Famous Society Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Society poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous society poems. These examples illustrate what a famous society poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Kahlil Gibran
Yesterday I drew myself from the noisome throngs and proceeded into the field until I reached a knoll upon which Nature had spread her comely garments. Now I could breathe.
I looked back, and the city appeared with its magnificent mosques and stately residences veiled by the smoke of the shops.
I commenced analyzing man's mission, but could conclude...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed,
By railroad, coach, and track --
By lonely graves of our brave dead,
Up-Country and Out-Back:
To where 'neath glorious the clustered stars
The dreamy plains expand --
My home lies wide a thousand miles
In the Never-Never Land.
It lies beyond the farming belt,
Wide wastes of scrub and plain,
A blazing desert...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Soul selects her own Society --
Then -- shuts the Door --
To her divine Majority --
Present no more --
Unmoved -- she notes the Chariots -- pausing --
At her low Gate --
Unmoved -- an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat --
I've known her -- from an ample nation --
Choose One --
Then -- close the Valves of her attention --
Like Stone --...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
L. ? TO SIR COD. Leave, COD, tobacco-like, burnt gums to take, Or fumy clysters, thy moist lungs to bake : Arsenic would thee fit for society make. ...Read more of this...
by
Philip Larkin
When I was a child, I thought,
Casually, that solitude
Never needed to be sought.
Something everybody had,
Like nakedness, it lay at hand,
Not specially right or specially wrong,
A plentiful and obvious thing
Not at all hard to understand.
Then, after twenty, it became
At once more difficult to get
And more desired - though all the same
More undesirable; for what
You are alone has, to achieve
The rank...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Aveugle comme Homère.")
{Improvised at the Café de Paris.}
Blind, as was Homer; as Belisarius, blind,
But one weak child to guide his vision dim.
The hand which dealt him bread, in pity kind—
He'll never see; God sees it, though, for him.
H.L.C., "London Society."
...Read more of this...
by
Rupert Brooke
Not with vain tears, when we're beyond the sun,
We'll beat on the substantial doors, nor tread
Those dusty high-roads of the aimless dead
Plaintive for Earth; but rather turn and run
Down some close-covered by-way of the air,
Some low sweet alley between wind and wind,
Stoop under faint gleams, thread the shadows, find
Some whispering ghost-forgotten nook, and there
Spend in pure converse our eternal...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Dunn
My neighbor was a biker, a pusher, a dog
and wife beater.
In bad dreams I killed him
and once, in the consequential light of day,
I called the Humane Society
about Blue, his dog. They took her away
and I readied myself, a baseball bat
inside my door.
That night I hear his wife scream
and I couldn't help it, that pathetic
relief; her again, not me.
It would...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
On the fair green hills of Rio
There grows a fearful stain:
The poor who come to Rio
And can't go home again.
On the hills a million people,
A million sparrows, nest,
Like a confused migration
That's had to light and rest,
Building its nests, or houses,
Out of nothing at all, or air.
You'd think a breath would end them,
They perch...Read more of this...
by
John Betjeman
Phone for the fish knives, Norman
As cook is a little unnerved;
You kiddies have crumpled the serviettes
And I must have things daintily served.
Are the requisites all in the toilet?
The frills round the cutlets can wait
Till the girl has replenished the cruets
And switched on the logs in the grate.
It's ever so close in the lounge dear,
But the vestibule's comfy for tea
And...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
we say blame the teachers
don't we send our young to school
to be taught the simple rules
for decent public-spirited behaviour
do we pay such crushing rates
to have our children turned to louts
we're sick of all this fuss
we say blame the teachers
or the preachers
they're all the same to us
we say blame the preachers
what right have they to shake
their moral fingers every week
at...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
He lay in the middle of the world, and twicht.
More Sparine for Pelides,
human (half) & down here as he is,
with probably insulting mail to open
and certainly unworthy words to hear
and his unforgiving memory.
-”I seldom go to films. They are too exciting,
said the Honourable Possum.
