Famous Affluence Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Sonnet XL

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XL. Quella per cui con Sorga ho cangiat' Arno. HE ATTEMPTS TO PAINT HER BEAUTIES, BUT NOT HER VIRTUES.  She, for whose sake fair Arno I resign,And for free poverty court-affluence spurn,Has known to sour the precious sweets to turnOn which I lived, for which I burn and pine.Though since,...Read more of this...

The Old Clock On The Stairs

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 L'eternite est une pendule, dont le balancier dit et redit sans
cesse ces deux mots seulement dans le silence des tombeaux:
"Toujours! jamais! Jamais! toujours!"--JACQUES BRIDAINE.

Somewhat back from the village street
Stands the old-fashioned country-seat.
Across its antique portico
Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw;
And from its station in the hall
An ancient timepiece says to all,--
"Forever--never!
Never--forever!"

Half-way up the stairs it stands,
And points and beckons with...Read more of this...

Blight

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Give me truths;
For I am weary of the surfaces,
And die of inanition. If I knew
Only the herbs and simples of the wood,
Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain and agrimony,
Blue-vetch and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras,
Milkweeds and murky brakes, quaint pipes and sun-dew,
And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woods
Draw untold juices from the common earth,
Untold, unknown, and I could surely spell
Their fragrance, and...Read more of this...

The Planet On The Table

by Wallace Stevens
 Ariel was glad he had written his poems.
They were of a remembered time
Or of something seen that he liked.

Other makings of the sun
Were waste and welter
And the ripe shrub writhed.

His self and the sun were one
And his poems, although makings of his self,
Were no less makings of the sun.

It was not important that they survive.
What mattered was that they...Read more of this...

Summer -- we all have seen --

by Emily Dickinson
 Summer -- we all have seen --
A few of us -- believed --
A few -- the more aspiring
Unquestionably loved --

But Summer does not care --
She goes her spacious way
As eligible as the moon
To our Temerity --

The Doom to be adored --
The Affluence conferred --
Unknown as to an Ecstasy
The Embryo endowed --...Read more of this...

In The Virgins

by Derek Walcott
 You can't put in the ground swell of the organ
from the Christiansted, St.Croix, Anglican Church
behind the paratrooper's voice: "Turned cop
after Vietnam. I made thirty jumps."
Bells punish the dead street and pigeons lurch
from the stone belfry, opening their chutes,
circling until the rings of ringing stop.
"Salud!" The paratrooper's glass is raised.
The congregation rises to its feet
like a patrol, with scuffling shoes...Read more of this...

Charles Augustus Fortescue

by Hilaire Belloc
 The nicest child I ever knew
Was Charles Augustus Fortescue.
He never lost his cap, or tore
His stockings or his pinafore:
In eating Bread he made no Crumbs,
He was extremely fond of sums,

To which, however, he preferred
The Parsing of a Latin Word--
He sought, when it was within his power,
For information twice an hour,

And as for finding Mutton-Fat
Unappatising, far from that!
He often, at...Read more of this...

Bewick Finzer

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Time was when his half million drew 
The breath of six per cent; 
But soon the worm of what-was-not 
Fed hard on his content; 
And something crumbled in his brain 
When his half million went. 

Time passed, and filled along with his 
The place of many more; 
Time came, and hardly one of us 
Had credence to restore, 
From...Read more of this...

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