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Famous 20 Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous 20 poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous 20 poems. These examples illustrate what a famous 20 poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Whitman, Walt
...ing! 
I will see if the fishes and birds are to be enough for themselves, and I am not to be
 enough
 for myself. 

20
I match my spirit against yours, you orbs, growths, mountains, brutes, 
Copious as you are, I absorb you all in myself, and become the master myself. 

America isolated, yet embodying all, what is it finally except myself?
These States—what are they except myself? 

I know now why the earth is gross, tantalizing, wicked—it is for my sake, 
I take you ...Read more of this...



by Pope, Alexander
...de extreme, 
The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam: 
Of smell, the headlong lioness between, 
And hound sagacious(20) on the tainted(21) green: 
Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,(22) 
To that which warbles thro' the vernal(23) wood: 
The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine! 
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line: 
In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true 
From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew:(24) 
How Instinct varies in the grov'ling s...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...ath  
And the outlets of the sky. 

It was never for the mean; 
It requireth courage stout  
Souls above doubt 20 
Valour unbending: 
Such 'twill reward;¡ª 
They shall return 
More than they were  
And ever ascending. 25 

Leave all for love; 
Yet hear me yet  
One word more thy heart behoved  
One pulse more of firm endeavour¡ª 
Keep thee to-day 30 
To-morrow for ever  
Free as an Arab 
Of thy beloved. 

Cling with life to the maid; 
But whe...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...to ash-delicate sky beguile 
my empty mind. A seagull passes alone wings 
spread silent over roofs. 

- May 20, 1975 Mayaguez Crisis ...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...purple-stain¨¨d mouth; 
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, 
And with thee fade away into the forest dim: 20 

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget 
What thou among the leaves hast never known, 
The weariness, the fever, and the fret 
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; 
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, 25 
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; 
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow 
And leaden-eyed desp...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...sh more than they? 

This hour I tell things in confidence; 
I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.

20
Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude; 
How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat? 

What is a man, anyhow? What am I? What are you? 

All I mark as my own, you shall offset it with your own; 
Else it were time lost listening to me.

I do not snivel that snivel the world over, 
That months are vacuums, and the ground but wa...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...ho dares demand 
From Giaffir thy reluctant hand; 
More ill-got wealth, a meaner soul 
Holds not a Musselim's control: [20] 
Was he not bred in Egripo? [21] 
A viler race let Israel show! 
But let that pass — to none be told 
Our oath; the rest let time unfold. 
To me and mine leave Osman Bey; 
I've partisans for peril's day: 
Think not I am what I appear; 
I've arms, and friends, and vengeance near." 

XIII. 

"Think not thou art what thou appearest! 
My Selim, t...Read more of this...

by Stevens, Wallace
...the lost terrestrial, 
18 The snug hibernal from that sea and salt, 
19 That century of wind in a single puff. 
20 What counted was mythology of self, 
21 Blotched out beyond unblotching. Crispin, 
22 The lutanist of fleas, the knave, the thane, 
23 The ribboned stick, the bellowing breeches, cloak 
24 Of China, cap of Spain, imperative haw 
25 Of hum, inquisitorial botanist, 
26 And general lexicographer of mute 
27 And maidenly greenhorns, now beheld hims...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...he grand old masters  
Not from the bards sublime  
Whose distant footsteps echo 
Through the corridors of Time. 20 

For like strains of martial music  
Their mighty thoughts suggest 
Life's endless toil and endeavor; 
And to-night I long for rest. 

