Famous Until Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The List of Famous Hats

by Edward Taylor
 Napoleon's hat is an obvious choice I guess to list as a famous
hat, but that's not the hat I have in mind. That was his hat for
show. I am thinking of his private bathing cap, which in all hon-
esty wasn't much different than the one any jerk might buy at a
corner drugstore now, except for two minor eccentricities. The
first...Read more of this...

At Midnight Hour

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [Goethe relates that a remarkable situation 
he was in one bright moonlight night led to the composition of this 
sweet song, which was "the dearer to him because he could not say 
whence it came and whither it would."]

AT midnight hour I went, not willingly,

A little, little boy, yon churchyard past,
To Father Vicar's house; the stars on high

On all...Read more of this...

Ave Caesar

by Robinson Jeffers
 No bitterness: our ancestors did it.
They were only ignorant and hopeful, they wanted freedom but wealth too.
Their children will learn to hope for a Caesar.
Or rather--for we are not aquiline Romans but soft mixed colonists--
Some kindly Sicilian tyrant who'll keep
Poverty and Carthage off until the Romans arrive,
We are easy to manage, a gregarious people,
Full of sentiment, clever at mechanics,...Read more of this...

Reedy River

by Henry Lawson
 Ten miles down Reedy River 
A pool of water lies, 
And all the year it mirrors 
The changes in the skies, 
And in that pool's broad bosom 
Is room for all the stars; 
Its bed of sand has drifted 
O'er countless rocky bars. 

Around the lower edges 
There waves a bed of reeds, 
Where water rats are hidden 
And...Read more of this...

Old Scout

by Robert William Service
 Is it because I'm bent and grey,
 Though wearing rather well,
That I can slickly get away
 With all the yarns I tell?
Is it because my bleary eye
 No longer beams with youth
That I can plant a whopping lie,
 And flout the truth?

I wonder why folks hark to me
 Where once they would have laughed?
They treat my yarns respectfully,
 No...Read more of this...

There is no Breeze to Cool the Heat of Love

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   As those who eat a Luscious Fruit, sunbaked,
     Full of sweet juice, with zest, until they find
   It finished, and their appetite unslaked,
     And so return and eat the pared-off rind;—

   We, who in Youth, set white and careless teeth
     In...Read more of this...

Things I Didnt Know I Loved

by Nazim Hikmet
 it's 1962 March 28th
I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train 
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain 
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird

I didn't know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it 
I've never worked the earth
it must be my...Read more of this...

Until the Desert knows

by Emily Dickinson
 Until the Desert knows
That Water grows
His Sands suffice
But let him once suspect
That Caspian Fact
Sahara dies

Utmost is relative --
Have not or Have
Adjacent sums
Enough -- the first Abode
On the familiar Road
Galloped in Dreams --...Read more of this...

A Lovers Call XXVII

by Kahlil Gibran
 Where are you, my beloved? Are you in that little 
Paradise, watering the flowers who look upon you 
As infants look upon the breast of their mothers? 


Or are you in your chamber where the shrine of 
Virtue has been placed in your honor, and upon 
Which you offer my heart and soul as sacrifice? 


Or amongst the books,...Read more of this...

Dominion lasts until obtained --

by Emily Dickinson
 Dominion lasts until obtained --
Possession just as long --
But these -- endowing as they flit
Eternally belong.

How everlasting are the Lips
Known only to the Dew --
These are the Brides of permanence
Supplanting me and you....Read more of this...

To Her Father with Some Verses

by Anne Bradstreet
 Most truly honoured, and as truly dear, 
If worth in me or ought I do appear, 
Who can of right better demand the same 
Than may your worthy self from whom it came? 
The principal might yield a greater sum, 
Yet handled ill, amounts but to this crumb; 
My stock's so small I know not how to pay, 
My...Read more of this...

Sonnets 04: Only Until This Cigarette Is Ended

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Only until this cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
And in the firelight to a lance extended,
Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,
The broken shadow dances on the wall,
I will permit my memory to recall
The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.
And then adieu,—farewell!—the dream is done.
Yours is a...Read more of this...

By Candlelight

by Sylvia Plath
 This is winter, this is night, small love --
A sort of black horsehair,
A rough, dumb country stuff
Steeled with the sheen
Of what green stars can make it to our gate.
I hold you on my arm.
It is very late.
The dull bells tongue the hour.
The mirror floats us at one candle power.

