Famous All Time Poems by Famous Poets

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

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All the Worlds a Stage

...All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William


As I Sat Alone by Blue Ontario's Shores

...1
AS I sat alone, by blue Ontario’s shore, 
As I mused of these mighty days, and of peace return’d, and the dead that return no
 more, 
A Phantom, gigantic, superb, with stern visage, accosted me; 
Chant me the poem, it said, that comes from the soul of America—chant me
 the
 carol of victory; 
And strike up the marches of Libertad—marches more powerful ye...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Beowulf (Modern English)

...Prologue

Listen! We have gathered the glory in days of yore
of the Spear-Danes, kings among men:
how these warriors performed deeds of courage. (ll. 1-3)

Often Scyld Scefing seized the mead-seats
from hordes of harmers, from how many people,
terrifying noble men, after he was found
so needy at the start. He wrangled his remedy after,
growing hal...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Howl

...For Carl Solomon

I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the ***** streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sa...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

Humanitad

...It is full winter now: the trees are bare,
Save where the cattle huddle from the cold
Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear
The autumn's gaudy livery whose gold
Her jealous brother pilfers, but is true
To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blew

From Saturn's cave; a few thin wisps of hay
Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain
Dr...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar


Hyperion

...the young day when first thy infant hand
Pluck'd witless the weak flowers, till thine arm
Could bend that bow heroic to all times.
Show thy heart's secret to an ancient Power
Who hath forsaken old and sacred thrones
For prophecies of thee, and for the sake
Of loveliness new born."---Apollo then,
With sudden scrutiny and gloomless eyes,
Thus answer'd, while his white melodious throat
Throbb'd with the syllables.---"Mnemosyne!
Thy name is on my tongue, I know not how;
Why shoul...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

I had no time to hate because

...I had no time to hate, because
The grave would hinder me,
And life was not so ample I
Could finish enmity.

Nor had I time to love, but since
Some industry must be,
The little toil of love, I thought,
Was large enough for me....Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

Inferno (English)

...CANTO I


 ONE night, when half my life behind me lay, 
 I wandered from the straight lost path afar. 
 Through the great dark was no releasing way; 
 Above that dark was no relieving star. 
 If yet that terrored night I think or say, 
 As death's cold hands its fears resuming are. 

 Gladly the dreads I felt, too dire to tell, 
 The hopeless, pathless, li...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

Jabberwocky

...'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: 
All mimsy were the borogoves, 
And the mome raths outgrabe. 

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son! 
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! 
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun 
The frumious Bandersnatch!" 

He took his vorpal sword in hand: 
Long time the manxome foe he sought 
So...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

Song of Myself

...my man’s body up, dripping and drown’d.

I understand the large hearts of heroes, 
The courage of present times and all times; 
How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steam-ship, and
 Death chasing it up and down the storm; 
How he knuckled tight, and gave not back one inch, and was faithful of days and
 faithful of nights, 
And chalk’d in large letters, on a board, Be of good cheer, we will not
 desert you:
How he follow’d with them, and tack’...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Song of the Open Road

...free to
 mine?

8
The efflux of the Soul is happiness—here is happiness; 
I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times; 
Now it flows unto us—we are rightly charged. 

Here rises the fluid and attaching character; 
The fluid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of man and woman;
(The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day out of the roots of
 themselves,
 than it sprouts fresh and sweet continually out of itself.) 

Toward th...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Ballad of the White Horse

...DEDICATION 

Of great limbs gone to chaos,
A great face turned to night--
Why bend above a shapeless shroud
Seeking in such archaic cloud
Sight of strong lords and light?

Where seven sunken Englands
Lie buried one by one,
Why should one idle spade, I wonder,
Shake up the dust of thanes like thunder
To smoke and choke the sun?

In cloud of clay so cast to ...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K

The Dream

...I

Our life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off waking toils,
They do ...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Growth of Love

...1
They that in play can do the thing they would,
Having an instinct throned in reason's place,
--And every perfect action hath the grace
Of indolence or thoughtless hardihood--
These are the best: yet be there workmen good
Who lose in earnestness control of face,
Or reckon means, and rapt in effort base
Reach to their end by steps well understood. 
Me whom...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour

The Idiot Boy

...The IDIOT BOY.   'Tis eight o'clock,—a clear March night,  The moon is up—the sky is blue,  The owlet in the moonlight air,  He shouts from nobody knows where;  He lengthens out his lonely shout,  Halloo! halloo! a long halloo!   —Why bustle thus about your door,&n...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

...The Argument.


Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep

Once meek, and in a perilous path,
The just man kept his course along 
The vale of death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow.
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.

Then the perilous path was planted:
And a river, and a spring
On every cliff and tom...Read more of this...
by Blake, William

The Triumph of Life

...Swift as a spirit hastening to his task 
Of glory & of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour, & the mask
Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth.
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
Flamed above crimson clouds, & at the birth
Of light, the Ocean's orison arose
To which the birds tempered their matin lay,
All flowers in field or fore...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The Vision of Judgment

...BY 
QUEVEDO REDIVIVUS 


SUGGESTED BY THE COMPOSITION SO ENTITLED BY THE AUTHOR OF 'WAT TYLER' 

'A Daniel come to judgment! yes a Daniel!
I thank thee, Jew for teaching me that word.' 

PREFACE 

It hath been wisely said, that 'One fool makes many;' and it hath been poetically observed —

'That fools rush in where angels fear to tread.' - Pope 

If Mr. So...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Waste Land

...The Waste Land
by T. S. Eliot

"Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis
vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:
Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo."

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
 April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter ke...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

White Flock

...pressed-down snow
In a cemetery, lightly sigh,
And you with your stick paint the palace
Where together we'll be for all time.



Consolation

You won't hear about him any longer,
You won't hear about him in the wind,
In the mournful fire-consumed Poland
His grave you will not find.

May your spirit be still an peaceful,
There will be no losses now:
He is new warrior of God's army,
Do not be about him in sorrow.

In the dear, beloved home
It's sinful to ...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

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