love's arms are peace, 'gainst rule, 'gainst sense,
'gainst shame,
And sweetens, in the suffering pangs it bears,
The aloes of all forces, shocks, and fears.
''Now all these hearts that do on mine depend,
Feeling it break, with bleeding groans they pine;
And supplicant their sighs to you extend,
To leave the battery that you make 'gainst mine,
Lending soft audience to my sweet design,
And credent ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...are you, that wanted only to be told what you knew before?
Who are you, that wanted only a book to join you in your nonsense?
(With pangs and cries, as thine own, O bearer of many children!
These clamors wild, to a race of pride I give.)
O lands! would you be freer than all that has ever been before?
If you would be freer than all that has been before, come listen to me.
Fear grace—Fear elegance, civilization, delicatesse,
Fear the mellow sweet, the sucking o...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
..."small"!
280
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading—treading—till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through—
And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum—
Kept beating—beating—till I thought
My Mind was going numb
And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space—began to toll,
As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...f Life in most august omnipresence,
Through which the rational intellect would find
In passion its expression, and mere sense,
Ignoble else, lend fire to the mind,
And being joined with it in harmony
More mystical than that which binds the stars planetary,
Strike from their several tones one octave chord
Whose cadence being measureless would fly
Through all the circling spheres, then to its Lord
Return refreshed with its new empery
And more exultant power, - this indeed
Coul...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...oamed sands.
"O ye, whom wrath consumes! who, passion-stung,
Writhe at defeat, and nurse your agonies!
Shut up your senses, stifle up your ears,
My voice is not a bellows unto ire.
Yet listen, ye who will, whilst I bring proof
How ye, perforce, must be content to stoop:
And in the proof much comfort will I give,
If ye will take that comfort in its truth.
We fall by course of Nature's law, not force
Of thunder, or of Jove. Great Saturn, thou
Hast sifted well th...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...led that heard him, and a fearful sound
Of issuing wind arose, and blood-red light
Broke from beneath our feet, and sense and sight
Left me. The memory with cold sweat once more
Reminds me of the sudden-crimsoned night,
As sank I senseless by the dreadful shore.
Canto IV
ARISING thunder from the vast Abyss
First roused me, not as he that rested wakes
From slumbrous hours, but one rude fury shakes
Untimely, and around I gazed to know
The pl...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...ar;
Yet he was firm, or had been firm till now,
And still defiance knit his gather'd brow;
Though mix'd with terror, senseless as he lay,
There lived upon his lip the wish to slay;
Some half-form'd threat in utterance there had died,
Some imprecation of despairing pride;
His eye was almost seal'd, but not forsook
Even in its trance the gladiator's look,
That oft awake his aspect could disclose,
And now was fix'd in horrible repose.
They raise him — bear him: hu...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...d pausing Harp Disturb'd her Soul with Pity! All Impulses of Soul and Sense Had thrill'd my guileless Genevieve, The Music, and the doleful Tale, The rich and balmy Eve; And Hopes, and Fears that kindle Hope, An undistinguishable Throng! And gentle Wishes long subdued, Subdued and cherish'd l...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...chain,
How steep the stairs within kings' houses are,
And all the petty miseries which mar
Man's nobler nature with the sense of wrong.
Yet this dull world is grateful for thy song;
Our nations do thee homage, - even she,
That cruel queen of vine-clad Tuscany,
Who bound with crown of thorns thy living brow,
Hath decked thine empty tomb with laurels now,
And begs in vain the ashes of her son.
O mightiest exile! all thy grief is done:
Thy soul walks now beside thy Beat...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...Before I went to say Good-morning there.—
I thought I would.— I know, but, Lett—I know—
I could, but what’s the sense? The rest won’t be
So bad.— Give me an hour for it.— Ho, ho,
Three hours to here! But that was all up hill;
The rest is down.— Why no, no, not a wallow:
They kept their heads and took their time to it
Like darlings, both of them. They’re in the barn.—
My dear, I’m coming just the same. I didn’t
Call you to ask you to invite me h...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...h she grown to her new use.
4
The very names of things belov'd are dear,
And sounds will gather beauty from their sense,
As many a face thro' love's long residence
Groweth to fair instead of plain and sere:
But when I say thy name it hath no peer,
And I suppose fortune determined thence
Her dower, that such beauty's excellence
Should have a perfect title for the ear.
Thus may I think the adopting Muses chose
Their sons by name, knowing none would be heard
Or writ s...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...at sunlit shore
Yet haunt my dreaming gaze!
PREFACE
If--and the thing is wildly possible--the charge of writing nonsense were ever brought against the author of this brief but instructive poem, it would be based, I feel convinced, on the line (in p.18)
"Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes."
In view of this painful possibility, I will not (as I might) appeal indignantly to my other writings as a proof that I am incapable of such a deed: I wil...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...e's enchanted hall,
Hands unseen thy couch are strewing,
Fairy strains of music fall,
Every sense in slumber dewing.
Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er,
Dream of fighting fields no more;
Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking,
Morn of toil, nor night of waking.
'No rude sound shall reach thine ear,
Armor's clang or war-steed champing
Trump nor pibroch summon here
Mustering clan or squadron t...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...to these are True
Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that calld Body is
a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses. the chief inlets
of Soul in this age
Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is
the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
Energy is Eternal Delight
_______________________________________
PLATE 5
Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough
to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...ored her to explain,
She simply said it all again.
Wrenched with an agony intense,
He spake, neglecting Sound and Sense,
And careless of all consequence:
"Mind - I believe - is Essence - Ent -
Abstract - that is - an Accident -
Which we - that is to say - I meant - "
When, with quick breath and cheeks all flushed,
At length his speech was somewhat hushed,
She looked at him, and he was crushed.
It needed not her calm reply:
She fixed him with a stony eye,
And h...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...which held
Their natures, snaps . . . ere the shock cease to tingle
One falls and then another in the path
Senseless, nor is the desolation single,
Yet ere I can say where the chariot hath
Past over them; nor other trace I find
But as of foam after the Ocean's wrath
Is spent upon the desert shore.--Behind,
Old men, and women foully disarrayed
Shake their grey hair in the insulting wind,
Limp in the dance & strain, with limbs decayed,
Seeking to reach the ligh...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...he first year of freedom's second dawn
Died George the Third; although no tyrant, one
Who shielded tyrants, till each sense withdrawn
Left him nor mental nor external sun:
A better farmer ne'er brush'd dew from lawn,
A worse king never left a realm undone!
He died — but left his subjects still behind,
One half as mad — and t'other no less blind.
IX
He died! his death made no great stir on earth:
His burial made some pomp; there was profusion
Of velvet, gilding...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...s
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid - troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a carved dolphin swam.
Above the antiq...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...—those lovely liquid 'l's'
Ring in the ears like sound of Sabbath bells.
Yet I have loathed those voices when the sense
Of what they said seemed to me insolence,
As if the dominance of the whole nation
Lay in that clear correct enunciation.
Many years later, I remember when
One evening I overheard two men
In Claridge's— white waistcoats, coats I know
Were built in Bond Street or in Savile Row—
So calm, so confident, so finely bred—
Young gods in tails— and this is ...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...s way..
But there remain no tears and no excuses.
x x x
To lose the freshness of the words and sense, for us,
Is it same as for an artist to lose vision,
Or for an actor -- voice and motion,
Or for a gorgeous woman -- her finesse?
But do not seek now for yourself to keep
What heaven has given to you below:
We have been judged -- and we ourselves both know --
To give away, and not to keep.
Or else alone you go to heal the blind,
To kno...Read more of this...
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