Famous Unlocked Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Snapshots of a Daughter-In-Law

by Adrienne Rich
  1

You, once a belle in Shreveport,
with henna-colored hair, skin like a peachbud,
still have your dresses copied from that time,
and play a Chopin prelude
called by Cortot: "Delicious recollections
float like perfume through the memory."

Your mind now, moldering like wedding-cake,
heavy with useless experience, rich
with suspicion, rumor, fantasy,
crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge
of mere fact. In the prime of your life.

Nervy, glowering,...Read more of this...

Perished

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 I called to the summer sun, 
“Come over the hills to-day! 
Unlock the rivers, and tell them to run, 
And kiss the snow-drifts and melt them away.”
And the sun came over – a tardy lover –
And unlocked the river, and told it to glide, 
And kissed the snow-drift till it fainted and died.

I called to the robin, “Come back!...Read more of this...

Reminder

by D. H. Lawrence
    Do you remember
How night after night swept level and low
Overhead, at home, and had not one star,
Nor one narrow gate for the moon to go
    Forth to her field of November.

    And you remember,
How towards the north a red blot on the sky
Burns like a blotch of anxiety
Over the forges,...Read more of this...

Love And Grief

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Out of my heart, one treach'rous winter's day,
I locked young Love and threw the key away.
Grief, wandering widely, found the key,
And hastened with it, straightway, back to me,
With Love beside him. He unlocked the door
And bade Love enter with him there and stay.
And so the twain abide for evermore.
...Read more of this...

A Servant to Servants

by Robert Frost
 I didn't make you know how glad I was 
To have you come and camp here on our land. 
I promised myself to get down some day 
And see the way you lived, but I don't know! 
With a houseful of hungry men to feed 
I guess you'd find.... It seems to me 
I can't express my feelings any...Read more of this...

When Once The Twilight Locks No Longer

by Dylan Thomas
 When once the twilight locks no longer
Locked in the long worm of my finger
Nor damned the sea that sped about my fist,
The mouth of time sucked, like a sponge,
The milky acid on each hinge,
And swallowed dry the waters of the breast.

When the galactic sea was sucked
And all the dry seabed unlocked,
I sent my creature scouting on the globe,
That globe...Read more of this...

My Friends Light

by Andrei Voznesensky
 I'm waiting for my friend. The gate's unlocked. 
 The banisters are lit so he can walk. 

 I'm waiting for my friend. The times are dull and tough. 
 Anticipation lightens our life. 

 He's driving down the Ring Road, at full speed, 
 the way I did it when he was in need. 

 He will arrive...Read more of this...

The Heart of Australia

by Henry Lawson
 When the wars of the world seemed ended, and silent the distant drum, 
Ten years ago in Australia, I wrote of a war to come: 
And I pictured Australians fighting as their fathers fought of old 
For the old things, pride or country, for God or the Devil or gold. 

And they lounged on the rim of Australia in...Read more of this...

Homers Seeing-Eye Dog

by William Matthews
 Most of the time he worked, a sort of sleep
with a purpose, so far as I could tell.
How he got from the dark of sleep
to the dark of waking up I'll never know;
the lax sprawl sleep allowed him
began to set from the edges in,
like a custard, and then he was awake,
me too, of course, wriggling my ears
while he unlocked...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Unlocked poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace