Famous Admirable Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Admirable poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous admirable poems. These examples illustrate what a famous admirable poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...by name
Thou canst not count, much less their natures aim;
All which are made with wondrous wise respect,
And all with admirable beauty deckt.
First th' earth, on adamantine pillars founded,
Amid the sea engirt with brazen bands;
Then th' air still flitting, but yet firmly bounded
On every side, with piles of flaming brands,
Never consum'd, nor quench'd with mortal hands;
And last, that mighty shining crystal wall,
Wherewith he hath encompassed this All.
By view wh...Read more of this...
by
Spenser, Edmund
...What needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones
The labor of an age in piled stones?
Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid?
Dear son of Memory, great heir of Fame,
What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thy self a livelong monument.
For whilst, to th' shame of...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...by name
Thou canst not count, much less their natures aim;
All which are made with wondrous wise respect,
And all with admirable beauty deckt.
First th' earth, on adamantine pillars founded,
Amid the sea engirt with brazen bands;
Then th' air still flitting, but yet firmly bounded
On every side, with piles of flaming brands,
Never consum'd, nor quench'd with mortal hands;
And last, that mighty shining crystal wall,
Wherewith he hath encompassed this All.
By view wh...Read more of this...
by
Spenser, Edmund
...uted to be,
and disused trails and mountains of rock
and miles of burnt forests, standing in gray scratches
like the admirable scriptures made on stones by stones--
and these regions now have little to say for themselves
except in thousands of light song-sparrow songs floating upward
freely, dispassionately, through the mist, and meshing
in brown-wet, fine torn fish-nets.
A small bus comes along, in up-and-down rushes,
packed with people, even to its step.
...Read more of this...
by
Bishop, Elizabeth
...velopes all, and envelopes the Soul for a proper time.
10
Now I am curious what sight can ever be more stately and admirable to me than my
mast-hemm’d
Manhattan,
My river and sun-set, and my scallop-edg’d waves of flood-tide,
The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the twilight, and the belated
lighter;
Curious what Gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and with voices I love call
me
promptly and loudly by my nighest name as I approach;...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...This admirable gadget, when it is
Wound on a string and spun with steady force,
Maintains its balance on most any smooth
Surface, pleasantly humming as it goes.
It is whirled not on a constant course, but still
Stands in unshivering integrity
For quite some time, meaning nothing perhaps
But being something agreeable to watch,
A silver nearly silence gleaning ...Read more of this...
by
Nemerov, Howard
...How admirable!
to see lightning and not think
life is fleeting....Read more of this...
by
Basho, Matsuo
...lowing at last!
I’ve always liked this world, and would so still;
And if it is your new Light leads you on
To such an admirable gait, for God’s sake,
Follow it, follow it, follow it, Lancelot;
Follow it as you never followed glory.
Once I believed that I was on the way
That you call yours, but I came home again
To Camelot—and Camelot was right,
For the world knows its own that knows not you;
You are a thing too vaporous to be sharing
The carnal feast of life....Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ellying gown
Enormous through the Sacred Town,
Bearing from College to their homes
Deep cargoes of gigantic tomes;
Dons admirable! Dons of Might!
Uprising on my inward sight
Compact of ancient tales, and port
And sleep--and learning of a sort.
Dons English, worthy of the land;
Dons rooted; Dons that understand.
Good Dons perpetual that remain
A landmark, walling in the plain--
The horizon of my memories--
Like large and comfortable trees.
Don very much apart fro...Read more of this...
by
Belloc, Hilaire
...o the opera,
Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery,
Or behold children at their sports,
Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old woman,
Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial,
Or my own eyes and figure in the glass;
These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring—yet each distinct, and in its place.
To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of s...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ld wish to die.
Notes: On Shakespear. Reprinted 1632 in the second folio
Shakespeare:
Title] An epitaph on the admirable dramaticke poet W.
Shakespeare
1 needs] neede
6 weak] dull
8 live-long] lasting
10 heart] part
13 it] her...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...The admirable number pi:
three point one four one.
All the following digits are also just a start,
five nine two because it never ends.
