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Famous Yawns Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...D[undas]
 Gaping with giddy terror o’er the brow;
In vain he struggles, the fates behind him press,
 And clam’rous hell yawns for her prey below:
How fallen That, whose pride late scaled the skies!
And This, like Lucifer, no more to rise!
 Again pronounce the powerful word;
See Day, triumphant from the night, restored.


 Then know this truth, ye Sons of Men!
 (Thus ends thy moral tale,)
 Your darkest terrors may be vain,
 Your brightest hopes may fail....Read more of this...



by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...planted it; 
But our poor wonder, when it comes too late, 
Fights with a lath, and one that solid fact 
Breaks while it yawns and looks another way
For a less negligible adversary. 
Away with wonder, then; though I’m at odds 
With conscience, even tonight, for good assurance 
That it was I, or chance and I together, 
Did all that sowing. If I seem to you
To be a little bitten by the question, 
Without a miracle it might be true; 
The miracle is to me that I’m not eate...Read more of this...

by Wignesan, T
...o scratch the bald pate.
        At five-thirty-one
        A minute just gone
The thud is on, the sledge-hammer yawns
And in the back of ears, strange noises
As from afar and a million feet tramp.
One infinitesimal particle knocks another
And the whirl begins in a silent rage
And the human heart beats harder
While in and around, this London
This atomic mammoth roams
In the wastes of wars and tumbling empires.
...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...hat night, but I have rather to believe 
As I lay turning, twisting, listening, 
And wondering, between great sleepless yawns, 
What possible satisfaction those dead leaves
Could find in sending shadows to my room 
And swinging them like black rags on a line, 
That I, with a forlorn clear-headedness 
Was ekeing out probation. I had sinned 
In fearing to believe what I believed,
And I was paying for it.—Whimsical, 
You think,—factitious; but “there is no luck, 
No fate...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...side they hurried in,
Rubbing their sleepy eyes with lazy wrists,
And doubling overhead their little fists
In backward yawns. But all were soon alive:
For as delicious wine doth, sparkling, dive
In nectar'd clouds and curls through water fair,
So from the arbour roof down swell'd an air
Odorous and enlivening; making all
To laugh, and play, and sing, and loudly call
For their sweet queen: when lo! the wreathed green
Disparted, and far upward could be seen
Blue heaven, an...Read more of this...



by Issa, Kobayashi
...Having slept, the cat gets up,
yawns, goes out
to make love....Read more of this...

by Ingelow, Jean
...d?
Contentment comes not therefore; still there lies
  An outer distance when the first is hailed,
And still forever yawns before our eyes
      An UTMOST—that is veiled.
Searching those edges of the universe,
  We leave the central fields a fallow part;
To feed the eye more precious things amerce,
      And starve the darkened heart.
Then all goes wrong: the old foundations rock;
  One scorns at him of old who gazed unshod;
One striking with a pickaxe thinks the s...Read more of this...

by Thoreau, Henry David
...earest ear of ear? 
By the decrees of fate 
From year to year, 
Does it communicate. 

Pathless the gulf of feeling yawns; 
No trivial bridge of words, 
Or arch of boldest span, 
Can leap the moat that girds 
The sincere man. 

No show of bolts and bars 
Can keep the foeman out, 
Or 'scape his secret mine, 
Who entered with the doubt 
That drew the line. 

No warder at the gate 
Can let the friendly in; 
But, like the sun, o'er all 
He will the castle win, 
And sh...Read more of this...

by Wilbur, Richard
...colors,
The soul descends once more in bitter
 love
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns
 and rises,

 "Bring them down from their ruddy
 gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs
 of thieves;
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be
 undone,
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure
 floating
Of dark habits,
 keeping their difficult
 balance."...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...


III -- Golden Courthouse

Waiting for the Judge, breathing silent
 Prisoners, witnesses, Police -- 
the stenographer yawns into her palms.

 August 9, 1978


IV -- Everybody's Fantasy

I walked outside & the bomb'd
 dropped lots of plutonium
 all over the Lower East Side
There weren't any buildings left just
 iron skeletons
groceries burned, potholes open to 
 stinking sewer waters

There were people starving and crawling
 across the desert
the Martian UFOs with blue
 ...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...of horns, and clang of cymbals and drums;
And strew the glimmering floor with roses,
And remember, while the rich music yawns and closes,
With a luxury of pain, how silence comes.
Yes, we loved each other, long ago;
We moved like wind to a music's ebb and flow.
At a phrase from violins you closed your eyes,
And smiled, and let me lead you how young we were!
Your hair, upon that music, seemed to stir.
Let us return there, let us return, you and I;
Through changeles...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...haunts her strain
While fiercely roars the troublous main.
Now the white breakers curling shew
The dread abyss that yawns below,
And still she sighs, "the sound is sweet,
"It seems to say, POOR MARGUERITE!"

