Famous Admonition Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Lancelot

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Gawaine, aware again of Lancelot 
In the King’s garden, coughed and followed him; 
Whereat he turned and stood with folded arms 
And weary-waiting eyes, cold and half-closed— 
Hard eyes, where doubts at war with memories
Fanned a sad wrath. “Why frown upon a friend? 
Few live that have too many,” Gawaine said, 
And wished unsaid, so thinly came the light...Read more of this...

The Old Kings New Jester

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 You that in vain would front the coming order 
With eyes that meet forlornly what they must, 
And only with a furtive recognition 
See dust where there is dust,— 
Be sure you like it always in your faces,
Obscuring your best graces, 
Blinding your speech and sight, 
Before you seek again your dusty places 
Where the old wrong seems right....Read more of this...

Nature -- the Gentlest Mother is

by Emily Dickinson
 Nature -- the Gentlest Mother is,
Impatient of no Child --
The feeblest -- or the waywardest --
Her Admonition mild --

In Forest -- and the Hill --
By Traveller -- be heard --
Restraining Rampant Squirrel --
Or too impetuous Bird --

How fair Her Conversation --
A Summer Afternoon --
Her Household -- Her Assembly --
And when the Sun go down --

Her Voice among the Aisles
Incite...Read more of this...

Admonition

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 WHEREFORE ever ramble on?

For the Good is lying near,
Fortune learn to seize alone,

For that Fortune's ever here.

 1789....Read more of this...

Life

by Charlotte Bronte
 I made a posie, while the day ran by: 
Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie 
My life within this band. 
But time did becken to the flowers, and they 
By noon most cunningly did steal away
And wither'd in my hand. 

My hand was next to them, and then my heart: 
I took, without more thinking, in...Read more of this...

Aboard at a Ship's Helm

by Walt Whitman
 , at a ship’s helm, 
A young steersman, steering with care. 

A bell through fog on a sea-coast dolefully ringing, 
An ocean-bell—O a warning bell, rock’d by the waves. 

O you give good notice indeed, you bell by the sea-reefs ringing,
Ringing, ringing, to warn the ship from its wreck-place. 

For, as on the alert, O steersman, you mind the...Read more of this...

How know it from a Summers Day?

by Emily Dickinson
 How know it from a Summer's Day?
Its Fervors are as firm --
And nothing in the Countenance
But scintillates the same --
Yet Birds examine it and flee --
And Vans without a name
Inspect the Admonition
And sunder as they came --...Read more of this...

83. The Cotter's Saturday Night

by Robert Burns
 MY lov’d, my honour’d, much respected friend!
 No mercenary bard his homage pays;
With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end,
 My dearest meed, a friend’s esteem and praise:
 To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,
The lowly train in life’s sequester’d scene,
 The native feelings strong, the guileless ways,
What Aiken in a cottage would have been;
Ah! tho’ his worth...Read more of this...

Mrs. Meyers

by Edgar Lee Masters
 He protested all his life long
The newspapers lied about him villainously;
That he was not at fault for Minerva's fall,
But only tried to help her.
Poor soul so sunk in sin he could not see
That even trying to help her, as he called it,
He had broken the law human and divine.
Passers by, an ancient admonition to you:
If your ways would be...Read more of this...

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