It can't be grasped, six five three five , at a glance,
eight nine, by calculation,
seven nine, through imagination,
or even three two three eight in jest, or by comparison
four six to anything
two six four thre...Read more of this...
by
Szymborska, Wislawa
...e:
Such its life, and such its pleasure is,
Such its art and traffic, such its gain,
Evermore in new conjunctions this
Admirable angle to maintain.
Crystalcraft in every flower and flake
Snow exhibits, of the welkin free:
Crystalline are crystals for the sake,
All and singular, of crystalry.
Yet does every crystal of the snow
Individualize, a seedling sown
Broadcast, but instinct with power to grow
Beautiful in beauty of its own.
Every flake with all its prong...Read more of this...
by
Davidson, John
...esolate,
I dare not proceed till I respectfully credit what you have left, wafted hither:
I have perused it—own it is admirable, (moving awhile among it;)
Think nothing can ever be greater—nothing can ever deserve more than it
deserves;
Regarding it all intently a long while—then dismissing it,
I stand in my place, with my own day, here.
Here lands female and male;
Here the heir-ship and heiress-ship of the world—here the flame of
materials;
Here Spirituality, t...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...unshapely pathos . . .
So death will flatter them at last: what, even the bald ape's by-shot
Was moderately admirable?
VI. Palinode
All summer neither rain nor wave washes the cormorants'
Perch, and their droppings have painted it shining white.
If the excrement of fish-eaters makes the brown rock a snow-mountain
At noon, a rose in the morning, a beacon at moonrise
On the black water: it is barely possible that even men's present
Lives are something; the...Read more of this...
by
Jeffers, Robinson
...tening as in
seeing.
Love is the most difficult and dangerous form of courage.
Courage is the most desperate, admirable and noble kind of
love.
So that when the great blue bell of silence is stilled and
stopped or broken
By the babel and chaos of desire unrequited, irritated and
frustrated,
When the heart has opened and when the heart has spoken
Not of the purity and symmetry of gratification, but action
of insatiable distraction's dissatisfaction,
Then th...Read more of this...
by
Schwartz, Delmore
...ay
Before me now. -- What, cowardice? Nay, why
Trouble myself with ugly words? 'Tis prudence,
And prudence is an admirable thing.
Yet here's much cost -- these packages piled up,
Ivory doubless, emeralds, gums, and silks,
All these they trust on shipboard? Ah, but I,
I who have seen God, I to put myself
Amid the heathen outrage of the sea
In a deal-wood box! It were plain folly.
There is naught more precious in the world than I:
I carry God in me, to gi...Read more of this...
by
Abercrombie, Lascelles
...people can,
Unconscious of it. Percy, the best man,
As thin as paper and as smart as paint,
Bade us good-by with admirable restraint,
Went from the church to catch his train to hell;
And died-saving his batman from a shell.
XXIII
We went down to Devon,
In a warm summer rain,
Knowing that our happiness
Might never come again;
I, not forgetting,
'Till death us do part,'
Was outrageously happy
With death in my heart.
Lovers in peacetime
With fif...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...ht!
Like a star that streams from heaven
Through the virgin airs light-riven,
From the lift there shot and fell
An admirable miracle.
Carved minute and clean, a key
Of purest lapis-lazuli
More blue than the blind sky that aches
(Wreathed with the stars, her torturing snakes),
For the dead god's kiss that never wakes;
Shot with golden specks of fire
Like a virgin with desire.
Look, the levers! fern-frail fronds
Of fantastic diamonds,
Glimmering with ethe...Read more of this...
by
Crowley, Aleister
...es went:
And some will smile at this, as well
As Romulus his Bee-like Cell.
Humility alone designs
Those short but admirable Lines,
By which, ungirt and unconstrain'd,
Things greater are in less contain'd.
Let others vainly strive t'immure
The Circle in the Quadrature!
These holy Mathematics can
In ev'ry Figure equal Man.
Yet thus the laden House does sweat,
And scarce indures the Master great:
But where he comes the swelling Hall
Stirs, and the Square grows Sph...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
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