Famous Somehow Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Ant Hill

by Robert William Service
 Black ants have made a musty mound
My purple pine tree under,
And I am often to be found,
Regarding it with wonder.
Yet as I watch, somehow it;s odd,
Above their busy striving
I feel like an ironic god
Surveying human striving.
Then one day came my serving maid,
And just in time I caught her,
For on each lusty arm she weighed
A pail of boiling water.
She said...Read more of this...

Syringa

by John Ashbery
 Orpheus liked the glad personal quality
Of the things beneath the sky. Of course, Eurydice was a part
Of this. Then one day, everything changed. He rends
Rocks into fissures with lament. Gullies, hummocks
Can't withstand it. The sky shudders from one horizon
To the other, almost ready to give up wholeness.
Then Apollo quietly told him: "Leave it all on earth.
Your lute, what point?...Read more of this...

The Explosion

by Philip Larkin
On the day of the explosion
Shadows pointed towards the pithead:
In thesun the slagheap slept.

Down the lane came men in pitboots
Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke 
Shouldering off the freshened silence.

One chased after rabbits; lost them;
Came back with a nest of lark's eggs;
Showed them; lodged them in the grasses.

SO they passed in beards and moleskins 
Fathers brothers nicknames laughter 
Through the tall...Read more of this...

The Made to Order Smile

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
 When a woman looks up at you with a twist about her eyes, 
And her brows are half uplifted in a nicely feigned surprise 
As you breathe some pretty sentence, though she hates you all the while, 
She is very apt to stun you with a made to order smile. 

It's a sublte combination of a sneer and a...Read more of this...

Johnson's Antidote

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Down along the Snakebite River, where the overlanders camp, 
Where the serpents are in millions, all of the most deadly stamp; 
Where the station-cook in terror, nearly every time he bakes, 
Mixes up among the doughboys half-a-dozen poison-snakes: 
Where the wily free-selector walks in armour-plated pants, 
And defies the stings of scorpions, and the bites of bull-dog ants: 
Where...Read more of this...

A Servant to Servants

by Robert Frost
 I didn't make you know how glad I was 
To have you come and camp here on our land. 
I promised myself to get down some day 
And see the way you lived, but I don't know! 
With a houseful of hungry men to feed 
I guess you'd find.... It seems to me 
I can't express my feelings any...Read more of this...

The Return of Frankenstein

by Edward Field
 He didn't die in the whirlpool by the mill
where he had fallen in after a wild chase
by all the people of the town.

Somehow he clung to an overhanging rock
until the villagers went away.

And when he came out, he was changed forever,
that soft heart of his had hardened
and he really was a monster now.

He was out to pay them back,
to...Read more of this...

Two Little Boots

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Two little boots all rough an' wo',
Two little boots!
Law, I 's kissed 'em times befo',
Dese little boots!
Seems de toes a-peepin' thoo
Dis hyeah hole an' sayin' "Boo!"
Evah time dey looks at you—
Dese little boots.
Membah de time he put 'em on,
Dese little boots;
Riz an' called fu' 'em by dawn,
Dese little boots;
Den he tromped de livelong day,
Laffin' in his happy way,
Evaht'ing he had...Read more of this...

Letter From Kirkheaton

by Barry Tebb
 I have no camera but imagination’s tinted glass

I cannot pass this crumbling dry stone wall

Without a break to catch the vistas of the chain of Pennine hills

That splash their shades of colour like mercury in the rising glass.



The June sun focuses upon the vivid grass,

The elder’s pale amber, the Victoria Tower’s finger

On the pulse of past shared walks, Emley’s...Read more of this...

Now I knew I lost her --

by Emily Dickinson
 Now I knew I lost her --
Not that she was gone --
But Remoteness travelled
On her Face and Tongue.

Alien, though adjoining
As a Foreign Race --
Traversed she though pausing
Latitudeless Place.

Elements Unaltered --
Universe the same
But Love's transmigration --
Somehow this had come --

Henceforth to remember
Nature took the Day
I had paid so much for --
His is Penury
Not who toils for Freedom
Or for Family
But the...Read more of this...

Dream Song 28: Snow Line

by John Berryman
 It was wet & white & swift and where I am
we don't know. It was dark and then
it isn't.
I wish the barker would come. There seems to be eat
nothing. I am usually tired.
I'm alone too.

If only the strange one with so few legs would come,
I'd say my prayers out of my mouth, as usual.
Where are his note I loved?
There...Read more of this...

Dream Song 90: Op. posth. no. 13

by John Berryman
 In the night-reaches dreamed he of better graces,
of liberations, and beloved faces,
such as now ere dawn he sings.
It would not be easy, accustomed to these things,
to give up the old world, but he could try;
let it all rest, have a good cry.

