Famous Watched Poems by Famous Poets

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

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On the Trek

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Oh, the weary, weary journey on the trek, day after day, 
With sun above and silent veldt below; 
And our hearts keep turning homeward to the youngsters far away, 
And the homestead where the climbing roses grow. 
Shall we see the flats grow golden with the ripening of the grain? 
Shall we hear the parrots calling on the bough?...Read more of this...

I watched the Moon around the House

by Emily Dickinson
 I watched the Moon around the House
Until upon a Pane --
She stopped -- a Traveller's privilege -- for Rest --
And there upon

I gazed -- as at a stranger --
The Lady in the Town
Doth think no incivility
To lift her Glass -- upon --

But never Stranger justified
The Curiosity
Like Mine -- for not a Foot -- nor Hand --
Nor Formula -- had...Read more of this...

Guenevere

by Sara Teasdale
 I was a queen, and I have lost my crown;
A wife, and I have broken all my vows;
A lover, and I ruined him I loved: --
There is no other havoc left to do.

A little month ago I was a queen,
And mothers held their babies up to see
When I came riding out of Camelot.
The women smiled, and all the world...Read more of this...

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

by Richard Brautigan
 I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammels and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky. 

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms. 

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of...Read more of this...

Lucille

by Robert William Service
 Of course you've heard of the Nancy Lee, and how she sailed away
On her famous quest of the Arctic flea, to the wilds of Hudson's Bay?
For it was a foreign Prince's whim to collect this tiny cuss,
And a golden quid was no more to him than a copper to coves like us.
So we sailed away and our hearts were...Read more of this...

Rapunzel

by Anne Sexton
 A woman 
who loves a woman 
is forever young. 
The mentor 
and the student 
feed off each other. 
Many a girl 
had an old aunt 
who locked her in the study 
to keep the boys away. 
They would play rummy 
or lie on the couch 
and touch and touch. 
Old breast against young breast... 
Let your dress fall down...Read more of this...

I entered the studio of a potter. I watched him work

by Omar Khayyam
I entered the studio of a potter. I watched him work
at his wheel, actively occupied in moulding the necks
and handles of pitchers, forming some of them like the
heads of kings, others like the feet of beggars....Read more of this...

The Ballad Of Hank The Finn

by Robert William Service
 Now Fireman Flynn met Hank the Finn where lights of Lust-land glow;
"Let's leave," says he, "the lousy sea, and give the land a show.
I'm fed up to the molar mark with wallopin' the brine;
I feel the bloody barnacles a-carkin' on me spine.
Let's hit the hard-boiled North a crack, where creeks are paved with gold."
"You count me in," says Hank...Read more of this...

Friday

by Elizabeth Jennings
 We nailed the hands long ago,
Wove the thorns, took up the scourge and shouted
For excitement's sake, we stood at the dusty edge
Of the pebbled path and watched the extreme of pain.

But one or two prayed, one or two
Were silent, shocked, stood back
And remembered remnants of words, a new vision,
The cross is up with its crying victim, the clouds
Cover the...Read more of this...

Clementes Images

by Robert Creeley
 1)

Sleeping birds, lead me,
soft birds, be me

inside this black room,
back of the white moon.

In the dark night
sight frightens me.


2)

Who is it nuzzles there
with furred, round headed stare?

Who, perched on the skin,
body's float, is holding on?

What other one stares still,
plays still, on and on?


3)

Stand upright, prehensile,
squat, determined,

small guardians of the painful
outside coming in --

in stuck in vials with needles,
bleeding life...Read more of this...

Travelling Bohemians

by Charles Baudelaire
 The prophetic tribe of the ardent eyes
Yesterday they took the road, holding their babies
On their backs, delivering to fierce appetites
The always ready treasure of pendulous breasts.

The men stick their feet out, waving their guns
Alongside the caravan where they tremble together,
Scanning the sky their eyes are weighted down
In mourning for absent chimeras.

At the bottom of his sandy retreat, a cricket
Watched...Read more of this...

The Torture of Cuauhtemoc

by Alan Seeger
 Their strength had fed on this when Death's white arms 
Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew, 
Curling across the jungle's ferny floor, 
Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides, 
Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold 
That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse, 
Not back to Seville and its sunny plains 
Winged their brief-biding dreams, but once...Read more of this...

A Night -- there lay the Days between

by Emily Dickinson
 A Night -- there lay the Days between --
The Day that was Before --
And Day that was Behind -- were one --
And now -- 'twas Night -- was here --

Slow -- Night -- that must be watched away --
As Grains upon a shore --
Too imperceptible to note --
Till it be night -- no more --...Read more of this...

