Famous Sudden Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Sudden poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous sudden poems. These examples illustrate what a famous sudden poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
I shall never forget you, never. Never escape
Your memory woven about the beautiful things of life.
The sudden Thought of your Face is like a Wound
When it comes unsought
On some scent of Jasmin, Lilies, or...Read more of this...
by
John Donne
When I am dead, and doctors know not why,
And my friends' curiosity
Will have me cut up to survey each part,—
When they shall find your picture in my heart,
You think a sudden damp of love
Will through all their senses move,
And work on them as me, and so prefer
Your murder to the name of massacre.
Poor victories! But if you dare...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
I never shall furgit that night when father hitched up Dobbin,
An' all us youngsters clambered in an' down the road went bobbin'
To school where we was kep' at work in every kind o' weather,
But where that night a spellin'-bee was callin' us together.
'Twas one o' Heaven's banner nights, the stars was all a glitter,
The moon was shinin' like the hand...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
GIVE me your hand, old Revolutionary;
The hill-top is nigh—but a few steps, (make room, gentlemen;)
Up the path you have follow’d me well, spite of your hundred and extra years;
You can walk, old man, though your eyes are almost done;
Your faculties serve you, and presently I must have them serve me.
Rest, while I tell what the...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
A happy lip -- breaks sudden --
It doesn't state you how
It contemplated -- smiling --
Just consummated -- now --
But this one, wears its merriment
So patient -- like a pain --
Fresh gilded -- to elude the eyes
Unqualified, to scan --...Read more of this...
by
Du Fu
Eight month autumn high wind angry howl Sweep off my house on three layers thatch Thatch fly across river sprinkle river beside High ones catch stick great forest top Low ones float turn sink pool hollow South village mob children bully me old without strength Bear able to face to steal be robbers Openly carry thatch...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Facts by our side are never sudden
Until they look around
And then they scare us like a spectre
Protruding from the Ground --
The height of our portentous Neighbor
We never know --
Till summoned to his recognition
By an Adieu --
Adieu for whence
The sage cannot conjecture
The bravest die
As ignorant of their resumption
As you or I --...Read more of this...
by
Conrad Aiken
'Number four—the girl who died on the table—
The girl with golden hair—'
The purpling body lies on the polished marble.
We open the throat, and lay the thyroid bare . . .
One, who held the ether-cone, remembers
Her dark blue frightened eyes.
He heard the sharp breath quiver, and saw her breast
More hurriedly fall and rise.
Her hands made futile gestures, she turned her...Read more of this...
by
Bob Hicok
My father's head has become a mystery to him.
We finally have something in common.
When he moves his head his eyes
get big as roses filled
with the commotion of spring.
Not long ago he was a man
who had tomato soup for lunch
and dusted with the earnestness
of a gun fight. Now he's a man
who sits at...Read more of this...
by
James Henry Leigh Hunt
Reader! what soul that laoves a verse can see
The spring return, nor glow like you and me?
Hear the quick birds, and see the landscape fill,
Nor long to utter his melodious will?
This more than ever leaps into the veins,
When spring has been delay'd by winds and rains,
And coming with a burst, comes like a...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
THE TWILIGHT fleeted away in pearl on the stream,
And night, like a diamond done, stood still in our dream.
Your eyes like burnished stones or as stars were bright
With the sudden vision that made us one with the night.
We loved in infinite spaces, forgetting here
The breasts that were lit with life and the lips so near;
Till the wizard willows waved...Read more of this...
by
Michael Drayton
An evil spirit, your beauty, haunts me still,
Wherewith, alas, I have been long possess'd,
Which ceaseth not to tempt me to each ill,
Nor gives me once but one poor minute's rest.
In me it speaks, whether I sleep or wake;
And when by means to drive it out I try,
With greater torments then it me doth take,
And tortures me in most extremity.
Before...Read more of this...
by
Donald Hall
A storm was coming, that was why it was dark. The wind was blowing the fronds of the palm trees off. They were maples. I looked out the window across the big lawn. The house was huge, full of children and old people. The lion was loose. Either because of the wind, or by malevolent human energy, which is...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
Let us, in our love and ardour, let us live so boldly our finest thoughts that they interweave in harmony with the supreme ecstasy and perfect fervour.
