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Famous Taking Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...e harvest moon through the mist of the marshes."
Then, with a smile of content, thus answered Basil the blacksmith,
Taking with easy air the accustomed seat by the fireside:--
"Benedict Bellefontaine, thou hast ever thy jest and thy ballad!
Ever in cheerfullest mood art thou, when others are filled with
Gloomy forebodings of ill, and see only ruin before them.
Happy art thou, as if every day thou hadst picked up a horseshoe."
Pausing a moment, to take the pipe tha...Read more of this...



by Carver, Raymond
...ear of falling asleep at night.
Fear of not falling asleep.
Fear of the past rising up.
Fear of the present taking flight.
Fear of the telephone that rings in the dead of night.
Fear of electrical storms.
Fear of the cleaning woman who has a spot on her cheek!
Fear of dogs I've been told won't bite.
Fear of anxiety!
Fear of having to identify the body of a dead friend.
Fear of running out of money.
Fear of having too much, though people wil...Read more of this...

by Carver, Raymond
...s arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it....Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...est & arms covered with poxied welts, 
head pains fading back of the neck, right eyebrow cheek 
mouth paralyzed--from taking the wrong medicine, sweated 
too much in the forehead helpless, covered my rage from 
gorge to prostate with grinding jaw and tightening anus 
not released the weeping scream of horror at robot Mayaguez 
World self ton billions metal grief unloaded 
Pnom Penh to Nakon Thanom, Santiago & Tehran. 
Fresh warm breeze in the window, day's release...Read more of this...

by Brown, Fleda
...heets 
than my poem, but as long as I don't bother her, she's glad 

to know I care. She's talked my father into taking 
a drive later, stopping for an A & W root beer. 
She is dreaming of foam on the glass, the tray propped 

on the car window. And trees, farmhouses, the expanse 
of the world as seen from inside the car. It is no 
use to try to get her out to watch airplanes 

take off, or walk a trail, or hear this poem 
and offer anything more t...Read more of this...



by Alighieri, Dante
...pierce it. 
 "Downward through the worlds of night 
 We will descend together. I first, and thou 
 My footsteps taking," spake my guide, and I 
 Gave answer, "Master, when thyself art pale, 
 Fear-daunted, shall my weaker heart avail 
 That on thy strength was rested?" 

 "Nay," said he, 
 "Not fear, but anguish at the issuing cry 
 So pales me. Come ye, for the path we tread 
 Is long, and time requires it." Here he led 
 Through the first entrance of the rin...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...t--she sometimes wondered.
So, till she found herself in a strange place
For the name Maple to have brought her to,
Taking dictation on a paper pad
And, in the pauses when she raised her eyes,
Watching out of a nineteenth story window
An airship laboring with unshiplike motion
And a vague all-disturbing roar above the river
Beyond the highest city built with hands.
Someone was saying in such natural tones
She almost wrote the words down on her knee,
"Do you know you r...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ttle of boiling water, the lobsters shall be boil’d till their
 color
 becomes scarlet.

Or, another time, mackerel-taking, 
Voracious, mad for the hook, near the surface, they seem to fill the water for miles: 
Or, another time, fishing for rock-fish, in Chesapeake Bay—I one of the brown-faced
 crew: 
Or, another time, trailing for blue-fish off Paumanok, I stand with braced body, 
My left foot is on the gunwale—my right arm throws the coils of slender rope,
In sight aro...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...provokers stiffening my limbs,
Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip, 
Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial, 
Depriving me of my best, as for a purpose, 
Unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist, 
Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture-fields,
Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away, 
They bribed to swap off with touch, and go and graze at the edges of me; 
No consideration, no regard for my draining st...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...tes, 
Long stately rows in avenues, hospitals for orphans, or for the poor or sick, 
Manhattan steamboats and clippers, taking the measure of all seas. 

The shapes arise!
Shapes of the using of axes anyhow, and the users, and all that neighbors them, 
Cutters down of wood, and haulers of it to the Penobscot or Kennebec, 
Dwellers in cabins among the California mountains, or by the little lakes, or on the
 Columbia,

Dwellers south on the banks of the Gila or Rio Grande—f...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...ill know truth,
if truth catches in its cup
and yet I pray, as a child would,
that the surgery take.

