Famous Achieve Poems by Famous Poets

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

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260. Sketch in Verse inscribed to the Right Hon. C. J. Fox

by Robert Burns
 HOW wisdom and Folly meet, mix, and unite,
How Virtue and Vice blend their black and their white,
How Genius, th’ illustrious father of fiction,
Confounds rule and law, reconciles contradiction,
I sing: If these mortals, the critics, should bustle,
I care not, not I—let the Critics go whistle!


 But now for a Patron whose name and whose glory,
At once may illustrate and honour...Read more of this...

The Lovers of the Poor

by Gwendolyn Brooks
 arrive. The Ladies from the Ladies' Betterment
League
Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
Here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall. 
Cutting with knives served by their softest care,
Served by their...Read more of this...

Modesties

by Philip Larkin
 Words as plain as hen-birds' wings 
Do not lie, 
Do not over-broider things - 
Are too shy. 

Thoughts that shuffle round like pence 
Through each reign, 
Wear down to their simplest sense 
Yet remain. 

Weeds are not supposed to grow 
But by degrees 
Some achieve a flower, although 
No one sees....Read more of this...

Which is the best -- the Moon or the Crescent?

by Emily Dickinson
 Which is the best -- the Moon or the Crescent?
Neither -- said the Moon --
That is best which is not -- Achieve it --
You efface the Sheen.

Not of detention is Fruition --
Shudder to attain.
Transport's decomposition follows --
He is Prism born....Read more of this...

Magpiety

by Czeslaw Milosz
 The same and not quite the same, I walked through oak forests
Amazed that my Muse, Mnemosyne,
Has in no way diminished my amazement.
A magpie was screeching and I said: Magpiety?
What is magpiety? I shall never achieve
A magpie heart, a hairy nostril over the beak, a flight
That always renews just when coming down,
And so I shall never comprehend magpiety.
If however magpiety...Read more of this...

Had I the power great Allah to advise,

by Omar Khayyam
Had I the power great Allah to advise,
I'd bid him sweep away this earth and skies,
And build a better, where, unclogged and free,
The clear soul might achieve her high emprise....Read more of this...

To undertake is to achieve

by Emily Dickinson
 To undertake is to achieve
Be Undertaking blent
With fortitude of obstacle
And toward encouragement

That fine Suspicion, Natures must
Permitted to revere
Departed Standards and the few
Criterion Sources here...Read more of this...

Equality

by John McCrae
 I saw a King, who spent his life to weave
Into a nation all his great heart thought,
Unsatisfied until he should achieve
The grand ideal that his manhood sought;
Yet as he saw the end within his reach,
Death took the sceptre from his failing hand,
And all men said, "He gave his life to teach
The task of honour to a sordid land!"
Within his...Read more of this...

Breadth And Depth

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Full many a shining wit one sees,
With tongue on all things well conversing;
The what can charm, the what can please,
In every nice detail rehearsing.
Their raptures so transport the college,
It seems one honeymoon of knowledge.

Yet out they go in silence where
They whilom held their learned prate;
Ah! he who would achieve the fair,
Or sow the embryo of the great,
Must hoard--to wait...Read more of this...

Julian and Maddalo (excerpt)

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 I rode one evening with Count Maddalo 
Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand
Of hillocks, heap'd from ever-shifting sand,
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,
Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds,
Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,
Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
Abandons; and no other object breaks
The waste, but...Read more of this...

My Heart ran so to thee

by Emily Dickinson
 My Heart ran so to thee
It would not wait for me
And I affronted grew
And drew away

For whatsoe'er my pace
He first achieve they Face
How general a Grace
Allotted two --

Not in malignity
Mentioned I this to thee --
Had he obliquity
Soonest to share
But for the Greed of him --
Boasting my Premium --
Basking in Bethleem
Ere I be there --...Read more of this...

The Wage-Slaves

by Rudyard Kipling
 Oh, glorious are the guarded heights
 Where guardian souls abide--
Self-exiled from our gross delights--
 Above, beyond, outside:
An ampler arc their spirit swings--
 Commands a juster view--
We have their word for all these things,
 No doubt their words are true.

Yet we, the bond slaves of our day,
 Whom dirt and danger press--
Co-heirs of insolence, delay,
 And leagued unfaithfulness--
Such is our...Read more of this...

