Famous Slowness Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Props assist the House

by Emily Dickinson
 The Props assist the House
Until the House is built
And then the Props withdraw
And adequate, erect,
The House support itself
And cease to recollect
The Auger and the Carpenter --
Just such a retrospect
Hath the perfected Life --
A past of Plank and Nail
And slowness -- then the Scaffolds drop
Affirming it a Soul....Read more of this...

The Human Face

by Paul Eluard
 I. Soon 

Of all the springtimes of the world 
This one is the ugliest 
Of all of my ways of being 
To be trusting is the best 

Grass pushes up snow 
Like the stone of a tomb 
But I sleep within the storm 
And awaken eyes bright 

Slowness, brief time ends 
Where all streets must pass 
Through my innermost...Read more of this...

Fit the Second ( Hunting of the Snark )

by Lewis Carroll
 The Bellman's Speech 

The Bellman himself they all praised to the skies--
Such a carriage, such ease and such grace!
Such solemnity, too! One could see he was wise,
The moment one looked in his face! 
He had bought a large map representing the sea, 
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A...Read more of this...

Words uttered in a subdued voice in order to constitute a dedication, Translation of Carlos Bousono's Sonnet

by T Wignesan
Words uttered in a subdued voice in order to constitute a dedication,
Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem :Palabras dichas en voz baja para
formar una dedicatoria
(To Ruth, so young, from another age)
(It’s quite probable that this poem commemorates and addresses Bousono’s
wife, Ruth, and as such the interest in the poem must underlie the intimate and/or
private candidness of tone, rather than the less...Read more of this...

Farm Boy After Summer

by Robert Francis
 A seated statue of himself he seems.
A bronze slowness becomes him. Patently
The page he contemplates he doesn't see. 

The lesson, the long lesson, has been summer.
His mind holds summer, as his skin holds sun.
For once the homework, all of it, was done. 

What were the crops, where were the fiery fields
Where for so many days so many hours
The sun...Read more of this...

Sadness

by Donald Justice
 1
Dear ghosts, dear presences, O my dear parents,
Why were you so sad on porches, whispering?
What great melancholies were loosed among our swings!
As before a storm one hears the leaves whispering
And marks each small change in the atmosphere,
So was it then to overhear and to fear.

2
But all things then were oracle and secret.
Remember the night when, lost, returning, we turned...Read more of this...

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