Famous Ancients Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Ancients poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous ancients poems. These examples illustrate what a famous ancients poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...;
Or else he would muster the heads of the clan,
And once more, in claret, try which was the man.
“By the gods of the ancients!” Downrightly replies,
“Before I surrender so glorious a prize,
I’ll conjure the ghost of the great Rorie More,
And bumper his horn with him twenty times o’er.”
Sir Robert, a soldier, no speech would pretend,
But he ne’er turn’d his back on his foe, or his friend;
Said, “Toss down the Whistle, the prize of the field,”
And, knee-deep in claret, he’...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...’d mysteries, the old and unknown hive-bees,
The North—the sweltering South—eastern Assyria—the Hebrews—the Ancient of Ancients,
Vast desolated cities—the gliding Present—all of these, and more, are in the
pageant-procession.
Geography, the world, is in it;
The Great Sea, the brood of islands, Polynesia, the coast beyond;
The coast you, henceforth, are facing—you Libertad! from your Western golden shores
The countries there, with their populations—the millions en-masse...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...till;
No sign of spring, save that the catkins fill,
And willow stems grow daily red and bright.
These are days when ancients held a rite
Of expiation for the old year's ill,
And prayer to purify the new year's will:
Fit days, ere yet the spring rains blur the sight,
Ere yet the bounding blood grows hot with haste,
And dreaming thoughts grow heavy with a greed
The ardent summer's joy to have and taste;
Fit days, to give to last year's losses heed,
To recon clear th...Read more of this...
by
Jackson, Helen Hunt
...Month which the warring ancients strangely styled
The month of war,--as if in their fierce ways
Were any month of peace!--in thy rough days
I find no war in Nature, though the wild
Winds clash and clang, and broken boughs are piled
As feet of writhing trees. The violets raise
Their heads without affright, without amaze,
And sleep through all the din, as sleeps a child.
And ...Read more of this...
by
Jackson, Helen Hunt
...bre they weave,
Or farmers quarrel over taro fields,
Preside as wisely as Wenweng did....
Is fame to be only for the ancients?...Read more of this...
by
Wei, Wang
...have gone--
Hy-Brazil or Babylon,
Islands of the Southern Run,
And Cities of Cathaia!
And we all praise famous men--
Ancients of the College;
For they taught us common sense--
Tried to teach us common sense--
Truth and God's Own Common Sense,
Which is more than knowledge!
Each degree of Latitude
Strung about Creation
Seeth one or more of us
(Of one muster each of us),
Diligent in that he does,
Keen in his vocation.
This we learned from famous men,
Knowing not its use...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...Where once we danced, where once we sang,
Gentlemen,
The floors are sunken, cobwebs hang,
And cracks creep; worms have fed upon
The doors. Yea, sprightlier times were then
Than now, with harps and tabrets gone,
Gentlemen!
Where once we rowed, where once we sailed,
Gentlemen,
And damsels took the tiller, veiled
Against too strong a stare (God wot...Read more of this...
by
Hardy, Thomas
...bjects please our Eyes,
Which out of Nature's common Order rise,
The shapeless Rock, or hanging Precipice.
But tho' the Ancients thus their Rules invade,
(As Kings dispense with Laws Themselves have made)
Moderns, beware! Or if you must offend
Against the Precept, ne'er transgress its End,
Let it be seldom, and compell'd by Need,
And have, at least, Their Precedent to plead.
The Critick else proceeds without Remorse,
Seizes your Fame, and puts his Laws in force.
I know there...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...s fill,
And let their Reason dictate to their Will,
Instead of Novels, Histories peruse,
And for their Guides the wiser Ancients chuse,
Thro' all the Labyrinths of Learning go,
And grow more humble, as they more do know.
By doing this, they will Respect procure,
Silence the Men, and lasting Fame secure;
And to themselves the best Companions prove,
And neither fear their Malice, nor desire their Love....Read more of this...
by
Chudleigh, Lady Mary
...ernal lechery
And all the horrors of fecundity!
We have, it is true, corrupt nations,
Beauty unknown to the radiant ancients:
Faces that gnaw through the heart's cankers,
And talk with the cool beauty of languor;
But these inventions of our backward muses
Are never hindered in their morbid uses
Of the old for profound homage to youth,
—To the young saint, the sweet air, the simple truth,
To the eye as limpid as the water current,
To spread out over all, insouciant...Read more of this...
by
Baudelaire, Charles
...d, he may do."
