Famous Waiting Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Waiting poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous waiting poems. These examples illustrate what a famous waiting poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Carl Sandburg
TODAY I will let the old boat stand
Where the sweep of the harbor tide comes in
To the pulse of a far, deep-steady sway.
And I will rest and dream and sit on the deck
Watching the world go by
And take my pay for many hard days gone I remember.
I will choose what clouds I like
In the great white fleets that wander...Read more of this...
by
Leonard Cohen
(co-written by Sharon Robinson)
Baby, I've been waiting,
I've been waiting night and day.
I didn't see the time,
I waited half my life away.
There were lots of invitations
and I know you sent me some,
but I was waiting
for the miracle, for the miracle to come.
I know you really loved me.
but, you see, my hands...Read more of this...
by
Constantine P Cavafy
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
The barbarians are due here today.
Why isn't anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today.
What laws can the senators make now?
Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating.
Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
In Worcester, Massachusetts,
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist's appointment
and sat and waited for her
in the dentist's waiting room.
It was winter. It got dark
early. The waiting room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
lamps and magazines.
My aunt was inside
what seemed like a long time
and while I waited and read
the National Geographic
(I could read) and carefully
studied the photographs:
the inside...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
I am waiting for the sky to flower
Like poems in a winter mind:
And yet they come, maybe trailing along
An urchin gang, sobbing and snotty-nosed....Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
A star looks down at me,
And says: "Here I and you
Stand each in our degree:
What do you mean to do,—
Mean to do?"
I say: "For all I know,
Wait, and let Time go by,
Till my change come."—"Just so,"
The star says: "So mean I:—
So mean I."...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
WHEN the dawn comes forth I wonder
Will our sad, sad hearts awaken,
And the grief we laboured under
From the new-in-joy be shaken?
If the night be long in going,
All our souls will fix in sadness;
And the light of morning glowing
Waken in our eyes no gladness.
All unschooled in mirth we will not
Rouse forgotten joys from sleeping;
And the dawn our pain shall still...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
You taught me Waiting with Myself --
Appointment strictly kept --
You taught me fortitude of Fate --
This -- also -- I have learnt --
An Altitude of Death, that could
No bitterer debar
Than Life -- had done -- before it --
Yet -- there is a Science more --
The Heaven you know -- to understand
That you be not ashamed
Of Me -- in Christ's...Read more of this...
by
Judith Skillman
Poem by Anne-Marie Derése, translated by Judith Skillman.
The waiting volcano inside us
gnaws, digs, trembles,
weighs its chances.
Distress coils up,
shrinks silent like a sick beast.
We are unrecognizable,
unique
in the certainty of our ferocity....Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
The sun has slipped his tether
And galloped down the west.
(Oh, it's weary, weary waiting, love.)
The little bird is sleeping
In the softness of its nest.
Night follows day, day follows dawn,
And so the time has come and gone:
And it's weary, weary waiting, love.
The cruel wind is rising
[Pg 101]With a whistle and a wail.
(And it's weary, weary waiting, love.)
My eyes are...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
People sit numbly at the counter
waiting for breakfast or service.
Today it's Hartford, Connecticut
more than twenty-five years after
the last death of Wallace Stevens.
I have come in out of the cold
and wind of a Sunday morning
of early March, and I seem to be
crying, but I'm only freezing
and unpeeled. The waitress brings
me...Read more of this...
by
Eliza Cook
THREE summers have gone since the first time we met, love,
And still 'tis in vain that I ask thee to wed ;
I hear no reply but a gentle " Not yet, love,"
With a smile of your lip, and a shake of your head.
Ah ! how oft have I whispered, how oft have I sued thee,
And breathed my soul's question...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
A day of seeming innocence,
A glorious sun and sky,
And, just above my picket fence,
Black Bonnet passing by.
In knitted gloves and quaint old dress,
Without a spot or smirch,
Her worn face lit with peacefulness,
Old Granny goes to church.
