Famous Occasional Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Occasional poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous occasional poems. These examples illustrate what a famous occasional poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...going out to shoot a sparrow
To feed my cat with."
So there was the whole picture,
The lovely early morning, the occasional shell
Screeching and scattering past us, the empty landscape, --
Empty, except for the young Gunner saluting,
And the cat, anxiously watching his every movement.
I may be wrong, or I may have told it badly,
But it struck me as being extremely ludicrous....Read more of this...
by
Newbolt, Sir Henry
...ard outside also
fill’d;
Some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some in the death-spasm sweating;
An occasional scream or cry, the doctor’s shouted orders or calls;
The glisten of the little steel instruments catching the glint of the torches;
These I resume as I chant—I see again the forms, I smell the odor;
Then hear outside the orders given, Fall in, my men, Fall in;
But first I bend to the dying lad—his eyes open—a half-smile gives he me;
Then the e...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...Brummell of Cats;
And we're all of us proud to be nodded or bowed to
By Bustopher Jones in white spats!
His visits are occasional to the Senior Educational
And it is against the rules
For any one Cat to belong both to that
And the Joint Superior Schools.
For a similar reason, when game is in season
He is found, not at Fox's, but Blimpy's;
He is frequently seen at the gay Stage and Screen
Which is famous for winkles and shrimps.
In the season of venison he gives his ...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...
alike, but certain as a stereoscopic view.
The wild road clambers along the brink of the coast.
On it stand occasional small yellow bulldozers,
but without their drivers, because today is Sunday.
The little white churches have been dropped into the matted hills
like lost quartz arrowheads.
The road appears to have been abandoned.
Whatever the landscape had of meaning appears to have been abandoned,
unless the road is holding it back, in the inter...Read more of this...
by
Bishop, Elizabeth
...
But small work for a soldier. By the way,
When you are weary sometimes of your own
Utility, I wonder if you find
Occasional great comfort pondering
What power a man has in him to put forth?
‘Of all the many marvelous things that are,
Nothing is there more marvelous than man,’
Said Sophocles; and he lived long ago;
‘And earth, unending ancient of the gods
He furrows; and the ploughs go back and forth,
Turning the broken mould, year after year.’…
“I turned a ...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...the London Poor
Even so distant, I can taste the grief,
Bitter and sharp with stalks, he made you gulp.
The sun's occasional print, the brisk brief
Worry of wheels along the street outside
Where bridal London bows the other way,
And light, unanswerable and tall and wide,
Forbids the scar to heal, and drives
Shame out of hiding. All the unhurried day,
Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.
Slums, years, have buried you. I would not dare
Console you if I...Read more of this...
by
Larkin, Philip
...>
All this messy blood? Death.
These minimum-efficiency eyes? Death.
This wicked little tongue? Death.
This occasional wakefulness? Death.
Given, stolen, or held pending trial?
Held.
Who owns the whole rainy, stony earth? Death.
Who owns all of space? Death.
Who is stronger than hope? Death.
Who is stronger than the will? Death.
Stronger than love? Death.
Stronger than life? Death.
But who is stronger than Death?
Me, evidently....Read more of this...
by
Hughes, Ted
...By night when others soundly slept,
And had at once both case and rest,
My waking eyes were open kept
And so to lie I found it best.
I sought Him whom my soul did love,
With tears I sought Him earnestly;
He bowed His ear down from above.
In vain I did not seek or cry.
My hungry soul He filled with good,
He in His bottle put my tears,
...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...of fine black birds
hanging in n's in banks.
One can hear their crying, crying,
the only sound there is
except for occasional sizhine
as a large aquatic animal breathes.
In the pink light
the small red sun goes rolling, rolling,
round and round and round at the same height
in perpetual sunset, comprehensive, consoling,
while the ships consider it.
Apparently they have reached their destination.
It would be hard to say what brought them there,
commerce or co...Read more of this...
by
Bishop, Elizabeth
...re stanza may have slipped into the lining of his jacket
through a hole in his pocket.
He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between stanzas,
and the way here and there a line will go into the
configuration of a Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up
and peer about, and then lay itself down slightly off the mark,
causing the poem to move forward with a reckless, shining wobble.
He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard about...Read more of this...
by
Kinnell, Galway
...I Christmas Poem for Nancy
Noel, Noel
We live and we die
Between heaven and hell
Between the earth and the sky
And all shall be well
And all shall be unwell
And once again! all shall once again!
