Famous Visiting Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Visiting poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous visiting poems. These examples illustrate what a famous visiting poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Wilmot, John
...f some few agree
To call him so; the rest to that degree
Affected are, that with their ears they see.
--Where I was visiting the other night
Comes a fine lady, with her humble knight,
Who had prevailed on her, through her own skill,
At his request, thought much against his will,
To come to London.
As the coach stopped, we heard her voice, more loud
Than a great-bellied woman's in a crowd,
Telling the knight that her affairs require
He, for some hours, obsequiously ret...Read more of this...
by
Wei, Wang
...an incense burns before her.
Those she knows in town are only the rich and the lavish,
And day and night she is visiting the hosts of the gayest mansions.
...Who notices the girl from Yue with a face of white jade,
Humble, poor, alone, by the river, washing silk?
...Read more of this...
by
Milosz, Czeslaw
...wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers.
White clouds refused to accept them, and the wind
Was too busy visiting sea after sea.
We did not succeed in interesting the animals.
Dogs, disappointed, expected an order,
A cat, as always immoral, was falling asleep.
A person seemingly very close
Did not care to hear of things long past.
Conversations with friends over vodka or coffee
Ought not be prolonged beyond the first sign of boredom.
It woul...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...Good for visiting hospitals or charitable work. Take some time to attend to your health.
Surely I will be disquieted
by the hospital, that body zone--
bodies wrapped in elastic bands,
bodies cased in wood or used like telephones,
bodies crucified up onto their crutches,
bodies wearing rubber bags between their legs,
bodies vomiting up their juice like deterg...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...rgan--
Next, teacher Trungpa Vajracharya's ghost mind, Gelek Rinpoche,
there Sakyong Mipham, Dalai Lama alert, chance visiting
America, Satchitananda Swami
Shivananda, Dehorahava Baba, Karmapa XVI, Dudjom Rinpoche,
Katagiri & Suzuki Roshi's phantoms
Baker, Whalen, Daido Loorie, Qwong, Frail White-haired Kapleau
Roshis, Lama Tarchen --
Then, most important, lovers over half-century
Dozens, a hundred, more, older fellows bald & rich
young boys met naked recently in bed...Read more of this...
by
Matthew, John
...It’s akin to visiting my foster mother, today,
That I am returning to you, mother city, after twenty years,
I look at your broad, bereft blood-stained streets, mater,
Through which emperors, prime ministers cavalcaded,
In victory and defeat, through gates and triumphal arches,
That murmur of the pains of your rape and impregnation.
The sudden shock of your poverty ...Read more of this...
by
Donne, John
...so, the taper's beamy eye
Amorously twinkling beckons the giddy fly,
Yet burns his wings; and such the devil is,
Scarce visiting them who are entirely his.
When I behold a stream which, from the spring,
Doth with doubtful melodious murmuring,
Or in a speechless slumber, calmly ride
Her wedded channels' bosom, and then chide
And bend her brows, and swell if any bough
Do but stoop down, or kiss her upmost brow:
Yet, if her often gnawing kisses win
The traiterous bank to gap...Read more of this...
by
Corso, Gregory
...all Troys
heralding cypressean torches
racing plumes and banners
and yet knowing Homer with a step of grace
Lo the visiting team of Present
the home team of Past
Lyre and tube together joined
Hark the hotdog soda olive grape
gala galaxy robed and uniformed
commissary O the happy stands
Ethereal root and cheer and boo
The billioned all-time attendance
The Zeusian pandemonium
Hermes racing Owens
The Spitball of Buddha
Christ striking out
Luther stealing third
...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats through unseen among us, -- visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower, --
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening, --
Like clouds in starlight widely spread, --
Like memory of music fled, --
Like aught that for it...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...ens drear
Fright and perplex, so also shuddered he---
Not at dog's howl, or gloom-bird's hated screech,
Or the familiar visiting of one
Upon the first toll of his passing-bell,
Or prophesyings of the midnight lamp;
But horrors, portion'd to a giant nerve,
Oft made Hyperion ache. His palace bright,
Bastion'd with pyramids of glowing gold,
And touch'd with shade of bronzed obelisks,
Glar'd a blood-red through all its thousand courts,
Arches, and domes, and fiery galleries;
...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...ite
Satellite TV, conference rooms, disco dinners.
