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Famous Staying Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Paz, Octavio
...Between going and staying the day wavers, 
in love with its own transparency. 
The circular afternoon is now a bay 
where the world in stillness rocks. 

All is visible and all elusive, 
all is near and can't be touched. 

Paper, book, pencil, glass, 
rest in the shade of their names. 

Time throbbing in my temples repeats 
the same unchanging syllable of bloo...Read more of this...



by Cohen, Leonard
...if you know what I mean:
 I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
 And I'm neither left or right
 I'm just staying home tonight,
 getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
 But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
 that Time cannot decay,
 I'm junk but I'm still holding up
 this little wild bouquet:
 Democracy is coming to the U.S.A....Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...Winds take Forests in their Paws—
The Universe—is still—

324

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church—
I keep it, staying at Home—
With a Bobolink for a Chorister—
And an Orchard, for a Dome—

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice—
I just wear my Wings—
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton—sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman—
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last—
I'm going, all along.

326...Read more of this...

by Rilke, Rainer Maria
...ved? (Where can you find a place
to keep her with all the huge strange thoughts inside you
going and coming and often staying all night.)
But when you feel longing sing of women in love;
for their famous passion is still not immortal. Sing
of women abandoned and desolate (you envy them almost)
who could love so much more purely than those who were gratified.
Begin again and again the never-attainable praising;
remember: the hero lives on; even his downfall...Read more of this...

by Milligan, Spike
...rowning. 'Will it take for the Doc to arrive? '
'Not very long, ' said the man with the disease. 'Till then try staying alive.'
'Very well, ' said the man who was drowning. 'I'll try and stay afloat.
By reciting the poems of Browning
And other things he wrote.'
'Help, help, ' said the man with the disease, 'I suddenly feel quite ill.'
'Keep calm.' said the man who was drowning, ' Breathe deeply and lie quite still.'
'Oh dear, ' said the man...Read more of this...



by Homer,
...hey clave the deep air above them as they went. And Hermes brought them to the place where rich-crowned Demeter was staying and checked them before her fragrant temple.

[Line 384] And when Demeter saw them, she rushed forth as does a Maenad down some thick-wooded mountain, while Persephone on the other side, when she saw her mother's sweet eyes, left the chariot and horses, and leaped down to run to her, and falling upon her neck, embraced her. But while Demete...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...for a moment—what is this, then? 
I do not ask any more delight—I swim in it, as in a sea. 

There is something in staying close to men and women, and looking on them, and in the
 contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well;
All things please the soul—but these please the soul well. 

5
This is the female form; 
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot; 
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction! 
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more th...Read more of this...

by Bowers, Edgar
...oving in with them,
Depression years and she the only earner.
Saturday, football game and opera broadcasts,
Sunday, staying at home to wash her hair,
The Business Women’s Circle Monday night,
And, for a treat, birthdays and holidays,
Nelson Eddy and Jeanette McDonald.
The young blond sister long since gone to college,
Nephew and nieces gone, her mother dead,
Instead of Caesar, having to teach First Aid,
The students rowdy, she retired. The rent
For the empty rooms...Read more of this...

by Tolkien, J R R
...nowing, no knowing
What brings Mister Baggins,
And Balin and Dwalin
Down into the valley
In June
Ha ha!

O! Will you be staying,
Or will you be flying?
Your ponies are straying!
The daylight is dying!
To fly would be folly,
To stay would be jolly!
And listen and hark
Till the end of the dark
To our tune.
Ha ha!

The dragon is withered,
His bones are now crumbled!
His armor is shivered,
His splendour is humbled!
Though sword shall be rusted
And throne and crown perish,
Wit...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...t down over that

rock and WHAM! a good hit! and I had the fish on and it ran

hard downstream, cutting at an angle and staying deep and

really coming on hard, solid and uncompromising, and then

the fish jumped and for a second I thought it was a frog. I'd

never seen a fish like that before.