"Here will I build a rocky shed,
"And here I'll make my sea-weed bed;
"Here gather, with unwearied hands--
"The orient shells that deck the sands.
"And here will I skim o'er the billows so high,
"And laugh at the moon and the dark frowning sky.
"And the Sea-bi...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...ut of Eden's navel twist the lines
Of snaky generations: let there be snakes!
And snakes there were, are, will be--till yawns

Consume this pipe and he tires of music
And pipes the world back to the simple fabric
Of snake-warp, snake-weft. Pipes the cloth of snakes

To a melting of green waters, till no snake
Shows its head, and those green waters back to
Water, to green, to nothing like a snake.
Puts up his pipe, and lids his moony eye....Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...Tries to sit on Sweeney’s knees

Slips and pulls the table cloth
Overturns a coffee-cup,
Reorganised upon the floor
She yawns and draws a stocking up;

The silent man in mocha brown
Sprawls at the window-sill and gapes;
The waiter brings in oranges
Bananas figs and hothouse grapes;

The silent vertebrate in brown
Contracts and concentrates, withdraws;
Rachel née Rabinovitch
Tears at the grapes with murderous paws;

She and the lady in the cape
Are suspect, thought to be in le...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...ripples of lustre;
The lamps in the streets are distorted and strange.
Someone takes his watch from his pocket and yawns.
One peers out in the night for the place to change.

Rain . . . rain . . . rain . . . we are buried in rain,
It will rain forever, the swift wheels hiss through water,
Pale sheets of water gleam in the windy street.
The pealing of bells is lost in a drive of rain-drops.
Remote and hurried the great b...Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...ripples of lustre;
The lamps in the streets are distorted and strange.
Someone takes his watch from his pocket and yawns.
One peers out in the night for the place to change.

Rain . . . rain . . . rain . . . we are buried in rain,
It will rain forever, the swift wheels hiss through water,
Pale sheets of water gleam in the windy street.
The pealing of bells is lost in a drive of rain-drops.
Remote and hurried the great b...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...s of time;
They fade in the light of
Their meaning sublime.

"The fiend that man harries
Is love of the Best;
Yawns the pit of the Dragon,
Lit by rays from the Blest.
The Lethe of Nature
Can't trance him again,
Whose soul sees the perfect,
Which his eyes seek in vain.

"To vision profounder,
Man's spirit must dive;
His aye-rolling orb
At no goal will arrive;
The heavens that now draw him
With sweetness untold,
Once found,--for new heavens
He sp...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...ictures of time,
They fade in the light of
Their meaning sublime.

The fiend that man harries,
Is love of the Best;
Yawns the Pit of the Dragon
Lit by rays from the Blest.
The Lethe of Nature
Can't trance him again,
Whose soul sees the Perfect,
Which his eyes seek in vain.

Profounder, profounder,
Man's spirit must dive;
To his aye-rolling orbit
No goal will arrive.
The heavens that draw him
With sweetness untold,
Once found, ?for new heavens
He spurneth the o...Read more of this...

by Gibran, Kahlil
...e looks upon the weak with merciful eyes. 

"Be brave, my boy. Nature smiles in Spring and laughs in Summer and yawns in Autumn, but now she is weeping; and with her tears she waters life, hidden under the earth. 

"Sleep, my dear child; your father is viewing us from Eternity. The snow and thunder bring us closer to him at this time. 

"Sleep, my beloved, for this white blanket which makes us cold, keeps the seeds warm, and these war-like things will prod...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...
 To enter as you passed away, 
 And in the very corner where 
 You played with frolic laughter gay, 
 He sighs and yawns with weary air. 
 
 What can I do? Shall I read books, 
 Or write more verse—or turn fond looks 
 Upon enamels blue, sea-green, 
 And white—on insects rare as seen 
 Upon my Dresden china ware? 
 Or shall I touch the globe, and care 
 To make the heavens turn upon 
 Its axis? No, not one—not one 
 Of all these things care I to do; 
 All wear...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things