Famous Talked Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Talked poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous talked poems. These examples illustrate what a famous talked poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis,
How the handsome Yenadizze
Danced at Hiawatha's wedding;
How the gentle Chibiabos,
He the sweetest of musicians,
Sang his songs of love and longing;
How Iagoo, the great boaster,
He the marvellous story-teller,
Told his tales of strange adventure,
That the feast might be more joyous,
That the time might pass more gayly,
And...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
We were out on the hills that night
To watch our sheep;
Drowsily by the fire we lay
Where the waning flame did flicker and leap,
And some were weary and half asleep,
And some talked low of their flocks and the fright
Of a lion that day.
But I had drawn from the others apart;
I was only...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I died for Beauty -- but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining room --
He questioned softly "Why I failed"?
"For Beauty", I replied --
"And I -- for Truth -- Themself are One --
We Brethren, are", He said --
And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night --
We talked between the Rooms --
Until the Moss...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
While I wrought out these fitful Danaan rhymes,
My heart would brim with dreams about the times
When we bent down above the fading coals
And talked of the dark folk who live in souls
Of passionate men, like bats in the dead trees;
And of the wayward twilight companies
Who sigh with mingled sorrow and content,
Because their blossoming dreams have never bent
Under the fruit...Read more of this...
by
Marriott Edgar
Albert were what you'd call “thwarted”.
He had long had an ambition, which...
Were to save up and go to Australia,
The saving up that were the hitch.
He'd a red money box on the pot shelf,
A post office thing made of tin,
But with him and his Dad and the bread knife,
It never had anything in....Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
Well, how are things in Heaven? I wish you’d say,
Because I’d like to know that you’re all right.
Tell me, have you found everlasting day,
Or been sucked in by everlasting night?
For when I shut my eyes your face shows plain;
I hear you make some cheery old remark—
I can rebuild you in my brain,
Though you’ve...Read more of this...
by
Oliver Wendell Holmes
How the mountains talked together,
Looking down upon the weather,
When they heard our friend had planned his
Little trip among the Andes
How they'll bare their snowy scalps
To the climber of the Alps
When the cry goes through their passes,
"Here comes the great Agassiz!"
"Yes, I'm tall," says Chimborazo,
"But I wait for him to say so,--
That's the only thing that lacks,-- he
Must see me,...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
One night a woman's breast came to a man's room and
began to talk about her twin sister.
Her twin sister this and her twin sister that.
Finally the man said, but what about you, dear breast?
And so the breast spent the rest of the night talking about
herself.
It was the same as when she talked about her sister:...Read more of this...
by
Conrad Aiken
One, where the pale sea foamed at the yellow sand,
With wave upon slowly shattering wave,
Turned to the city of towers as evening fell;
And slowly walked by the darkening road toward it;
And saw how the towers darkened against the sky;
And across the distance heard the toll of a bell.
Along the darkening road he hurried alone,
With his eyes cast down,
And thought...Read more of this...
by
Ezra Pound
Come, my songs, let us express our baser passions.
Let us express our envy for the man with a steady job and no worry about the future.
You are very idle, my songs,
I fear you will come to a bad end.
You stand about the streets, You loiter at the corners and bus-stops,
You do next to nothing at all....Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
I
I have lived with Shades so long,
So long have talked to them,
I sped to street and throng,
That sometimes they
In their dim style
Will pause awhile
To hear my say;
II
And take me by the hand,
And lead me through their rooms
In the To-Be, where Dooms
Half-wove and shapeless stand:
And show from there
The dwindled dust
And rot and rust
Of things that were.
