Famous Upstairs Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Upstairs poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous upstairs poems. These examples illustrate what a famous upstairs poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Wilmot, John
...a lemon peel.
Prithee, farewell! We'll meet again anon."
The necessary thing bows, and is gone.
--She flies upstairs, and all the haste does show
That fifty antic postures will allow,
And then bursts out: "Dear madam, am not I
The altered'st creature breathing? Let me die,
I find myself ridiculously grown,
Embarassee with being out of town,
Rude and untaught like any Indian queen:
My country nakedness is strangely seen.
--"How is love governed, love that rules...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...often think of the smooth hickory bars.
It got so I would say--you know, half fooling--
"It's time I took my turn upstairs in jail"--
Just as you will till it becomes a habit.
No wonder I was glad to get away.
Mind you, I waited till Len said the word.
I didn't want the blame if things went wrong.
I was glad though, no end, when we moved out,
And I looked to be happy, and I was,
As I said, for a while--but I don't know!
Somehow the change wore ou...Read more of this...
by
Betjeman, John
...while swimming along to Heaven.
The sun shone low on the railway line
And over the bricks and stacks
And in at the upstairs windows
Of the Dawley houses' backs
When we saw the ghost of Captain Webb,
Webb in a water sheeting,
Come dripping along in a bathing dress
To the Saturday evening meeting.
Dripping along -
Dripping along -
To the Congregational Hall;
Dripping and still he rose over the sill and faded away in a wall.
There wasn't a man in Oakengates
That ha...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...was young,
I had not given a penny for a song
Did not the poet Sing it with such airs
That one believed he had a sword upstairs;
Yet would be now, could I but have my wish,
Colder and dumber and deafer than a fish....Read more of this...
by
Walcott, Derek
...r>
My face smashed in, my bloddy mug
pouring, my olive-branch jacket saved
from cuts and tears,
I crawled four flights upstairs.
Sprawled in the gutter, I
remember a few watchers waved
loudly, and one kid's mother shouting
like "Jackie" or "Terry,"
"now that's enough!"
It's nothing really.
They don't get enough love.
You know they wouldn't kill
you. Just playing rough,
like young Americans will.
Still it taught me somthing
about love. If it's so toug...Read more of this...
by
Aldington, Richard
...th the hymn-books.
There was nothing to see,
Nothing to do,
Nothing to play with,
Except that in an empty room upstairs
There was a large tin box
Containing reproductions of the Magna Charta,
Of the Declaration of Independence
And of a letter from Raleigh after the Armada.
There were also several packets of stamps,
Yellow and blue Guatemala parrots,
Blue stags and red baboons and birds from Sarawak,
Indians and Men-of-war
From the United States,
And the...Read more of this...
by
Fu, Du
...landscape Long rain not harm farming Full willow row little green Hill pear flower little red Reed pipe upstairs emit One goose into high sky The sky's water has fallen, and autumn clouds are thin, The western wind has blown ten thousand li. This morning's scene is good and fine, Long rain has not harmed the land. The row of willows begins to show green, The pear tree on ...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
... I blew it and wish I hadn't.
I rang the door bell and waited on the stairs. I could hear her moving around upstairs.
The way she moved I could tell that she was getting up. I had awakened her.
Then she came down the stairs. I could feel her approach in my stomach. Every step she
took stirred my feelings and lead indirectly to her opening the door. She saw me and it
did not please her.
Once upon a time it pleased her very much, last wee...Read more of this...
by
Betjeman, John
...She died in the upstairs bedroom
By the light of the ev'ning star
That shone through the plate glass window
From over Leamington Spa
Beside her the lonely crochet
Lay patiently and unstirred,
But the fingers that would have work'd it
Were dead as the spoken word.
And Nurse came in with the tea-things
Breast high 'mid the stands and chairs-
But Nurse was alone with her...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...me from my bedside radio?
Now it's Dinn, Dinn, Dinn!
while the ladies in the next room argue
and pick their teeth.
Upstairs a girl curls like a snail;
in another room someone tries to eat a shoe;
meanwhile an adolescent pads up and down
the hall in his white tennis socks.
A new doctor makes rounds
advertising tranquilizers, insulin, or shock
to the uninitiated.
Six years of such small preoccupations!
