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Famous Alters Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Dickinson, Emily
...eruke
Were not so shy
Of Goer by --
And Hands -- so slight --
They would elate a Sprite
With Merriment --

A Voice that Alters -- Low
And on the Ear can go
Like Let of Snow --
Or shift supreme --
As tone of Realm
On Subjects Diadem --

Too small -- to fear --
Too distant -- to endear --
And so Men Compromise
And just -- revere --...Read more of this...



by Kipling, Rudyard
...ese tales, which are strictest true,
 Just by way of convincing you
 How very little, since things was made,
 Any thing alters in any one's trade!...Read more of this...

by Wilbur, Richard
...Of an undreamt thing, we know to our cost
How the dreamt cloud crumbles, the vines are blackened by frost,
How the view alters. We could believe,

If you told us so, that the white-tailed deer will slip
Into perfect shade, grown perfectly shy,
The lark avoid the reaches of our eye,
The jack-pine lose its knuckled grip

On the cold ledge, and every torrent burn
As Xanthus once, its gliding trout
Stunned in a twinkling. What should we be without
The dolphin's arc, the d...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...After the Sun comes out
How it alters the World --
Waggons like messengers hurry about
Yesterday is old --

All men meet as if
Each foreclosed a news --
Fresh as a Cargo from Batize
Nature's qualities --...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...ut true Expression, like th' unchanging Sun,
Clears, and improves whate'er it shines upon,
It gilds all Objects, but it alters none.
Expression is the Dress of Thought, and still
Appears more decent as more suitable;
A vile Conceit in pompous Words exprest,
Is like a Clown in regal Purple drest;
For diff'rent Styles with diff'rent Subjects sort,
As several Garbs with Country, Town, and Court.
Some by Old Words to Fame have made Pretence;
Ancients in Phrase, meer Moder...Read more of this...



by Watts, Isaac
...save or to destroy;
Infinite years his life prolong,
And endless is his joy.]

[He knows no shadow of a change
Nor alters his decrees;
Firm as a rock his truth remains
To guard his promises.]

[Sinners before his presence die;
How holy is his name!
His anger and his jealousy
Burn like devouring flame.]

Justice upon a dreadful throne
Maintains the rights of God;
While Mercy sends her pardons down,
Bought with a Savior's blood.

Now to my soul, immortal King!
...Read more of this...

by Clampitt, Amy
...nded by women,
nurturers everywhere of the strange and wonderful,
beneath whose hands what had been alien begins,
as it alters, to grow as though it were indigenous.

But at this remove what I think of as
strange and wonderful, strolling the side streets of Manhattan
on an April afternoon, seeing hybrid pear trees in blossom,
a tossing, vertiginous colonnade of foam, up above—
is the white petalfall, the warm snowdrift
of the indigenous wild plum of my childhood.
Noth...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Anne
...fail.
The sun that on thy morning rose
Will light thee to the evening's close,
Whatever storms assail.' 

'God alters not; but Time on me
A wide and wondrous change has wrought:
And in these parted years I see
Cause for grave care and saddening thought.
I see that time, and toil, and truth,
An inward hardness can impart, -­
Can freeze the generous blood of youth,
And steel full fast the tender heart.' 

'Bless God for that divine decree! -­
That hardness come...Read more of this...

by Shakespeare, William
...Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with...Read more of this...

by Shakespeare, William
...Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his...Read more of this...

by Shakespeare, William
...Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his...Read more of this...

by Drayton, Michael
...oserpine's sad tears 
When she was rapt to the infernal bower, 
By thine own loved Psyche, by the fires 
Spent on thine alters flaming up to heav'n, 
By all true lovers' sighs, vows, and desires, 
By all the wounds that ever thou hast giv'n: 
I conjure thee by all that I have nam'd 
To make her love, or, Cupid, be thou damn'd....Read more of this...

by Shakespeare, William
...Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with...Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...ses
random peeing in the ocean
(this one’s guesses
another’s mishaps)
eureka quick becomes convention
then cosmos farts
alters the laws of motion
(a fresh menu of starts)

fear and loneliness – the basic drives
we take to bed
(sacrifice to you)
desperately wanting a sign
bringing us close to you
you – whom we give a head
voice (ownership of lives)
the only game at hand -
give selves a shine
play at being your ampersand

the wise settle for stardust
the grit the pearl
was fost...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...es,
Unwitting their soon sacrifice.

It is the Corpus Christi fête;
Processions crowd the bannered ways;
Before the alters women wait,
While men unite in hymns of praise,
And children look with angel gaze.

The bulls know naught of holiness,
To pious pomp their eyes are blind;
Their brutish brains will never guess
The sordid passions of mankind:
Poor innocents, they wait resigned.

Till in a black room each is penned,
While from above with cruel aim
Two torturers ...Read more of this...

by Raleigh, Sir Walter
...it is but dust:
And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lie.

Tell age it daily wasteth;
Tell honour how it alters;
Tell beauty how she blasteth;
Tell favour how it falters:
And as they shall reply,
Give every one the lie.

Tell wit how much it wrangles
In tickle points of niceness;
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in overwiseness:
And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.

Tell physic of her boldness;
Tell skill it is pretension;
Tell char...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...leasant bank beside a river by moon light
hearing a harper who sung to the harp. & his theme was, The man
who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds
reptiles of the mind.
But I arose, and sought for the mill, & there I found my
Angel, who surprised asked me, how I escaped?
I answerd. All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics: for
when you ran away, I found myself on a bank by moonlight hearing
a harper, But now we have seen my eternal lot, s...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...I heard the old, old men say,
'Everything alters,
And one by one we drop away.'
They had hands like claws, and their knees
Were twisted like the old thorn-trees
By the waters.
I heard the old, old men say,
'All that's beautiful drifts away
Like the waters.'...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...
Like those three stars of the airy Giant's zone, 
That glitter burnished by the frosty dark; 
And as the fiery Sirius alters hue, 
And bickers into red and emerald, shone 
Their morions, washed with morning, as they came. 

And I that prated peace, when first I heard 
War-music, felt the blind wildbeast of force, 
Whose home is in the sinews of a man, 
Stir in me as to strike: then took the king 
His three broad sons; with now a wandering hand 
And now a pointed finger,...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...grope a little --
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead --
But as they learn to see --

Either the Darkness alters --
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight --
And Life steps almost straight....Read more of this...

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