Famous Acquired Poems by Famous Poets

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

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America America!

...the Atlantic
 -of the peoples' hearts, crossing it 
 to new America.

I am burdened with the truck and chimera, hope,
 acquired in the sweating sick-excited passage 
 in steerage, strange and estranged
Hence I must descry and describe the kingdom of emotion.

For I am a poet of the kindergarten (in the city)
 and the cemetery (in the city)
And rapture and ragtime and also the secret city in the
 heart and mind
This is the song of the natural city self in the 20th century.

I...Read more of this...
by Schwartz, Delmore


Beowulf (Modern English)

...aments,
saying it wordfully to the Eternal Lord,
those which I am looking upon here,
the likes of which I might have acquired
for my people before my death-day.
Now I have purchased with my elderly span of life
this hoard of treasures. You all must look
to the people’s needs from here. I can be here no longer. (ll. 2792b-2801)

“Order those war-renowned to make a mound
bright after the pyre upon the cliffs by the sea—
which must tower high upon the Whale’s Ness
as...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Child of Europe

...eople.
Successor of Descartes, Spinoza, inheritor of the word 'honor',
Posthumous child of Leonidas
Treasure the skills acquired in the hour of terror.

You have a clever mind which sees instantly
The good and bad of any situation.
You have an elegant, skeptical mind which enjoys pleasures
Quite unknown to primitive races.

Guided by this mind you cannot fail to see
The soundness of the advice we give you:
Let the sweetness of day fill your lungs
For this we have strict but w...Read more of this...
by Milosz, Czeslaw

Cooney Potter

...I inherited forty acres from my Father
And, by working my wife, my two sons and two daughters
From dawn to dusk, I acquired
A thousand acres. But not content,
Wishing to own two thousand acres,
I bustled through the years with axe and plow,
Toiling, denying myself, my wife, my sons, my daughters.
Squire Higbee wrongs me to say
That I died from smoking Red Eagle cigars.
Eating hot pie and gulping coffee
During the scorching hours of harvest time
Brought me here ere I had ...Read more of this...
by Masters, Edgar Lee

Days Of 1903

...ickly lost....
the poetic eyes, the pale
face.... in the dusk of the street....

I never found them again -- the things acquired quite by chance,
that I gave up so lightly;
and that later in agony I wanted.
The poetic eyes, the pale face,
those lips, I never found again....Read more of this...
by Cavafy, Constantine P


None can experience sting

...
Who Bounty -- have not known --
The fact of Famine -- could not be
Except for Fact of Corn --

Want -- is a meagre Art
Acquired by Reverse --
The Poverty that was not Wealth --
Cannot be Indigence....Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

Paragraphs from a Day-Book

...hedge 
were pale pastimes compared to my desire 
Did I hector one of the privileged
warblers to tell us where they were acquired?

– the candy store on Tremont Avenue
Of course I don’t call her Gísela.
I call her Grandma.. "Grandma will buy it for you,"
– does she add "mammele "
not letting her annoyance filter through 
as an old-world friend moves into view?
The toddler and the stout
grey-haired woman walk out
of the small park toward the shopping streets
into a present tens...Read more of this...
by Hacker, Marilyn

Saturday At The Border

...ired
Bankers of Arizona are ringing the death knell

For everyone, how ideologies compel
Children to violence. Artifice acquired
For its own sake is war. Frail villanelle,

Have you this power? And must Igo and sell
Myself? "Wow," they say, and "cool"--this hired
Old poetry guy with his spaced-out death knell.

Ah, far from home and God knows not much fired
By thoughts of when he thought he was inspired,
He writes by writing what he must. Death knell
Is what he's found in his...Read more of this...
by Carruth, Hayden

Sonnet LIV

...SPAN>Of your fair footsteps the elastic trace;And whence the ink, the paper whence acquired,Fill'd with your memories: if in this I err,Not art's defect but Love's own fault it were. Macgregor....Read more of this...
by Petrarch, Francesco

Sonnet XXV

...RITTEN ONLY TO SOOTHE HIS OWN GRIEF: OTHERWISE HE WOULD HAVE LABOURED TO MAKE THEM MORE DESERVING OF THE FAME THEY HAVE ACQUIRED.  Had I e'er thought that to the world so dearThe echo of my sighs would be in rhyme,I would have made them in my sorrow's primeRarer in style, in number more appear.Since she is dead ...Read more of this...
by Petrarch, Francesco

Stoves and sunshine

...foreign clime,
And I've learned a heap of learning, but I've shivered all the time;
And the biggest bit of wisdom I've acquired--as I can see--
Is that which teaches that this land's the land of lands for me.

Now, I am of opinion that a person should get some
Warmth in this present life of ours, not all in that to come;
So when Boreas blows his blast, through country and through town,
Or when upon the muddy streets the stifling fog rolls down,
Go, guzzle in a pub, or plod s...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene

The Execution of James Graham Marquis of Montrose

...-eight, James Graham, Marquis of Montrose,
Who was brought to a premature grave by his bitter foes;
A commander who had acquired great military glory
In a short space of time, which cannot be equalled in story....Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz

The Golden Verses of Pythagoras

...ained by destiny that all men shall die.
16. And that the goods of fortune are uncertain; and that just as they may be acquired, they may likewise be lost.
17. Concerning all the calamities that men suffer by divine fortune,
18. Support your lot with patience, it is what it may be, and never complain at it.
19. But endeavour what you can to remedy it.
20. And consider that fate does not send the greatest portion of these misfortunes to good men.
21. There are many sorts...Read more of this...
by Pythagoras,

The Song Of The Widow

...ppiness,
it also wants your pain back and your tears
and buys the ruin as something useless, old.

Fate was present and acquired for a nothing
every expression my face is capable of,
even to the way I walk.
The daily diminishing of me went on
and after I was emptied fate gave me up
and left me standing there, abandoned....Read more of this...
by Rilke, Rainer Maria

The Vision of Judgment

...It is not impossible that it may be as good as his own, seeing that it cannot, by any species of stupidity, natural or acquired, be worse. The gross flattery, the dull impudence, the renegado intolerance, and impious cant, of the poem by the author if 'Wat Tyler,' are something so stupendous as to form the sublime of himself — containing the quintessence of his own attributes. 

So much for his poem — a word on his preface. In this preface it has pleased the magnanimous Laur...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The White Cliffs

...e 
In the chapel of the King. 
The library of Trinity, 
The quadrangle of Clare, 
John bought a pipe from Bacon, 
And I acquired there 
The Anecdotes of Painting 
From a handcart in the square.

The Playing fields at sunset
Were vivid emerald green,
The elms were tall and mighty,
And many youths were seen,
Carefree young gentlemen
In the Spring of 'Fourteen.

XI 
London, just before dawn-immense and dark—
Smell of wet earth and growth from the empty Park, 
Pall Mall vacant-Wh...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer

Thoughts On Jesus Christs Descent Into Hell

...for us expired.
The triumph to yon realms He shows,--
Remote from earth, where star ne'er glows,

The triumph He for us acquired.
He cometh, Hell to extirpate,

Whom He, by dying, wellnigh kill'd;
He shall pronounce her fearful fate

Hark! now the curse is straight fulfill'd.

Hell sees the victor come at last,
She feels that now her reign is past,

She quakes and fears to meet His sight;
She knows His thunders' terrors dread,
In vain she seeks to hide her head,

Attempts to ...Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang

Trilogy of Passion: I. TO WERTHER

...he harsh farewell is hid behind!

Thou smilest, friend, with fitting thoughts inspired;
By a dread parting was thy fame acquired,
Thy mournful destiny we sorrow'd o'er,
For weal and woe thou left'st us evermore,
And then again the passions' wavering force
Drew us along in labyrinthine course;
And we, consumed by constant misery,
At length must part--and parting is to die!
How moving is it, when the minstrel sings,
To 'scape the death that separation brings!
Oh grant, some god...Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang

Two Dogs HaveI

...For years we've had a little dog,
Last year we acquired a big dog;
He wasn't big when we got him,
He was littler than the dog we had.
We thought our little dog would love him,
Would help him to become a trig dog,
But the new little dog got bigger,
And the old little dog got mad.

Now the big dog loves the little dog,
But the little dog hates the big dog,
The little dog is eleven years old,
And the big do...Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden

Wild Grapes

...ud cries from my brother of "Let go!
Don't you know anything, you girl? Let go!"
But I, with something of the baby grip
Acquired ancestrally in just such trees
When wilder mothers than our wildest now
Hung babies out on branches by the hands
To dry or wash or tan, I don't know which,
(You'll have to ask an evolutionist)-
I held on uncomplainingly for life.
My brother tried to make me laugh to help me.
"What are you doing up there in those grapes?
Don't be afraid. A few of the...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

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