1777

by Amy Lowell
 I
The Trumpet-Vine Arbour
The throats of the little red trumpet-flowers are 
wide open,
And the clangour of brass beats against the hot sunlight.
They bray and blare at the burning sky.
Red! Red! Coarse notes of red,
Trumpeted at the blue sky.
In long streaks of sound, molten metal,
The vine declares itself.
Clang! -- from its red and yellow trumpets.
Clang! -- from its long, nasal trumpets,
Splitting...Read more of this...

To A Friend Concerning Several Ladies

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 You know there is not much 
that I desire, a few chrysanthemums 
half lying on the grass, yellow 
and brown and white, the 
talk of a few people, the trees, 
an expanse of dried leaves perhaps 
with ditches among them. 
But there comes 
between me and these things 
a letter 
or even a look—well placed, 
you understand, 
so that...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of Pious Pete

by Robert William Service
 "The North has got him." --Yukonism.


I tried to refine that neighbor of mine, honest to God, I did.
I grieved for his fate, and early and late I watched over him like a kid.
I gave him excuse, I bore his abuse in every way that I could;
I swore to prevail; I camped on his trail; I plotted and planned for...Read more of this...

Forget-Me-Not

by William Topaz McGonagall
 A gallant knight and his betroth'd bride,
Were walking one day by a river side,
They talk'd of love, and they talk'd of war,
And how very foolish lovers are. 

At length the bride to the knight did say,
'There have been many young ladies led astray
By believing in all their lovers said,
And you are false to me I am afraid.' 

'No, Ellen,...Read more of this...

The Rat Of Faith

by Philip Levine
 A blue jay poses on a stake 
meant to support an apple tree 
newly planted. A strong wind 
on this clear cold morning 
barely ruffles his tail feathers. 
When he turns his attention 
toward me, I face his eyes 
without blinking. A week ago 
my wife called me to come see 
this same bird chase a rat 
into the...Read more of this...

Aftermath

by Siegfried Sassoon
 Have you forgotten yet?...
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past...Read more of this...

The Ghosts

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Never stoops the soaring vulture
On his quarry in the desert,
On the sick or wounded bison,
But another vulture, watching
From his high aerial look-out,
Sees the downward plunge, and follows;
And a third pursues the second,
Coming from the invisible ether,
First a speck, and then a vulture,
Till the air is dark with pinions.
So disasters come not singly;
But as if they watched and waited,
Scanning one...Read more of this...

The Eavesdropper

by Bliss Carman
 In a still room at hush of dawn,
My Love and I lay side by side
And heard the roaming forest wind
Stir in the paling autumn-tide.
I watched her earth-brown eyes grow glad
Because the round day was so fair;
While memories of reluctant night
Lurked in the blue dusk of her hair.
Outside, a yellow maple tree,
Shifting upon the silvery blue
With tiny multitudinous sound,
Rustled to...Read more of this...

The Snake Charmer and the Hamadryad

by T Wignesan
For J. C. Alldridge

Piccolo and been-throated pibroch
Dilating dimpled hood
Spreading photometric darkroom eyes
Waxing waxing matching
Venomous lip to music's piping lip
O Queen of stung dragon mouthed Po
Dancing girl of nuanceless ancient reliefs
The apotheosis Brahman curling on the neck
Must you now sink sink
Dread watched
Spineless
Into the winding womb wickerwork
Watching watching pipe-eyed watching
Until you slip
Over the sill of the pipe and the lip

Anathema! Amorphous piteous...Read more of this...

Lobster For Lunch

by Robert William Service
 His face was like a lobster red,
His legs were white as mayonnaise:
"I've had a jolly lunch," he said,
That Englishman of pleasant ways.
"Thy do us well at our hotel:
In England food is dull these days."

"We had a big langouste for lunch.
I almost ate the whole of it.
And now I'll smoke and read my Punch,
And maybe siesta a bit;
And then I'll...Read more of this...

The Pumpkin

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 Oh, greenly and fair in the lands of the sun,
The vines of the gourd and the rich melon run,
And the rock and the tree and the cottage enfold,
With broad leaves all greenness and blossoms all gold,
Like that which o'er Nineveh's prophet once grew,
While he waited to know that his warning was true,
And longed for the storm-cloud, and listened in...Read more of this...

This barbaric capital

by Emile Verhaeren
This barbaric capital, whereon monsters writhe, soldered together by the might of claw and tooth, in a mad whirl of blood, of fiery cries, of wounds, and of jaws that bite and bite again,
This was myself before you were mine, you who are new and old, and who, from the depths of your eternity, came to me with passion and...Read more of this...

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