All shall be well
By the ringing and the swinging
of the great beautiful holiday bell
Of Noel! Noel!
II Salute Valentine
I'll drink to thee only with my eyes
...Read more of this...
by
Schwartz, Delmore
...down the Niagara, (the St. Lawrence,)—the superb scenery—the
steamers,
The ships sailing—the Thousand Islands—the occasional timber-raft, and the
raftsmen
with long-reaching sweep-oars,
The little huts on the rafts, and the stream of smoke when they cook their supper at
evening.
O something pernicious and dread!
Something far away from a puny and pious life!
Something unproved! Something in a trance!
Something escaped from the anchorage, and driving free.Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...painted like a silver abll,
float up over the Forum, up over the lost emperors,
to shiver its little modern cage in an occasional
breeze. You worked your New England conscience out
beside artisans, chestnut vendors and the devout.
Tonight I will learn to love you twice;
learn your first days, your mid-Victorian face.
Tonight I will speak up and interrupt
your letters, warning you that wars are coming,
that the Count will die, that you will accept
your America bac...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...,
the
pioneer,
Lumbermen in their winter camp, day-break in the woods, stripes of snow on the limbs of
trees,
the
occasional snapping,
The glad clear sound of one’s own voice, the merry song, the natural life of the woods,
the
strong
day’s work,
The blazing fire at night, the sweet taste of supper, the talk, the bed of hemlock boughs,
and
the
bear-skin;
—The house-builder at work in cities or anywhere,
The preparatory jointing, squaring, sawing, mortising,
The...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...in the Sky --
The Pattern of a Chimney --
The Forehead of a Hill --
Sometimes -- a Vane's Forefinger --
But that's -- Occasional --
The Seasons -- shift -- my Picture --
Upon my Emerald Bough,
I wake -- to find no -- Emeralds --
Then -- Diamonds -- which the Snow
From Polar Caskets -- fetched me --
The Chimney -- and the Hill --
And just the Steeple's finger --
These -- never stir at all --...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...
Their Voices did expend
As Brook by Brook bestows itself
To multiply the Pond.
Their Witnesses were not --
Except occasional man --
In homely industry arrayed --
To overtake the Morn --
Nor was it for applause --
That I could ascertain --
But independent Ecstasy
Of Deity and Men --
By Six, the Flood had done --
No Tumult there had been
Of Dressing, or Departure --
And yet the Band was gone --
The Sun engrossed the East --
The Day controlled the World --
The Miracle t...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...souvenir shop which featured
fuzzy off-color Monets next to his acrylics, no doubt,
plus beared African drums and the occasional miniature
gargoyle from Notre Dame the Great Artist had
carved at breakfast with a pocket knife.
"Tourists love us.The Parisians, of course"--
she blushed--"are amused, though not without
a certain admiration . . ."
The Chateaubriand
arrived on a bone-white plate, smug and absolute
in its fragrant crust, a black plug steaming...Read more of this...
by
Dove, Rita
...eshness of surprise
At being so utterly mine: you’ve learned to fear
The gloomy, stricken places in my soul,
And the occasional ghosts that haunt my gaze.
You made me glad; and I can still return
To you, the haven of my lonely pride:
But I am sworn to murder those illusions
That blossom from desire with desperate beauty:
And there shall be no falsehood in our failure;
Since, if we loved like beasts, the thing is done,
And I’ll not hide it, though our heaven be h...Read more of this...
by
Sassoon, Siegfried
...m nor cold,
of a temperature impossible to records in thermometers.
But when the Man-Moth
pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface,
the moon looks rather different to him. He emerges
from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks
and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings.
He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky,
proving the sky quite useless for protection.
He trembles, but must investigate as high as ...Read more of this...
by
Bishop, Elizabeth
...l Corso & toward the Piazza di Espagna
As each street grew quieter until
Finally we heard nothing at the end
Except the occasional scrape of our own steps,
And so said good-bye. Among such friends,
Who never allowed anything, still alive,
To die, I'd almost forgotten that what
Most people leave behind them disappears.
Three days later, staying alone in a cheap
Hotel in Naples, I noticed a child's smeared
Fingerprint on a bannister. It
Had been indifferently preser...Read more of this...
by
Levis, Larry
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