I knew Len, the tubby taxi man
With his retirement dreams of visiting
The world’s great galleries:
‘Titian, Leonardo, Goya,
I’ve lived all my life in the house I was born in
All my life I’ve saved for this trip’
The same house he was done to death in
Tortured by three fourteen year olds,
Made headlines for one night, another
Murder to add to Beeston’s five this year.
Yorkshire Forward advertises nation-...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...possesses,
A magnificent rotunda among lawns and wooded glades,
Air conditioned with more staff than patients-
When visiting times are readily extended to encompass
My moorland walks and journeys to the capital
When I visit Brenda Williams, England’s leading protest poet.
In an Eden garden which spreads its lawned sleeves
To envelop my tobacco smoke which irritates everyone
Or is it a displacement onto the smoker
As I ecstasise the red and yellow splendour of t...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...unt the crisped brooks,
Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold,
With mazy errour under pendant shades
Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed
Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice Art
In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon
Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain,
Both where the morning sun first warmly smote
The open field, and where the unpierced shade
Imbrowned the noontide bowers: Thus was this place
A happy rural seat of various view;
Gro...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...s very lucky. That's always a good
combination.
You asked about New York and New York is very hot.
I'm visiting some friends, a young burglar and his wife.
He's unemployed and his wife is working as a cocktail wait-
ress. He's been looking for work but I fear the worst.
It was so hot last night that I slept with a wet sheet wrapped
around myself, trying to keep cool. I felt like a mental patient.
I woke up in the middle of the night...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...beg
It will not let me take
One single thing away:
Not my son's frightening eyes -
A suffering set in stone,
Or prison visiting hours
Or days that end in storms
Nor the sweet coolness of a hand
The anxious shade of lime trees
Nor the light distant sound
Of final comforting words.
[14 May 1940. Fontannyi Dom]
X
CRUCIFIXION
Weep not for me, mother.
I am alive in my grave.
1.
A choir of angels glorified the greatest hour,
The heavens melted into flames.<...Read more of this...
by
Kay, Jackie
...g
Murderous light
My breasts sag my stomach
Still soft as a baby's
My voice deep and old as ammonite
I am a stranger visiting
Myself occasionally
An empty ruinous house
Cobwebs dust and broken stairs
Inside woodworm
Outside the weeds grow tall
As she must be now
V
She, my little foreigner
No longer familiar with my womb
Kicking her language of living
Somewhere past stalking her first words
She is six years old today
I am twenty-five; we are only
That distance apart ...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...e light-bearded, sunburnt faces
In negligent and travel-stain'd array,
That in the city of Dante come to-day,
Haughtily visiting her holy places?
O these be noble men that hide their graces,
True England's blood, her ancient glory's stay,
By tales of fame diverted on their way
Home from the rule of oriental races.
Life-trifling lions these, of gentle eyes
And motion delicate, but swift to fire
For honour, passionate where duty lies,
Most loved and loving: and they quickl...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...thither half
The neighbouring borough with their Institute
Of which he was the patron. I was there
From college, visiting the son,--the son
A Walter too,--with others of our set,
Five others: we were seven at Vivian-place.
And me that morning Walter showed the house,
Greek, set with busts: from vases in the hall
Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names,
Grew side by side; and on the pavement lay
Carved stones of the Abbey-ruin in the park,
Hug...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...with us.
Our generation awaits the taste of death
With none of the anticipated solace,
No children’s children visiting in spite of the spare room
Stacked with toys, with shelves of dusty books, Baum’s ‘Magical Land of Oz’
Its spine laid bare, Mombi the witch, Dorothy and Toto
Gathered forlornly round the saw-horse, the scarlet and crimson
Of their Edwardian rig slightly ridiculous, the Gothic typeface
Evoking sepia prints of my father at five in a pinafore or s...Read more of this...
by
Piercy, Marge
...In flat America, in Chicago,
Graceland cemetery on the German North Side.
Forty feet of Corinthian candle
celebrate Pullman embedded
lonely raisin in a cake of concrete.
The Potter Palmers float
in an island parthenon.
Barons of hogfat, railroads and wheat
are postmarked with angels and lambs.
But the Getty tomb: white, snow patte...Read more of this...
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