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Famous Wants Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Plath, Sylvia
...s.

Is this the one for the annunciation?
My god, what a laugh!'

But it shimmers, it does not stop, and I think it wants me.
I would not mind if it were bones, or a pearl button.

I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year.
After all I am alive only by accident.

I would have killed myself gladly that time any possible way.
Now there are these veils, shimmering like curtains,

The diaphanous satins of a January window
White as babies' bedding ...Read more of this...



by Bukowski, Charles
...ttle hard-ons and his precious
love-making. All for himself, you understand, all for himself! You know what a woman
wants, George." 
"Thanks for the whiskey, Connie. Lemme have another cigarette." 
George filled them up again. "I missed your legs, Connie. I've really missed those
legs. I like the way you wear those high heels. They drive me crazy. These modern women
don't know what they're missing. The high heel shapes the calf, the thi...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...Nature has in Worth deny'd,
She gives in large Recruits of needful Pride;
For as in Bodies, thus in Souls, we find
What wants in Blood and Spirits, swell'd with Wind;
Pride, where Wit fails, steps in to our Defence,
And fills up all the mighty Void of Sense!
If once right Reason drives that Cloud away,
Truth breaks upon us with resistless Day;
Trust not your self; but your Defects to know,
Make use of ev'ry Friend--and ev'ry Foe.

A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing;
D...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...nor less, 
He is the arbiter of the diverse, he is the key,
He is the equalizer of his age and land, 
He supplies what wants supplying—he checks what wants checking, 
In peace, out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty, building populous
 towns,
 encouraging agriculture, arts, commerce, lighting the study of man, the Soul, health,
 immortality, government; 
In war, he is the best backer of the war—he fetches artillery as good as the
 engineer’s—he can make ...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...er could ooze out of the radio. 
Who knows? 
Ms. Dog stands on the shore 
and the sea keeps rocking in 
and she wants to talk to God. 

Interrogator: 
Why talk to God? 

Anne: 
It's better than playing bridge. 

* 

Learning to talk is a complex business. 
My daughter's first word was utta, 
meaning button. 
Before there are words 
do you dream? 
In utero 
do you dream? 
Who taught you to suck? 
And how come? 
You don't need to be taught to cry. 
T...Read more of this...



by Frost, Robert
...ing in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down."  I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself.  I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's sa...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...I don't know what to call him,
Who comes from Philadelphia every year
With a great flock of chickens of rare breeds
He wants to give the educational
Advantages of growing almost wild
Under the watchful eye of hawk and eagle 
Dorkings because they're spoken of by Chaucer,
Sussex because they're spoken of by Herrick.

She has a touch of gold. New Hampshire gold—
You may have heard of it. I had a farm
Offered me not long since up Berlin way
With a mine on it that wa...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ir rage, and Heaven resembles Hell! 
As he our darkness, cannot we his light 
Imitate when we please? This desert soil 
Wants not her hidden lustre, gems and gold; 
Nor want we skill or art from whence to raise 
Magnificence; and what can Heaven show more? 
Our torments also may, in length of time, 
Become our elements, these piercing fires 
As soft as now severe, our temper changed 
Into their temper; which must needs remove 
The sensible of pain. All things invite 
To p...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ual love, the crown of all our bliss 
Ordained by thee; and this delicious place 
For us too large, where thy abundance wants 
Partakers, and uncropt falls to the ground. 
But thou hast promised from us two a race 
To fill the earth, who shall with us extol 
Thy goodness infinite, both when we wake, 
And when we seek, as now, thy gift of sleep. 
This said unanimous, and other rites 
Observing none, but adoration pure 
Which God likes best, into their inmost bower 
Han...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...sive must, and meaths 
From many a berry, and from sweet kernels pressed 
She tempers dulcet creams; nor these to hold 
Wants her fit vessels pure; then strows the ground 
With rose and odours from the shrub unfumed. 
Mean while our primitive great sire, to meet 
His God-like guest, walks forth, without more train 
Accompanied than with his own complete 
Perfections; in himself was all his state, 
More solemn than the tedious pomp that waits 
On princes, when their rich r...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...
Full happiness with me, or rather not, 
But keeps the odds of knowledge in my power 
Without copartner? so to add what wants 
In female sex, the more to draw his love, 
And render me more equal; and perhaps, 
A thing not undesirable, sometime 
Superiour; for, inferiour, who is free 
This may be well: But what if God have seen, 
And death ensue? then I shall be no more! 
And Adam, wedded to another Eve, 
Shall live with her enjoying, I extinct; 
A death to think! Confirmed th...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...r> 
Out of my sight, thou Serpent! That name best 
Befits thee with him leagued, thyself as false 
And hateful; nothing wants, but that thy shape, 
Like his, and colour serpentine, may show 
Thy inward fraud; to warn all creatures from thee 
Henceforth; lest that too heavenly form, pretended 
To hellish falshood, snare them! But for thee 
I had persisted happy; had not thy pride 
And wandering vanity, when least was safe, 
Rejected my forewarning, and disdained 
Not to be tru...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...is another life to the city,
The backing of the looking glass of the
Unidentified but precisely sketched studio. It wants
To siphon off the life of the studio, deflate
Its mapped space to enactments, island it.
That operation has been temporarily stalled
But something new is on the way, a new preciosity
In the wind. Can you stand it,
Francesco? Are you strong enough for it?
This wind brings what it knows not, is
Self--propelled, blind, has no notion
Of itself....Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...ye on it to make out which;
If forward, then it’s with a friend’s impatience—
You see I know—to get you on to things
It wants to see how you will take, if backward
It’s from regret for something you have passed
And failed to see the good of. Never mind,
Things must expect to come in front of us
A many times—I don’t say just how many—
That varies with the things—before we see them.
One of the lies would make it out that nothing
Ever presents itself before us twice....Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...ues, 
And not us’d the Elders and Priests like dogs; 
But humble as a lamb or ass 
Obey’d Himself to Caiaphas. 
God wants not man to humble himself: 
That is the trick of the Ancient Elf. 
This is the race that Jesus ran: 
Humble to God, haughty to man, 
Cursing the Rulers before the people 
Even to the Temple’s highest steeple, 
And when He humbled Himself to God 
Then descended the cruel rod. 
‘If Thou Humblest Thyself, Thou humblest Me. 
Thou also dwell’st ...Read more of this...

by Thomson, James
..., and her Orphans, pin'd,
In starving Solitude; while Luxury,
In Palaces, lay prompting her low Thought,
To form unreal Wants: why Heaven-born Faith,
And Charity, prime Grace! wore the red Marks
Of Persecution's Scourge: why licens'd Pain,
That cruel Spoiler, that embosom'd Foe,
Imbitter'd all our Bliss. Ye Good Distrest!
Ye Noble Few! that, here, unbending, stand
Beneath Life's Pressures -- yet a little while,
And all your Woes are past. Time swiftly fleets,
And wish...Read more of this...

by Strand, Mark
...sire,
how the momentary disclosures
of purpose make you afraid.
The book describes much more than it should.
It wants to divide us.

3
This morning I woke and believed
there was no more to to our lives
than the story of our lives.
When you disagreed, I pointed
to the place in the book where you disagreed.
You fell back to sleep and I began to read
those mysterious parts you used to guess at
while they were being written
and lose interest in after they beca...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...'t bear to look at you.
And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He's been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said. 
Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can't.
But if Albert makes ...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...in the desert and hurts his mother's heart.
I will him to be common,
To love me as I love him,
And to marry what he wants and where he will.

THIRD VOICE:
Hot noon in the meadows. The buttercups
Swelter and melt, and the lovers
Pass by, pass by.
They are black and flat as shadows.
It is so beautiful to have no attachments!
I am solitary as grass. What is it I miss?
Shall I ever find it, whatever it is?

The swans are gone. Still the river
Remembers...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...the dark garland dressed
Onto my chest, exhausted from the haste.

And only conscience, scarier with each day,
Wants a great ransom and for this abuses.
Closing the face, I answer her this way..
But there remain no tears and no excuses.



x x x

To lose the freshness of the words and sense, for us,
Is it same as for an artist to lose vision,
Or for an actor -- voice and motion,
Or for a gorgeous woman -- her finesse?

But do not seek n...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things