Famous Wanting(A) Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Wanting(A) poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous wanting(a) poems. These examples illustrate what a famous wanting(a) poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
William Bronk
This boy, of course, was dead, whatever that
might mean. And nobly dead. I think we should feel
he was nobly dead. He fell in battle, perhaps,
and this carved stone remembers him
not as he may have looked, but as if to define
the naked virtue the stone describes as his.
One foot is forward, the eyes look out, the...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the most unnameable lust returns.
Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention
the furniture you have placed under the sun.
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
Twice I have...Read more of this...
by
Kahlil Gibran
The dark wings of night enfolded the city upon which Nature had spread a pure white garment of snow; and men deserted the streets for their houses in search of warmth, while the north wind probed in contemplation of laying waste the gardens. There in the suburb stood an old hut heavily laden with snow and on the verge...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Searching my heart for its true sorrow,
This is the thing I find to be:
That I am weary of words and people,
Sick of the city, wanting the sea;
Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness
Of the strong wind and shattered spray;
Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound
Of the big surf that breaks all day.
Always before about my dooryard,
Marking the reach of the...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
May—, 1786.I LANG hae thought, my youthfu’ friend,
A something to have sent you,
Tho’ it should serve nae ither end
Than just a kind memento:
But how the subject-theme may gang,
Let time and chance determine;
Perhaps it may turn out a sang:
Perhaps turn out a sermon.
Ye’ll try the world soon, my lad;
And, Andrew dear, believe me,
Ye’ll find mankind...Read more of this...
by
Michael Drayton
Sitting alone, Love bids me go and write;
Reason plucks back, commanding me to stay,
Boasting that she doth still direct the way,
Or else Love were unable to endite.
Love, growing angry, vexed at the spleen
And scorning Reason's maimed argument,
Straight taxeth Reason, wanting to invent,
Where she with Love conversing hath not been.
Reason, reproached with...Read more of this...
by
William Drummond
Phoebus, arise!
And paint the sable skies
With azure, white, and red:
Rouse Memnon's mother from her Tithon's bed
That she may thy career with roses spread:
The nightingales thy coming each-where sing:
Make an eternal spring!
Give life to this dark world which lieth dead;
Spread forth thy golden hair
In larger locks than thou wast wont before,
And emperor-like decore
With diadem of pearl thy temples fair:
Chase hence...Read more of this...
by
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet...Read more of this...
by
Denise Levertov
Not the moon. A flower
on the other side of the water.
The water sweeps past in flood,
dragging a whole tree by the hair,
a barn, a bridge. The flower
sings on the far bank.
Not a flower, a bird calling
hidden among the darkest trees, music
over the water, making a silence
out of the brown folds of the river's cloak.
The moon. No, a young man...Read more of this...
by
George Meredith
Pitch here the tent, while the old horse grazes:
By the old hedge-side we'll halt a stage.
It's nigh my last above the daisies:
My next leaf'll be man's blank page.
Yes, my old girl! and it's no use crying:
Juggler, constable, king, must bow.
One that outjuggles all's been spying
Long to have me, and he has me now.
We've travelled times to this old common:
Often...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
Till I shall come again, let this suffice,
I send my salt, my sacrifice
To thee, thy lady, younglings, and as far
As to thy Genius and thy Lar;
To the worn threshold, porch, hall, parlour, kitchen,
The fat-fed smoking temple, which in
The wholesome savour of thy mighty chines,
Invites to supper him who dines:
Where laden spits, warp'd with large ribs of beef,
Not represent, but...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
Now can you see the monument? It is of wood
built somewhat like a box. No. Built
like several boxes in descending sizes
one above the other.
Each is turned half-way round so that
its corners point toward the sides
of the one below and the angles alternate.
Then on the topmost cube is set
a sort of fleur-de-lys of weathered wood,
long petals of board, pierced...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Dunn
The dogs greet me, I descend
into their world of fur and tongues
and then my wife and I embrace
as if we'd just closed the door
in a motel, our two girls slip in
between us and we're all saying
each other's names and the dogs
Buster and Sundown are on their hind legs,
people-style, seeking more love.
