Famous Accepted Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Unusual Love

by Dejan Stojanovic
Our desires flew like birds in the mornings 
When we were waked by the bells of dreams 
Hypnotized and ready for another round of living 

We would walk down the street of a foreign city mesmerized 
By our own history seen on the streets and in the gardens 
Filled with exotic flowers and the grass; you loved the grass 

You...Read more of this...

As I lay with Head in your Lap Camerado

by Walt Whitman
 AS I lay with my head in your lap, Camerado, 
The confession I made I resume—what I said to you in the open air I resume: 
I know I am restless, and make others so; 
I know my words are weapons, full of danger, full of death; 
(Indeed I am myself the real soldier;
It is not he, there, with...Read more of this...

To A Cat

by Jorge Luis Borges
 Mirrors are not more silent
nor the creeping dawn more secretive;
in the moonlight, you are that panther
we catch sight of from afar.
By the inexplicable workings of a divine law,
we look for you in vain;
More remote, even, than the Ganges or the setting sun,
yours is the solitude, yours the secret.
Your haunch allows the lingering
caress of my hand. You have accepted,
since that...Read more of this...

The Bohemian

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Bring me the livery of no other man.
I am my own to robe me at my pleasure.
[Pg 93]Accepted rules to me disclose no treasure:
What is the chief who shall my garments plan?
No garb conventional but I 'll attack it.
(Come, why not don my spangled jacket?)
...Read more of this...

Up Lifes Hill with my my little Bundle

by Emily Dickinson
 Up Life's Hill with my my little Bundle
If I prove it steep --
If a Discouragement withhold me --
If my newest step

Older feel than the Hope that prompted --
Spotless be from blame
Heart that proposed as Heart that accepted
Homelessness, for Home --...Read more of this...

O We Are The Outcasts

by Charles Bukowski
 ah, christ, what a CREW:
more
poetry, always more
P O E T R Y .

if it doesn't come, coax it out with a 
laxative. get your name in LIGHTS,
get it up there in
8 1/2 x 11 mimeo.

keep it coming like a miracle.

ah christ, writers are the most sickening
of all the louts!
yellow-toothed, slump-shouldered,
gutless, flea-bitten and
obvious . . . in tinker-toy rooms
with their...Read more of this...

Sestina V

by Francesco Petrarch
SESTINA V. Alia dolce ombra de le belle frondi. HE TELLS THE STORY OF HIS LOVE, RESOLVING HENCEFORTH TO DEVOTE HIMSELF TO GOD.  Beneath the pleasant shade of beauteous leavesI ran for shelter from a cruel light,E'en here below that burnt me from high heaven,When the last snow had ceased upon the...Read more of this...

Wedding Morn

by D. H. Lawrence
The morning breaks like a pomegranate
In a shining crack of red,
Ah, when to-morrow the dawn comes late
Whitening across the bed,
It will find me watching at the marriage gate
And waiting while light is shed
On him who is sleeping satiate,
With a sunk, abandoned head.

And when the dawn comes creeping in,
Cautiously I shall raise
Myself to watch the morning win
My first of days,
As it...Read more of this...

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

by Delmore Schwartz
 I looked toward the movie, the common dream,
The he and she in close-ups, nearer than life, 
And I accepted such things as they seem,

The easy poise, the absence of the knife, 
The near summer happily ever after, 
The understood question, the immediate strife,

Not dangerous, nor mortal, but the fadeout 
Enormously kissing amid warm laughter, 
As if such things were...Read more of this...

For this -- accepted Breath

by Emily Dickinson
 For this -- accepted Breath --
Through it -- compete with Death --
The fellow cannot touch this Crown --
By it -- my title take --
Ah, what a royal sake
To my necessity -- stooped down!

No Wilderness -- can be
Where this attendeth me --
No Desert Noon --
No fear of frost to come
Haunt the perennial bloom --
But Certain June!

Get Gabriel -- to tell...Read more of this...

The Magpie Evening: A Prayer

by Gary Fincke
           When magpies die, each of the living swoops down 
           and pecks, one by one, in an accepted order.
 
He coaxed my car to start, the boy who’s killed himself.
He twisted a cable, performed CPR on
The carburetor while my...Read more of this...

The Pro-Consuls

by Rudyard Kipling
 The overfaithful sword returns the user
His heart's desire at price of his heart's blood.
The clamour of the arrogant accuser
Wastes that one hour we needed to make good.
This was foretold of old at our outgoing;
This we accepted who have squandered, knowing,
The strength and glory of our reputations,
At the day's need, as it were dross, to guard
The tender and new-dedicate foundations
Against...Read more of this...

