Famous Take Place Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Everything In Its Place

by Barry Tebb
 Desks are straining on all fours, flanks

Heaving to hurl the hunched riders

Down crack and cranny, buck

Finger-snapping lids, consume

Scrap and scribble between tongue and teeth.



The blackboard is cleaning itself behind me,

Making my neck prick as it scatters dust

Like seed, empties its clogged pores of clich?,

Anoints its carved channels and cavities

With infinite black ooze and sap.



And I don’t trust that corner...Read more of this...

Place for a Third

by Robert Frost
 Nothing to say to all those marriages!
She had made three herself to three of his.
The score was even for them, three to three.
But come to die she found she cared so much:
She thought of children in a burial row;
Three children in a burial row were sad.
One man's three women in a burial row
Somehow made her impatient with the man.
And...Read more of this...

I stood upon a high place

by Stephen Crane
 I stood upon a high place,
And saw, below, many devils
Running, leaping,
and carousing in sin.
One looked up, grinning,
And said, "Comrade! Brother!"...Read more of this...

Trinity Place

by Carl Sandburg
 THE GRAVE of Alexander Hamilton is in Trinity yard at the end of Wall Street.

The grave of Robert Fulton likewise is in Trinity yard where Wall Street stops.

And in this yard stenogs, bundle boys, scrubwomen, sit on the tombstones, and walk on the grass of graves, speaking of war and weather, of babies, wages and love.

An iron picket fence...Read more of this...

How sick -- to wait -- in any place -- but thine

by Emily Dickinson
 How sick -- to wait -- in any place -- but thine --
I knew last night -- when someone tried to twine --
Thinking -- perhaps -- that I looked tired -- or alone --
Or breaking -- almost -- with unspoken pain --

And I turned -- ducal --
That right -- was thine --
One port -- suffices -- for a Brig...Read more of this...

In This Place (An American Lyric)

by Amanda Gorman
There’s a poem in this place—
in the footfalls in the halls
in the quiet beat of the seats.
It is here, at the curtain of day,
where America writes a lyric
you must whisper to say.

There’s a poem in this place—
in the heavy grace,
the lined face of this noble building,
collections burned and reborn twice.

There’s a poem in Boston’s Copley Square
where protest chants
tear through the...Read more of this...

The Poem That Took The Place Of A Mountain

by Wallace Stevens
 There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.

He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.

It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction,

How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,

For the outlook that would...Read more of this...

What Place is Besieged?

by Walt Whitman
 WHAT place is besieged, and vainly tries to raise the siege? 
Lo! I send to that place a commander, swift, brave, immortal; 
And with him horse and foot—and parks of artillery, 
And artillery-men, the deadliest that ever fired gun....Read more of this...

The White Island:or Place Of The Blest

by Robert Herrick
 In this world, the Isle of Dreams,
While we sit by sorrow's streams,
Tears and terrors are our themes,
Reciting:

But when once from hence we fly,
More and more approaching nigh
Unto young eternity,
Uniting

In that whiter Island, where
Things are evermore sincere:
Candour here, and lustre there,
Delighting:--

There no monstrous fancies shall
Out of hell an horror call,
To create, or cause at all
Affrighting.

There, in calm and cooling sleep,
We...Read more of this...

The Place Where The Rainbow Ends

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
There's a fabulous story
Full of splendor and glory,
That Arabian legends transcends;
Of the wealth without measure,
The coffers of treasure,
At the place where the rainbow ends.
Oh, many have sought it,
And all would have bought it,
With the blood we so recklessly spend;
But none has uncovered,
The gold, nor discovered
The spot at the rainbow's end.
They have sought it in battle,
And e'en where the rattle
Of dice...Read more of this...

Absent Place -- an April Day --

by Emily Dickinson
 Absent Place -- an April Day --
Daffodils a-blow
Homesick curiosity
To the Souls that snow --

Drift may block within it
Deeper than without --
Daffodil delight but
Him it duplicate --...Read more of this...

Ah! would there were a place of rest from pain,

by Omar Khayyam
Ah! would there were a place of rest from pain,
Which we, poor pilgrims, might at last attain,
And after many thousand wintry years,
Renew our life, like flowers, and bloom again!...Read more of this...

Staying Overnight with Abbot Zan (Abbot of Dayun Temple in the capital, exiled to this place)

by Du Fu
 Cane tin how come here Autumn wind already sough Rain waste large court chrysanthemum Frost topple half pool lotus Banish rather against nature Void not leave Chan Mutual meet all night stay Gansu moon toward man round  How did your tin-edged cane get here? The autumn wind's already sighing. The rain's laid waste the great...Read more of this...