 God-damn ! What the hell!

 The fish ran deep again and I could feel its life energy

screaming back up the line to my hand. The line felt like

sound. It was like an...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...live in this place. It took my whole life to get here, to

get to this strange cabin above Mill Valley.

 We're staying with Pard and his girlfriend. They have

rented a cabin for three months, June 15th to September 15th,

for a hundred dollars. We are a funny bunch, all living here

together.

 Pard was born of Okie parents in British Nigeria and came

to America when he was two years old and was raised as a

ranch kid in Oregon, Washington and Idaho.Read more of this...

by Duhamel, Denise
...,
why don't you pull back your hair? Show those pretty eyes?"
or "Come on, I'll take you shopping."
 Snow preferred
staying in her safe room, looking out of her window
at the deer leaping across the lawn. Or she'd practice
her dance moves with invisible princes. And the Queen,
busy being Queen, didn't like to push it....Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...tisfied
Through their excess, each passion being loth
For love's own sake to leave the other's side
Yet killing love by staying; memories
Of Oreads peeping through the leaves of silent moonlit trees,

Of lonely Ariadne on the wharf
At Naxos, when she saw the treacherous crew
Far out at sea, and waved her crimson scarf
And called false Theseus back again nor knew
That Dionysos on an amber pard
Was close behind her; memories of what Maeonia's bard

With sightless eyes beheld, t...Read more of this...

by Donne, John
...m'st then  
I must confess it could not choose but be 
Profane to think thee anything but thee. 20 

Coming and staying show'd thee thee  
But rising makes me doubt that now 
Thou art not thou. 
That Love is weak where Fear 's as strong as he; 
'Tis not all spirit pure and brave 25 
If mixture it of Fear Shame Honour have. 
Perchance as torches which must ready be  
Men light and put out so thou deal'st with me. 
Thou cam'st to kindle go'st to come...Read more of this...

by Turner Smith, Charlotte
...hoping to cheer
The last sad hour of some laborious life
That hasten'd to its close--even such a Man
Becomes an exile; staying not to try
By temperate zeal to check his madd'ning flock,
Who, at the novel sound of Liberty
(Ah! most intoxicating sound to slaves!),
Start into licence--Lo! dejected now,
The wandering Pastor mourns, with bleeding heart,
His erring people, weeps and prays for them,
And trembles for the account that he must give
To Heaven for souls entrusted to his...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...to the Clyde.
And the Lines were all beginning, and we all of us started fair,
Building our engines like houses and staying the boilers square.
But M'Cullough 'e wanted cabins with marble and maple and all,
And Brussels an' Utrecht velvet, and baths and a Social Hall,
And pipes for closets all over, and cutting the frames too light,
But M'Cullough he died in the Sixties, and ---- Well, I'm dying to-night...
I knew -- I knew what was coming, when we bid on ...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...fee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
 What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, 
You cannot...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...in caress and comfort and hold.

XLIII 
My father came over now and then 
To look at the boy and talk to me, 
Never staying long, 
For the urge was strong 
To get back to his yawl and the summer sea. 
He came like a nomad passing by, 
Hands in his pockets, hat over one eye, 
Teasing every one great and small 
With a blank straight face and a Yankee drawl; 
Teasing the Vicar on Apostolic Succession 
And what the Thirty-Nine Articles really meant to convey,
Teasing Nann...Read more of this...

by Crane, Hart
...er-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,--
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!

Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft
A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan.

Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,
A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene;
All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn . . .
Thy cables breathe the Nort...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...another river, the Klamath, and I was

trying to get thirty-five miles downstream to Steelhead,

the place where I was staying.

 It was all very simple. No one would stop and pick me up

even though I was carrying fishing tackle. People usually

stop and pick up a fisherman. I had to wait three hours for a

ride.

 The sun was like a huge fifty-cent piece that someone had

 poured kerosene on and then had lit with a match and said,

"Here, hold this whil...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things