Of the Visage of Things

by Walt Whitman
 OF the visages of things—And of piercing through to the accepted hells beneath; 
Of ugliness—To me there is just as much in it as there is in beauty—And now the
 ugliness of human beings is acceptable to me; 
Of detected persons—To me, detected persons are not, in any respect, worse than
 undetected
 persons—and are not in any respect worse...Read more of this...

Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine

by Hilaire Belloc
 To exalt, enthrone, establish and defend,
To welcome home mankind's mysterious friend
Wine, true begetter of all arts that be;
Wine, privilege of the completely free;
Wine the recorder; wine the sagely strong;
Wine, bright avenger of sly-dealing wrong,
Awake, Ausonian Muse, and sing the vineyard song!

Sing how the Charioteer from Asia came,
And on his front the little dancing flame
Which marked the God-head. Sing the...Read more of this...

My Indian In-laws

by Belinda Subraman
 I remember India:
palm trees, monkey families,
fresh lime juice in the streets,
the sensual inundation
of sights and smells
and excess in everything.
I was exotic and believable there.

I was walking through dirt
in my sari, 
to temples of the deities
following the lead
of my Indian in-laws.
I was scooping up fire with my hands,
glancing at idols that held no meaning for me,
being marked by the ash.

They...Read more of this...

From Paumanok Starting

by Walt Whitman
 FROM Paumanock starting, I fly like a bird, 
Around and around to soar, to sing the idea of all; 
To the north betaking myself, to sing there arctic songs, 
To Kanada, till I absorb Kanada in myself—to Michigan then, 
To Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, to sing their songs, (they are inimitable;)
Then to Ohio and Indiana to sing theirs—to Missouri and...Read more of this...

How many masks wear we, and undermasks,

by Fernando Pessoa
How many masks wear we, and undermasks,

Upon our countenance of soul, and when,

If for self-sport the soul itself unmasks,

Knows it the last mask off and the face plain?

The true mask feels no inside to the mask

But looks out of the mask by co-masked eyes.

Whatever consciousness begins the task

The task's accepted use to sleepness ties.

Like a child frighted by its mirrored...Read more of this...

Not Works

by William Cowper
 Grace, triumphant in the throne,
Scorns a rival, reigns alone;
Come and bow beneath her sway;
Cast your idol works away!
Works of man, when made his plea,
Never shall accepted be;
Fruits of pride (vainglorious worm!)
Are the best he can perform.

Self, the god his soul adores,
Influences all his powers;
Jesus is a slighted name,
Self-advancement all his aim:
But when God the Judge shall come,
To pronounce the...Read more of this...

As the Bell Clinks

by Rudyard Kipling
 As I left the Halls at Lumley, rose the vision of a comely
Maid last season worshipped dumbly, watched with fervor from afar;
And I wondered idly, blindly, if the maid would greet me kindly.
That was all -- the rest was settled by the clinking tonga-bar.
Yea, my life and hers were coupled by the tonga coupling-bar.

For my misty meditation, at the...Read more of this...

On Pain

by Kahlil Gibran
 Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses 
your understanding. 

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its 
heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. 

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the 
daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem 
less wondrous than your joy;...Read more of this...

Beautiful Old Age

by D. H. Lawrence
 It ought to be lovely to be old
to be full of the peace that comes of experience
and wrinkled ripe fulfilment.

The wrinkled smile of completeness that follows a life
lived undaunted and unsoured with accepted lies
they would ripen like apples, and be scented like pippins
in their old age.

Soothing, old people should be, like apples
when one is tired of love.
Fragrant like yellowing...Read more of this...

In The Depths of Solitude

by Tupac Shakur
i exist in the depths of solitude
pondering my true goal
trying 2 find peace of mind
and still preserve my soul
constantly yearning 2 be accepted
and from all receive respect
never comprising but sometimes risky
and that is my only regret
a young heart with an old soul
how can there be peace
how can i be in the depths of solitude
when there r 2 inside of me
this...Read more of this...

Words For Departure

by Louise Bogan
 Nothing was remembered, nothing forgotten.
When we awoke, wagons were passing on the warm summer pavements,
The window-sills were wet from rain in the night,
Birds scattered and settled over chimneypots
As among grotesque trees.

Nothing was accepted, nothing looked beyond.
Slight-voiced bells separated hour from hour,
The afternoon sifted coolness
And people drew together in streets becoming deserted.
There was a moon, and light in a shop-front,
And...Read more of this...

Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 I

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage...Read more of this...

Accepted

by Elizabeth Jennings
 You are no longer young,
Nor are you very old.
There are homes where those belong.
You know you do not fit
When you observe the cold
Stares of those who sit

In bath-chairs or the park
(A stick, then, at their side)
Or find yourself in the dark
And see the lovers who,
In love and in their stride,
Don't even notice you.

This is a time to begin
Your life....Read more of this...

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