Famous Agent Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Agent poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous agent poems. These examples illustrate what a famous agent poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Burns, Robert
...k care,
Thou now hast got thy Daddy’s chair;
Nae handcuff’d, mizl’d, hap-shackl’d Regent,
But, like himsel, a full free agent,
Be sure ye follow out the plan
Nae waur than he did, honest man!
As muckle better as you can.January, 1, 1789....Read more of this...
by
Lehman, David
...one ugly stereotype or another:
The grasping Jew with the hooked nose or the Ivy League Bolshevik
who thinks he is the agent of world history.
But most of them are neither ostentatiously pious nor
excessively avaricious.
How I envy them! They believe.
How I envy them their annual family reunion on Passover,
anniversary of the Exodus, when all the uncles and aunts and
cousins get together.
They wonder about the heritage of Judaism they are passing along
to...Read more of this...
by
Dryden, John
...And made for empire, whispers me within;
Desire of greatness is a god-like sin.
Him staggering so when Hell's dire agent found,
While fainting virtue scarce maintain'd her ground,
He pours fresh forces in, and thus replies:
Th'eternal God, supremely good and wise,
Imparts not these prodigious gifts in vain;
What wonders are reserv'd to bless your reign?
Against your will your arguments have shown,
Such virtue's only giv'n to guide a throne.
Not that your father's mi...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...Of years that wash away to faded lines,
Or blot out wholly, the sharp wrongs and ills
Of youth, have had no cleansing agent in them
To dim the picture. I still see him going
Away from where I stood; and I shall see him
Longer, sometime, than I shall see the face
Of whosoever watches by the bed
On which I die—given I die that way.
I doubt if he could reason his advantage
In living any longer after that
Among the rest of us. The lad he slandered,
Or gave a ...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...
Italy's self,--the marvellous Modenese!--
Yet was not on your list before, perhaps.
--Alas, friend, here's the agent . . . is't the name?
The captain, or whoever's master here--
You see him screw his face up; what's his cry
Ere you set foot on shipboard? "Six feet square!"
If you won't understand what six feet mean,
Compute and purchase stores accordingly--
And if, in pique because he overhauls
Your Jerome, piano, bath, you come on board
Bare--why...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...escape me.
I bring what you much need, yet always have,
Not money, amours, dress, eating, but as good;
I send no agent or medium, offer no representative of value, but offer the value itself.
There is something that comes home to one now and perpetually;
It is not what is printed, preach’d, discussed—it eludes discussion and print;
It is not to be put in a book—it is not in this book;
It is for you, whoever you are—it is no farther from you than your hearing an...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...dson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie
Then I'd throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood &
Agent Orange,
Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out
the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state,
& put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an
Aeon till it came out clean...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...here are
other pictures of the Giovannitti people I could give
you for to-morrow,
And how some of them go to the county agent on winter
mornings with their baskets for beans and cornmeal
and molasses.
I listen to fellows saying here's good stuff for a novel or
it might be worked up into a good play.
I say there's no dramatist living can put old Mrs.
Gabrielle Giovannitti into a play with that kindling
wood piled on top of her head coming along Peoria
Street nine o...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...et, bat-
light shining off the top. It stopped in front of the ice-cream
parlor at Filbert and Stockton.
An agent got out and went in and bought two hundred
double-decker ice-cream cones. He needed a wheelbarrow
to get them back to the car.
THE LAST TIME I SAW
TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA
The last time we met was in July on the Big Wood River, ten
miles away from Ketchum. It was just after Hemingway had
killed himself there, but I did...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...without it:
I now remember all about it;
I wrote the thing myself.
"It came out in a 'Monthly,' or
At least my agent said it did:
Some literary swell, who saw
It, thought it seemed adapted for
The Magazine he edited.
"My father was a Brownie, Sir;
My mother was a Fairy.
The notion had occurred to her,
The children would be happier,
If they were taught to vary.
"The notion soon became a craze;
And, when it once began, she
Brought us all out in...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...Who are these people at the bridge to meet me? They are the villagers----
The rector, the midwife, the sexton, the agent for bees.
In my sleeveless summery dress I have no protection,
And they are all gloved and covered, why did nobody tell me?
They are smiling and taking out veils tacked to ancient hats.
I am nude as a chicken neck, does nobody love me?