-”It takes me so long to read the 'paper,
said to me one day a novelist hot...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
the horses have bolted
the one door's been locked
the flood can't get out
the greasy bilge swills
up the walls to the roof
hercules is hopeless
the manger is mangy
fresh myths and sayings
are urgently wanted
mythmakers get busy...Read more of this...
by
Les Murray
Sprawl is the quality
of the man who cut down his Rolls-Royce
into a farm utility truck, and sprawl
is what the company lacked when it made repeated efforts
to buy the vehicle back and repair its image.
Sprawl is doing your farm work by aeroplane, roughly,
or driving a hitchhiker that extra hundred miles home.
It is the rococo of being your own still...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Conscious am I in my Chamber,
Of a shapeless friend --
He doth not attest by Posture --
Nor Confirm -- by Word --
Neither Place -- need I present Him --
Fitter Courtesy
Hospitable intuition
Of His Company --
Presence -- is His furthest license --
Neither He to Me
Nor Myself to Him -- by Accent --
Forfeit Probity --
Weariness of Him, were quainter
Than Monotony
Knew a Particle --...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
In truth, wine is a limpid spirit in the cup; in the body
of the flask, it is a transparent soul. No annoying person
is worthy of my society. It is only the cup of wine
which can figure there, for that is at once a solid and a
diaphanous body....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Never for Society
He shall seek in vain --
Who His own acquaintance
Cultivate -- Of Men
Wiser Men may weary --
But the Man within
Never knew Satiety --
Better entertain
Than could Border Ballad --
Or Biscayan Hymn --
Neither introduction
Need You -- unto Him --...Read more of this...
by
Langston Hughes
Fine living . . . a la carte?
Come to the Waldorf-Astoria!
LISTEN HUNGRY ONES!
Look! See what Vanity Fair says about the
new Waldorf-Astoria:
"All the luxuries of private home. . . ."
Now, won't that be charming when the last flop-house
has turned you down this winter?
Furthermore:
"It is far beyond anything hitherto attempted in the hotel
world. ....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Society for me my misery
Since Gift of Thee --...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
Yes, here I lie close to a stunted rose bush
In a forgotten place near the fence
Where the thickets from Siever's woods
Have crept over, growing sparsely.
And you, you are a leader in New York,
The wife of a noted millionaire,
A name in the society columns,
Beautiful, admired, magnified perhaps
By the mirage of distance.
You have succeeded, I have failed
In the eyes of the...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
We miss Her, not because We see --
The Absence of an Eye --
Except its Mind accompany
Abridge Society
As slightly as the Routes of Stars --
Ourselves -- asleep below --
We know that their superior Eyes
Include Us -- as they go --...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
What belongs to youth is wine, the limpid juice of the
vine and the society of beauty; and since water once
brought ruin to this world by annihilating it, it is our
part to drown ourselves in wine, to pass our life in
drunkenness complete....Read more of this...
by
Thomas Warton
Oft upon the twilight plain,
Circled with thy shadowy train,
While the dove at distance coo'd,
Have I met thee, Solitude!
Then was loneliness to me
Best and true society,
But ah! how alter'd is thy mien
In this sad deserted scene!
Here all thy classic pleasures cease,
Musing mild, and thoughtful peace;
Here thou com'st in sullen mood,
Not with thy fantastic brood
Of magic shapes and visions airy
Beckon'd from...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
I stood there in front of forty-five faces
The first day of term, not especially fancying
"Exercises in Mechanical Arithmetic" and so instead
I read a poem from Kirkup in Japan, about Nijinsky,
Hand-written on a fan of rice-paper.
Thirty years later, taking a Sri Lankan girl
In search of her first job around London schools,
A Head-of-English announced "You wouldn’t get away
With that now!" as...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
A NEWER garden of creation, no primal solitude,
Dense, joyous, modern, populous millions, cities and farms,
With iron interlaced, composite, tied, many in one,
By all the world contributed—freedom’s and law’s and thrift’s society,
The crown and teeming paradise, so far, of time’s accumulations,
To justify the past....Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Society poems.