Famous Uncertainty Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Uncertainty poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous uncertainty poems. These examples illustrate what a famous uncertainty poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...re no more
Of high renown, and victory secure,
To kings low prostrate at their bloody shrines.
No more with vain uncertainty perplex
Mistaken worshippers, or give unseen
Response ambiguous in some mystic sound,
And hollow murmer from the dark recess.
No more of Lybian Jove; Dodona's oaks,
In sacred grove give prophecy no more.
Th' infernal deities retire abash'd,
Our God himself on earth begins his reign;
Pure revelation beams on ev'ry land,
On ev'ry h...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...on, did she but see that shape
With sixty or more winters on its head,
A compensation for the pang of his birth,
Or the uncertainty of his setting forth?
VI
Plato thought nature but a spume that plays
Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;
Solider Aristotle played the taws
Upon the bottom of a king of kings;
World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras
Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings
What a star sang and careless Muses heard:
Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.
...Read more of this...
by
Arnold, Matthew
...with indiscernible flow its way;
And that we should not see
The buried stream, and seem to be
Eddying at large in blind uncertainty,
Though driving on with it eternally.
But often, in the world's most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which bea...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...mself with every mystery, and awe;
Till, weary, he sat down before the maw
Of a wide outlet, fathomless and dim
To wild uncertainty and shadows grim.
There, when new wonders ceas'd to float before,
And thoughts of self came on, how crude and sore
The journey homeward to habitual self!
A mad-pursuing of the fog-born elf,
Whose flitting lantern, through rude nettle-briar,
Cheats us into a swamp, into a fire,
Into the bosom of a hated thing.
What misery most drowningly...Read more of this...
by
Housman, A E
...riff
On tablets not of wax,
Nor with a pen did I inscribe it there,
For many reasons: LIFE, I say, IS NOT
A STRANGER TO UNCERTAINTY.
Not from the flight of omen-yelling fowls
This fact did I discover,
Nor did the Delphine tripod bark it out,
Nor yet Dodona.
Its native ingunuity sufficed
My self-taught diaphragm.
Antistrophe
Why should I mention
The Inachean daughter, loved of Zeus?
Her whom of old the gods,
More provident than kind,
Provided with four hoofs, two...Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...an’t attain it
twentieth-century science perceived that mess
the more you probed the inner – more the scope
for chaos (uncertainty) – no mind could drain it
tie it to a marriage it must elope
clarity of thinking must make worse the stress
the artist looks at truth and has to feign it
stirs mud makes shapes (gives up) disturbs old rope
what’s not there’s there (says who) – such wantonness
(II)
revelation comes in flits and starts
each one’s a bundle of the genes’ loose ends...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...Must all of worth be travailled for, and those
Life's brightest stars rise from a troubled sea?
Must years go by in sad uncertainty
Leaving us doubting whose the conquering blows,
Are we or Fate the victors? Time which shows
All inner meanings will reveal, but we
Shall never know the upshot. Ours to be
Wasted with longing, shattered in the throes,
The agonies of splendid dreams, which day
Dims from our vision, but each night brings back;
We strive to hold their grandeur, ...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...loosening; honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the state.
We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty; somewhere
A man is killed, or a house burned,
Yet no clear fact to be discerned:
Come build in he empty house of the stare.
A barricade of stone or of wood;
Some fourteen days of civil war;
Last night they trundled down the road
That dead young soldier in his blood:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
We had fed the heart on fa...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...br>
Only analysis with its symmetries and asymmetries
Exactness and paradox, scientific as Heisenberg's
Principle of Uncertainty, yet various as the shades of Monet,
Eases me.
I think of those I have known and know no longer,
Who have died needlessly, disappeared irrevocably
Or changed beyond recognition.
I think of the bridge, river and streets
Of my Montmartre, gone under and made over
Into the grey utilities of trade, the empty road,
Sad as telegraph pol...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...OF the terrible doubt of appearances,
Of the uncertainty after all—that we may be deluded,
That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all,
That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only,
May-be the things I perceive—the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing
waters,
The skies of day and night—colors, densities, forms—May-be these are, (as
doubtless
they
a...Read more of this...
by
Gibran, Kahlil
...k her hand and placed against it his flaming lips. And with a voice with bespoke past sorrow, and joy of union, and uncertainty of her reaction, he said, "Fear me not, for I am the object of your plea. Be glad, for Peace has carried me back safely to you, and humanity has restored what greed essayed to take from us. Be not sad, but smile, my beloved. Do not express bewilderment, for Love has power that dispels Death; charm that conquers the enemy. I am you...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...morning; every night
I tried to dream of him, but never could,
More than I might have seen in Adam’s eyes
Their fond uncertainty when Eve began
The play that all her tireless progeny
Are not yet weary of. One scene of it
Was brief, but was eternal while it lasted;
And that was while I was the happiest
Of an imaginary six or seven,
Somewhere in history but not on earth,
For whom the sky had shaken and let stars
Rain down like diamonds. Then there were clouds, ...Read more of this...
by
Stone, Ruth
...For me the great truths are laced with hysteria.
How many Einsteins can we tolerate?
I leap into the uncertainty principle.
After so many smears, you want to wash it off with a laugh.
Ha ha, you say. So what if it's a meltdown?
Last lines to poems I will write immediately....Read more of this...
by
Arnold, Matthew
...with indiscernible flow its way;
And that we should not see
The buried stream, and seem to be
Eddying at large in blind uncertainty,
Though driving on with it eternally.
But often, in the world's most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which bea...Read more of this...
by
Lehman, David
...Florida. She gave him Rome, New York.
He gave her a false sense of security. She gave him a true sense of uncertainty.
He gave her the finger. She gave him what for.
He gave her a black eye. She gave him a divorce.
He gave her a steak for her black eye. She gave him his money back.
He gave her what she had never had before. She gave him what he had had and
lost.
He gave her nastiness in children. She gave him pruder...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...but dimpled not for joy
The mountain-shadows on her breast
Were neither broken nor at rest;
In bright uncertainty they lie,
Like future joys to Fancy's eye.
The water-lily to the light
Her chalice reared of silver bright;
The doe awoke, and to the lawn,
Begemmed with dew-drops, led her fawn;
The gray mist left the mountain-side,
The torrent showed its glistening pride;
Invisible in flecked sky The lark sent clo...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...ves unglossily against the vaguely bright wall --
Dull chalk-white striking the retina like a blow
Through the wavering uncertainty of steam.
Vitreous-white of glasses with green reflections,
Ice-green carboys, shifting -- greener, bluer -- with the jar of
moving water.
Jagged green-white bowls of pressed glass
Rearing snow-peaks of chipped sugar
Above the lighthouse-shaped castors
Of grey pepper and grey-white salt.
Grey-white placards: "Oyster Stew, Cornbeef Ha...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...equally
By immortality.
No respite from the inference
That this which is begun,
Though where its labors lie
A bland uncertainty
Besets the sight
This mighty night --...Read more of this...
by
Bogan, Louise
...f;
Be mad--only do not let talk
Wear the bloom from silence.
And go away without fire or lantern
Let there be some uncertainty about your departure....Read more of this...
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