Famous Sensitive Poems by Famous Poets

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

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In a Minor Key

by Amy Levy
 (AN ECHO FROM A LARGER LYRE.)


That was love that I had before
Years ago, when my heart was young;
Ev'ry smile was a gem you wore;
Ev'ry word was a sweet song sung.

You came--all my pulses burn'd and beat.
(O sweet wild throbs of an early day!)
You went--with the last dear sound of your feet
The light wax'd dim and the place grew grey.

And...Read more of this...

The Frog

by Hilaire Belloc
 Be kind and tender to the Frog,
And do not call him names,
As "Slimy skin," or "Polly-wog,"
Or likewise "Ugly James,"
Or "Gap-a-grin," or "Toad-gone-wrong,"
Or "Bill Bandy-knees":
The Frog is justly sensitive
To epithets like these.

No animal will more repay
A treatment kind and fair;
At least so lonely people say
Who keep a frog (and, by the way,
They are extremely rare)....Read more of this...

Sensitive Burglar

by Robert William Service
 Selecting in the dining-room
 The silver of his choice,
The burglar heard from chamber gloom
 A female voice.
As cold and bitter as a toad,
 She spat a nasty name,
So even as his swag he stowed
 He blushed for shame.

'You dirty dog!' he heard her say,
 'I sniff your whisky stench.
I bet you've gambled half your pay,
 Or blown it on...Read more of this...

Girlhood

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Girlhood, the dearest time of joy and love,
The sunny spring of gladness and of peace,
The time that joins its links with heaven above,
And all that's pure below; a running ease
Of careless thought beguiles the murmuring stream
Of girlish life, and as some sweet, vague dream,
The fleeting days go by; fair womanhood
Comes oft to lure the girlish feet away,
But by the brooklet...Read more of this...

Sadism

by Ehsan Sehgal
Who promised to live together,
Side by side in the life journey
Forever
But left me in the midway
Broke the promise
Ignored affection and love
No care of the sensitive heart,
Feelings and the emotions
Just for another target
To put anybody either
Into the fire
It is the sadism
And a great tragedy
We Knowingly accept
Destruction of our life and the destiny
Ehsan Sehgal...Read more of this...

James Simmons R.i.p

by Barry Tebb
 You were the one I wanted most to know

So like yet unlike, like fire and snow,

The casual voice, the sharp invective,

The barbed wit, the lapsed Irish Protestant

Who never gave a ****, crossed the palms

Of the great and good with coins hot with contempt

For the fakers and the tricksters whose poetry

Deftly bent to fashion’s latest slant.



You wrote from the heart,...Read more of this...

Government

by Carl Sandburg
 THE Government--I heard about the Government and
I went out to find it. I said I would look closely at
it when I saw it.
Then I saw a policeman dragging a drunken man to
the callaboose. It was the Government in action.
I saw a ward alderman slip into an office one morning
and talk with a judge. Later in the day the judge
dismissed...Read more of this...

Daily Trials by a Sensitive Man

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 Oh, there are times 
When all this fret and tumult that we hear 
Do seem more stale than to the sexton's ear 
His own dull chimes. 
Ding dong! ding dong! 
The world is in a simmer like a sea 
Over a pent volcano, -- woe is me 
All the day long! 
From crib to shroud! 
Nurse o'er our cradles...Read more of this...

Secret

by Gwendolyn B. Bennett
I shall make a song like your hair . . . . 
gold-woven with shadows green-tinged, 
And I shall play with my song 
As my fingers might play with your hair.
Deep in my heart
I shall play with my song of you, 
Gently . . . . 
I shall laugh
At its sensitive lustre . . . 
I shall wrap my song...Read more of this...

Easter 1916

by William Butler Yeats
 I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But...Read more of this...

We May Roam Through This World

by Thomas Moore
 We may roam through this world, like a child at a feast, 
Who but sips of a sweet, and then flies to the rest; 
And, when pleasure begins to grow dull in the east, 
We may order our wings and be off to the west: 
But if hearts that feel, and eyes that smile, 
Are the dearest gifts that...Read more of this...

Spontaneous Me

by Walt Whitman
 SPONTANEOUS me, Nature, 
The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with, 
The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder, 
The hill-side whiten’d with blossoms of the mountain ash, 
The same, late in autumn—the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple, and light and dark
 green,
The rich coverlid of the grass—animals and birds—the private untrimm’d
...Read more of this...

American Beauty

by Carolyn Kizer
 For Ann London 

As you described your mastectomy in calm detail
and bared your chest so I might see
the puckered scar,
"They took a hatchet to your breast!" I said. "What an
Amazon you are."

