Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Turn On Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Wilbur, Richard
...aight
 furrow
Or filling the well-made bowl?
What night will not the whole 
Sky with its clear studs and steady spheres
Turn on a sound chimney? It is seventeen 
 years
Come tomorrow

That Bruna Sandoval has kept the church
Of San Ysidro, sweeping
And scrubbing the aisles, keeping
The candlesticks and the plaster faces bright,
And seen no visions but the thing done right
>From the clay porch

To the white altar. For love and in all weathers
This is what she has done.
...Read more of this...



by Petrarch, Francesco
...lly beheld the cruel printsIn the fair limbs of thy beloved Son,Ah! turn on my sad doubt,Who friendless, helpless thus, for counsel come to thee! [Pg 319]O Virgin! pure and perfect in each part,Maiden or Mother, from thy honour'd birth,This...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...who attacks with yellow teeth
and an army of cousins big as shoes,
you are lumps of coal that are mechanized
and when I turn on the light you scuttle
into the corners and there is this hiss upon the land.
Yet I know you are only the common angel
turned into, by way of enchantment, the ugliest.
Your uncle was made into an apple.
Your aunt was made into a Siamese cat,
all the rest were made into butterflies
but because you lied to God outrightly--
told him that all ...Read more of this...

by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...my children, nor in rage 
Mock at the just, the helpless and the poor, 
Foot-fast in Sodom's rat-trap; make me bold 
To turn on the Despoilers all their age 
Invents: damnations never felt before 
And hells more horrible than hot and cold. 

And, since in Heaven creatures purified 
Rational, free, perfected in their kinds 
Contemplate God and see Him face to face 
In Hell, for sure, spirits transmogrified, 
Paralysed wills and parasitic minds 
Mirror their own corruption ...Read more of this...

by Kunitz, Stanley
...An agitation of the air,
A perturbation of the light
Admonished me the unloved year
Would turn on its hinge that night.

I stood in the disenchanted field
Amid the stubble and the stones
Amaded, while a small worm lisped to me
The song of my marrow-bones.

Blue poured into summer blue,
A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,
The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew
That part of my life was forever over.

Already the iron door of the Nor...Read more of this...



by Carroll, Lewis
...hile marking with complacent ears
The moaning of some tortured hound: 

Who prate of Wisdom - nay, forbear,
Lest Wisdom turn on you in wrath,
Trampling, with heel that will not spare,
The vermin that beset her path! 

Go, throng each other's drawing-rooms,
Ye idols of a petty clique:
Strut your brief hour in borrowed plumes,
And make your penny-trumpets squeak. 

Deck your dull talk with pilfered shreds
Of learning from a nobler time,
And oil each other's little heads
Wit...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...ea in such an order'd space:
The starry heavens reach no further, but here bend and set
On all sides, and the two Poles turn on their valves of gold:
And if he moves his dwelling-place, his heavens also move
Where'er he goes, and all his neighbourhood bewail his loss.
Such are the spaces called Earth and such its dimension.
As to that false appearance which appears to the reasoner
As of a globe rolling through voidness, it is a delusion of Ulro.
The microscope kno...Read more of this...

by Dunn, Stephen
...Relax. This won't last long.
Or if it does, or if the lines
make you sleepy or bored,
give in to sleep, turn on
the T.V., deal the cards.
This poem is built to withstand
such things. Its feelings
cannot be hurt. They exist 
somewhere in the poet,
and I am far away.
Pick it up anytime. Start it
in the middle if you wish.
It is as approachable as melodrama,
and can offer you violence
if it is violence you like. Look,
there's a...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...he opened vault 
On dust and bones, and I am mute.

It is noon; the bells let fall soft flowers of sound. 
They turn on the air, they shrink in the flare of noon. 
It is night; and I lie alone, and watch through the window 
The terrible ice-white emptiness of the moon. 
Small bells, far off, spill jewels of sound like rain, 
A long wind hurries them whirled and far, 
A cloud creeps over the moon, my bed is darkened, 
I hold my breath and watch a star.

Do ...Read more of this...

by Cohen, Leonard
...ve that is graceful and green as a
stem. 
When I left they were sleeping, I hope you run into them
soon. 
Don't turn on the lights, you can read their address by the
moon. 
And you won't make me jealous if I hear that they sweetened
your night: 
We weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all
right, 
We weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all
right....Read more of this...

by Arnold, Matthew
...lt
By the gray sea.-If so, then hail!
I honour and welcome thee.


The Youth.

The Gods are happy.
They turn on all sides
Their shining eyes,
And see below them
The earth and men.
They see Tiresias
Sitting, staff in hand,
On the warm, grassy
Asopus bank,
His robe drawn over
His old sightless head,
Revolving inly
The doom of Thebes.
They see the Centaurs
In the upper glens
Of Pelion, in the streams,
Where red-berried ashes fringe
The clear-brown shallow...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...
Inexorable to thy zeal:
Baby, do not whine and chide;
Art thou not also real?
Why should'st thou stoop to poor excuse?
Turn on the Accuser roundly; say,
"Here am I, here will I remain
Forever to myself soothfast,
Go thou, sweet Heaven, or, at thy pleasure stay."—
Already Heaven with thee its lot has cast,
For it only can absolutely deal....Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...'s a rough-house game and a thankless game, and it isn't a game for a fool, 
For an army's fate and a nation's fame may turn on an Army mule. 

And if you go to the front-line camp where the sleepless outposts lie, 
At the dead of night you can hear the tramp of the mule train toiling by. 
The rattle and clink of a leading-chain, the creak of the lurching load, 
As the patient, plodding creatures strain at their task in the shell-torn road, 
Through the dark and the d...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...They might ignore me immediately 
In my moon suit and funeral veil. 
I am no source of honey 
So why should they turn on me? 
Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free. 

The box is only temporary....Read more of this...

by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...my children, nor in rage 
Mock at the just, the helpless and the poor, 
Foot-fast in Sodom's rat-trap; make me bold 
To turn on the Despoilers all their age 
Invents: damnations never felt before 
And hells more horrible than hot and cold. 

And, since in Heaven creatures purified 
Rational, free, perfected in their kinds 
Contemplate God and see Him face to face 
In Hell, for sure, spirits transmogrified, 
Paralysed wills and parasitic minds 
Mirror their own corruption ...Read more of this...

by Turner Smith, Charlotte
...that concerns ye much;
And, trembling, learn, that if oppress'd too long,
The raging multitude, to madness stung,
Will turn on their oppressors; and, no more
By sounding titles and parading forms
Bound like tame victims, will redress themselves!
Then swept away by the resistless torrent,
Not only all your pomp may disappear,
But, in the tempest lost, fair Order sink
Her decent head, and lawless Anarchy
O'erturn celestial Freedom's radiant throne;--
As now in Gallia; where Co...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...'s a puzzle of wards within wards;
Or, if your colt's fore-foot inclines to curve inwards,
Horseshoes they hammer which turn on a swivel
And won't allow the hoof to shrivel.
Then they cast bells like the shell of the winkle
That keep a stout heart in the ram with their tinkle;
But the sand---they pinch and pound it like otters;
Commend me to Gipsy glass-makers and potters!
Glasses they'll blow you, crystal-clear,
Where just a faint cloud of rose shall appear,
As if in pur...Read more of this...

by Nash, Ogden
...hing to be flayed,
She will not use him as a lady's maid.

Stove-wise he's the perpetual backward learner
Who can't turn on or off the proper burner.
If faced with washing up he never gripes,
But simply drops more dishes than he wipes.
She finds his absence preferable to his aid,
And thus all mealtime chores doth he evade.

He can, attempting to replace a fuse,
Black out the coast from Boston to Newport News,
Or, hanging pictures, be the rookie wizard
Who fill...Read more of this...

by Arnold, Matthew
...sea.-If so, then hail! 
129 I honour and welcome thee. 

The Youth. 

130 The Gods are happy. 
131 They turn on all sides 
132 Their shining eyes, 
133 And see below them 
134 The earth and men. 

135 They see Tiresias 
136 Sitting, staff in hand, 
137 On the warm, grassy 
138 Asopus bank, 
139 His robe drawn over 
140 His old sightless head, 
141 Revolving inly 
142 The doom of Thebes. 

143 They see the Centaurs
144 In the upper glens
145 Of Pelion, ...Read more of this...

by Larkin, Philip
...hrashing
My apron and the hanging cloths on the line.
Can it be borne, this bodying-forth by wind
Of joy my actions turn on, like a thread
Carrying beads? Shall I be let to sleep
Now this perpetual morning shares my bed?
Can even death dry up
These new delighted lakes, conclude
Our kneeling as cattle by all-generous waters?...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Turn On poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs