Famous Smallest Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Smallest poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous smallest poems. These examples illustrate what a famous smallest poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Marge Piercy
You strop my anger, especially
when I find you in restaurant or bar
and pay for the same liquid, coming and going.
In bus depots and airports and turnpike plazas
some woman is dragging in with three kids hung off her
shrieking their simple urgency like gulls.
She's supposed to pay for each of them
and the privilege of not dirtying the corporate floor.
Sometimes a woman...Read more of this...
by
Jane Kenyon
Now wind torments the field,
turning the white surface back
on itself, back and back on itself,
like an animal licking a wound.
Nothing but white--the air, the light;
only one brown milkweed pod
bobbing in the gully, smallest
brown boat on the immense tide.
A single green sprouting thing
would restore me. . . .
Then think of the tall delphinium,
swaying, or the bee when it comes
to the...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
Come, soft Aeolian harp, while zephyr plays
Along the meek vibration of thy strings,
As twilight's hand her modest mantle brings,
Blending with sober grey, the western blaze!
O! prompt my Phaon's dreams with tend'rest lays,
Ere night o'er shade thee with its humid wings,
While the lorn Philomel his sorrow sings
In leafy cradle, red with parting rays!
Slow let thy dulcet tones on ether glide,
So...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Life we have is very great.
The Life that we shall see
Surpasses it, we know, because
It is Infinity.
But when all Space has been beheld
And all Dominion shown
The smallest Human Heart's extent
Reduces it to none....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
A Saucer holds a Cup
In sordid human Life
But in a Squirrel's estimate
A Saucer hold a Loaf.
A Table of a Tree
Demands the little King
And every Breeze that run along
His Dining Room do swing.
His Cutlery -- he keeps
Within his Russer Lips --
To see it flashing when he dines
Do Birmingham eclipse --
Convicted -- could we be
Of our Minutiae
The smallest Citizen that flies
Is...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I've often wondered why
Old chaps who choose to die
In evil passes,
Before themselves they slay,
Invariably they
Take off their glasses?
As I strolled by the Castle cliff
An oldish chap I set my eyes on,
Who stood so singularly stiff
And stark against the blue horizon;
A poet fashioning a sonnet,
I thought - how rapt he labours on it!
And then I blinked and stood astare,
And questioned...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Least Bee that brew --
A Honey's Weight
Content Her smallest fraction help
The Amber Quantity --...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
I
"Percussus sum sicut foenum, et aruit cor meum."
- Ps. ci
Wintertime nighs;
But my bereavement-pain
It cannot bring again:
Twice no one dies.
Flower-petals flee;
But, since it once hath been,
No more that severing scene
Can harrow me.
Birds faint in dread:
I shall not lose old strength
In the lone...Read more of this...
by
Lady Mary Chudleigh
Would but indulgent Fortune send
To me a kind, and faithful Friend,
One who to Virtue's Laws is true,
And does her nicest Rules pursue;
One Pious, Lib'ral, Just and Brave,
And to his Passions not a Slave;
Who full of Honour, void of Pride,
Will freely praise, and freely chide;
But not indulge the smallest Fault,
Nor entertain one slighting Thought:
Who still the same will ever prove,
Will...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Except to Heaven, she is nought.
Except for Angels -- lone.
Except to some wide-wandering Bee
A flower superfluous blown.
Except for winds -- provincial.
Except by Butterflies
Unnoticed as a single dew
That on the Acre lies.
The smallest Housewife in the grass,
Yet take her from the Lawn
And somebody has lost the face
That made Existence -- Home!...Read more of this...
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...
by
Emily Dickinson
Going to Heaven!
I don't know when --
Pray do not ask me how!
Indeed I'm too astonished
To think of answering you!
Going to Heaven!
How dim it sounds!
And yet it will be done
As sure as flocks go home at night
Unto the Shepherd's arm!
Perhaps you're going too!
Who knows?
If you should get there first
Save just a little space for me
Close to the two I lost...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When man had ceased to utter his lament,
A god then let me tell my tale of sorrow.
WHAT hope of once more meeting is there now
In the still-closed blossoms of this day?