Yes holy be thy resting place

by Emily Brontë
 Yes, holy be thy resting place
Wherever thou may'st lie;
The sweetest winds breathe on thy face,
The softest of the sky. 

And will not guardian Angles send
Kind dreams and thoughts of love,
Though I no more may watchful bend
Thy longed repose above? 

And will not heaven itself bestow
A beam of glory there
That summer's grass more green may grow,
And summer's flowers more fair?...Read more of this...

We make the wine-jar's lip our place of prayer,

by Omar Khayyam
We make the wine-jar's lip our place of prayer,
And drink in lessons of true manhood there,
And pass our lives in taverns, if perchance
The time mis-spent in mosques we may repair....Read more of this...

Oh! would to God that there existed some place of repose—that

by Omar Khayyam
Oh! would to God that there existed some place of repose—that
the road we follow had some settled end!
Would God that, after a hundred thousand years, we
could conceive the hope of one new birth of heart upon
the earth as the green turf is born again!
379...Read more of this...

The Place of the Damned

by Jonathan Swift
 All folks who pretend to religion and grace,
Allow there's a HELL, but dispute of the place:
But, if HELL may by logical rules be defined
The place of the damned -I'll tell you my mind.
Wherever the damned do chiefly abound,
Most certainly there is HELL to be found:
Damned poets, damned critics, damned blockheads, damned knaves,
Damned senators bribed, damned prostitute slaves;
Damned lawyers and...Read more of this...

In a lonely place

by Stephen Crane
 In a lonely place,
I encountered a sage
Who sat, all still,
Regarding a newspaper.
He accosted me:
"Sir, what is this?"
Then I saw that I was greater,
Aye, greater than this sage.
I answered him at once,
"Old, old man, it is the wisdom of the age."
The sage looked upon me with admiration....Read more of this...

On The Porch At The Frost Place Franconia N. H

by William Matthews
 So here the great man stood,
fermenting malice and poems
we have to be nearly as fierce
against ourselves as he
not to misread by their disguises.
Blue in dawn haze, the tamarack
across the road is new since Frost
and thirty feet tall already.
No doubt he liked to scorch off
morning fog by simply staring through it
long enough so that what he saw
grew visible. "Watching the...Read more of this...

Mans Dying-place Uncertain

by Robert Herrick
 Man knows where first he ships himself; but he
Never can tell where shall his landing be....Read more of this...

In the first place, my being was given me without my

by Omar Khayyam
In the first place, my being was given me without my
consent, which makes my own existence a lasting problem
to me. Then, we leave this world with regret, and without
having accomplished the aim of our coming, of our
stay, or our departure....Read more of this...

This is the place they hoped before

by Emily Dickinson
 This is the place they hoped before,
Where I am hoping now.
The seed of disappointment grew
Within a capsule gay,
Too distant to arrest the feet
That walk this plank of balm --
Before them lies escapeless sea --
The way is closed they came....Read more of this...

The Place of Rest

by George William Russell
 UNTO the deep the deep heart goes,
It lays its sadness nigh the breast:
Only the Mighty Mother knows
The wounds that quiver unconfessed.


It seeks a deeper silence still;
It folds itself around with peace,
Where thoughts alike of good or ill
In quietness unfostered cease.


It feels in the unwounding vast
For comfort for its hopes and fears:
The Mighty Mother bows at last;
She listens to her...Read more of this...

I know a place where Summer strives

by Emily Dickinson
 I know a place where Summer strives
With such a practised Frost --
She -- each year -- leads her Daisies back --
Recording briefly -- "Lost" --

But when the South Wind stirs the Pools
And struggles in the lanes --
Her Heart misgives Her, for Her Vow --
And she pours soft Refrains

Into the lap of Adamant --
And spices -- and the Dew --
That...Read more of this...

On Opening a Place for Social Prayer

by William Cowper
 Jesus! where'er Thy people meet,
There they behold Thy mercy seat;
Where'er they seek Thee, Thou art found,
And every place is hallow'd ground.

For Thou, within no walls confined,
Inhabitest the humble mind;
Such ever bring Thee where they come
And going, take Thee to their home.

Dear Shepherd of Thy chosen few!
Thy former mercies here renew;
Her to our waiting hearts proclaim
The sweetness of Thy saving...Read more of this...

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