Famous Solving Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Ambulances

...see
A wild white face that overtops
Red stretcher-blankets momently
As it is carried in and stowed,

And sense the solving emptiness
That lies just under all we do,
And for a second get it whole,
So permanent and blank and true.
The fastened doors recede. Poor soul,
They whisper at their own distress;

For borne away in deadened air
May go the sudden shut of loss
Round something nearly at an end,
And what cohered in it across
The years, the unique random blend...Read more of this...
by Larkin, Philip


Evolutionary Hymn

...Glossed great Nature's simple text;
He who runs can read it plainly,
'Goodness = what comes next.'
By evolving, Life is solving
All the questions we perplexed.

Oh then! Value means survival-
Value. If our progeny
Spreads and spawns and licks each rival,
That will prove its deity
(Far from pleasant, by our present,
Standards, though it may well be)....Read more of this...
by Lewis, C S

My Aviary

...y questions in their breasts revolving
Whose deeper meaning science never learns,
Till at some reverend elder's look dissolving,
The speechless senate silently adjourns.

But when along the waves the shrill north-easter
Shrieks through the laboring coaster's shrouds "Beware!"
The pale bird, kindling like a Christmas feaster
When some wild chorus shakes the vinous air,

Flaps from the leaden wave in fierce rejoicing,
Feels heaven's dumb lightning thrill his torpid nerves,
Now ...Read more of this...
by Holmes, Oliver Wendell

My Triumph

...e 
Of what mankind shall be, -- 
Pure, generous, brave, and free. 

A dream of man and woman 
Diviner but still human, 
Solving the riddle old, 
Shaping the Age of Gold! 

The love of God and neighbor; 
An equal-handed labor; 
The richer life, where beauty 
Walks hand in hand with duty. 

Ring, bells in unreared steeples, 
The joy of unborn peoples! 
Sound, trumpets far off blown, 
Your triumph is my own! 

Parcel and part of all, 
I keep the festival, 
Fore-reach the good to...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf

Ripening

...the seed
of what we know. It was bitter to learn
that we come to death as we come
to love, bitter to face
the just and solving welcome
that death prepares. But that is bitter
only to the ignorant, who pray
it will not happen. Having come
the bitter way to better prayer, we have
the sweetness of ripening. How sweet
to know you by the signs of this world!...Read more of this...
by Berry, Wendell


Table Song

...s smile directed!
From the springhead to the sea,

Many a mill's revolving,
And the world's prosperity

Is the task I'm solving.

1802....Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang

Threnody

...ought's perilous whirling pool,
When frail Nature can no more,—
Then the spirit strikes the hour,
My servant Death with solving rite
Pours finite into infinite.
Wilt thou freeze love's tidal flow,
Whose streams through nature circling go?
Nail the star struggling to its track
On the half-climbed Zodiack?
Light is light which radiates,
Blood is blood which circulates,
Life is life which generates,
And many-seeming life is one,—
Wilt thou transfix and make it none,
Its onward s...Read more of this...
by Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Threnody

...t's perilous, whirling pool; 
When frail Nature can no more, 
Then the Spirit strikes the hour: 
My servant Death, with solving rite, 
Pours finite into infinite. 
Wilt thou freeze love's tidal flow, 
Whose streams through Nature circling go? 
Nail the wild star to its track 
On the half-climbed zodiac? 
Light is light which radiates, 
Blood is blood which circulates, 
Life is life which generates, 
And many-seeming life is one,-- 
Wilt thou transfix and make it none? 
Its on...Read more of this...
by Emerson, Ralph Waldo

With All Thy Gifts

...—With these, and like of these, vouchsafed
 to
 thee, 
What if one gift thou lackest? (the ultimate human problem never solving;) 
The gift of Perfect Women fit for thee—What of that gift of gifts thou lackest?
The towering Feminine of thee? the beauty, health, completion, fit for thee? 
The Mothers fit for thee?...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

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