Both heaven and hell thrown open seest thou;
What wav'ring thoughts within the bosom play
No longer doubt! Descending from the sky,
She lifts thee in her arms to realms on...Read more of this...
by
Kobayashi Issa
Even on the smallest islands,
they are tilling the fields,
skylarks singing....Read more of this...
by
Annie Finch
names, silence—quietest minutes
(building like rain or returning like seas)
since they have touched me, your warm hands have sown
gentlest sounds, touches and hours
(or, building like rain, turning, like seas)
(building like rain, or returning like seas)
ripples and springs—the shiniest rivers—
since they have known me your warm hands have gathered
smallest, most stars—happiest skies—
simplest—touched—sounding—hours...Read more of this...
by
Les Murray
The word goes round Repins,
the murmur goes round Lorenzinis,
at Tattersalls, men look up from sheets of numbers,
the Stock Exchange scribblers forget the chalk in their hands
and men with bread in their pockets leave the Greek Club:
There's a fellow crying in Martin Place. They can't stop him.
The traffic in George Street is banked up for half a mile
and drained of...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Vincent Benet
The grey gulls drift across the bay
Softly and still as flakes of snow
Against the thinning fog. All day
I sat and watched them come and go;
And now at last the sun was set,
Filling the waves with colored fire
Till each seemed like a jewelled spire
Thrust up from some drowned city. Soon
From peak and...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Carew
Can we not force from widow'd poetry,
Now thou art dead (great Donne) one elegy
To crown thy hearse? Why yet dare we not trust,
Though with unkneaded dough-bak'd prose, thy dust,
Such as th' unscissor'd churchman from the flower
Of fading rhetoric, short-liv'd as his hour,
Dry as the sand that measures it, should lay
Upon thy ashes,...Read more of this...
by
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
The sunlight fell with a golden gleam
On the waves of the rippling rill;
The pansies nodded their purple heads;
But the proud queen-rose stood still.
She loved the light and she loved the sun,
And the peaceful night when the day was done,
But the faithless sun in his careless way
Had broken her heart on that summer's day.
She had bathed her...Read more of this...
by
Maxine Kumin
You have forty-nine days between
death and rebirth if you're a Buddhist.
Even the smallest soul could swim
the English Channel in that time
or climb, like a ten-month-old child,
every step of the Washington Monument
to travel across, up, down, over or through
--you won't know till you get there which to do.
He laid on me for a few seconds
said Roscoe Black, who lived to...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
I would ask for still more, if I had the sky with all its stars,
and the world with its endless riches; but I would be content with
the smallest corner of this earth if only she were mine....Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
I will give you all my keys,
You shall be my ch?telaine,
You shall enter as you please,
As you please shall go again.
When I hear you jingling through
All the chambers of my soul,
How I sit and laugh at you
In your vain housekeeping r?le.
Jealous of the smallest cover,
Angry at the simplest door;
Well,...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Dunn
To hold a damaged sparrow
under water until you feel it die
is to know a small something
about the mind; how, for example,
it blames the cat for the original crime,
how it wants praise for its better side.
And yet it's as human
as pulling the plug on your Dad
whose world has turned
to feces and fog, human as--
Well, let's admit, it's a mild thing
as...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Struck, was I, not yet by Lightning --
Lightning -- lets away
Power to perceive His Process
With Vitality.
Maimed -- was I -- yet not by Venture --
Stone of stolid Boy --
Nor a Sportsman's Peradventure --
Who mine Enemy?
Robbed -- was I -- intact to Bandit --
All my Mansion torn --
Sun -- withdrawn to Recognition --
Furthest shining -- done --
Yet was not the...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The south-wind brings
Life, sunshine, and desire,
And on every mount and meadow
Breathes aromatic fire,
But over the dead he has no power,
The lost, the lost he cannot restore,
And, looking over the hills, I mourn
The darling who shall not return.
I see my empty house,
I see my trees repair their boughs,
And he, —the wondrous child,
Whose silver warble wild
Outvalued every pulsing sound
Within the air's...Read more of this...
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