Let Randall rest, whom your self-torturing
cannot restore one instant's good to, rest:
he's left us now.
The panic died and...Read more of this...

In the Stable

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 What! you don't like him; well, maybe -- we all have our fancies, of course: 
Brumby to look at, you reckon? Well, no; he's a thoroughbred horse; 
Sired by a son of old Panic -- look at his ears and his head -- 
Lop-eared and Roman-nosed, ain't he? -- well, that's how the Panics are bred. 
Gluttonous, ugly and...Read more of this...

Poor Cock Robin

by Robert William Service
 My garden robin in the Spring
Was rapturous with glee,
And followed me with wistful wing
From pear to apple tree;
His melodies the summer long
He carolled with delight,
As if he could with jewelled song
Find favour in my sight.

And now that Autumn's in the air
He's singing singing still,
And yet somehow I cannot bear
The frenzy of his bill;
The keen wind ruffs his ruddy breast
As...Read more of this...

Heaven

by Rupert Brooke
 Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June,
Dawdling away their wat'ry noon)
Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,
Each secret fishy hope or fear.
Fish say, they have their Stream and Pond;
But is there anything Beyond?
This life cannot be All, they swear,
For how unpleasant, if it were!
One may not doubt that, somehow, Good
Shall come of Water and of Mud;
And, sure, the reverent eye must...Read more of this...

Our biggest fish

by Eugene Field
 When in the halcyon days of old, I was a little tyke,
I used to fish in pickerel ponds for minnows and the like;
And oh, the bitter sadness with which my soul was fraught
When I rambled home at nightfall with the puny string I'd caught!
And, oh, the indignation and the valor I'd display
When I claimed that all the biggest fish...Read more of this...

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 54. Oh yet we Trust that somehow Goo

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Oh, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final end of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;
That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with...Read more of this...

Dream Song 50: In a motion of night they massed nearer my post

by John Berryman
 In a motion of night they massed nearer my post.
I hummed a short blues. When the stars went out
I studied my weapons system.
Grenades, the portable rack, the yellow spout
of the anthrax-ray: in order. Yes, and most
of my pencils were sharp.

This edge of the galaxy has often seen
a defence so stiff, but it could only go
one way.
-”Mr Bones, your troubles...Read more of this...

Somehow myself survived the Night

by Emily Dickinson
 Somehow myself survived the Night
And entered with the Day --
That it be saved the Saved suffice
Without the Formula.

Henceforth I take my living place
As one commuted led --
A Candidate for Morning Chance
But dated with the Dead....Read more of this...

The Legend Of The One-Eyed Man

by Anne Sexton
 Like Oedipus I am losing my sight.
LIke Judas I have done my wrong.
Their punishment is over;
the shame and disgrace of it
are all used up.
But as for me,
look into my face
and you will know that crimes dropped upon me
as from a high building
and although I cannot speak of them
or explain the degrading details
I have remembered much
about Judas -
about Judas, the...Read more of this...

I reason Earth is short

by Emily Dickinson
 I reason, Earth is short --
And Anguish -- absolute --
And many hurt,
But, what of that?

I reason, we could die --
The best Vitality
Cannot excel Decay,
But, what of that?

I reason, that in Heaven --
Somehow, it will be even --
Some new Equation, given --
But, what of that?...Read more of this...

Caboose Thoughts

by Carl Sandburg
 IT’S going to come out all right—do you know?
The sun, the birds, the grass—they know.
They get along—and we’ll get along.

Some days will be rainy and you will sit waiting
And the letter you wait for won’t come,
And I will sit watching the sky tear off gray and gray
And the letter I wait for won’t come.

There will be ac-ci-dents.
I know ac-ci-dents...Read more of this...

Home And Love

by Robert William Service
 Just Home and Love! the words are small
Four little letters unto each;
And yet you will not find in all
The wide and gracious range of speech
Two more so tenderly complete:
When angels talk in Heaven above,
I'm sure they have no words more sweet
 Than Home and Love.

Just Home and Love! it's hard to guess
Which of the two were best to gain;
Home...Read more of this...

A Spiritual Woman

by D. H. Lawrence
 Close your eyes, my love, let me make you blind; 
 They have taught you to see 
Only a mean arithmetic on the face of things, 
A cunning algebra in the faces of men, 
 And God like geometry 
Completing his circles, and working cleverly. 

I'll kiss you over the eyes till I kiss you blind; 
 If I...Read more of this...

thirteeners

by Rg Gregory
 18
if you want a revolution attack
symbols not systems - the simple forms
that (blithely) give the truth away
tying down millions to their terms
quietly with no one answering back

where the stage is makes the play
keeps actors (meanings) to those norms
stability requires - change tack
(remove the stage) violent storms
will sweep the old regime away

eventually there'll be no going back
once new symbols breed...Read more of this...

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