Famous Suggestions Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Lord Lundy

by Hilaire Belloc
 Who was too Freely Moved to Tears, and thereby ruined his Political Career 

Lord Lundy from his earliest years
Was far too freely moved to Tears.
For instance if his Mother said,
"Lundy! It's time to go to Bed!"
He bellowed like a Little Turk.
Or if his father Lord Dunquerque
Said "Hi!" in a Commanding Tone,
"Hi, Lundy! Leave the Cat alone!"
Lord Lundy, letting go...Read more of this...

Hiawathas Photographing

by Lewis Carroll
 From his shoulder Hiawatha
Took the camera of rosewood,
Made of sliding, folding rosewood;
Neatly put it all together.
In its case it lay compactly,
Folded into nearly nothing; 

But he opened out the hinges,
Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges,
Till it looked all squares and oblongs,
Like a complicated figure
In the Second Book of Euclid. 

This he perched upon a tripod -
Crouched beneath its...Read more of this...

The Spleen

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 What art thou, SPLEEN, which ev'ry thing dost ape?
Thou Proteus to abus'd Mankind,
Who never yet thy real Cause cou'd find,
Or fix thee to remain in one continued Shape.
Still varying thy perplexing Form,
Now a Dead Sea thou'lt represent,
A Calm of stupid Discontent,
Then, dashing on the Rocks wilt rage into a Storm. 
Trembling sometimes thou dost appear,
Dissolv'd into a Panick Fear;
On...Read more of this...

In Cabin'd Ships at Sea

by Walt Whitman
 1
IN cabin’d ships, at sea, 
The boundless blue on every side expanding, 
With whistling winds and music of the waves—the large imperious waves—In
 such, 
Or some lone bark, buoy’d on the dense marine, 
Where, joyous, full of faith, spreading white sails,
She cleaves the ether, mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or under many a star
 at night,...Read more of this...

Manhattan Streets I Saunter'd Pondering

by Walt Whitman
 1
MANHATTAN’S streets I saunter’d, pondering, 
On time, space, reality—on such as these, and abreast with them, prudence. 

2
After all, the last explanation remains to be made about prudence; 
Little and large alike drop quietly aside from the prudence that suits immortality. 

The Soul is of itself;
All verges to it—all has reference to what ensues; 
All that a person does,...Read more of this...

More About People

by Ogden Nash
 When people aren't asking questions 
They're making suggestions 
And when they're not doing one of those 
They're either looking over your shoulder or stepping on your toes 
And then as if that weren't enough to annoy you 
They employ you. 
Anybody at leisure 
Incurs everybody's displeasure. 
It seems to be very irking 
To people at work to see other...Read more of this...

Favrile

by Mark Doty
 Glassmakers,
at century's end,
compounded metallic lusters

in reference
to natural sheens (dragonfly
and beetle wings,

marbled light on kerosene)
and invented names
as coolly lustrous

as their products'
scarab-gleam: Quetzal,
Aurene, Favrile.

Suggesting,
respectively, the glaze
of feathers,

that sun-shot fog
of which halos
are composed,

and -- what?
What to make of Favrile,
Tiffany's term

for his coppery-rose
flushed with gold
like the alchemized

atmosphere of sunbeams
in a Flemish room?
Faux Moorish,

fake Japanese,
his lamps illumine
chiefly themselves,

copying waterlilies'
bronzy stems,
wisteria or trout scales;

surfaces burnished
like...Read more of this...

An Alphabet of Famous Goops

by Gelett Burgess
 AN ALPHABET OF FAMOUS GOOPS.
Which you 'll Regard with Yells and Whoops.
Futile Acumen! 
For you Yourselves are Doubtless Dupes
Of Failings Such as Mar these Groups --
We all are Human!

1 ABEDNEGO was Meek and Mild; he Softly Spoke, he Sweetly Smiled.
2 He never Called his Playmates Names, and he was Good in Running Games;
3 But he was Often in Disgrace...Read more of this...

Nature

by George Herbert
 Full of rebellion, I would die, 
Or fight, or travel, or deny
That thou has aught to do with me.
O tame my heart; 
It is thy highest art
To captivate strong holds to thee.

If thou shalt let this venom lurk, 
And in suggestions fume and work, 
My soul will turn to bubbles straight, 
And thence by kind
Vanish into a wind, 
Making...Read more of this...

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