Anonymous Poems
A collection of select Anonymous famous poems that were written by Anonymous or written about the poet by other famous poets. PoetrySoup is a comprehensive educational resource of the greatest poems and poets on history.
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...The day is turning ghost,
And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively,
To join the anonymous host
Of those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe,
To one of like degree.
I part the fire-gnawed logs,
Rake forth the embers, spoil the busy flames, and lay the ends
Upon the shining dogs;
Further and further from the nooks the twilight's stride extends,
And beamless black impends.
Nothing of tiniest worth
Have I w...Read more of this...
by
Hardy, Thomas
...ristmas piece, "Old
Santeclaus." Foster's analysis of this deception appears in his Author
Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous (New York: Henry Holt, 2000):
221-75. 22.
1Later revised to "Donder and Blitzen" by Clement Clarke
Moore when he took credit for the poem in Poems (New York: Bartlett
and Welford, 1844).
Source:
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/livingston1.html...Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...black pencil lines of telephone posts, crucified,
At regular intervals, post after post
Of thrice crossed, blue-belled, anonymous trees.
And then the bird cried as if to all of us:
0 your life, your lonely life
What have you ever done with it,
And done with the great gift of consciousness?
What will you ever do with your life before death's
knife
Provides the answer ultimate and appropriate?
As I for my part felt in my heart as one who falls,
Falls in a parachute...Read more of this...
by
Schwartz, Delmore
...e off your hat, king of the beasts, and be seated,
Mr. Bones."
And hence the poet must seek to be essentially anonymous.
He must die a little death each morning.
He must swallow his toad and study his vomit
as Baudelaire studied la charogne of Jeanne Duval.
The poet must be or become both Keats and Renoir and
Keats as Renoir.
Mozart as Figaro and Edgar Allan Poe as Ophelia, stoned
out of her mind
drowning in the river called forever river and ever....Read more of this...
by
Schwartz, Delmore
...ing to glide into His spoils,
I take bread and wine,
and the demon farts and giggles,
at my letting God out of my mouth
anonymous woman
at the anonymous altar....Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...This is the time of day when the weight of bedclothes
Is harder to bear than a sharp incision of steel.
The endless anonymous croak of a cheap transistor
Intesifies the lonely terror I feel....Read more of this...
by
Betjeman, John
...brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.
And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.
Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the ...Read more of this...
by
Collins, Billy
...sed, I am
a dancer." Soon snow will fall
on the Tudor houses of the suburbs,
turning the elegant parked sedans
into anonymous mounds; the winds
will sweep in over the Rockies
and across the great freezing plains
where America first died, winds
so fierce boys and men turn their backs
to them and simply weep, and yet
in all that air the soul of Mrs. William
Settle will not release me, not even
for one second. Male and female,
aged and middle-aged, we ride it out
blo...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...Wild and fearful in his cavern
Hid the naked troglodyte,
And the homeless nomad wandered
Laying waste the fertile plain.
Menacing with spear and arrow
In the woods the hunter strayed ...
Woe to all poor wreteches stranded
On those cruel and hostile shores!
From the peak of high Olympus
Came the mother Ceres down,
Seeeking in thos...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...e
While the day outside glides by like ticker tape.
The night brings violets,
Tapestries of eyes,
Lights,
The soft anonymous
Talkers: 'You all right?'
The starched, inaccessible breast.
Dead egg, I lie
Whole
On a whole world I cannot touch,
At the white, tight
Drum of my sleeping couch
Photographs visit me-
My wife, dead and flat, in 1920 furs,
Mouth full of pearls,
Two girls
As flat as she, who whisper 'We're your daughters.'
The still waters
Wrap my lips,
E...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...e
rock.
The trout was lying very still now.
"It died happy, " he said.
"This is my ode to Alcoholics Anonymous.
"Look here !"...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...;
but if it yields a steadier light, he knows
the pure verse, when it finally comes, will sound
like a mountain spring, anonymous and serene.
Beneath the blue oblivious sky, the water
sings of nothing, not your name, not mine....Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Don
...And beauty standing motionless before
Her mirror sees behind her, mile on mile,
A long queue in an unknown corridor,
Anonymous faces plastered with her smile....Read more of this...
by
Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...r of my life" - Artaud
"At this time let me somehow bequeath all the leftovers
to my daughters and their daughters" - Anonymous
Better,
despite the worms talking to
the mare's hoof in the field;
better,
despite the season of young girls
dropping their blood;
better somehow
to drop myself quickly
into an old room.
Better (someone said)
not to be born
and far better
not to be born twice
at thirteen
where the boardinghouse,
each year a bedroom,
caught fire...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...There’s not a leaf within the bower,—There’s not a bird upon the tree,—There’s not a dewdrop on the flower,—But bears the impress, Lord, of Thee.[Pg 008]Thy power the varied leaf designed,And gave the bird its thrilling tone;Thy hand the dewdrops’ tints combined,Till like a diamond’s blaze they shone.Yes, dewdrops, leaves...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...All through the win-ter, long and cold,
Dear Minnie ev-ery morn-ing fed
The little spar-rows, pert and bold,
And ro-bins, with their breasts so red.
She lov-ed to see the lit-tle birds
Come flut-ter-ing to the win-dow pane,
In answer to the gen-tle words
With which she scat-ter-ed crumbs and grain.
One ro-bin, bol-der than the re...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...And I solemnly swear
on the chill of secrecy
that I know you not, this room never,
the swollen dress I wear,
nor the anonymous spoons that free me,
nor this calendar nor the pulse we pare and cover.
For all these present,
before that wandering ghost,
that yellow moth of my summer bed,
I say: this small event
is not. So I prepare, am dosed
in ether and will not cry what stays unsaid.
I was brown with August,
the clapping waves at my thighs
and a storm riding i...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...The common rain had come again
Slanting and colorless, pale and anonymous,
Fainting falling in the first evening
Of the first perception of the actual fall,
The long and late light had slowly gathered up
A sooty wood of clouded sky, dim and distant more and
more
Until, at dusk, the very sense of selfhood waned,
A weakening nothing halted, diminished or denied or set
aside,
Neither tea, nor, after an hour, whiskey,
Ice...Read more of this...
by
Schwartz, Delmore
...
OF DROWNED VICTIM'S DOUBLE-BREASTED SUIT!!!
'Dere wasa dis frogg
Gone jumpa offa da logg
Now he inna bogg.'
-- Anonymous
Translated by George M. Young, Jr.
Old pond
leap -- splash
a frog.
Translated by Lucien Stryck
The old pond,
A frog jumps in:.
Plop!
Translated by Allan Watts
The old pond, yes, and
A frog is jumping into
The water, and splash.
Translated by G.S. Fraser...Read more of this...
by
Basho, Matsuo
...Oh! is there any cause to fear
That dol-ly will be very ill?
To cure my lit-tle dar-ling here,
Pray, doc-tor, use your ut-most skill.
And dol-ly, if you would get well,
Hold out your arm, that Dr. Gray
May feel your tiny pulse, and tell
What best will take the pain a-way.
And do not say: "I will not touch
That nas-ty phy-s...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,