Yes, here is the secretary of bees with her white shop smock,
Buttoning the cuffs at my wrists and the slit f...Read more of this...
by
McGonagall, William Topaz
...de,
Also Mr J. Carter, who never was afraid
To denounce strong drink, and to warn the people from it to flee,
While agent of the Temperance Society in Dundee.
And when the funeral cortege arrived at the Western burying-ground,
Then the clergyman performed the funeral service with a solemn sound;
While from the eyes of the spectators fell many a tear
For the late Ex-Provost Rough they loved so dear.
And when the coffin was lowered into its house of clay,
Then t...Read more of this...
by
Killigrew, Anne
...
The smart of Fire, or yet the Edge of Steel.
As little can it Worldly Joys partake,
Though it the Body does its Agent make,
And joyntly with it Servile Labour bear,
For Things, alas, in which it cannot share.
Surveigh the Land and Sea by Heavens embrac't,
Thou'lt find no sweet th'Immortal Soul can tast:
Why dost thou then, O Man! thy self torment
Good here to gain, or Evils to prevent?
Who only Miserable or Happy art,
As thou neglects, or wisely act'st thy ...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...famous Australia through
As a dancer, fighter and singer.
He was fit for the ring, if he'd had his rights
As an agent of devastation;
And the number of men he had killed in fights
Was his principal conversation.
"I have known blokes go to their doom," said he,
"Through actin' with haste and rashness:
But the style that this Noisy Ned assumes,
It's nothing but silent flashness.
"We may just be dirt, from his point of view,
Unworthy a word in season;
...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...so out of a farm
At one stroke (of a match), Brad had to turn
To earn a living on the Concord railroad,
As under-ticket-agent at a station
Where his job, when he wasn't selling tickets,
Was setting out, up track and down, not plants
As on a farm, but planets, evening stars
That varied in their hue from red to green.
He got a good glass for six hundred dollars.
His new job gave him leisure for stargazing.
Often he bid me come and have a look
Up the brass barrel, v...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...as one who says
To man that he shall sit with folded hands
Against the Coming. If I be anything,
I move a driven agent among my kind,
Establishing by the faith of Abraham,
And by the grace of their necessities,
The clamoring word that is the word of life
Nearer than heretofore to the solution
Of their tomb-serving doubts. If I have loosed
A shaft of language that has flown sometimes
A little higher than the hearts and heads
Of nature’s minions, it will yet b...Read more of this...
by
Williams, William Carlos (WCW)
...of Indian blood
will throw up a girl so desolate
so hemmed round
with disease or murder
that she'll be rescued by an
agent—
reared by the state and
sent out at fifteen to work in
some hard-pressed
house in the suburbs—
some doctor's family, some Elsie—
voluptuous water
expressing with broken
brain the truth about us—
her great
ungainly hips and flopping breasts
addressed to cheap
jewelry
and rich young men with fine eyes
as if the earth under our feet
were
an excremen...Read more of this...
by
Murray, Les
...l
plugged views of my pluck and offal.
The only poet whose liver
damage hadn't been self-inflicted,
grinned my agent. A momentarily
holed bowel had released flora
who live in us and will eat us
when we stop feeding them the earth.
I had, it did seem, rehearsed
the private office of the grave,
ceased excreting, made corpse gases
all while liana'd in tubes
and overseen by cockpit instruments
that beeped or struck up Beethoven's
Fifth at behests of f...Read more of this...
by
Auden, Wystan Hugh (W H)
...g watches glanced up as he passed
And went on working; where a hospital was rising fast,
A joiner touched his cap; an agent came to tell
Some of the trees he'd planted were progressing well.
The white alps glittered. It was summer. He was very great.
Far off in Paris where his enemies
Whsipered that he was wicked, in an upright chair
A blind old woman longed for death and letters. He would write,
"Nothing is better than life." But was it? Yes...Read more of this...
by
Noonuccal, Oodgeroo
...re to the place of their old bora ground
Where now the many white men hurry about like ants.
Notice of the estate agent reads: 'Rubbish May Be Tipped Here'.
Now it half covers the traces of the old bora ring.
'We are as strangers here now, but the white tribe are the strangers.
We belong here, we are of the old ways.
We are the corroboree and the bora ground,
We are the old ceremonies, the laws of the elders.
We are the wonder tales of Dream Ti...Read more of this...
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