This is the fluid in which we meet each other,
This haloey...Read more of this...

A great Hope fell

by Emily Dickinson
 A great Hope fell
You heard no noise
The Ruin was within
Oh cunning wreck that told no tale
And let no Witness in

The mind was built for mighty Freight
For dread occasion planned
How often foundering at Sea
Ostensibly, on Land

A not admitting of the wound
Until it grew so wide
That all my Life had entered it
And there were troughs beside

A closing of the simple lid
That...Read more of this...

The Maoris Wool

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The Maoris are a mighty race -- the finest ever known; 
Before the missionaries came they worshipped wood and stone; 
They went to war and fought like fiends, and when the war was done 
They pacified their conquered foes by eating every one. 
But now-a-days about the pahs in idleness they lurk, 
Prepared to smoke or drink or talk...Read more of this...

Prothalamion

by Delmore Schwartz
 "little soul, little flirting,
 little perverse one
 where are you off to now?
 little wan one, firm one
 little exposed one...
 and never make fun of me again."


Now I must betray myself.
The feast of bondage and unity is near,
And none engaged in that great piety
When each bows to the other, kneels, and takes
Hand in hand, glance and glance, care...Read more of this...

Until the wise are satisfied,

by Kalidasa
Until the wise are satisfied,
I cannot feel that skill is shown;
The best-trained mind requires support,
And does not trust itself alone....Read more of this...

Recollection of the Arabian Nights

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 WHEN the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free 
In the silken sail of infancy, 
The tide of time flow'd back with me, 
The forward-flowing tide of time; 
And many a sheeny summer-morn, 
Adown the Tigris I was borne, 
By Bagdat's shrines of fretted gold, 
High-walled gardens green and old; 
True Mussulman was I and sworn, 
For it was...Read more of this...

Essay On The Personal

by Stephen Dunn
 Because finally the personal
is all that matters,
we spend years describing stones,
chairs, abandoned farmhouses—
until we're ready. Always
it's a matter of precision,
what it feels like
to kiss someone or to walk
out the door. How good it was
to practice on stones
which were things we could love
without weeping over. How good
someone else abandoned the farmhouse,
bankrupt and desperate.
Now we can bring a fine edge
to our...Read more of this...

May 24 1980

by Joseph Brodsky
 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages,
carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters,
lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis,
dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles.
From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives rake my nitty-gritty.
Quit the country the bore and...Read more of this...

Darling Daughter of Babylon

by Vachel Lindsay
 Too soon you wearied of our tears.
And then you danced with spangled feet,
Leading Belshazzar's chattering court
A-tinkling through the shadowy street.
With mead they came, with chants of shame.
DESIRE'S red flag before them flew.
And Istar's music moved your mouth
And Baal's deep shames rewoke in you.

Now you could drive the royal car;
Forget our Nation's breaking load:
Now you could sleep on silver beds.—
(Bitter...Read more of this...

The Bistro Styx

by Rita Dove
 She was thinner, with a mannered gauntness
as she paused just inside the double
glass doors to survey the room, silvery cape
billowing dramatically behind her.What's this,

I thought, lifting a hand until
she nodded and started across the parquet;
that's when I saw she was dressed all in gray,
from a kittenish cashmere skirt and cowl

down to the graphite signature of her shoes.
"Sorry I'm late,"...Read more of this...

Longfellow

by Henry Van Dyke
 In a great land, a new land, a land full of labour 
and riches and confusion,
Where there were many running to and fro, and
shouting, and striving together,
In the midst of the hurry and the troubled noise, 
I heard the voice of one singing. 

"What are you doing there, O man, singing
quietly amid all this tumult?
This is the time for...Read more of this...

Lines Written In Recapitulation

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 I could not bring this splendid world nor any trading beast
In charge of it, to defer, no, not to give ear, not in the least
Appearance, to my handsome prophecies,
which here I ponder and put by. 

I am left simpler, less encumbered, by the consciousness
that I shall by no pebble in my dirty sling
avail To slay one purple giant four...Read more of this...

Temporary Poem Of My Time

by Yehuda Amichai
 Hebrew writing and Arabic writing go from east to west,
Latin writing, from west to east.
Languages are like cats:
You must not stroke their hair the wrong way.
The clouds come from the sea, the hot wind from the desert,
The trees bend in the wind,
And stones fly from all four winds,
Into all four winds. They throw stones,
Throw this land, one at the...Read more of this...

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