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Famous Son Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...r>
Dikes, that the hands of the farmers had raised with labor incessant,
Shut out the turbulent tides; but at stated seasons the flood-gates
Opened, and welcomed the sea to wander at will o'er the meadows.
West and south there were fields of flax, and orchards and cornfields
Spreading afar and unfenced o'er the plain; and away to the northward
Blomidon rose, and the forests old, and aloft on the mountains
Sea-fogs pitched their tents, and mists from the mighty Atlantic
Lo...Read more of this...



by Wilde, Oscar
...odding carillons
Each breezy morn, and then white jessamine,
That star of its own heaven, snap-dragons
With lolling crimson tongues, and eglantine
In dusty velvets clad usurp the bed
And woodland empery, and when the lingering rose hath shed

Red leaf by leaf its folded panoply,
And pansies closed their purple-lidded eyes,
Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy
Unload their gaudy scentless merchandise,
And violets getting overbold withdraw
From their shy nooks, and scarlet berries...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...her'd grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen divinity
Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds
Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips.

 Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went,
No further than to where his feet had stray'd,
And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground
His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,
Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed;...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...s' worth of distance run, 
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, 
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son! ...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...false gods lied to man; 
 And when the great Augustan age began, 
 I wrote the tale of Ilium burnt, and how 
 Anchises' son forth-pushed a venturous prow, 
 Seeking unknown seas. But in what mood art thou 
 To thus return to all the ills ye fled, 
 The while the mountain of thy hope ahead 
 Lifts into light, the source and cause of all 
 Delectable things that may to man befall?" 

 I answered, "Art thou then that Virgil, he 
 From whom all grace of measured speech in me ...Read more of this...



by Wilde, Oscar
...ty rising clear,
Crowned with her crown of towers! - On and on
I galloped, racing with the setting sun,
And ere the crimson after-glow was passed,
I stood within Ravenna's walls at last!


II.


How strangely still! no sound of life or joy
Startles the air; no laughing shepherd-boy
Pipes on his reed, nor ever through the day
Comes the glad sound of children at their play:
O sad, and sweet, and silent! surely here
A man might dwell apart from troublous fear,
Watching the t...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
..., or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and
 hill-sides;
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and
 meeting the sun. 

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth
 much? 
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read? 
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? 

Stop this day and night with me, and you shall possess the origin of all poems;
You shall possess the good of the ea...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...erty,  His energies roll back upon his heart,  And stagnate and corrupt; till changed to poison,  They break out on him, like a loathsome plague spot.  Then we call in our pamper'd mountebanks—  And this is their best cure! uncomforted.   And friendless solitude, groaning and tears.  And savage faces, at the clanking hour,  Seen through the steams and vapour ...Read more of this...

by Bradstreet, Anne
...>1 Lo now! four other acts upon the stage,
1.2 Childhood, and Youth, the Manly, and Old-age.
1.3 The first: son unto Phlegm, grand-child to water,
1.4 Unstable, supple, moist, and cold's his Nature.
1.5 The second: frolic claims his pedigree;
1.6 From blood and air, for hot and moist is he.
1.7 The third of fire and choler is compos'd,
1.8 Vindicative, and quarrelsome dispos'd.
1.9 The last, of earth and heavy melancholy,
1....Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...1
They that in play can do the thing they would,
Having an instinct throned in reason's place,
--And every perfect action hath the grace
Of indolence or thoughtless hardihood--
These are the best: yet be there workmen good
Who lose in earnestness control of face,
Or reckon means, and rapt in effort base
Reach to their end by steps well understood. 
Me whom thou sawest of late strive with the pains
Of one who spends his strength to rul...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...old, 
From our Lord's time. And when King Arthur made 
His Table Round, and all men's hearts became 
Clean for a season, surely he had thought 
That now the Holy Grail would come again; 
But sin broke out. Ah, Christ, that it would come, 
And heal the world of all their wickedness! 
"O Father!" asked the maiden, "might it come 
To me by prayer and fasting?" "Nay," said he, 
"I know not, for thy heart is pure as snow." 
And so she prayed and fasted, till the sun 
S...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...m torn,
And have them carried soft unto the tent
Of Theseus, and he full soon them sent
To Athens, for to dwellen in prison
Perpetually, he *n'olde no ranson*. *would take no ransom*
And when this worthy Duke had thus y-done,
He took his host, and home he rit anon
With laurel crowned as a conquerour;
And there he lived in joy and in honour
Term of his life; what needeth wordes mo'?
And in a tower, in anguish and in woe,
Dwellen this Palamon, and eke Arcite,
For evermore, ...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...he died,
     And there the wild-cat's brindled hide
     The frontlet of the elk adorns,
     Or mantles o'er the bison's horns;
     Pennons and flags defaced and stained,
     That blackening streaks of blood retained,
     And deer-skins, dappled, dun, and white,
     With otter's fur and seal's unite,
     In rude and uncouth tapestry all,
     To garnish forth the sylvan hall.
     XXVIII.

     The wondering stranger round him gazed,
     And next the fall...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...dam into
Paradise; see Isaiah XXXIV & XXXV Chap:
Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and
Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to
Human existence.
From these contraries spring what the religious call Good &
Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason[.] Evil is the active
springing from Energy.
Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.

PLATE 4
The voice of the Devil


All Bibles or sacred codes. have been the causes of th...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...at closing time. I had some beer and we sat there talking. It
was then that I got the perception of her as a person full of kindness and caring. She
gave herself away without knowing it. At the same time she would leap back into areas of
wildness and incoherence. Schitzi. A beautiful and spiritual schitzi. Perhaps some man,
something, would ruin her forever. I hoped that it wouldn't be me. We went to bed and
after I turned out the lights Ca...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...ivate virtues (although a little expense to the nation) there can be no doubt. 

With regard to the supernatural personages treated of, I can only say that I know as much about them, and (as an honest man) have a better right to talk of them than Robert Southey. I have also treated them more tolerantly. The way in which that poor insane creature, the Laureate, deals about his judgments in the next world, is like his own judgment in this. If it was not complete...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...e night, and go south in the winter.
 What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, 
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at mor...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...—I melted at the sound. 
Oh, English voices, are there any words 
Those tones to tell, those cadences to teach! 
As song of thrushes is to other birds, 
So English voices are to other speech; 
Those pure round 'o's '—those lovely liquid 'l's' 
Ring in the ears like sound of Sabbath bells.

Yet I have loathed those voices when the sense
Of what they said seemed to me insolence,
As if the dominance of the whole nation
Lay in that clear correct enunciation.

Many yea...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...ery patient,
Turning through my time, the suns and stars
Regarding me with attention.
The moon's concern is more personal:
She passes and repasses, luminous as a nurse.
Is she sorry for what will happen? I do not think so.
She is simply astonished at fertility.

When I walk out, I am a great event.
I do not have to think, or even rehearse.
What happens in me will happen without attention.
The pheasant stands on the hill;
He is arranging his brown f...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...at all
But then when we started to lose one thing after another,
Each day became
A memorial day --
And then we made songs
Of great divine generosity
And of our former riches.


Unification

I'll leave your quiet yard and your white house -
Let life be empty and with light complete.
I'll sing the glory to you in my verse
Like not one woman has sung glory yet.
And that dear girlfriend you remember
In heaven you created for her sight,
I'm trading p...Read more of this...

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