When we were girls we climbed Mt. Tamalpais
chewing bay leaves we had plucked
along the way;
we got high all right, from animal pleasure in each other,
shouting to the sky.

On...Read more of this...

Ode for the Keats Centenary

by Duncan Campbell Scott
 The Muse is stern unto her favoured sons,
Giving to some the keys of all the joy
Of the green earth, but holding even that joy
Back from their life;
Bidding them feed on hope,
A plant of bitter growth,
Deep-rooted in the past;
Truth, 'tis a doubtful art
To make Hope sweeten
Time as it flows;
For no man knows
Until the very last,
Whether it be a sovereign herb...Read more of this...

Queen Mab: Part VI (excerpts)

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 "Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light, 
Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffus'd
A Spirit of activity and life,
That knows no term, cessation, or decay;
That fades not when the lamp of earthly life,
Extinguish'd in the dampness of the grave,
Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe
In the dim newness of its being feels
The impulses of sublunary things,
And...Read more of this...

The Three Tommies

by Robert William Service
 That Barret, the painter of pictures, what feeling for color he had!
And Fanning, the maker of music, such melodies mirthful and mad!
And Harley, the writer of stories, so whimsical, tender and glad!

To hark to their talk in the trenches, high heart unfolding to heart,
Of the day when the war would be over, and each would be true to his...Read more of this...

Ego Dominus Tuus

by William Butler Yeats
 Hic. On the grey sand beside the shallow stream
Under your old wind-beaten tower, where still
A lamp burns on beside the open book
That Michael Robartes left, you walk in the moon,
And, though you have passed the best of life, still trace,
Enthralled by the unconquerable delusion,
Magical shapes.

Ille. By the help of an image
I call to my own opposite, summon all
That I...Read more of this...

Growing Old

by Robert William Service
 Somehow the skies don't seem so blue
 As they used to be;
Blossoms have a fainter hue,
 Grass less green I see.
There's no twinkle in a star,
 Dawns don't seem so gold . . .
Yet, of course, I know they are:
 Guess I'm growing old.

Somehow sunshine seems less bright,
 Birds less gladly sing;
Moons don't thrill me with delight,
 There's no...Read more of this...

Frog The

by Hilaire Belloc
 Be kind and tender to the Frog,
And do not call him names,
As "Slimy skin," or "Polly-wog,"
Or likewise "Ugly James,"
Or "Gap-a-grin," or "Toad-gone-wrong,"
Or "Bill Bandy-knees":
The Frog is justly sensitive
To epithets like these.

No animal will more repay
A treatment kind and fair;
At least so lonely people say
Who keep a frog (and, by the way,
They are extremely rare)....Read more of this...

Lotus Hurt by the Cold

by D. H. Lawrence
 How many times, like lotus lilies risen 
Upon the surface of a river, there 
Have risen floating on my blood the rare 
Soft glimmers of my hope escaped from prison.

So I am clothed all over with the light
And sensitive beautiful blossoming of passion;
Till naked for her in the finest fashion 
The flowers of all my mud swim into sight....Read more of this...

The Driver

by Friedrich von Schiller
 "What knight or what vassal will be so bold
As to plunge in the gulf below?
See! I hurl in its depths a goblet of gold,
Already the waters over it flow.
The man who can bring back the goblet to me,
May keep it henceforward,--his own it shall be."

Thus speaks the king, and he hurls from the height
Of the cliffs that, rugged and...Read more of this...

Victor Hugo

by Henry Van Dyke
 Heart of France for a hundred years,
Passionate, sensitive, proud, and strong,
Quick to throb with her hopes and fears,
Fierce to flame with her sense of wrong!
You, who hailed with a morning song
Dream-light gilding a throne of old:
You, who turned when the dream grew cold,
Singing still, to the light that shone
Pure from Liberty's ancient throne,
Over the human throng!
You, who dared in...Read more of this...

In re a Gentleman One

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 We see it each day in the paper, 
And know that there's mischief in store; 
That some unprofessional caper 
Has landed a shark on the shore. 
We know there'll be plenty of trouble 
Before they get through with the fun, 
Because he's been coming the double 
On clients, has "Gentleman, One". 
Alas for the gallant attorney, 
Intent upon cutting...Read more of this...

Fair way

by Ehsan Sehgal
"Dedicate your affection in fair way to get someone's affection, never use tricks that are sensitive and weakness of somebody, may the respose is positive, but the real and true attention and affection is in doubts, as this concept, you are the loser."
Ehsan Sehgal...Read more of this...

Teeth sensitive to the sand

by Matsuo Basho
 Teeth sensitive to the sand
in salad greens--
 I'm getting old....Read more of this...

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