I've come home wanting to touch
everyone, everything; usually I...Read more of this...
by
T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed,
refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the
terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.
Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
Twice I have...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
And wilt thou, faithless one, then, leave me,
With all thy magic phantasy,--
With all the thoughts that joy or grieve me,
Wilt thou with all forever fly?
Can naught delay thine onward motion,
Thou golden time of life's young dream?
In vain! eternity's wide ocean
Ceaselessly drowns thy rolling stream.
The glorious suns my youth enchanting
Have set in never-ending night;
Those blest ideals now are wanting
That swelled...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
when the doctor came on a monday
he looked at my mother and said
there's something seriously wrong here -
she's had a stroke - she's almost dead
it must have happened on thursday
why wasn't i told before
the busy rest home shook its head
we thought she was drowsy - nothing more
she only came to us a week ago
she was angry and violent and...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
peaches exude this thrall -
reminders of those luscious
whereabouts that lips
best find their precious sips
to cry let this be all
they lull so well endowed
with dreams of wanting flesh
who can resist their touch
not they who wishing much
sigh o you do me proud
and yield in fruitful dreams
to the nectars of delight
that peaches bosom forth
(no better biter’s worth)
or so the vision...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
I’ve never ceased to curse the day I signed
A seven years’ bargain for the Golden Fleece.
’Twas a bad deal all round; and dear enough
It cost me, what with my daft management,
And the mean folk as owed and never paid me,
And backing losers; and the local bucks
Egging me on with whiskys while I bragged...Read more of this...
by
Allen Ginsberg
Last nite I dreamed of T.S. Eliot
welcoming me to the land of dream
Sofas couches fog in England
Tea in his digs Chelsea rainbows
curtains on his windows, fog seeping in
the chimney but a nice warm house
and an incredibly sweet hooknosed
Eliot he loved me, put me up,
gave me a couch to sleep on,
conversed kindly, took me serious
asked my opinion on Mayakovsky
I...Read more of this...
by
Edmund Spenser
Unhappy verse, the witness of my unhappy state,
Make thy self flutt'ring wings of thy fast flying
Thought, and fly forth unto my love, wheresoever she be:
Whether lying restless in heavy bed, or else
Sitting so cheerless at the cheerful board, or else
Playing alone careless on her heavenly virginals.
If in bed, tell her, that my eyes can take no rest:
If at board,...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
WHEN Nature her great master-piece design’d,
And fram’d her last, best work, the human mind,
Her eye intent on all the mazy plan,
She form’d of various parts the various Man.
Then first she calls the useful many forth;
Plain plodding Industry, and sober Worth:
Thence peasants, farmers, native sons of earth,
And merchandise’ whole genus take their birth:
Each prudent cit a warm existence finds,
And...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
On the mountain's breezy summit,
Where the southern sunbeams shine,
Aided by their warming vigor,
Nature yields the golden wine.
How the wondrous mother formeth,
None have ever read aright;
Hid forever is her working,
And inscrutable her might.
Sparkling as a son of Phoebus,
As the fiery source of light,
From the vat it bubbling springeth,
Purple, and as crystal bright;
And rejoiceth all the senses,
And in every sorrowing breast
Poureth...Read more of this...
by
Marilyn Hacker
for Audre Lorde and Sonny Wainwright
Twice in my quickly disappearing forties
someone called while someone I loved and I were
making love to tell me another woman had died of cancer.
Seven years apart, and two different lovers:
underneath the numbers, how lives are braided,
how those women's death and lives, lived and died, were
interleaved also.
Does lip touch on lip a memento mori?
Does the...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I.
Dead ! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Dead ! both my boys ! When you sit at the feast
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at me !
II.
Yet I was a poetess only last year,
And good at my art, for a...Read more of this...
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