Famous Amazing Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Challenge To The Dark

...shot in the eye 
shot in the brain 
shot in the ass 
shot like a flower in the dance 

amazing how death wins hands down 
amazing how much credence is given to idiot forms of life 

amazing how laughter has been drowned out 
amazing how viciousness is such a constant 

I must soon declare my own war on their war 
I must hold to my last piece of ground 
I must protect the small space I have made that has allowed me life 

my life not their deat...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles


Adela

...ze of gold and blue
Rides on the moon, a lilac conch of pearl,
As if the dread god, charioted anew
Came conquering, his amazing disk awhirl
To war down all the stars. I see him through
The hair of this mine own Italian girl,
Adela
That bends her face on mine in the gondola!


There is scarce a breath of wind on the lagoon.
Life is absorbed in its beatitude,
A meditative mage beneath the moon
Ah! should we come, a delicate interlude,
To Campo Santo that, this night of June,
He...Read more of this...
by Crowley, Aleister

Ai

...uests for money stopped coming.
I wonder if Ai the poet is happy she shares a name
with a gifted chimp. To me, the most amazing thing
about Ai the poet is she hardly ever
writes an "I" poem about herself.
She crawls into the hearts
of the cruelest men and writes about what
it is like to be them, while I mostly
curl in the bellies of the shattered women.
There's no evidence that one approach
is better than the other. There's no evidence
that chimpanzees use numbers in the wild...Read more of this...
by Duhamel, Denise

An Essay on Man in Four Epistles: Epistle 1

...strike,
Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.


And, if each system in gradation roll
Alike essential to th' amazing whole,
The least confusion but in one, not all
That system only, but the whole must fall.
Let earth unbalanc'd from her orbit fly,
Planets and suns run lawless through the sky;
Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurl'd,
Being on being wreck'd, and world on world;
Heav'n's whole foundations to their centre nod,
And nature trembles to the throne o...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander

Apostroph

...you hastening light! O the sun of the world will ascend, dazzling, and take his
 height—and you too will ascend; 
O so amazing and so broad! up there resplendent, darting and burning;
O prophetic! O vision staggered with weight of light! with pouring glories! 
O copious! O hitherto unequalled! 
O Libertad! O compact! O union impossible to dissever! 
O my Soul! O lips becoming tremulous, powerless! 
O centuries, centuries yet ahead!
O voices of greater orators! I pause—I list...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt


Bridge-Guard in the Karroo

...
Till the aching Oudtshoorn ranges
 Stand up like the thrones of Kings --

Ramparts of slaughter and peril --
 Blazing, amazing, aglow --
'Twixt the sky-line's belting beryl
 And the wine-dark flats below.

Royal the pageant closes,
 Lit by the last of the sun --
Opal and ash-of-roses,
 Cinnamon, umber, and dun.

The twilight svallows the thicket,
 The starlight reveals the ridge.
The whistle shrills to the picket --
 We are changing guard on the bridge.

(Few, forgotten and ...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

Dickinson Poems by Number

...I cannot see—
For love of Her—Sweet—countrymen—
Judge tenderly—of Me.

448

This was a Poet—It is That
Distills amazing sense
From ordinary Meanings—
And Attar so immense

From the familiar species
That perished by the Door—
We wonder it was not Ourselves—
Arrested it—before—

Of Pictures, the Discloser—
The Poet—it is He—
Entitles Us—by Contrast—
To ceaseless Poverty—

Of Portion—so unconscious—
The Robbing—could not harm—
Himself—to Him—a Fortune—
E...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

Essay on Man

...trike, 
Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike. 
And if each system in gradation roll, 
Alike essential to th' amazing whole; 
The least confusion but in one, not all 
That system only, but the whole must fall. 
Let Earth unbalanc'd from her orbit fly, 
Planets and Suns run lawless thro' the sky, 
Let ruling Angels from their spheres be hurl'd, 
Being on being wreck'd, and world on world, 
Heav'n's whole foundations to their centre nod, 
And Nature tremble to the thr...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander

From a Survivor

...
who might have made the leap
we talked, too late, of making

which I live now
not as a leap
but a succession of brief, amazing movements

each one making possible the next...Read more of this...
by Rich, Adrienne

Goliath Of Gath

...which the giant grac'd.
His monarch saw him coming from the war,
And thus demanded of the son of Ner.
"Say, who is this amazing youth?" he cry'd,
When thus the leader of the host reply'd;
"As lives thy soul I know not whence he sprung,
"So great in prowess though in years so young:"
"Inquire whose son is he," the sov'reign said,
"Before whose conq'ring arm Philistia fled."
Before the king behold the stripling stand,
Goliath's head depending from his hand:
To him the king: "Sa...Read more of this...
by Wheatley, Phillis

Holy Sonnet XIII: What If This Present Were The Worlds Last Night?

