Famous Superficial Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Four Quartets 3: The Dry Salvages

...has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence—
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness—not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination—
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a ...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)


In The Slight Ripple The Mind Perceives The Heart

...the eyes fall 
Through the lucid water. The small pebble, 
The clear clay bottom, the white shell
Are apparent, though superficial. 
Who would ask more of the August afternoon? 
Who would dig mines and follow shadows? 
"I would," answers bored Heart, "Lounger, rise"
(Underlip trembling, face white with stony anger),
"The old error, the thought of sitting still, 
"The senses drinking, by the summer river, 
"On the tended lawn, below the traffic, 
"As if time would pause,
 and...Read more of this...
by Schwartz, Delmore

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

...et of water.
And just as there are no words for the surface, that is,
No words to say what it really is, that it is not
Superficial but a visible core, then there is
No way out of the problem of pathos vs. experience.
You will stay on, restive, serene in
Your gesture which is neither embrace nor warning
But which holds something of both in pure
Affirmation that doesn't affirm anything.

The balloon pops, the attention
Turns dully away. Clouds
In the puddle stir up into sawtoo...Read more of this...
by Ashbery, John

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

...hate religion,
for he was incapable thro' his conceited notions.
Thus Swedenborgs writings are a recapitulation of all
superficial opinions, and an analysis of the more sublime, but no
further.
Have now another plain fact: Any man of mechanical talents
may from the writings of Paracelsus or Jacob Behmen, produce ten
thousand volumes of equal value with Swedenborg's.
and from those of Dante or Shakespear, an infinite number.
But when he has done this, let him not say that he ...Read more of this...
by Blake, William

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