Because in our kindred souls something more holy than we and purer and greater awakens, let us clasp hands to worship it through ourselves.
It matters not that we have only cries or tears to...Read more of this...
by
Sidney Lanier
What time I paced, at pleasant morn,
A deep and dewy wood,
I heard a mellow hunting-horn
Make dim report of Dian's lustihood
Far down a heavenly hollow.
Mine ear, though fain, had pain to follow:
`Tara!' it twanged, `tara-tara!' it blew,
Yet wavered oft, and flew
Most ficklewise about, or here, or there,
A music now from earth and now from air.
But on a sudden, lo!
I marked...Read more of this...
by
Edmund Blunden
Friend whom I never saw, yet dearest friend,
Be with me travelling on the byeway now
In April's month and mood: our steps shall bend
By the shut smithy with its penthouse brow
Armed round with many a felly and crackt plough:
...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Infinite a sudden Guest
Has been assumed to be --
But how can that stupendous come
Which never went away?...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
As I left the Halls at Lumley, rose the vision of a comely
Maid last season worshipped dumbly, watched with fervor from afar;
And I wondered idly, blindly, if the maid would greet me kindly.
That was all -- the rest was settled by the clinking tonga-bar.
Yea, my life and hers were coupled by the tonga coupling-bar.
For my misty meditation, at the...Read more of this...
by
Erica Jong
the sky sinks its blue teeth
into the mountains.
Rising on pure will
(the lurch & lift-off,
the sudden swing
into wide, white snow),
I encourage the cable.
Past the wind
& crossed tips of my skis
& the mauve shadows of pines
& the spoor of bears
& deer,
I speak to my fear,
rising, riding,
finding myself
the only thing
between snow & sky,
the link
that holds it all together.
Halfway up the wire,
we stop,
slide...Read more of this...
by
Claude McKay
No more for you the city's thorny ways,
The ugly corners of the ***** belt;
The miseries and pains of these harsh days
By you will never, never again be felt.
No more, if still you wander, will you meet
With nights of unabating bitterness;
They cannot reach you in your safe retreat,
The city's hate, the city's prejudice!...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Dunn
My neighbor was a biker, a pusher, a dog
and wife beater.
In bad dreams I killed him
and once, in the consequential light of day,
I called the Humane Society
about Blue, his dog. They took her away
and I readied myself, a baseball bat
inside my door.
That night I hear his wife scream
and I couldn't help it, that pathetic
relief; her again, not me.
It would...Read more of this...
by
Phillis Wheatley
NO more the flow'ry scenes of pleasure rife,
Nor charming prospects greet the mental eyes,
No more with joy we view that lovely face
Smiling, disportive, flush'd with ev'ry grace.
The tear of sorrow flows from ev'ry eye,
Groans answer groans, and sighs to sighs reply;
What sudden pangs shot thro' each aching heart,
When, Death, thy messenger dispatch'd his dart?
Thy dread attendants, all-destroying Pow'r,
Hurried the...Read more of this...
by
Ellis Parker Butler
Well, eight months ago one clear cold day,
I took a ramble up Broadway,
And with my hands behind my back
I strolled along on the streetcar track—
(I walked on the track, for walking there
Gives one, I think, a distinguished air.)
“Well, all of a sudden I felt a jar
And I said, “I’ll bet that’s a trolley car,”
And, sure enough, when I looked...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
A little leaf just in the forest's edge,
All summer long, had listened to the wooing
Of amorous brids that flew across the hedge,
Singing their blithe sweet songs for her undoing.
So many were the flattering things they told her,
The parent tree seemed quite too small to hold her.
At last one lonesome day she saw them fly
Across the fields behind the coquette...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
Filaments of light
slant like windswept rain.
The orange seller hawks
into the sky, a man with a hat
stops below my window
and shakes his tassels.
Awake
in Tetuan, the room filling
with the first colors, and water running
in a tub.
*
A row of sparkling carp
iced in the new sun, odor
of first love,...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Sudden poems.