Famous Agreed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Godolphin Horne

by Hilaire Belloc
 Who was cursed with the Sin of Pride, and Became a Boot-Black. 

Godolphin Horne was Nobly Born;
He held the Human Race in Scorn,
And lived with all his Sisters where
His father lived, in Berkeley Square.
And oh! The Lad was Deathly Proud!
He never shook your Hand or Bowed,
But merely smirked and nodded thus:
How perfectly ridiculous!
Alas! That such Affected Tricks
Should flourish in...Read more of this...

No Road

by Philip Larkin
 Since we agreed to let the road between us
Fall to disuse,
And bricked our gates up, planted trees to screen us,
And turned all time's eroding agents loose,
Silence, and space, and strangers - our neglect
Has not had much effect.

Leaves drift unswept, perhaps; grass creeps unmown;
No other change.
So clear it stands, so little overgrown,
Walking that way tonight would not seem strange,
And still...Read more of this...

Colonel Martin

by William Butler Yeats
 I

The Colonel went out sailing,
He spoke with Turk and Jew,
With Christian and with Infidel,
For all tongues he knew.
'O what's a wifeless man?' said he,
And he came sailing home.
He rose the latch and went upstairs
And found an empty room.
The Colonel went out sailing.

 II

'I kept her much in the country
And she was much alone,
And though she may be there,' he...Read more of this...

I. The Witch of Coös

by Robert Frost
 I stayed the night for shelter at a farm
Behind the mountains, with a mother and son,
Two old-believers. They did all the talking.

MOTHER: Folks think a witch who has familiar spirits
She could call up to pass a winter evening,
But won-™t, should be burned at the stake or something.
Summoning spirits isn-™t -œButton, button,
Who-™s got the button,- I would have them know.

SON:...Read more of this...

Zilpha Marsh

by Edgar Lee Masters
 At four o'clock in late October
I sat alone in the country school-house
Back from the road 'mid stricken fields,
And an eddy of wind blew leaves on the pane,
And crooned in the flue of the cannon-stove,
With its open door blurring the shadows
With the spectral glow of a dying fire.
In an idle mood I was running the planchette --
All at once my...Read more of this...

Uncle Bob

by Barry Tebb
 Shell-shocked from Korea

A grenade that left him

The platoon’s only survivor,

Put him in Stanley Royd

For thirty years.

He tailored there

And out on weekend leaves

He made and mended

Everybody’s clothes,

Crying copiously

While he sewed.

When they cleared out

The chronic cases

Uncle Bob came home,

Shopping for Edna,

Doing the garden;

When the lodger left

Without a word, the police

Searched his room,

The garden shed,

Even the chest freezer.

Oesophageal cancer

Is very final.

John, his...Read more of this...

Sweeney

by Henry Lawson
 It was somewhere in September, and the sun was going down, 
When I came, in search of `copy', to a Darling-River town; 
`Come-and-have-a-drink' we'll call it -- 'tis a fitting name, I think -- 
And 'twas raining, for a wonder, up at Come-and-have-a-drink. 

'Neath the public-house verandah I was resting on a bunk 
When a stranger rose before me,...Read more of this...

The Old Timers Steeplechase

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The sheep were shorn and the wool went down 
At the time of our local racing; 
And I'd earned a spell -- I was burnt and brown -- 
So I rolled my swag for a trip to town 
And a look at the steeplechasing. 
Twas rough and ready--an uncleared course 
As rough as the blacks had found it; 
With...Read more of this...

There was an Old Person of Leeds

by Edward Lear
There was an Old Person of Leeds,Whose head was infested with beads;She sat on a stool and ate gooseberry-fool,Which agreed with that Person of Leeds. ...Read more of this...

Walking The Marshland

by Stephen Dunn
 It was no place for the faithless,
so I felt a little odd
walking the marshland with my daughters,

Canada geese all around and the blue 
herons just standing there;
safe, and the abundance of swans.

The girls liked saying the words,
gosling,
egret, whooping crane, and they liked

when I agreed. The casinos were a few miles
to the east.
I liked saying craps and croupier

and sometimes I...Read more of this...

Hudsons Last Voyage

by Henry Van Dyke
 June 22, 1611 

THE SHALLOP ON HUDSON BAY 

One sail in sight upon the lonely sea
And only one, God knows! For never ship 
But mine broke through the icy gates that guard 
These waters, greater grown than any since
We left the shores of England. We were first, 
My men, to battle in between the bergs
And floes to these wide...Read more of this...

The Bull Moose

by Alden Nowlan
 Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain, 
lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar, 
stumbling through tamarack swamps,
came the bull moose
to be stopped at last by a pole-fenced pasture.

Too tired to turn or, perhaps, aware
there was no place left to go, he stood with the cattle.
They, scenting the musk of death, seeing his great head...Read more of this...

You

by Barry Tebb
 “Remember, you loved me, when we were young, one day”



The words of the song in Tauber’s mellifluous tenor

Haunt my nights and days, make me tremble when I hear

Your voice on the phone, sadden me when I can’t make into your smile

The pucker of your lips, the gleam in your eye.



The day we met is with me still, you asked...Read more of this...

A Study In Feeling

by Ellis Parker Butler
 To be a great musician you must be a man of moods,
You have to be, to understand sonatas and etudes.
To execute pianos and to fiddle with success,
With sympathy and feeling you must fairly effervesce;
It was so with Paganini, Remenzi and Cho-pang,
And so it was with Peterkin Von Gabriel O’Lang.

Monsieur O’Lang had sympathy to such a great degree.
No virtuoso ever...Read more of this...

Sam Goes To It

by Marriott Edgar
 Sam Small had retired from the Army,
In the old Duke of Wellington's time,
So when present unpleasantness started,
He were what you might call... past his prime.

He'd lived for some years in retirement,
And knew nowt of war, if you please,
Till they blasted and bombed his allotment,
And shelled the best part of his peas.

'T were as if bugles called Sam to duty,
For...Read more of this...

Flammonde

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 The man Flammonde, from God knows where, 
With firm address and foreign air 
With news of nations in his talk 
And something royal in his walk, 
With glint of iron in his eyes, 
But never doubt, nor yet surprise, 
Appeared, adn stayed, and held his head 
As one by kings accredited.

Erect, with his alert repose 
About him, and about...Read more of this...

Two Tramps In Mud Time

by Robert Frost
 Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.

Good blocks of...Read more of this...

The Disciples

by Aleister Crowley
 "To Lionel Engers-Kennedy: to the memory of Hargrave Jennings: and
to A. C. W. G. and H. E. H."


Beneath the vine tree and the fig
Where mortal cares may not intrude,
On melon and on sucking pig
Although their brains are bright and big
Banquet the Great White Brotherhood.

Among the fountains and the trees
That fringed his garden's glowing border,
At sunset walked, and, in the...Read more of this...

An Excursion Steamer Sunk in the Tay

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1888, and on July the 14th day,
That an alarming accident occurred in the River Tay.
Which resulted in the sinking of the Tay Ferries' Steamer "Dundee,"
Which was a most painful and sickening sight to see. 

The Steamer was engaged by the Independent Order of Rechabites,
And all were resolved to see some rural sights;
And the place...Read more of this...

Ninth Inning

by David Lehman
 He woke up in New York City on Valentine's Day,
Speeding. The body in the booth next to his was still warm,
Was gone. He had bought her a sweater, a box of chocolate
Said her life wasn't working he looked stricken she said
You're all bent out of shape, accusingly, and when he
She went from being an Ivy League professor of French
To...Read more of this...

Nellie Clark

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I was only eight years old;
And before I grew up and knew what it meant
I had no words for it, except
That I was frightened and told my Mother;
And that my Father got a pistol
And would have killed Charlie, who was a big boy,
Fifteen years old, except for his Mother.
Nevertheless the story clung to me.
But the man who married me,...Read more of this...

Botany Bay Eclogues 03 - Humphrey And William

by Robert Southey
 (Time, Noon.)


HUMPHREY:

See'st thou not William that the scorching Sun
By this time half his daily race has run?
The savage thrusts his light canoe to shore
And hurries homeward with his fishy store.
Suppose we leave awhile this stubborn soil
To eat our dinner and to rest from toil!


WILLIAM:

Agreed. Yon tree whose purple gum bestows
A ready medicine for the sick-man's woes,
Forms with its shadowy...Read more of this...

Grif of the Bloody Hand

by William Topaz McGonagall
 In an immense wood in the south of Kent,
There lived a band of robbers which caused the people discontent;
And the place they infested was called the Weald,
Where they robbed wayside travellers and left them dead on the field. 

Their leader was called Grif, of the Bloody Hand,
And so well skilled in sword practice there's few could him withstand;
And sometimes...Read more of this...

The Wreck of the Steamer London

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1866, and on a very beautiful day,
That eighty-two passengers, with spirits light and gay,
Left Gravesend harbour, and sailed gaily away
On board the steamship "London,"
Bound for the city of Melbourne,
Which unfortunately was her last run,
Because she was wrecked on the stormy main,
Which has caused many a heart to throb with pain,
Because they will ne'er look...Read more of this...

Lays of Sorrow

by Lewis Carroll
 The day was wet, the rain fell souse
Like jars of strawberry jam, [1] a
sound was heard in the old henhouse,
A beating of a hammer. 
Of stalwart form, and visage warm,
Two youths were seen within it,
Splitting up an old tree into perches for their poultry
At a hundred strokes [2] a minute. 
The work is done, the hen has taken
Possession of...Read more of this...

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