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Famous Popular Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Crowley, Aleister
...how shall I
Make August sing the raptures of July?
And you are gone away --- what evil star
Makes you so competent and popular?
How have I raised this harpy-hag of Hell's
Malice --- that you are wanted somewhere else?
I wish you were like me a man forbid,
Banned, outcast, nice society well rid
Of the pair of us --- then who would interfere
With us? --- my darling, you would now be here!

But no! we must fight on, win through, succeed,
Earn the grudged praise that never comes...Read more of this...



by Frost, Robert
...But outer Space,
At least this far,
For all the fuss
Of the populace
Stays more popular
Than populous...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...r;

Man in the first you see or touch—always in friend, brother, nighest
 neighbor—Woman
 in
 mother, lover, wife; 
The popular tastes and employments taking precedence in poems or any where, 
You workwomen and workmen of These States having your own divine and strong life,
And all else giving place to men and women like you....Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness—not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination—
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...subtle beast 
Lay couchant with his eyes upon the throne, 
Ready to spring, waiting a chance: for this 
He chilled the popular praises of the King 
With silent smiles of slow disparagement; 
And tampered with the Lords of the White Horse, 
Heathen, the brood by Hengist left; and sought 
To make disruption in the Table Round 
Of Arthur, and to splinter it into feuds 
Serving his traitorous end; and all his aims 
Were sharpened by strong hate for Lancelot. 

For thus it ch...Read more of this...



by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...t-like, as the great Sicilian called
Calliope to grace his golden verse -- 
Ay, and this Kypris also -- did I take
That popular name of thine to shadow forth
The all-generating powers and genial heat
Of Nature, when she strikes thro' the thick blood
Of cattle, and light is large, and lambs are glad
Nosing the mother's udder, and the bird
Makes his heart voice amid the blaze of flowers;
Which things appear the work of mighty Gods.

"The Gods! and if I go my work is left
Un...Read more of this...

by Southey, Robert
...happened in the North of England. I have
adopted the metre of Mr. Lewis's Alonzo and Imogene--a poem deservedly
popular.


I.

Who is she, the poor Maniac, whose wildly-fix'd eyes
Seem a heart overcharged to express?
She weeps not, yet often and deeply she sighs,
She never complains, but her silence implies
The composure of settled distress.


II.

No aid, no compassion the Maniac will seek,
Cold and hunger awake not her care:
Thro' her rags do the win...Read more of this...

by Collins, Billy
...he Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called "Find the Cow."
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.

Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
...Read more of this...

by Shakur, Tupac
...red
u were a friend
when i was at my lowest
and being a friend to me
was not easy or fashionable
regardless of how popular
I became u remain
my unconditional friend
unconditional in it's truest sense
did u think i would forget
did u for 1 moment dream
that I would ignore u
if so remember this from here 2 forever
nothing can come between us ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
..., 
Ethereal Virtues! or these titles now 
Must we renounce, and, changing style, be called 
Princes of Hell? for so the popular vote 
Inclines--here to continue, and build up here 
A growing empire; doubtless! while we dream, 
And know not that the King of Heaven hath doomed 
This place our dungeon, not our safe retreat 
Beyond his potent arm, to live exempt 
From Heaven's high jurisdiction, in new league 
Banded against his throne, but to remain 
In strictest bondage, though...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...l be registered 
Part good, part bad; of bad the longer scroll; 
Whose foul idolatries, and other faults 
Heaped to the popular sum, will so incense 
God, as to leave them, and expose their land, 
Their city, his temple, and his holy ark, 
With all his sacred things, a scorn and prey 
To that proud city, whose high walls thou sawest 
Left in confusion; Babylon thence called. 
There in captivity he lets them dwell 
The space of seventy years; then brings them back, 
Rememb...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...t enemies undaunted! 
To be entirely alone with them! to find how much one can stand! 
To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, death, face to face! 
To mount the scaffold! to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance! 
To be indeed a God!

18
O, to sail to sea in a ship! 
To leave this steady, unendurable land! 
To leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and the houses; 
To leave you, O you solid motionless land, and entering a ship, 
T...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...Idol, and forbid
Laborious works, unwillingly this rest
Thir Superstition yields me; hence with leave
Retiring from the popular noise, I seek
This unfrequented place to find some ease,
Ease to the body some, none to the mind
From restless thoughts, that like a deadly swarm
Of Hornets arm'd, no sooner found alone, 
But rush upon me thronging, and present
Times past, what once I was, and what am now.
O wherefore was my birth from Heaven foretold
Twice by an Angel, who at la...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...he solemn step with which Melpomene moves?"--
"Neither! For naught we love but what is Christian and moral;
And what is popular, too, homely, domestic, and plain."
"What? Does no Caesar, does no Achilles, appear on your stage now,
Not an Andromache e'en, not an Orestes, my friend?"
"No! there is naught to be seen there but parsons,
and syndics of commerce,
Secretaries perchance, ensigns, and majors of horse."
"But, my good friend, pray tell me, what can such people e'...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...hod horses on the granite floor; 
The snow-sleighs, the clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snowballs; 
The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous’d mobs; 
The flap of the curtain’d litter, a sick man inside, borne to the hospital;
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall; 
The excited crowd, the policeman with his star, quickly working his passage to
 the centre of the crowd; 
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes; 
Wha...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...o engrossed was the Butcher, he heeded them not,
 As he wrote with a pen in each hand,
And explained all the while in a popular style
 Which the Beaver could well understand.

"Taking Three as the subject to reason about--
 A convenient number to state--
We add Seven, and Ten, and then multiply out
 By One Thousand diminished by Eight.

"The result we proceed to divide, as you see,
 By Nine Hundred and Ninety and Two:
Then subtract Seventeen, and the answer must be
 E...Read more of this...

by Dryden, John
...way 
Could be seduced to arbitrary sway, 
Forsaken of that hope, he shifts his sail, 
Drives down the current with the popular gale, 
And shows the fiend confessed without a veil. 
He preaches to the crowd that power is lent, 
But not conveyed to kingly government, 
That claims successive bear no binding force, 
That coronation oaths are things of course; 
Maintains the multitude can never err, 
And sets the people in the papal chair. 
The reason's obvious, interest ...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...e
Of that great crowd sent forth incessantly
These shadows, numerous as the dead leaves blown
"In Autumn evening from a popular tree--
Each, like himself & like each other were,
At first, but soon distorted, seemed to be
"Obscure clouds moulded by the casual air;
And of this stuff the car's creative ray
Wrought all the busy phantoms that were there
"As the sun shapes the clouds--thus, on the way
Mask after mask fell from the countenance
And form of all, and long before the da...Read more of this...

by Auden, Wystan Hugh (W H)
...aid his dues,(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)And our Social Psychology workers foundThat he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every dayAnd that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living ...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...r>
The greatest part must have been of Chaucer's own invention,
though one may plainly see that he had been reading the popular
invectives against marriage and women in general; such as the
'Roman de la Rose,' 'Valerius ad Rufinum, De non Ducenda
Uxore,' ('Valerius to Rufinus, on not being ruled by one's wife')
and particularly 'Hieronymus contra Jovinianum.' ('Jerome
against Jovinianus') St Jerome, among other things designed to
discourage marriage, has inserted in his t...Read more of this...

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