Famous Today Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Today poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous today poems. These examples illustrate what a famous today poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...thing go and have it go whole?
Must you stamp each piece purple,
Must you kill what you can?
There is one thing I want today, and only you can give it to me.
It stands at my window, big as the sky.
It breathes from my sheets, the cold dead center
Where split lives congeal and stiffen to history.
Let it not come by the mail, finger by finger.
Let it not come by word of mouth, I should be sixty
By the time the whole of it was delivered, and to numb to use it.
Only let down...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...God and that man’s courage
opposed that outcome. The Measurer ruled
all of the kindred of men, just as he still does today.
Therefore good sense must be the best of all things,
the spirit’s forethought. Many beloved things,
and many hateful too, must he abide, whoever
would long enjoy this world here in these strifesome days. (ll. 1050-62)
There were chants and cheering raised together
before Halfdane’s battle-leader,
the singing wood was struck, verses often told...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...Today I opened wide my eyes,
And stared with wonder and surprise,
To see beneath November skies
An apple blossom peer;
Upon a branch as bleak as night
It gleamed exultant on my sight,
A fairy beacon burning bright
Of hope and cheer.
"Alas!" said I, "poor foolish thing,
Have you mistaken this for Spring?
Behold, the thrush has taken wing,
And Winter's near."...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...arts among.
She did not sing as we did—
It was a different tune—
Herself to her a music
As Bumble bee of June.
Today is far from Childhood—
But up and down the hills
I held her hand the tighter—
Which shortened all the miles—
And still her hum
The years among,
Deceives the Butterfly;
Still in her Eye
The Violets lie
Mouldered this many May.
I spilt the dew—
But took the morn—
I chose this single star
From out the wide night's numbers—
Sue—forevermor...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...and a point his space.
If to be perfect in a certain sphere,
What matter, soon or late, or here or there?
The blest today is as completely so,
As who began a thousand years ago.
III. Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescrib'd, their present state;
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer Being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy Reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to th...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...
Skeezix, you are me. La de dah.
You grow a beard but our drool is identical.
Forgive us, Father, for we know not.
Today is November 14th, 1972.
I live in Weston, Mass., Middlesex County,
U.S.A., and it rains steadily
in the pond like white puppy eyes.
The pond is waiting for its skin.
the pond is waiting for its leather.
The pond is waiting for December and its Novocain.
It begins:
Interrogator:
What can you say of your last seven days?
Anne:
They were tir...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...ourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no more hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your...Read more of this...
by
Angelou, Maya
...the worker sold to the machine.
I am the *****, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turn...Read more of this...
by
Hughes, Langston
...and weeks.
Then jet the blue tent topple, stars rain down,
and god or void appall us till we drown
in our own tears: today we start
to pay the piper with each breath, yet love
knows not of death nor calculus above
the simple sum of heart plus heart....Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...sk what they were up to
At that date with a wharf already built,
And take their name. They've since told me their name—
Today an honored one in Nottingham.
As for what they were up to more than fishing—
Suppose they weren't behaving Puritanly,
The hour bad not yet struck for being good,
Mankind had not yet gone on the Sabbatical.
It became an explorer of the deep
Not to explore too deep in others' business.
Did you but know of him, New Hampshire has
One real reformer who wou...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called "Find the Cow."
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.
Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.
Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle
while your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.
We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.
These da...Read more of this...
by
Collins, Billy
...(also referred to as The Rock Cries Out To Us Today)
A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Mark the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and...Read more of this...
by
Angelou, Maya
...uate the enchantment of self with self:
Eyebeams, muslin, coral. It doesn't matter
Because these are things as they are today
Before one's shadow ever grew
Out of the field into thoughts of tomorrow.
Tomorrow is easy, but today is uncharted,
Desolate, reluctant as any landscape
To yield what are laws of perspective
After all only to the painter's deep
Mistrust, a weak instrument though
Necessary. Of course some things
Are possible, it knows, but it doesn't know
Which ones. S...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...s of it.
I see two deaths,
and the two men plod toward the mortuary of my heart,
and though I willed one away in court today
and I whisper dreams and birthdays into the other,
they both die like waves breaking over me
and I am drowning a little,
but always swimming
among the pillows and stones of the breakwater.
And though your daisies are an unwanted death,
I wade through the smell of their cancer
and recognize the prognosis,
its cartful of loss--
I say now,
you gave what ...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...so they say, these books of ours, but seem
Mute of this miracle, far as I have read.
But who first saw the holy thing today?'
`A woman,' answered Percivale, `a nun,
And one no further off in blood from me
Than sister; and if ever holy maid
With knees of adoration wore the stone,
A holy maid; though never maiden glowed,
But that was in her earlier maidenhood,
With such a fervent flame of human love,
Which being rudely blunted, glanced and shot
Only to holy things; ...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...n here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spelling word...Read more of this...
by
Angelou, Maya
..., my one
And only love had died, and now his son
Asks me, his alien mother, to assay
The worth of England to mankind today—
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war;
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea—
Ah, no, not that—not Shakespeare—I must be
A sterner critic. I must weigh the ill
Against the good, must strike the balance, till
I know the ans...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...y with my identity
A day ago, two days, three days ago. It was a Friday.
I do not even need a holiday; I can go to work today.
I can love my husband, who will understand.
Who will love me through the blur of my deformity
As if I had lost an eye, a leg, a tongue.
And so I stand, a little sightless. So I walk
Away on wheels, instead of legs, they serve as well.
And learn to speak with fingers, not a tongue.
The body is resourceful.
The body of a starfish can grow back its arms...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...Are still colorless and thin.
The rays of dusk are burning until midnight.
How nice it is inside my cramped abode!
Today with me converse many-a-bird
About the most tender, in delight.
I'm happy. But the way,
Forest and smooth, is to me most dear,
The crippled bridge, curved a bit here,
And that remain only several days.
x x x
She came up. I did not show my worry,
Calmly looking outside the windows.
She sat down, like ceramic idol
In a long-ago-chos...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...on an even keel! Don't dollop over
All you are, to a man who'll go to town
On his next little fling. If he's entranced today
By the way you finger your silk throat inside your collar,
Tomorrow there'll be Olga, Sally, Jane. But then I'd whisper
Go for it, petal. Nothing's as real as what you write.
His funeral, if he's not up to it. What we feel
Is mortal, and won't come again.
*
So cut, weeks later, to an outside shot: the same girl
Taking cover ("Dear God, he's here, he's...Read more of this...
by
Padel, Ruth
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