An Island

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Take it away, and swallow it yourself. 
Ha! Look you, there’s a rat. 
Last night there were a dozen on that shelf, 
And two of them were living in my hat. 
Look! Now he goes, but he’ll come back—
Ha? But he will, I say … 
Il reviendra-z-à Pâques, 
Ou à la Trinité …
Be very sure that he’ll return again;...Read more of this...

Love Much

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Love much. Earth has enough of bitter in it.
Cast sweets into its cup whene’er you can.
No heart so hard, but love at last may win it.
Love is the great primæval cause of man.
All hate is foreign to the first great plan.

Love much. Your heart will be led out to slaughter, 
On altars built of envy and deciet.
Love on, love...Read more of this...

Those who have been in the Grave the longest --

by Emily Dickinson
 Those who have been in the Grave the longest --
Those who begin Today --
Equally perish from our Practise --
Death is the other way --

Foot of the Bold did least attempt it --
It -- is the White Exploit --
Once to achieve, annuls the power
Once to communicate --...Read more of this...

Sonnet LVII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LVII. Per mirar Policleto a prova fiso. ON THE PORTRAIT OF LAURA PAINTED BY SIMON MEMMI.  Had Policletus seen her, or the restWho, in past time, won honour in this art,A thousand years had but the meaner partShown of the beauty which o'ercame my breast.But Simon sure, in Paradise the...Read more of this...

Duino Elegies: The First Elegy

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so...Read more of this...

Modern Love XL: I Bade My Lady Think

by George Meredith
 I bade my Lady think what she might mean. 
Know I my meaning, I? Can I love one, 
And yet be jealous of another? None 
Commits such folly. Terrible Love, I ween, 
Has might, even dead, half sighing to upheave 
The lightless seas of selfishness amain: 
Seas that in a man's heart have no rain 
To fall and still...Read more of this...

The Windhover: To Christ Our Lord

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
 dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
 Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
 As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
 Rebuffed...Read more of this...

Will Consider Situation

by Ogden Nash
 There here are words of radical advice for a young man looking for a job;
Young man, be a snob.
Yes, if you are in search of arguments against starting at the bottom,
Why I've gottem.
Let the personnel managers differ;
It,s obvious that you will get on faster at the top than at the bottom because
there are more people at the bottom than...Read more of this...

Farewell

by Wang Wei
 Down horse drink gentleman alcohol 
Ask gentleman what place go 
Gentleman say not achieve wish 
Return lie south mountain near 
Still go nothing more ask 
White cloud not exhaust time 


Dismounting, I offer my friend a cup of wine, 
I ask what place he is headed to. 
He says he has not achieved his aims, 
Is retiring to the...Read more of this...

To a Steam Roller

by Marianne Moore
 The illustration
is nothing to you without the application.
You lack half wit. You crush all the particles down
into close conformity, and then walk back and forth on them. 

Sparkling chips of rock
are crushed down to the level of the parent block.
Were not 'impersonal judment in aesthetic
matters, a metaphysical impossibility,' you 

might fairly achieve
it. As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive
of...Read more of this...

Fireflies in the Garden

by Robert Frost
 Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,
And here on earth come emulating flies,
That though they never equal stars in size,
(And they were never really stars at heart)
Achieve at times a very star-like start.
Only, of course, they can't sustain the part....Read more of this...

Unnamed Lands

by Walt Whitman
 NATIONS ten thousand years before These States, and many times ten thousand years before
 These
 States; 
Garner’d clusters of ages, that men and women like us grew up and travel’d their
 course, and pass’d on; 
What vast-built cities—what orderly republics—what pastoral tribes and nomads; 
What histories, rulers, heroes, perhaps transcending all others; 
What laws, customs, wealth, arts, traditions;
What sort...Read more of this...

Resolve

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Build on resolve, and not upon regret, 
The structure of thy future. Do not grope
Among the shadows of old sins, but let
Thine own soul’s light shine on the path of hope
And dissipate the darkness. Waste no tears
Upon the blotted record of lost years, 
But turn the leaf, and smile, oh! smile, to see
The fair white pages that remain for...Read more of this...

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