I dream it is taking.
Next I dream the love is swallowing itself.
Next I dream the love is made of glass,
glass coming through the telephone
that is breaking slowly,
day by day, into my ear.
Next I dream that I put on the love
like a lifejacket and we float,
jacket and I,
we bounce on that priest-blue.
We are as light as a cat's ear
and it is safe,
safe fa...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...ad. 
He said there'd come a blazing screeching 
Daft Bible-prophet chap a-preaching, 
Had put th'old mare in such a taking 
she'd thought the bloody earth was quaking. 
And others come and spread a tale 
Of cut-throats out of Gloucester jail, 
And how we needed extra cops 
With all them Welsh come picking hops: 
With drunken Welsh in all our sheds 
We might be murdered in our beds.

By all accounts, both men and wives 
Had had the scare up of their lives.

I a...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...ll, what beats the javelin
With which his boars my father pinned you?
And then, for a purpose you shall hear presently,
Taking some Cotnar, a tight plump skinful,
I shall go journeying, who but I, pleasantly!
Sorrow is vain and despondency sinful.
What's a man's age? He must hurry more, that's all;
Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold.
When we mind labour, then only, we're too old---
What age had Methusalem when he begat Saul?
And at last, as its haven so...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...eet recrost the deathful ridge 
No memory in me lives; but that I touched 
The chapel-doors at dawn I know; and thence 
Taking my war-horse from the holy man, 
Glad that no phantom vext me more, returned 
To whence I came, the gate of Arthur's wars.' 

`O brother,' asked Ambrosius,--`for in sooth 
These ancient books--and they would win thee--teem, 
Only I find not there this Holy Grail, 
With miracles and marvels like to these, 
Not all unlike; which oftentime I read, 
W...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...ays a difficult art,
 Though with only one ship and one bell:
And he feared he must really decline, for his part,
 Undertaking another as well.

The Beaver's best course was, no doubt, to procure
 A second-hand dagger-proof coat--
So the Baker advised it-- and next, to insure
 Its life in some Office of note:

This the Banker suggested, and offered for hire
 (On moderate terms), or for sale,
Two excellent Policies, one Against Fire,
 And one Against Damage From Hail.
...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...ve the earths shadow: then I flung myself with him
directly into the body of the sun, here I clothed myself in
white, & taking in my hand Swedenborgs volumes sunk from the
glorious clime, and passed all the planets till we came to
saturn, here I staid to rest & then leap'd into the void, between
saturn & the fixed stars.
Here said I! is your lot, in this space, if space it may be
calld, Soon we saw the stable and the church, & I took him to the
altar and open'd the Bible,...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...live by code. 

Oh, that inflexible code of living,
That seems so easy and unconstrained,
The Englishman's code of taking and giving
Rights and privileges pre-ordained,
Based since English life began
On the prime importance of being a man.

IX 
And what a voice he had-gentle, profound, 
Clear masculine!—I melted at the sound. 
Oh, English voices, are there any words 
Those tones to tell, those cadences to teach! 
As song of thrushes is to other birds, 
So English...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...nd act upon
 others as
 upon us now—yet not act upon us! 
To think of all these wonders of city and country, and others taking great interest in
 them—and we taking no interest in them! 

To think how eager we are in building our houses! 
To think others shall be just as eager, and we quite indifferent! 

(I see one building the house that serves him a few years, or seventy or eighty years at
 most,
I see one building the house that serves him longer than that.) 

Slow-mo...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...stood up and then again waddled
Under his heavy load.

We had almost failed to notice him
Before the nomad-tent taking his place.
Just like stars the blue eyes were shining,
Lighting the tormented face.

And I proffered to him the child,
Raising arms with the trace of a chain
He pronounced with joy and with ringing:
"May your son live and healthy remain."



x x x

Oh, there are unrepeated words,
Who ever said wasted more than he should.Read more of this...

by Ferlinghetti, Lawrence
...
'Souls eat souls in the general emptiness'
A piano concerto comes out a kitchen window
A yogi speaks at Ojai
'It's all taking pace in one mind'
On the lawn among the trees
lovers are listening
for the master to tell them they are one
with the universe
Eyes smell flowers and become them
There's a deathless hush
on the freeway tonight
as a Pacific tidal wave a mile high
sweeps in
Los Angeles breathes its last gas
and sinks into the sea like the Titanic all lights lit
Nine minu...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs