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Famous Trying Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Thomas, Dylan
...nd the mulling
pokers. Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying
their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then
holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the
kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to
break, like faded cups and...Read more of this...



by Poe, Edgar Allan
...,
Its letters, although naturally lying
Like the knight Pinto- Mendez Ferdinando-
Still form a synonym for Truth- Cease trying!
You will not read the riddle, though you do the best you can do....Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...r>'
And Annie could have wept for pity of him;
And yet she held him on delayingly
With many a scarce-believable excuse,
Trying his truth and his long-sufferance,
Till half-another year had slipt away. 

By this the lazy gossips of the port,
Abhorrent of a calculation crost,
Began to chafe as at a personal wrong.
Some thought that Philip did but trifle with her;
Some that she but held off to draw him on;
And others laugh'd at her and Philip too,
As simple folks that kn...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...o here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
...Read more of this...

by Hughes, Langston
...t them into practice.
The people do not always understand each other.
But there is, somewhere there,
Always the trying to understand,
And the trying to say,
"You are a man. Together we are building our land."

America!
Land created in common,
Dream nourished in common,
Keep your hand on the plow! Hold on!
If the house is not yet finished,
Don't be discouraged, builder!
If the fight is not yet won,
Don't be weary, soldier!
The plan and the pattern is here,
Wove...Read more of this...



by Sandburg, Carl
...us executives who boss the work of
thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
their women and children 
and a keg of beer and an
accordion....Read more of this...

by Sassoon, Siegfried
...upland spaces, whispering leaves, 
And far off the long churring night-jar¡¯s note. 

But something in the wood, trying to daunt him, 
Led him confused in circles through the thicket. 25 
He was forgetting his old wretched folly, 
And freedom was his need; his throat was choking. 
Barbed brambles gripped and clawed him round his legs, 
And he floundered over snags and hidden stumps. 
Mumbling: ¡®I will get out! I must get out!¡¯ 30 
Butting and thrus...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...rass of public parks and 
 cemeteries scattering their semen freely to 
 whomever come who may, 
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up 
 with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath 
 when the blond & naked angel came to pierce 
 them with a sword, 
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate 
 the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar 
 the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb 
 and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but 
 sit on her ...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...loved so well. 
Than that /he/ lov'd! Oh! never yet beneath 
The breast of man such trusty love may breathe! 
That trying moment hath at once reveal'd 
The secret long and yet but half conceal'd; 
In baring to revive that lifeless breast, 
Its grief seem'd ended, but the sex confess'd; 
And life return'd, and Kaled felt no shame — 
What now to her was Womanhood or Fame? 

XXII. 

And Lara sleeps not where his fathers sleep, 
But where he died his grave was dug as dee...Read more of this...

by Berman, David
...hat a surprise ending
and this hill would still be beautiful
a place I wouldn't mind dying
alone or with you.

I am trying to get at something
and I want to talk very plainly to you
so that we are both comforted by the honesty.
You see there is a window by my desk
I stare out when I am stuck
though the outdoors has rarely inspired me to write
and I don't know why I keep staring at it.

My childhood hasn't made good material either
mostly being a mulch of white min...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...scaping from
And falling back into, as the waterwheel of days
Pursues its uneventful, even serene course?
I think it is trying to say it is today
And we must get out of it even as the public
Is pushing through the museum now so as to
Be out by closing time. You can't live there.
The gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how:
Secrets of wash and finish that took a lifetime
To learn and are reduced to the status of
Black-and-white illustrations in a book where colorpl...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...n your open book! It moved
Just then, I thought. It’s stood erect like that,
There on the table, ever since I came,
Trying to turn itself backward or forward,
I’ve had my eye on it to make out which;
If forward, then it’s with a friend’s impatience—
You see I know—to get you on to things
It wants to see how you will take, if backward
It’s from regret for something you have passed
And failed to see the good of. Never mind,
Things must expect to come in front of us
A ma...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...maker of the axe large and small, and the welder and temperer, 
The chooser breathing his breath on the cold steel, and trying the edge with his thumb,
The one who clean-shapes the handle, and sets it firmly in the socket; 
The shadowy processions of the portraits of the past users also, 
The primal patient mechanics, the architects and engineers, 
The far-off Assyrian edifice and Mizra edifice, 
The Roman lictors preceding the consuls,
The antique European warrior with his a...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...o sought me for nine years,
in stories made up in front of your naked mirror
or walking through rooms of fog women,
you trying to forget the mother
who built guilt with the lumber of a locked door
as she sobbed her soured mild and fed you loss
through the keyhole,
you who wrote out your own birth
and built it with your own poems,
your own lumber, your own keyhole,
into the trunk and leaves of your manhood,
you, who fell into my words, years
before you fell into me (the other,...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...ched her close.
Tea over, he endeavoured to extort
The cause of her excitement. She arose
And stood beside him, trying to compose
Herself, all whipt to quivering, curdled life,
And he, poor fool, misunderstood his wife.
Suddenly, broken through her anxious grasp,
Her music-kindled love crashed on him there.
Amazed, he felt her fling against him, clasp
Her arms about him, weighing down his chair,
Sobbing out all her hours of despair.
"Theodore, a woman need...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...r> 
Some day you'll break your mother's heart, 
After God knows she done her part, 
Working her arms off day and night 
Trying to keep your collars white. 
Look at your face, too, in the street. 
What dirty filth've you found to eat? 
Now don't you blubber here, boy, or 
I'll give you sum't to blubber for." 
She snatched him off from where we stand 
And knocked the pear-core from his hand, 
and looked at me, "You Devil's limb, 
How dare you talk to Jaggard's Jim; ...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...could tell that they stood on the ground
 Where the Baker had met with the Snark.

In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
 In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away---
 For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

THE END....Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...r> All you could see were the heads of the pins, but the pins were driven down into
her face. 
"God damn you, still trying to destroy your beauty, eh?" 
"No, it's the fad, you fool." 
"You're crazy." 
"I've missed you," she said. 
"Is there anybody else?"
"No there isn't anybody else. Just you. But I'm hustling. It costs ten bucks. But
you get it free."
"Pull those pins out." 
"No, it's the fad." 
"It's making me very unhappy." ...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...y have not escaped
for they are only great and famous within
Humanity. 
I have not escaped
but I have not failed in trying again and
again. 
before my death I hope to obtain my
life. 
from blank gun silencer - 1994...Read more of this...

by Shakur, Tupac
...ng Niggas
Now that i'm grown
i got my mind on
bein sumthin
don't wanna be
anotha statistic
out there doin nothing trying
to maintain in this dirty game
keep it real and I
will even kill me
my young niggaz
stay away from
these dumb niggaz
put down the guns
and have some fun nigga. ...Read more of this...

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