...ell,
The picture of Christ crucified, and tell
Whether that countenance can thee affright,
Tears in his eyes quench the amazing light,
Blood fills his frowns, which from his pierced head fell.
And can that tongue adjudge thee unto hell,
Which prayed forgiveness for his foes' fierce spite?
No, no; but as in my idolatry
I said to all my profane mistresses,
Beauty, of pity, foulness only is
A sign of rigour: so I say to thee,
To wicked spirits are horrid shapes assigned,
This be...Read more of this...
by Donne, John

London Bridge

...ancy—when it leads you 
Far enough beyond the moment for a glance at the abyss?” 

“Will you tell me what intrinsic and amazing sort of nonsense 
You are crowding on the patience of the man who gives you—this?
Look around you and be sorry you’re not living in an attic, 
With a civet and a fish-net, and with you to pay the rent. 
I say words that you can spell without the use of all your letters; 
And I grant, if you insist, that I’ve a guess at what you meant.” 

“Have I told...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Longevity

...the wisdom of his poll.
For every time I want a rhyme he seems to find the word;
In any doubt he helps me out - a most amazing bird.
This line that lies before your eyes he helped me to indite;
I sling the ink but often think it's he who ought to write.
It's he who should in mystic mood concoct poetic screeds,
And I who ought to drop my crot and crackle sunflower seeds.

A parrot nears a hundred years (or so the legend goes),
So were I he this century I might see to its clos...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Old Deuteronomy

...lk out but the GREAT RUMPUSCAT.
His eyes were like fireballs fearfully blazing,
He gave a great yawn, and his jaws were amazing;
And when he looked out through the bars of the area,
You never saw anything fiercer or hairier.
And what with the glare of his eyes and his yawning,
The Pekes and the Pollicles quickly took warning.
He looked at the sky and he gave a great leap--
And they every last one of them scattered like sheep.

And when the Police Dog returned to his beat,
The...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

Senlin: His Futile Preoccupations

...azily stream 
Cloud upon thin-brown cloud, revolving, scattering; 
The mulberry tree rakes heaven and drops its fruit; 
Amazing sunlight sings in the opened vault 
On dust and bones, and I am mute.

It is noon; the bells let fall soft flowers of sound. 
They turn on the air, they shrink in the flare of noon. 
It is night; and I lie alone, and watch through the window 
The terrible ice-white emptiness of the moon. 
Small bells, far off, spill jewels of sound like rain, 
A long...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad

Sonnet Reversed

...Hand trembling towards hand; the amazing lights 
Of heart and eye. They stood on supreme heights. 

Ah, the delirious weeks of honeymoon! 
Soon they returned, and, after strange adventures, 
Settled at Balham by the end of June. 
Their money was in Can. Pacs. B. Debentures, 
And in Antofagastas. Still he went 
Cityward daily; still she did abide 
At home. And both were really quite content ...Read more of this...
by Brooke, Rupert

The Hammers

...ilk bonnet,
Titters with delight as her eyes fall upon it,
When she steps lightly down from Lawyer Green's whisky;
Such amazing beauty makes one feel frisky,
She explains.
Mr. Nichols says he is delighted
(He is the firm);
His work is all requited
If Miss Jessie can approve.
Miss Jessie answers that the ship is "a love".
The sides are yellow as marigold,
The port-lids are red when the ports are up:
Blood-red squares like an even chequer
Of yellow asters and portulaca.
There i...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The House Of Dust: Complete (Long)

...w, or knew himself a part
Of marvelous slowly-wreathing intricate patterns,
Plane upon plane, depth upon coiling depth,
Amazing leaves, folding one on another,
Voluted grasses, twists and curves and spirals—
All of it darkly moving . . . as for me,
I need no hasheesh for it—it's too easy!
Soon as I shut my eyes I set out walking
In a monstrous jungle of monstrous pale pink roseleaves,
Violets purple as death, dripping with water,
And ivy-leaves as big as clouds above me.

Her...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad

The Santa-Fe Trail (A Humoresque)

...n houses choke us, and great books bore us!
While I watch the highroad
And look at the sky,
While I watch the clouds in amazing grandeur
Roll their legions without rain
Over the blistering Kansas plain—
While I sit by the milestone
And watch the sky,
The United States
Goes by.

Listen to the iron-horns, ripping, racking. 
Listen to the quack-horns, slack and clacking.
Way down the road, trilling like a toad,
Here comes the dice -horn, here comes the vice -horn,
Here comes the...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel

Years End

...ach time we went back to each other's hands and
mouths as to a requiem where the chorus
sings death with irrelevant and amazing
bodily music....Read more of this...
by Hacker, Marilyn

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