Her hair is richly white, like milk,
That long ago was fair --
And glossy still...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
Dawn’s my Mr Right, already
Cocks have crowed, birds flown from nests,
The neon lights of Leeds last night still
Sovereign in my sights, limousines and
Pink baloons, tee shirts with green stencilled
Dates of wedding days to come, the worn dance floor,
Jingling arcades where chrome fendered fruit machines
Rest on plush carpets like the ghosts of fifties Chevies,
Dreams for sale on boulevards where forget-me-nots
Are...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
Afield at dusk
What things for dream there are when specter-like,
Moving amond tall haycocks lightly piled,
I enter alone upon the stubbled filed,
From which the laborers' voices late have died,
And in the antiphony of afterglow
And rising full moon, sit me down
Upon the full moon's side of the first haycock
And lose myself amid so many alike.
I dream upon the opposing lights of...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
for Daniel Weissbort
Some poems meant only for my eyes
About a grief I can’t let go
But I want to, want to throw
It away like an old worn-out cloak
Or screw up like a ball of over-written
Trash and toss into the corner bin.
I said it must come up or out
I don't know which but either way
Will do, I know I can't write...Read more of this...
by
Sophie Hannah
He’ll be pleased if I phone to ask him how he is.
It will make me look considerate and he likes considerate people.
He’ll be reassured to see that I haven’t lost interest,
Which might make him happy and then I’ll have done him a favour.
If I phone him right now I’ll get to speak to him sooner
Than I will if I...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
Thou dear and well-loved haunt of happy hours,
How often in some distant gallery,
Gained by a little painful spiral stair,
Far from the halls and corridors where throng
The crowd of casual readers, have I passed
Long, peaceful hours seated on the floor
Of some retired nook, all lined with books,
Where reverie and quiet reign supreme!
Above, below, on every side, high shelved
From careless grasp...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
Tired of waiting, you burst your bonds, impatient flowers, before
the winter had gone. Glimpses of the unseen comer reached your
wayside watch, and you rushed out running and panting, impulsive
jasmines, troops of riotous roses.
You were the first to march to the breach of death, your
clamour of colour and perfume troubled the air. You laughed and
pressed and pushed each other, bared...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
BECAUSE I have called to you
as the flame flamingo calls,
or the want of a spotted hawk
is called—
because in the dusk
the warblers shoot the running
waters of short songs to the
homecoming warblers—
because
the cry here is wing to wing
and song to song—
I am waiting,
waiting with the flame flamingo,
the spotted hawk, the running water
warbler—
waiting for you....Read more of this...
by
Lam Quang My
Apart we stay within in each other
Parting – as yesterday alive in the memory –
Boats on the river at sunset
The storm dispersed in a seven-colour rainbow
And since only the sand upon the shore
Awaits our footsteps...Read more of this...
by
William Cowper
Breathe from the gentle south, O Lord,
And cheer me from the north;
Blow on the treasures of thy word,
And call the spices forth!
I wish, Thou knowest, to be resign'd,
And wait with patient hope;
But hope delay'd fatigues the mind,
And drinks the spirits up.
Help me to reach the distant goal;
Confirm my feeble knee;
Pity the sickness of a soul
That faints for love of...Read more of this...
by
Belinda Subraman
Silence has no zen today.
Ambient freeway noise
from ? mile away,
the occasional Friday nighter
coming home 2:00 a.m. Saturday,
the appliances with two-tone hums,
the bumping and grinding
of an old swamp cooler,
a distant train,
forces what has been pushed back
to break through.
My father needs O 2
all the time now.
His innocence
in countering the surgeons’ truth
with his wishes and beliefs
stabs me in the...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I sing to use the Waiting
My Bonnet but to tie
And shut the Door unto my House
No more to do have I
Till His best step approaching
We journey to the Day
And tell each other how We sung
To Keep the Dark away....Read more of this...
by
John Betjeman
At the end of a long-walled garden in a red provincial town,
A brick path led to a mulberry- scanty grass at its feet.
I lay under blackening branches where the mulberry leaves hung down
Sheltering ruby fruit globes from a Sunday-tea-time heat.
Apple and plum espaliers basked upon bricks of brown;
The air was swimming with insects, and children played in the street.
Out...Read more of this...
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