Famous Telling You Now Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Let others Rhodes (LAUDABUNT ALII)

by Horace
     Let others Rhodes or Mytilene sing,
         Or Ephesus, or Corinth, set between
     Two seas, or Thebes, or Delphi, for its king
         Each famous, or Thessalian Tempe green;
     There are who make...Read more of this...

The Death Of Santa Claus

by Charles Webb
 He's had the chest pains for weeks,
but doctors don't make house
calls to the North Pole,

he's let his Blue Cross lapse,
blood tests make him faint,
hospital gown always flap

open, waiting rooms upset
his stomach, and it's only
indigestion anyway, he thinks,

until, feeding the reindeer,
he feels as if a monster fist
has grabbed his heart and won't

stop squeezing. He can't
breathe, and the beautiful white
world he...Read more of this...

Visits To St. Elizabeths

by Elizabeth Bishop
 This is the house of Bedlam.

This is the man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is the time 
of the tragic man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is a wristwatch
telling the time
of the talkative man
that lies in the house of Bedlam.

This is a sailor 
wearing the watch
that tells the time
of the honored man
that lies in the house of...Read more of this...

The Village of Tayport and Its Surroundings

by William Topaz McGonagall
 All ye pleasure-seekers, where'er ye be,
I pray ye all be advised by me,
Go and visit Tayport on the banks o' the Tay,
And there ye can spend a pleasant holiday. 

The village and its surroundings are magnificent to be seen,
And the shops on the High Street are tidy and clean,
And the goods, I'm sure, would please the Queen,
They cannot be...Read more of this...

One Morning

by Eamon Grennan
 Looking for distinctive stones, I found the dead otter
rotting by the tideline, and carried all day the scent of this savage
valediction. That headlong high sound the oystercatcher makes
came echoing through the rocky cove
where a cormorant was feeding and submarining in the bay
and a heron rose off a boulder where he'd been invisible,
drifted a little, stood again -- a hieroglyph
or...Read more of this...

The Knights Song

by Lewis Carroll
 I'll tell thee everything I can:
There's little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.

'Who are you, aged man?' I said.
'And how is it you live?'
And his answer trickled through my head,
Like water through a sieve.
He said, 'I look for butterflies
That sleep among the wheat:
I make them into mutton-pies,
And sell them in the street.

I sell them unto...Read more of this...

Telling the Bees

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 Here is the place; right over the hill 
Runs the path I took; 
You can see the gap in the old wall still, 
And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook. 

There is the house, with the gate red-barred, 
And the poplars tall; 
And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard, 
And the white horns tossing above the wall. 

There...Read more of this...

Something For The Touts The Nuns The Grocery Clerks And You . .

by Charles Bukowski
 we have everything and we have nothing
and some men do it in churches
and some men do it by tearing butterflies
in half
and some men do it in Palm Springs
laying it into butterblondes
with Cadillac souls
Cadillacs and butterflies
nothing and everything,
the face melting down to the last puff
in a cellar in Corpus Christi.
there's something for the touts, the nuns,
the grocery clerks and you...Read more of this...

The Englishman In Italy

by Robert Browning
 (PIANO DI SORRENTO.)

Fortu, Frotu, my beloved one,
Sit here by my side,
On my knees put up both little feet!
I was sure, if I tried,
I could make you laugh spite of Scirocco;
Now, open your eyes— 
Let me keep you amused till he vanish
In black from the skies,
With telling my memories over
As you tell your beads;
All the memories plucked at Sorrento
—The flowers,...Read more of this...

Hannah Armstrong

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I wrote him a letter asking him for old times' sake
To discharge my sick boy from the army;
But maybe he couldn't read it.
Then I went to town and had James Garber,
Who wrote beautifully, write him a letter.
But maybe that was lost in the mails.
So I traveled all the way to Washington.
I was more than an hour finding the White...Read more of this...

Autumnal Sonnet

by William Allingham
 Now Autumn's fire burns slowly along the woods, 
And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt, 
And night by night the monitory blast 
Wails in the key-hold, telling how it pass'd 
O'er empty fields, or upland solitudes, 
Or grim wide wave; and now the power is felt 
Of melancholy, tenderer in its moods 
Than any joy indulgent...Read more of this...

Gone

by Adam Lindsay Gordon
 IN Collins Street standeth a statute tall, 
A statue tall, on a pillar of stone, 
Telling its story, to great and small, 
Of the dust reclaimed from the sand waste lone; 
Weary and wasted, and worn and wan, 
Feeble and faint, and languid and low, 
He lay on the desert a dying man; 
Who has gone, my friends, where...Read more of this...

As with others

by Emile Verhaeren
As with others, an hour has its ill-humour: the peevish hour or a malevolent humour has sometimes stamped our hearts with its black seals; and yet, in spite of all, even at the close of the darkest days, never have our hearts said the irrevocable words.
A radiant and glowing sincerity was our joy and counsel, and our passionate soul found...Read more of this...

The Tavern

by Willa Cather
 IN the tavern of my heart 
Many a one has sat before, 
Drunk red wine and sung a stave, 
And, departing, come no more. 
When the night was cold without, 
And the ravens croaked of storm, 
They have sat them at my hearth, 
Telling me my house was warm. 

As the lute and cup went round, 
They have rhymed...Read more of this...

Alan Dugan Telling Me I Have A Problem With Time

by Nick Flynn
 He reads my latest attempt at a poem
and is silent for a long time, until it feels
like that night we waited for Apollo,
my mother wandering in and out of her bedroom, asking,
Haven't they landed yet? At last
Dugan throws it on the table and says,
This reads like a cheap detective novel
and I've got nothing to say about it. It sits,
naked...Read more of this...

Mountains

by Henry Kendall
RIFTED mountains, clad with forests, girded round by gleaming pines, 
Where the morning, like an angel, robed in golden splendour shines; 
Shimmering mountains, throwing downward on the slopes a mazy glare 
Where the noonday glory sails through gulfs of calm and glittering air; 
Stately mountains, high and hoary, piled with blocks of amber cloud, 
Where the fading twilight lingers, when...Read more of this...

from Asphodel That Greeny Flower

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
 like a buttercup
 upon its branching stem-
save that it's green and wooden-
 I come, my sweet,
 to sing to you.
We lived long together
 a life filled,
 if you will,
with flowers. So that
 I was cheered
 when I came first to know
that there were flowers also
 in hell.
 Today
I'm filled with the fading memory of...Read more of this...

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, 
And sorry I could not travel both 
And be one traveler, long I stood 
And looked down one as far as I could 
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 

Then took the other, as just as fair, 
And having perhaps the better claim 
Because it was grassy and wanted wear; 
Though as...Read more of this...

From The Testament of Beauty

by Robert Seymour Bridges
 'Twas at that hour of beauty when the setting sun
squandereth his cloudy bed with rosy hues, to flood
his lov'd works as in turn he biddeth them Good-night;
and all the towers and temples and mansions of men
face him in bright farewell, ere they creep from their pomp
naked beneath the darkness;- while to mortal eyes
'tis given, ifso they close not of...Read more of this...

The Negatives

by Philip Levine
 On March 1, 1958, four deserters from the French Army of North Africa, 
August Rein, Henri Bruette, Jack Dauville, & Thomas Delain, robbed a 
government pay station at Orleansville. Because of the subsequent 
confession of Dauville the other three were captured or shot. Dauville 
was given his freedom and returned to the land of his birth, the U.S.A.

AUGUST REIN:...Read more of this...

The Wife of the Mind

by Charles Webb
 Sharecroppers' child, she was more schooled
In slaughtering pigs and coaxing corn out of
The ground than in the laws of Math, the rules
Of Grammar. Seventeen, she fell in love
With the senior quarterback, and nearly
Married him, but—the wedding just a week
Away—drove her trousseau back to Penney's,
Then drove on past sagging fences, flooding creeks,
And country bars to huge Washington State,
Where, feeling like...Read more of this...

Telling You All

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Telling you all would take too long.
Besides, we read in the Bible
how the good is harmful
and how misfortune is good.

Let's invite something new
by unifying our silences;
if, then and there, we advance,
we'll know it soon enough.

And yet towards evening,
when his memory is persistent,
one belated curiousity
stops him before the mirror.

We don't know if he is frightened.
But he stays, he is engrossed,
and,...Read more of this...

A Tree Telling of Orpheus

by Denise Levertov
 White dawn. Stillness.When the rippling began
I took it for sea-wind, coming to our valley with rumors of salt, of treeless horizons. But the white fog
didn't stir; the leaves of my brothers remained outstretched, unmoving.
Yet the rippling drew nearer – and then my own outermost branches began to tingle, almost as if
fire had been lit below them, too close, and...Read more of this...

Impossible To Tell

by Robert Pinsky
 to Robert Hass and in memory of Elliot Gilbert


Slow dulcimer, gavotte and bow, in autumn,
Bashõ and his friends go out to view the moon;
In summer, gasoline rainbow in the gutter,

The secret courtesy that courses like ichor
Through the old form of the rude, full-scale joke,
Impossible to tell in writing. "Bashõ"

He named himself, "Banana Tree": banana
After the plant some grateful students...Read more of this...

Reveille

by Primo Levi
 In the brutal nights we used to dream
Dense violent dreams,
Dreamed with soul and body:
To return; to eat; to tell the story.
Until the dawn command
Sounded brief, low
'Wstawac'
And the heart cracked in the breast.

Now we have found our homes again,
Our bellies are full,
We're through telling the story.
It's time. Soon we'll hear again
The strange command:
'Wstawac'


Translated by Ruth Feldman And Brian Swann...Read more of this...

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