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).
See also:
...meaning!
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 to b...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...es soon,
the people should follow him. By these praiseful deeds
one ought to flourish in every tribe everywhere. (ll. 20-25)
Then Scyld turned himself away at his given hour—
faring full of greatness—into the covenant of the Lord.
Then they brought him to the briny beach,
his beloved retainers, just as he himself had bidden
while he still wielded words, the benefactor of the Scyldings—
the first of the land, dear and old, had ruled them a long time. (ll. 26-31)
T...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...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
Pope, Alexander
...wn path
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 when the su...Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...
deep into 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
Ginsberg, Allen
...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
Keats, John
...tonish 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 wallow...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...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, thou art sadl...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...much 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 himself,...Read more of this...
by
Stevens, Wallace
...om the 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
St...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...s joy it was for me!
I crept beneath the boughs, and found
A circle smooth of mossy ground
Beneath a poplar-tree. 20
Old garden rose-trees hedged it in,
Bedropt with roses waxen-white,
Well satisfied with dew and light,
And careless to be seen.
Long years ago, it might befall, 25
When all the garden flowers were trim,
The grave old gardener prided him
On these the most of all.
Some Lady, stately overmuch,
Here moving with a silken noise, 30
H...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...y would 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 kindle go'st t...Read more of this...
by
Donne, John
...ght 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 win i...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...dy
Of 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 Mercu...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...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
Blake, William
...e dogs? 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
Bukowski, Charles
...s
Who’s naked 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
Tebb, Barry
...gnise in the 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, fits my purpose
in two ways: because he is associated ...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...full bitterly 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 will I tell...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...lia
You 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
"Where i...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
Dont forget to view our wonderful member 20 poems.