Famous Alternative Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Alternative poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous alternative poems. These examples illustrate what a famous alternative poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...my skill or strength,
But ask no land beyond my sabre's length:
Power sways but by division — her resource
The blest alternative of fraud or force!
Ours be the last; in time deceit may come
When cities cage us in a social home:
There ev'n thy soul might err — how oft the heart
Corruption shakes which peril could not part!
And woman, more than man, when death or woe,
Or even disgrace, would lay her lover low,
Sunk in the lap of luxury will shame —
Away suspicion! — ...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...As a kid I believed in democracy: I
'saw no alternative'-”teaching at The Big Place I ah
put it in practice:
we'd time for one long novel: to a vote-”
Gone with the Wind they voted: I crunched 'No'
and we sat down with War & Peace.
As a man I believed in democracy (nobody
ever learns anything): only one lazy day
my assistant, called James Dow,
& I were chatting, in a failure of meeting of minds,
and...Read more of this...
by
Berryman, John
...hope is yours to live,
I charge you take in trust to give
For very love's sake, in whose sight,
Through poise of hours alternative
And seasons plumed with light or night,
Ye live and move and have your breath
To sing with on the ridge of death.
I charge you faint not all night through
For love's sake that was breathed on you
To be to you as wings and feet
For travel, and as blood to heat
And sense of spirit to renew
And bloom of fragrance to keep sweet
And fire of purpose t...Read more of this...
by
Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...lled down, listening to
classical music
I was young I was so young it hurt like a knife
inside
because there was no alternative except to hide as long
as possible--
not in self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance:
trying to connect.
the old composers -- Mozart, Bach, Beethoven,
Brahms were the only ones who spoke to me and
they were dead.
finally, starved and beaten, I had to go into
the streets to be interviewed for low-paying and
monotonous
jobs
by st...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...ndar
from what's less likely each year to "recur."
Our saved-for-now lives are life sentences
-- which we prefer to the alternative....Read more of this...
by
Hacker, Marilyn
...lchion's edge."
Proud Otho on the instant, reddening, threw
His glove on earth, and forth his sabre flew.
"The last alternative befits me best,
And thus I answer for mine absent guest."
With cheek unchanging from its sallow gloom,
However near his own or other's tomb;
With hand, whose almost careless coolness spoke
Its grasp well-used to deal the sabre-stroke;
With eye, though calm, determined not to spare,
Did Lara too his willing weapon bare.
In vain the circli...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...ropose is not
Marxism, which
is not dead yet in
the English department,
Not maximalism, which was
a still-born alternative
to minimalism,
Nor Maxism, which rests on
adulation of Max
Beerbohm, parodist
nonpareil,
But maximism, the love
of adages,
Or Maximism, the advocacy of
maximum gastronomic
pleasure on the model
of a meal at Maxim's
in Paris in, say, 1950.
Is that clear?...Read more of this...
by
Lehman, David
...rigid an arrangement
Might, of itself, perforce...
I would like to submit for the Minister's concurrence
The following alternative course,
Subject to revision and reconsideration
In the light of our experience gains..."
And this had to happen at the corner where the by-pass
Comes into Egham out of Staines.
That very near miss for an All Souls' Fellowship
The recent compensation of a 'K' -
The first-class brains of a senior civil servant
Are sweetbread on the road today....Read more of this...
by
Betjeman, John
...Darkness braced as firm
As all my stratagem had been
The Midnight to confirm --
No Drug for Consciousness -- can be --
Alternative to die
Is Nature's only Pharmacy
For Being's Malady --...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...up to be their filling
Even from wells we sunk too deep for war
And filled by brows that bled where no wounds were.
*Alternative line --*
Even as One who bled where no wounds were....Read more of this...
by
Owen, Wilfred
...my skill or strength,
But ask no land beyond my sabre's length:
Power sways but by division — her resource
The blest alternative of fraud or force!
Ours be the last; in time deceit may come
When cities cage us in a social home:
There ev'n thy soul might err — how oft the heart
Corruption shakes which peril could not part!
And woman, more than man, when death or woe,
Or even disgrace, would lay her lover low,
Sunk in the lap of luxury will shame —
Away suspicion! — ...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...them no pecunial pain: they got off with
no mere pecuniary punishment. (Transcriber's note: "Astert"
means "escape". An alternative reading of this line is "there
might astert him no pecunial pain" i.e. no fine ever escaped him
(the archdeacon))
3. A dog for the bow: a dog attending a huntsman with bow
and arrow.
4. Ribibe: the name of a musical instrument; applied to an old
woman because of the shrillness of her voice.
5. De par dieux: by the gods.
6. See note 12 to the ...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
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