Then by the rule that made the horsetail bare,
I pluck out year by year, as hair by hair,
And melt down ancients like a heap of snow:
While you, to measure merits, look in Stowe,
And estimating authors by the year,
Bestow a garland only on a bier.
Shakespeare (whom you and ev'ry playhouse bill
Style the divine, the matchless, what you will)
For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight,
And grew immortal in his own despite.
Ben, old and poor, as little seem'd...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...OUNG.
For Z is zest. God give us all a relish of our duty.
For Action and Speaking are one according to God and the Ancients.
For the approaches of Death are by illumination.
For a man cannot have Publick Spirit, who is void of private benevolence.
For the order of Alamoth is first three, second six, third eighteen, fourth fifty four, and then the whole band.
For the order of Sheminith is first ten, second twenty, third thirty and then the whole band.
For the fi...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...serion a stone in India like Green Oil.
Let Knightly, house of Knightly rejoice with Zoronysios a gem supposed by the ancients to have magical effects. Star -- word -- herb -- gem.
Let Fellows, house of Fellows rejoice with Syrites a gem found in a Wolf's bladder.
Let Ascham, house of Ascham rejoice with Thyitis a precious stone remarkably hard. God be gracious to Bennet.
Let Mowbray, house of Mowbray rejoice with The Black and Blue Creeper a beautiful small bird of B...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...y;
But this great work is for our Monarch fit,
And henceforth Charles only to Charles shall sit.
His master-hand the ancients shall outdo,
Himself the painter and the poet too.
To the King
So his bold tube, man to the sun applied
And spots unknown to the bright star descried,
Showed they obscure him, while too near they please
And seem his courtiers, are but his disease.
Through optic trunk the planet seemed to hear,
And hurls them off e'er since in his career.
...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...Dear Goddess of Corn, whom the ancients we know,
(Among other odd whims of those comical bodies,)
Adorn'd with somniferous poppies, to show,
Thou wert always a true Country-gentleman's Goddess.
Behold in his best, shooting-jacket, before thee,
An eloquent 'Squire, who most humbly beseeches,
Great Queen of the Mark-lane (if the thing doesn't bore thee),
Thou'lt read o'er the last of his -...Read more of this...
by
Moore, Thomas
...they need;
And every man will make himself a creed:
In doubtful questions 'tis the safest way
To learn what unsuspected ancients say:
For 'tis not likely we should higher soar
In search of Heav'n, than all the Church before:
Nor can we be deceiv'd, unless we see
The Scripture, and the Fathers disagree.
If after all, they stand suspected still,
(For no man's faith depends upon his will;)
'Tis some relief, that points not clearly known,
Without much hazard may be let alone:
And...Read more of this...
by
Dryden, John
...hat stains and scours the sandstone,
and the heart of gloomy columns, telamons,
overthrown in the grass. Spirit of the ancients, grey
with rancour, return on the wind,
breathe in that feather-light moss
that covers those giants, hurled down by heaven.
How alone in the space that’s still yours!
And greater, your pain, if you hear, once more,
the sound that moves, far off, towards the sea,
where Hesperus streaks the sky with morning:
the jew’s-harp vibrates
in the waggoner’s ...Read more of this...
by
Quasimodo, Salvatore
...are sad or merry; and Mr Fox's remarks on the subject have provoked some learned controversy as to the opinions of the ancients on the subject. I dare not venture a conjecture on the point, though a little inclined to the "errare [m?]alleum," &c., if Mr Fox was mistaken.
[Transcriber's note: the print impression I am working from is poor and in places not entirely intelligible.]
(18) "Azrael," the angel of death.
(19) The treasures of the Pre-Adamite Sultans. See D'Her...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...said;
I still my old opinion keep,
The posture, that we give the dead,
Points out the soul's eternal sleep.
Not so the ancients of these lands --
The Indian, when from life releas'd
Again is seated with his friends,
And shares gain the joyous feast.
His imag'd birds, and painted bowl,
And ven'son, for a journey dress'd,
Bespeak the nature of the soul,
Activity, that knows no rest.
His bow, for action ready bent,
And arrows, with a head of stone,
Can only mean that life is ...Read more of this...
by
Freneau, Philip
...llar the halls of perfumed gloom; we plume where the eagles soar;
The North-wind swoops from the brooding Pole, and our ancients crash and roar;
But where one falls from the crumbling walls shoots up a hardy score.
We spring from the gloom of the canyon's womb; in the valley's lap we lie;
From the white foam-fringe, where the breakers cringe to the peaks that tusk the sky,
We climb, and we peer in the crag-locked mere that gleams like a golden eye.
Gain to the verge of the ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
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