III
"Now turn," they said to...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Man was made of social earth,
Child and brother from his birth;
Tethered by a liquid cord
Of blood through veins of kindred poured,
Next his heart the fireside band
Of mother, father, sister, stand;
Names from awful childhood heard,
Throbs of a wild religion stirred,
Their good was heaven, their harm was vice,
Till Beauty came to snap all ties,
The maid, abolishing the past,
With lotus-wine obliterates
Dear memory's...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
We talked as Girls do --
Fond, and late --
We speculated fair, on every subject, but the Grave --
Of ours, none affair --
We handled Destinies, as cool --
As we -- Disposers -- be --
And God, a Quiet Party
To our Authority --
But fondest, dwelt upon Ourself
As we eventual -- be --
When Girls to Women, softly raised
We -- occupy -- Degree --
We...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
We talked with each other about each other
Though neither of us spoke --
We were listening to the seconds' Races
And the Hoofs of the Clock --
Pausing in Front of our Palsied Faces
Time compassion took --
Arks of Reprieve he offered to us --
Ararats -- we took --...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
Silvia, do you remember
the moments, in your mortal life,
when beauty still shone
in your sidelong, laughing eyes,
and you, light and thoughtful,
went
beyond girlhood’s limits?
The quiet rooms and the streets
around you, sounded
to your endless singing,
when you sat, happily content,
intent, on that woman’s work,
the vague future, arriving alive in your mind.
It was the scented May, and that’s how
you spent your day.
I would...Read more of this...
by
Kenneth Koch
You have helped hold me together.
I'd like you to be still.
Stop talking or doing anything else for a minute.
No. Please. For three minutes, maybe five minutes.
Tell me which walk to take over the hill.
Is there a bridge there? Will I want company?
Tell me about the old people who built the bridge.
What is "the Japanese economy"?
Where did you hide the...Read more of this...
by
Fleda Brown
Sometimes I feel her easing further into her grave,
resigned, as always, and I have to come to her rescue.
Like now, when I have so much else to do. Not that
she'd want a poem. She would have been proud, of course,
of all its mystery, involving her, but scared a little.
Her eyes would have filled with tears....Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
Although I shelter from the rain
Under a broken tree,
My chair was nearest to the fire
In every company
That talked of love or politics,
Ere Time transfigured me.
Though lads are making pikes again
For some conspiracy,
And crazy rascals rage their fill
At human tyranny,
My contemplations are of Time
That has transfigured me.
There's not a woman turns her face
Upon a broken tree,
And yet the beauties that...Read more of this...
by
Sara Teasdale
I went back to the clanging city,
I went back where my old loves stayed,
But my heart was full of my new love's glory,
My eyes were laughing and unafraid.
I met one who had loved me madly
And told his love for all to hear --
But we talked of a thousand things together,
The past was buried too deep...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
It is a year dear one, since you afar
Went out beyond my yearning mortal sight
A wondrous year! perchance in many a star
You have sojourned, or basked within the light
Of mightier suns; it may be you have trod
The glittering pathways of the Pleiades,
And through the Milky Way's white mysteries
Have walked at will, fire-shod.
You may have gazed in the immortal...Read more of this...
by
Adrienne Rich
The pact that we made was the ordinary pact
of men & women in those days
I don't know who we thought we were
that our personalities
could resist the failures of the race
Lucky or unlucky, we didn't know
the race had failures of that order
and that we were going to share them
Like everybody else, we thought of ourselves as special
Your body is as...Read more of this...
by
Fernando Pessoa
As to a child, I talked my heart asleep
With empty promise of the coming day,
And it slept rather for my words made sleep
Than from a thought of what their sense did say.
For did it care for sense, would it not wake
And question closer to the morrow's pleasure?
Would it not edge nearer my words, to take
The promise in the meting of...Read more of this...
by
William Stafford
With Kit, Age 7, at the Beach
We would climb the highest dune,
from there to gaze and come down:
the ocean was performing;
we contributed our climb.
Waves leapfrogged and came
straight out of the storm.
What should our gaze mean?
Kit waited for me to decide.
Standing on such a hill,
what would you tell your child?
That...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
On the fair green hills of Rio
There grows a fearful stain:
The poor who come to Rio
And can't go home again.
On the hills a million people,
A million sparrows, nest,
Like a confused migration
That's had to light and rest,
Building its nests, or houses,
Out of nothing at all, or air.
You'd think a breath would end them,
They perch...Read more of this...
by
John Montague
My love, while we talked
They removed the roof. Then
They started on the walls,
Panes of glass uprooting
From timber, like teeth.
But you spoke calmly on,
Your example of courtesy
Compelling me to reply.
When we reached the last
Syllable, nearly accepting
Our positions, I saw that
The floorboards were gone:
It was clay we stood upon....Read more of this...
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