Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Am Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...June.
O, my Luve's like a melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair as thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun:
I will love thess till, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run:

And fare thee well, my only luve!
And fare thee weel, a while!
And I will come again, my luve,
Tho' it ware ten thousand mile....Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert



...
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 yet;
And sing me before you go, the song of the throes of Democracy. 

(Democracy—the destin’d conqueror—yet treacherous lip-smiles everywhere, 
And Death and infidelity at every step.) 

2
A Nation announcing itself, 
I myself make the only growth by which ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...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 hale under the heavens, thriving honorably,
until all of them had to obey him,
those scatter...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,
...

One Sister have I in our house,
And one, a hedge away.
There's only one recorded,
But both belong to me.

One came the road that I came—
And wore my last year's gown—
The other, as a bird her nest,
Builded our hearts among.

She did not sing as we did—
It was a different tune—
Herself to her a music
As Bumble bee of June.

Today is far from Childhood—
But up and down the hills
I held her hand the tighter—
Which shortened all the miles—

And still her h...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily
...ts 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 sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen



...ating sheep
Press close against the hurdles, and the shivering house-dogs creep

From the shut stable to the frozen stream
And back again disconsolate, and miss
The bawling shepherds and the noisy team;
And overhead in circling listlessness
The cawing rooks whirl round the frosted stack,
Or crowd the dripping boughs; and in the fen the ice-pools crack

Where the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds
And flaps his wings, and stretches back his neck,
And hoots to see the moon; a...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...a summer's day
Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen divinity
Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds
Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips.

 Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went,
No further than to where his feet had stray'd,
And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground
His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead,
Unscept...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...turns his eyes to see 
 The league-wide wastes that held him. So mine eyes 
 Surveyed that fear, the while my wearied frame 
 Rested, and ever my heart's tossed lake became 
 More quiet. 
 Then from that pass released, which yet 
 With living feet had no man left, I set 
 My forward steps aslant the steep, that so, 
 My right foot still the lower, I climbed. 

 Below 
 No more I gazed. Around, a slope of sand 
 Was sterile of all growth on either hand, 
 Or moving life, a spo...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante
...  All Thoughts, all Passions, all Delights,  Whatever stirs this mortal Frame,  All are but Ministers of Love,    And feed his sacred flame.   Oft in my waking dreams do I  Live o'er again that happy hour,  When midway on the Mount I lay    Beside the Ruin'd Tower.   The Moonshine stealing o'er the scene  Had blended w...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William
...l have thousands of
 globes,
 and all time. 

2
O the engineer’s joys!
To go with a locomotive! 
To hear the hiss of steam—the merry shriek—the steam-whistle—the laughing
 locomotive! 
To push with resistless way, and speed off in the distance. 

O the gleesome saunter over fields and hill-sides! 
The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds—the moist fresh stillness of the woods,
The exquisite smell of the earth at day-break, and all through the forenoon. 

O the horseman’s...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...

The atmosphere is not a perfume—it has no taste of the distillation—it
 is odorless; 
It is for my mouth forever—I am in love with it;
I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked; 
I am mad for it to be in contact with me. 

2
The smoke of my own breath; 
Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine; 
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood
 and air through my lungs;
The s...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...orld before me, 
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose. 

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune—I myself am good fortune; 
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Strong and content, I travel the open road. 

The earth—that is sufficient; 
I do not want the constellations any nearer; 
I know they are very well where they are; 
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens; 
I carry them, me...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...ut still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am th...Read more of this...
by Angelou, Maya
...oo English to be true.

Of a good king on an island
That ruled once on a time;
And as he walked by an apple tree
There came green devils out of the sea
With sea-plants trailing heavily
And tracks of opal slime.

Yet Alfred is no fairy tale;
His days as our days ran,
He also looked forth for an hour
On peopled plains and skies that lower,
From those few windows in the tower
That is the head of a man.

But who shall look from Alfred's hood
Or breathe his breath alive?
His centu...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K
...hold me, now that I have cast my chains,
Master of the art which for thy sake I serve.


2
For thou art mine: and now I am ashamed
To have uséd means to win so pure acquist,
And of my trembling fear that might have misst
Thro' very care the gold at which I aim'd;
And am as happy but to hear thee named,
As are those gentle souls by angels kisst
In pictures seen leaving their marble cist
To go before the throne of grace unblamed. 
Nor surer am I water hath the skill
To quench m...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...ul no more!
 Work claims my wakeful nights, my busy days--
Albeit bright memories of that sunlit shore
 Yet haunt my dreaming gaze!


PREFACE


If--and the thing is wildly possible--the charge of writing nonsense were ever brought against the author of this brief but instructive poem, it would be based, I feel convinced, on the line (in p.18) 

"Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes." 

In view of this painful possibility, I will not (as I might) appeal indign...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis
...ing 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 forest which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray
Burned slow & inconsumably, & sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smilin...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...Satanic School,' the which he doth recommend to the notice of the legislature; thereby adding to his other laurels, the ambition of those of an informer. If there exists anywhere, except in his imagination, such a School, is he not sufficiently armed against it by his own intense vanity? The truth is, that there are certain writers whom Mr. S. imagines, like Scrub, to have 'talked of him; for they have laughed consumedly.' 

I think I know enough of most of the writers to who...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...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 kept us warm, covering
Earth in forge...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...Copyright Anna Akhmatova
Copyright English translation by Ilya Shambat (ilya_shambat@yahoo.com)
Origin: http://www.geocities.com/ilya_shambat/akhmatova.html

 * I * 

We thought we were beggars, we thought we had nothing at all
But then when we started to lose one thing after another,
Each day became
A memorial day --
And then we made songs
Of great divine generosity
And of our former riches.


Unificatio...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Am poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things