Read from some humbler poet 25 
Whose songs gushed from his heart  
As showers from the clouds of summer  
Or tears from the eyelids start; 

Who through long days of labor  
And nights devoid of ease 30 ...Read more of this...

by Donne, John
...uld wake me and cam'st then  
I must confess it could not choose but be 
Profane to think thee anything but thee. 20 

Coming and staying show'd thee thee  
But rising makes me doubt that now 
Thou art not thou. 
That Love is weak where Fear 's as strong as he; 
'Tis not all spirit pure and brave 25 
If mixture it of Fear Shame Honour have. 
Perchance as torches which must ready be  
Men light and put out so thou deal'st with me. 
Thou cam'st to ki...Read more of this...

by Bradstreet, Anne
...not ride, but run,
1.18 And in his hand an hour-glass new begun,
1.19 In dangers every moment of a fall,
1.20 And when 'tis broke, then ends his life and all.
1.21 But if he held till it have run its last,
1.22 Then may he live till threescore years or past.
1.23 Next, youth came up in gorgeous attire
1.24 (As that fond age, doth most of all desire),
1.25 His Suit of Crimson, and his Scarf of Green.
1.26 In's countenance, his p...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...music and melodious song,--
The flaming flowers of heaven, making May-dance
In dear Imagination's rich pleasance. 

20
The world still goeth about to shew and hide,
Befool'd of all opinion, fond of fame:
But he that can do well taketh no pride,
And see'th his error, undisturb'd by shame:
So poor's the best that longest life can do,
The most so little, diligently done;
So mighty is the beauty that doth woo,
So vast the joy that love from love hath won. 
God's love to w...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...f Eros, but rather y-like manie* *madness
Engender'd of humours melancholic,
Before his head in his cell fantastic.
And shortly turned was all upside down,
Both habit and eke dispositioun,
Of him, this woful lover Dan* Arcite. *Lord 
Why should I all day of his woe indite?
When he endured had a year or two
This cruel torment, and this pain and woe,
At Thebes, in his country, as I said,
Upon a night in sleep as he him laid,
Him thought how that the winged god M...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...into which
I descended driving the Angel before me, soon we saw seven houses
of brick, one we enterd; in it were a [PL 20] number of monkeys,
baboons, & all of that species chaind by the middle, grinning and
snatching at one another, but witheld by the shortness of their
chains: however I saw that they sometimes grew numerous, and then
the weak were caught by the strong and with a grinning aspect,
first coupled with & then devourd, by plucking off first one limb
and then ano...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...gs? I got up
and found a bottle of wine and drank from it heavily. Cass the most beautiful girl in town
was dead at 20. Outside somebody honked their automobile horn. They were very loud and
persistent. I sat the bottle down and screamed out: "GOD DAMN YOU, YOU SON OF A *****
,SHUT UP!" The night kept coming and there was nothing I could do....Read more of this...

by Poe, Edgar Allan
...esently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, 
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; 20 
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, 
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, 
That I scarce was sure I heard you"¡ªhere I opened wide the door:¡ª 
Darkness there and nothing more. 

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, 25 
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ev...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...ed feet touched heaven in their swirls.



Note: I use the word ‘scruples’ in its old sense i.e.a weight of 20 grains....Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...poem certain references to
vegetation ceremonies.
 Macmillan Cambridge.

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
Line 20. Cf. Ezekiel 2:1.
23. Cf. Ecclesiastes 12:5.
31. V. Tristan und Isolde, i, verses 5-8.
42. Id. iii, verse 24.
46. I am not familiar with the exact constitution of the Tarot
pack
of cards, from which I have obviously departed to suit my own convenience.
The Hanged Man, a member of the traditional pack...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...terly him wrung.* *pinched
There was no wight, save God and he, that wist
In many wise how sore I did him twist.20
He died when I came from Jerusalem,
And lies in grave under the *roode beam:* *cross*
Although his tomb is not so curious
As was the sepulchre of Darius,
Which that Apelles wrought so subtlely.
It is but waste to bury them preciously.
Let him fare well, God give his soule rest,
He is now in his grave and in his chest.

Now of my fifthe husband...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...have driven your mine tank.

On the Malahov's kurgan
They shot an officer with a gun.
Less than a week for 20 years
He saw God's light with eyes so dear.



Prayer

Give me bitter years in malady
Breathlessness, sleeplessness, fever,
Both a friend and a child and mysterious
Gift take away forever --
Thus I pray after your liturgy
After many exhausting days,
That the cloud over dark Russia
Become cloud in the glory of rays.



x x x
...Read more of this...

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