Six years of shuttling in and out of this place!
O my hunger! ...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...> He'd wanted to
go back again and again. He'd wanted
to do this for the country,
for this -- a small house with upstairs
bedrooms -- so he'd asked to go
on raid after raid as though
he hungered to kill or be killed.
THE PRESIDENT
Today on television men
will enter space and return,
men she cannot imagine.
Lost in gigantic paper suits,
they move like sea creatures.
A voice will crackle from out
there where no voices are
speaking of the great the...Read more of this...
by
Kenyon, Jane
...I never let my dear
ones drown!" After that, I wept for days.
6IN AND OUT
The dog searches until he finds me
upstairs, lies down with a clatter
of elbows, puts his head on my foot.
Sometimes the sound of his breathing
saves my life -- in and out, in
and out; a pause, a long sigh. . . .
7PARDON
A piece of burned meat
wears my clothes, speaks
in my voice, dispatches obligations
haltingly, or not at all.
It is tired of trying
to b...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...ke it, dear?”
“That’s what you’re so concerned to know! You hope
I like it. Bang goes something big away
Off there upstairs. The very tread of men
As great as those is shattering to the frame
Of such a little house. Once left alone,
You and I, dear, will go with softer steps
Up and down stairs and through the rooms, and none
But sudden winds that snatch them from our hands
Will ever slam the doors.”
“I think you see
More than you like to own to out that wind...Read more of this...
by
Lorde, Audre
...where only white men
ruled by money. How you labored
in the docks of the Hotel Astor
your bright wife a chambermaid upstairs
welded love and survival to ambition
as the land of promise withered
crashed the hotel closed
and you peddle dawn-bought apples
from a push-cart on Broadway.
Does an image of return
wealthy and triumphant
warm your chilblained fingers
as you count coins in the Manhattan snow
or is it only Linda
who dreams of home?
When my mother's first-born ...Read more of this...
by
John, David St
...e gone, those little mermaid tears
Running down her cheeks. Maestro
Was always cool. He'd let them use his room upstairs,
Sometimes, because they couldn't go out--
Black and white couldn't mix like that then.
I mean, think about it--
This kid star and a cool beauty who made King Cole
Sound raw? No, they had to keep it
To the club; though sometimes,
Near the end, he'd come out to her place
At the beach, always taking the iced whisky
I brought to him with a sly, swe...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...ou were named after a maple tree.
Your mother named you. You and she just saw
Each other in passing in the room upstairs,
One coming this way into life, and one
Going the other out of life—you know?
So you can't have much recollection of her.
She had been having a long look at you.
She put her finger in your cheek so hard
It must have made your dimple there, and said,
'Maple.' I said it too: 'Yes, for her name.'
She nodded. So we're sure there's no...Read more of this...
by
Koch, Kenneth
...inside Rome. One sidewalk
May hide another, as when you're asleep there, and
One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs
Hide the beating of drums. One friend may hide another, you sit at the
foot of a tree
With one and when you get up to leave there is another
Whom you'd have preferred to talk to all along. One teacher,
One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man
May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass.
You think, Now it is saf...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...r and then turn right until you're outside. It's stacked
in lengths. You can't miss it. The waterfalls are upstairs in
the used plumbing department. "
"What about the animals?"
"Well, what's left of the animals are straight back from
the stream. You'll see a bunch of our trucks parked on a
road by the railroad tracks. Turn right on the road and fol-
low it down past the piles of lumber. The animal shed's right
at the end of the lot. "...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...was embarrassed. I could not leave the bookstore because
they were entering by the only door, so I decided to go
upstairs and go to the toilet. I got up abruptly and walked
to the back of the bookstore and went upstairs to the bathroom,
and they followed after me. I could hear them on the stairs.
I waited for a long time in the bathroom and they waited
an equally long time in the other room. They never spoke.
When I came out of the bathroom, t...Read more of this...
by
Nash, Ogden
...time taking off your seeing glasses to put
on your reading glasses, and then remembering that your
reading glasses are upstairs or in the car,
And then you can't find your seeing glasses again because
without them on you can't see where they are.
Enough of such mishaps, they would try the patience of an
ox,
I prefer to forget both pairs of glasses and pass my declining
years saluting strange women and grandfather clocks....Read more of this...
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