Famous Slide By Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Menses

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 (He speaks, but to himself, being aware how it is with her)
Think not I have not heard.
Well-fanged the double word
And well-directed flew.

I felt it. Down my side
Innocent as oil I see the ugly venom slide:
Poison enough to stiffen us both, and all our friends;
But I am not pierced, so there the mischief ends.

There is more to be said: I...Read more of this...

Cupid And Folly

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 CUPID, ere depriv'd of Sight, 
Young and apt for all Delight, 
Met with Folly on the way, 
As Idle and as fond of Play. 
In gay Sports the time they pass; 
Now run, now wrestle on the Grass; 
Their painted Wings then nimbly ply, 
And ev'ry way for Mast'ry try: 
'Till a Contest do's arise, 
Who has won th'...Read more of this...

Little Sleeps-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight

by Galway Kinnell
1

You scream, waking from a nightmare.

When I sleepwalk
into your room, and pick you up,
and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me
hard,
as if clinging could save us. I think
you think
I will never die, I think I exude
to you the permanence of smoke or stars,
even as
my broken arms heal themselves around you.

2

I have heard you tell
the sun, don't go...Read more of this...

The Albatross

by Charles Baudelaire
 Often, to amuse themselves, the crew of the ship
Would fell an albatross, the largest of sea birds,
Indolent companions of their trip
As they slide across the deep sea's bitters.

Scarcely had they dropped to the plank
Than these blue kings, maladroit and ashamed
Let their great white wings sink
Like an oar dragging under the water's plane.

The winged visitor, so awkward and weak!
So recently...Read more of this...

Solitude: An Ode

by Alexander Pope
 I. 
How happy he, who free from care 
The rage of courts, and noise of towns; 
Contented breaths his native air, 
In his own grounds. 

II. 
Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, 
Whose flocks supply him with attire, 
Whose trees in summer yield him shade, 
In winter fire. 

III. 
Blest! who can unconcern'dly find 
Hours, days, and...Read more of this...

Psalm 38

by Isaac Watts
 Guilt of conscience and relief

Amidst thy wrath remember love,
Restore thy servant, Lord;
Nor let a Father's chast'ning prove
Like an avenger's sword.

Thine arrows stick within my heart,
My flesh is sorely pressed;
Between the sorrow and the smart,
My spirit finds no rest.

My sins a heavy load appear,
And o'er my head are gone;
Too heavy they for me to bear,
Too hard for me t' atone.

My...Read more of this...

One Viceroy Resigns

by Rudyard Kipling
 So here's your Empire. No more wine, then?
Good.
We'll clear the Aides and khitmatgars away.
(You'll know that fat old fellow with the knife --
He keeps the Name Book, talks in English too,
And almost thinks himself the Government.)
O Youth, Youth, Youth! Forgive me, you're so young.
Forty from sixty -- twenty years of work
And power to back the working. Ay def mi!
You...Read more of this...

A Birthday Present

by Sylvia Plath
 What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful?
It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges?

I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want.
When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking

'Is this the one I am too appear for,
Is this the elect one,...Read more of this...

The Fury Of Flowers And Worms

by Anne Sexton
 Let the flowers make a journey 
on Monday so that I can see 
ten daisies in a blue vase 
with perhaps one red ant 
crawling to the gold center. 
A bit of the field on my table, 
close to the worms 
who struggle blinding, 
moving deep into their slime, 
moving deep into God's abdomen, 
moving like oil through water,...Read more of this...

Cassidys Epitaph

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Here lies a bloke who's just gone West, 
A Number One Australian; 
He took his gun and did his best 
To mitigate the alien. 
So long as he could get to work 
He needed no sagacity; 
A German, Austrian, or Turk, 
Were all the same to Cassidy. 
Wherever he could raise "the stuff" 
-- A liquor deleterious -- 
The...Read more of this...

Someone Is Harshly Coughing As Before

by Delmore Schwartz
 Someone is harshly coughing on the next floor,
Sudden excitement catching the flesh of his throat:
Who is the sick one?
Who will knock at the door,
Ask what is wrong and sweetly pay attention,
The shy withdrawal of the sensitive face
Embarrassing both, but double shame is tender
--We will mind our ignorant business, keep our place.

But it is God, who has caught cold again,
Wandering...Read more of this...

The Night Journey

by Rupert Brooke
 Hands and lit faces eddy to a line;
The dazed last minutes click; the clamour dies.
Beyond the great-swung arc o' the roof, divine,
Night, smoky-scarv'd, with thousand coloured eyes

Glares the imperious mystery of the way.
Thirsty for dark, you feel the long-limbed train
Throb, stretch, thrill motion, slide, pull out and sway,
Strain for the far, pause, draw to strength again. . . .

As...Read more of this...

Care-charming Sleep

by John Gould Fletcher
 Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes,
Brother to Death, sweetly thyself dispose
On this afflicted prince; fall like a cloud
In gentle showers; give nothing that is loud
Or painful to his slumbers; easy, sweet,
And as a purling stream, thou son of Night,
Pass by his troubled senses; sing his pain,
Like hollow murmuring wind or silver rain;
Into this prince gently, oh gently slide,
And...Read more of this...

As the Bell Clinks

by Rudyard Kipling
 As I left the Halls at Lumley, rose the vision of a comely
Maid last season worshipped dumbly, watched with fervor from afar;
And I wondered idly, blindly, if the maid would greet me kindly.
That was all -- the rest was settled by the clinking tonga-bar.
Yea, my life and hers were coupled by the tonga coupling-bar.

For my misty meditation, at the...Read more of this...

Appreciation

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
My muvver's ist the nicest one
'At ever lived wiz folks;
She lets you have ze mostes' fun,
An' laffs at all your jokes.
I got a ol' maid auntie, too,
The worst you ever saw;
Her eyes ist bore you through and through,—
She ain't a bit like ma.
She's ist as slim, as slim can be,
An' when you want to slide
Down on ze balusters, w'y she
Says...Read more of this...

A Hymn

by Anne Bronte
 Eternal power of earth and air,
Unseen, yet seen in all around,
Remote, but dwelling everywhere,
Though silent, heard in every sound. 
If e'er thine ear in mercy bent
When wretched mortals cried to thee,
And if indeed thy Son was sent
To save lost sinners such as me. 

Then hear me now, while kneeling here;
I lift to thee my heart and eye
And all my...Read more of this...

The City Planners

by Margaret Atwood
 Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
than the rational whine of a power mower
cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.

But though the driveways neatly
sidestep hysteria
by being...Read more of this...

Crab

by Sharon Olds
 When I eat crab, slide the rosy
rubbery claw across my tongue
I think of my mother. She'd drive down
to the edge of the Bay, tiny woman in a
huge car, she'd ask the crab-man to
crack it for her. She'd stand and wait as the
pliers broke those chalky homes, wild-
red and knobby, those cartilage wrists, the
thin orange roof of the back.
I'd come...Read more of this...

The Electric Slide Boogie

by Audre Lorde
 New Year's Day 1:16 AM
and my body is weary beyond
time to withdraw and rest
ample room allowed me in everyone's head
but community calls
right over the threshold
drums beating through the walls
children playing their truck dramas
under the collapsible coatrack
in the narrow hallway outside my room

The TV lounge next door is wide open
it is midnight in Idaho
and the throb easy subtle spin
of the...Read more of this...

Lizards And Snakes

by Anthony Hecht
 On the summer road that ran by our front porch
 Lizards and snakes came out to sun.
It was hot as a stove out there, enough to scorch
 A buzzard's foot. Still, it was fun
To lie in the dust and spy on them. Near but remote,
 They snoozed in the carriage ruts, a smile
In the set of the jaw, a...Read more of this...

two spanish poems

by Rg Gregory
 (a) orihuela-time

the sun in orihuela calms the dust
and people glide about the streets at ease
(problems left indoors to cool themselves)
time has grown fat and no one cares
to pin each minute to its proper place
the day is long tomorrow's not yet real

doves and old men occupy the squares
nattering to each other in such tongues
that take the clock away from what...Read more of this...

The Trail Of Ninety-Eight

by Robert William Service
 Gold! We leapt from our benches. Gold! We sprang from our stools.
Gold! We wheeled in the furrow, fired with the faith of fools.
Fearless, unfound, unfitted, far from the night and the cold,
Heard we the clarion summons, followed the master-lure--Gold!

Men from the sands of the Sunland; men from the woods of the West;
Men from the farms and the cities, into...Read more of this...

A Goodnight

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 Go to sleep—though of course you will not— 
to tideless waves thundering slantwise against 
strong embankments, rattle and swish of spray 
dashed thirty feet high, caught by the lake wind, 
scattered and strewn broadcast in over the steady 
car rails! Sleep, sleep! Gulls' cries in a wind-gust 
broken by the wind; calculating wings set above 
the field of waves...Read more of this...

Boy and Father

by Carl Sandburg
 THE BOY Alexander understands his father to be a famous lawyer.
The leather law books of Alexander’s father fill a room like hay in a barn.
Alexander has asked his father to let him build a house like bricklayers build, a house with walls and roofs made of big leather law books.

 The rain beats on the windows
 And the raindrops...Read more of this...

In Memoriam A. H. H.

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
   Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
   By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
 
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
   Thou madest Life in man and brute;
   Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Slide By poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace