Famous Touching Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Discovery

by Richard Brautigan
 The petals of the vagina unfold
like Christofer Columbus
taking off his shoes.

Is there anything more beautiful
than the bow of a ship
touching a new world?...Read more of this...

Human Life's Mystery

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 We sow the glebe, we reap the corn, 
We build the house where we may rest, 
And then, at moments, suddenly, 
We look up to the great wide sky, 
Inquiring wherefore we were born… 
For earnest or for jest? 

The senses folding thick and dark 
About the stifled soul within, 
We guess diviner things beyond, 
And yearn to them...Read more of this...

Kathleen

by Robert William Service
 It was the steamer Alice May that sailed the Yukon foam.
And touched in every river camp from Dawson down to Nome.
It was her builder, owner, pilot, Captain Silas Geer,
Who took her through the angry ice, the last boat of the year;
Who patched her cracks with gunny sacks and wound her pipes with wire,
And cut the spruce upon the banks...Read more of this...

Palm Trees by the Sea

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Second Song: The Girl from Baltistan

                            Throb, throb, throb,
   Far away in the blue transparent Night,
   On the outer horizon of a dreaming consciousness,
  ...Read more of this...

Chanting the Square Deific

by Walt Whitman
 1
CHANTING the square deific, out of the One advancing, out of the sides; 
Out of the old and new—out of the square entirely divine, 
Solid, four-sided, (all the sides needed)... from this side JEHOVAH am I, 
Old Brahm I, and I Saturnius am; 
Not Time affects me—I am Time, old, modern as any;
Unpersuadable, relentless, executing righteous judgments; 
As the...Read more of this...

Dark Night

by Frank Bidart
 (John of the Cross) 


 In a dark night, when the light
 burning was the burning of love (fortuitous
 night, fated, free,--)
 as I stole from my dark house, dark
 house that was silent, grave, sleeping,--

 by the staircase that was secret, hidden,
 safe: disguised by darkness (fortuitous
 night, fated, free,--)
 by darkness and by cunning, dark
 house that...Read more of this...

Manteau Three

by Jorie Graham
 In the fairy tale the sky
 makes of itself a coat
because it needs you
 to put it 
on. How can it do this?
 It collects its motes. It condenses its sound-
track, all the pyrric escapes, the pilgrimages
 still unconsummated, 
the turreted thoughts of sky it slightly liquefies
 and droops, the hum of the yellowest day alive,

office-holders in their books,...Read more of this...

Gallios Song

by Rudyard Kipling
 "And Gallio cared for none of these things."-- Acts xviii. 17 "Little Foxes"-- Actions and Reactions.
All day long to the judgment-seat
The crazed Provincials drew--
All day long at their ruler's feet
Howled for the blood of the Jew.
Insurrection with one accord
Banded itself and woke,
And Paul was about to open his mouth
When Achaia's Deputy spoke--

"Whether the God descend from above
Or the Man...Read more of this...

Curse of the Cat Woman

by Edward Field
 It sometimes happens
that the woman you meet and fall in love with
is of that strange Transylvanian people
with an affinity for cats.

You take her to a restuarant, say, or a show,
on an ordinary date, being attracted
by the glitter in her slitty eyes and her catlike walk,
and afterwards of course you take her in your arms
and she turns into a black...Read more of this...

Before the Throne of Beauty XXVI

by Kahlil Gibran
 One heavy day I ran away from the grim face of society and the dizzying clamor of the city and directed my weary step to the spacious alley. I pursued the beckoning course of the rivulet and the musical sounds of the birds until I reached a lonely spot where the flowing branches of the trees prevented the sun...Read more of this...

Naming The Stars

by Joyce Sutphen
 This present tragedy will eventually
turn into myth, and in the mist
of that later telling the bell tolling
now will be a symbol, or, at least,
a sign of something long since lost.

This will be another one of those
loose changes, the rearrangement of
hearts, just parts of old lives
patched together, gathered into
a dim constellation, small consolation.

Look, we will say, you can almost see
the...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXIX: When Conquering Love

by Michael Drayton
 To the Senses

When conquering Love did first my Heart assail, 
Unto mine aid I summon'd every Sense, 
Doubting, if that proud tyrant should prevail, 
My Heart should suffer for mine Eyes' offence; 
But he with Beauty first corrupted Sight, 
My Hearing bribed with her tongue's harmony, 
My Taste by her sweet lips drawn with delight, 
My Smelling won with...Read more of this...

Traveling Through The Dark

by William Stafford
 Traveling through the dark I found a deer
dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.
It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:
that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
I dragged...Read more of this...

Darkies

by John Lindley
 “I’d rather make $700 a week playing a maid than earn $7 a day being a maid”. Hattie McDaniel.

I’m the savage in the jungle
and the busboy in the town.
I’m the one who jumps the highest 
when the Boss man comes around.

I’m the maid who wields the wooden broom.
I’m the black boot polish cheeks.
I’m the big fat Lawdy Mama
who always...Read more of this...

A Conceit

by Maya Angelou
Give me your hand

Make room for me
to lead and follow
you
beyond this rage of poetry.

Let others have
the privacy of
touching words
and love of loss
of love.

For me
Give me your hand....Read more of this...

Finis

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 An idle rhyme of the summer time, 
Sweet, and solemn, and tender; 
Fair with the haze of the moon's pale rays, 
Bright with the sunset's splendour.

Summer and beauty over the lands -
Careless hours of pleasure; 
A meeting of eyes and a touching of hands -
A change in the floating measure.

A deeper hue in the skies of blue, 
Winds from...Read more of this...

228. To Alex. Cunningham Esq. Writer Edinburgh

by Robert Burns
 MY godlike friend—nay, do not stare,
 You think the phrase is odd-like;
But “God is love,” the saints declare,
 Then surely thou art god-like.


And is thy ardour still the same?
 And kindled still at ANNA?
Others may boast a partial flame,
 But thou art a volcano!


Ev’n Wedlock asks not love beyond
 Death’s tie-dissolving portal;
But thou, omnipotently fond,
 May’st promise love immortal!


Thy...Read more of this...

Mans Medley

by George Herbert
 Hark, how the birds do sing,
And woods do ring!
All creatures have their joy, and man hath his.
Yet if we rightly measure,
Man's joy and pleasure
Rather hereafter than in present is.

To this life things of sense
Make their pretence;
In th' other angels have a right by birth.
Man ties them both alone,
And makes them one,
With th' one hand touching heaven, with th' other...Read more of this...

When First We Faced And Touching Showed

by Philip Larkin
 When first we faced, and touching showed
How well we knew the early moves,
Behind the moonlight and the frost,
The excitement and the gratitude,
There stood how much our meeting owed
To other meetings, other loves.

The decades of a different life
That opened past your inch-close eyes
Belonged to others, lavished, lost;
Nor could I hold you hard enough
To call my years of hunger-strife
Back for your...Read more of this...

A Retrospect Of Humidity

by Les Murray
 All the air conditioners now slacken
their hummed carrier wave. Once again
we've served our three months with remissions
in the steam and dry iron of this seaboard.
In jellied glare, through the nettle-rash season
we've watched the sky's fermenting laundry
portend downpours. Some came, and steamed away,
and we were clutched back into the rancid
saline midnights of orifice weather,
to damp grittiness and wiping off the...Read more of this...

At The Door

by David Wagoner
 All actors look for them-the defining moments
When what a character does is what he is.
The script may say, He goes to the door
And exits or She goes out the door stage left.

But you see your fingers touching the doorknob,
Closing around it, turning it
As if by themselves. The latch slides
Out of the strike-plate, the door swings on its hinges,
And you're...Read more of this...

Leaves From Australian Forests - Dedication

by Henry Kendall
To her who, cast with me in trying days, 
Stood in the place of health and power and praise;- 
Who, when I thought all light was out, became 
A lamp of hope that put my fears to shame;- 
Who faced for love's sole sake the life austere 
That waits upon the man of letters here;- 
Who, unawares, her deep affection...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...

Tortoise Shell

by D. H. Lawrence
 The Cross, the Cross
Goes deeper in than we know,
Deeper into life;
Right into the marrow
And through the bone.
Along the back of the baby tortoise
The scales are locked in an arch like a bridge,
Scale-lapping, like a lobster's sections
Or a bee's.

Then crossways down his sides
Tiger-stripes and wasp-bands.

Five, and five again, and five again,
And round the edges twenty-five little ones,
The sections of the...Read more of this...

Embrace Noir

by Nick Flynn
 I go back to the scene where the two men embrace
& grapple a handgun at stomach level between them.

They jerk around the apartment like that
holding on to each other, their cheeks

almost touching. One is shirtless, the other
wears a suit, the one in the suit came in through a window

to steal documents or diamonds, it doesn't matter anymore 
which, what's...Read more of this...

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