Famous Site Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Her Story

by Andrei Voznesensky
 I started up the engine and I lingered. 
 Where should I go? The night was fine, I figured. 
 The bonnet trembled like a nervous hound. 
 I shivered. Night lit up the houses around. 
 The Balzac age, I felt its burning pain, 
 Chilled to the bone, I couldn't hold my own. 
 The age of...Read more of this...

Marriage And Feasts

by Victor Hugo
 ("La salle est magnifique.") 
 
 {IV. Aug. 23, 1839.} 


 The hall is gay with limpid lustre bright— 
 The feast to pampered palate gives delight— 
 The sated guests pick at the spicy food, 
 And drink profusely, for the cheer is good; 
 And at that table—where the wise are few— 
 Both sexes and all...Read more of this...

A Nervous Governor-General

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 We read in the press that Lord Northcote is here 
To take up Lord Tennyson's mission. 
'Tis pleasant to find they have sent us a Peer, 
And a man of exalted position. 
It's his business to see that the Radical horde 
From loyalty's path does not swerve us; 
But his tastes, and the task, don't seem quite in accord...Read more of this...

Translations: Dante - Inferno Canto XXVI

by Alan Seeger
 Florence, rejoice! For thou o'er land and sea 
So spread'st thy pinions that the fame of thee 
Hath reached no less into the depths of Hell. 
So noble were the five I found to dwell 
Therein -- thy sons -- whence shame accrues to me 
And no great praise is thine; but if it be 
That truth unveil in...Read more of this...

August 15

by David Lehman
 My new Web site is dropdead.com
It's interactive you get to choose how
you'll die, where, and at what age
and it'll still come as a complete
surprise to you I guarantee
but let's not get morbid it's a game
it's more fun than ********.com and a lot less
narcissistic than kissmyass.com
Michael Douglas will play the lead with Sandra
Bullock as a baby in an out-of-control
baby carriage...Read more of this...

Sonnets 09: Let You Not Say Of Me When I Am Old

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Let you not say of me when I am old,
In pretty worship of my withered hands
Forgetting who I am, and how the sands
Of such a life as mine run red and gold
Even to the ultimate sifting dust, "Behold,
Here walketh passionless age!"—for there expands
A curious superstition in these lands,
And by its leave some weightless tales are told.

In me no lenten...Read more of this...

My Husky Team

by Robert William Service
 I met an ancient man who mushed
With Peary to the Pole.
Said I, "In all that land so hushed
What most inspired your soul?"
He looked at me with bleary eye,
He scratched a hoary head:
"You know that Sourdoughs jest cain't lie
So here's the dope," he said.

"That hike was like a devil's dream,
Just blizzards, gales and fogs,
But I was leadin' wi' my team
O'...Read more of this...

A loss of something ever felt I --

by Emily Dickinson
 A loss of something ever felt I --
The first that I could recollect
Bereft I was -- of what I knew not
Too young that any should suspect

A Mourner walked among the children
I notwithstanding went about
As one bemoaning a Dominion
Itself the only Prince cast out --

Elder, Today, a session wiser
And fainter, too, as Wiseness is --
I find myself still softly searching
For...Read more of this...

Governors On Sominex

by David Berman
 It had been four days of no weather
as if nature had conceded its genius to the indoors.

They'd closed down the Bureau of Sad Endings
and my wife sat on the couch and read the paper out loud.

The evening edition carried the magic death of a child
backlit by a construction site sunrise on its front page.

I kept my back to her...Read more of this...

Immrama

by Paul Muldoon
 I, too, have trailed my father's spirit
From the mud-walled cabin behind the mountain
Where he was born and bred,
TB and scarletina, 

The farm where he was first hired out,
To Wigan, to Crewe junction,
A building-site from which he disappeared
And took passage, almost, for Argentina. 

The mountain is coming down with hazel,
The building-site a slum,
While he has gone no further than Brazil....Read more of this...

Love Among The Ruins

by Robert Browning
 I

Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles
 Miles and miles
On the solitary pastures where our sheep
 Half-asleep
Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop
 As they crop— 
Was the site once of a city great and gay,
 (So they say)
Of our country's very capital, its prince
 Ages since
Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
 Peace or war.

II

Now—the country...Read more of this...

Account of a Visit From ST. Nicholas

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 "Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar plums danc'd in their heads,
And mama in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had...Read more of this...

The Epic Of The Lion

by Victor Hugo
 ("Un lion avait pris un enfant.") 
 
 {XIII.} 


 A Lion in his jaws caught up a child— 
 Not harming it—and to the woodland, wild 
 With secret streams and lairs, bore off his prey— 
 The beast, as one might cull a bud in May. 
 It was a rosy boy, a king's own pride, 
...Read more of this...

On the Circuit

by Wystan Hugh (W H) Auden
Among pelagian travelers,Lost on their lewd conceited wayTo Massachusetts, Michigan,Miami or L.A., An airborne instrument I sit,Predestined nightly to fulfillColumbia-Giesen-Management'sUnfathomable will, By whose election justified,I bring my gospel of the MuseTo fundamentalists, to nuns,to Gentiles and to Jews, And daily, seven days a week,Before a local sense has jelled,From talking-site to talking-siteAm jet-or-prop-propelled. Though warm my welcome everywhere,I shift so...Read more of this...

Heaven is so far of the Mind

by Emily Dickinson
 Heaven is so far of the Mind
That were the Mind dissolved --
The Site -- of it -- by Architect
Could not again be proved --

'Tis vast -- as our Capacity --
As fair -- as our idea --
To Him of adequate desire
No further 'tis, than Here --...Read more of this...

Song Of Love

by Victor Hugo
 ("S'il est un charmant gazon.") 
 
 {XXII, Feb. 18, 1834.} 


 If there be a velvet sward 
 By dewdrops pearly drest, 
 Where through all seasons fairies guard 
 Flowers by bees carest, 
 Where one may gather, day and night, 
 Roses, honeysuckle, lily white, 
 I fain would make of it a site 
 For...Read more of this...

Lost By Way of Tchin-Tabarden

by Susan Rich
 Republic of Niger

Nomads are said to know their way by an exact spot in the sky,

the touch of sand to their fingers, granules on the tongue.

But sometimes a system breaks down. I witness a shift of light,

study the irregular shadings of dunes. Why am I traveling

this road to Zinder, where really there is no road? No service station

at this...Read more of this...

There is a solitude of space

by Emily Dickinson
 There is a solitude of space
A solitude of sea
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be
Compared with that profounder site
That polar privacy
A soul admitted to itself --
Finite infinity....Read more of this...

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