Famous Argue Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Carol of Words

by Walt Whitman
 1
EARTH, round, rolling, compact—suns, moons, animals—all these are words to be
 said; 
Watery, vegetable, sauroid advances—beings, premonitions, lispings of the future, 
Behold! these are vast words to be said. 

Were you thinking that those were the words—those upright lines? those curves,
 angles,
 dots? 
No, those are not the words—the substantial words are in the ground and sea,
They are in...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXXIX

by Edmund Spenser
 MEn call you fayre, and you doe credit it,
For that your selfe ye dayly such doe see:
but the trew fayre, that is the gentle wit,
and vertuous mind is much more praysd of me.
For all the rest, how euer fayre it be,
shall turne to nought and loose that glorious hew:
but onely that is permanent and free
from frayle corruption, that doth...Read more of this...

Why argue on Yasin and on Barat?

by Omar Khayyam
Why argue on Yasin and on Barat?
Write me the draft for wine they call Barat!
The day my weariness is drowned in wine
Will seem to me as the great night Barat!...Read more of this...

Sweeney

by Henry Lawson
 It was somewhere in September, and the sun was going down, 
When I came, in search of `copy', to a Darling-River town; 
`Come-and-have-a-drink' we'll call it -- 'tis a fitting name, I think -- 
And 'twas raining, for a wonder, up at Come-and-have-a-drink. 

'Neath the public-house verandah I was resting on a bunk 
When a stranger rose before me,...Read more of this...

Marys Son

by Rudyard Kipling
 If you stop to find out what your wages will be
 And how they will clothe and feed you,
Willie, my son, don't you go on the Sea.
 For the Sea will never need you.

If you ask for the reason of every command,
 And argue with people about you,
Willie, my son, don't you go on the Land,
 For the Land...Read more of this...

Jonah and the Grampus

by Marriott Edgar
 I'll tell you the story of Jonah,
A really remarkable tale;
A peaceful and humdrum existence he had
Until one day he went for a sail. 

The weather were grand when they started,
But later at turn of the tide
The wind started blowing, the water got rough,
And Jonah felt funny inside.

When the ship started pitching and tossing
He tried hard his feelings to smother,
At...Read more of this...

A Dogs Mistake

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 He had drifted in among us as a straw drifts with the tide, 
He was just a wand'ring mongrel from the weary world outside; 
He was not aristocratic, being mostly ribs and hair, 
With a hint of spaniel parents and a touch of native bear. 
He was very poor and humble and content with what he got, 
So we...Read more of this...

The Hosts

by Alan Seeger
 Purged, with the life they left, of all 
That makes life paltry and mean and small, 
In their new dedication charged 
With something heightened, enriched, enlarged, 
That lends a light to their lusty brows 
And a song to the rhythm of their tramping feet, 
These are the men that have taken vows, 
These are the hardy, the flower, the...Read more of this...

War Profit Litany

by Allen Ginsberg
 To Ezra Pound

These are the names of the companies that have made
 money from this war
nineteenhundredsixtyeight Annodomini fourthousand
 eighty Hebraic
These are the Corporations who have profited by merchan-
 dising skinburning phosphorous or shells fragmented
 to thousands of fleshpiercing needles
and here listed money millions gained by each combine for
 manufacture
and here are gains numbered, index'd swelling a decade, set
 in...Read more of this...

To One Shortly to Die

by Walt Whitman
 1
FROM all the rest I single out you, having a message for you: 
You are to die—Let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate, 
I am exact and merciless, but I love you—There is no escape for you. 

Softly I lay my right hand upon you—you just feel it, 
I do not argue—I bend my head close,...Read more of this...

Behind The Arras

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
As in some dim baronial hall restrained,
A prisoner sits, engirt by secret doors
And waving tapestries that argue forth
Strange passages into the outer air;
So in this dimmer room which we call life,
Thus sits the soul and marks with eye intent[Pg 95]
That mystic curtain o'er the portal death;
Still deeming that behind the arras lies
The lambent way that leads to lasting...Read more of this...

The Grog-anGrumble Steeplechase

by Henry Lawson
 'Twixt the coastline and the border lay the town of Grog-an'-Grumble 
In the days before the bushman was a dull 'n' heartless drudge, 
An' they say the local meeting was a drunken rough-and-tumble, 
Which was ended pretty often by an inquest on the judge. 
An' 'tis said the city talent very often caught a tartar 
In the Grog-an'-Grumble sportsman,...Read more of this...

The Dons of Spain

by Henry Lawson
 The Eagle screams at the beck of trade, so Spain, as the world goes round, 
Must wrestle the right to live or die from the sons of the land she found; 
For, as in the days when the buccaneer was abroad on the Spanish Main, 
The national honour is one thing dear to the hearts of the Dons of...Read more of this...

To the Same

by John Milton
 Cyriack, this three years’ day these eyes, though clear, 
To outward view, of blemish or of spot, 
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot; 
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear 
Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not 
Against Heaven’s hand or will, nor bate a jot 
Of heart...Read more of this...

The Respectable Burgher on The Higher Criticism

by Thomas Hardy
 Since Reverend Doctors now declare 
That clerks and people must prepare 
To doubt if Adam ever were; 
To hold the flood a local scare; 
To argue, though the stolid stare, 
That everything had happened ere 
The prophets to its happening sware; 
That David was no giant-slayer, 
Nor one to call a God-obeyer 
In certain details we could spare, 
But...Read more of this...

Sixteen Dead Men

by William Butler Yeats
 O but we talked at large before
The sixteen men were shot,
But who can talk of give and take,
What should be and what not
While those dead men are loitering there
To stir the boiling pot?

You say that we should still the land
Till Germany's overcome;
But who is there to argue that
Now Pearse is deaf and dumb?
And is their logic to outweigh
MacDonagh's bony...Read more of this...

Stepping Backward

by Adrienne Rich
 Good-by to you whom I shall see tomorrow,
Next year and when I'm fifty; still good-by.
This is the leave we never really take.
If you were dead or gone to live in China
The event might draw your stature in my mind.
I should be forced to look upon you whole
The way we look upon the things we lose.
We see each other daily...Read more of this...

That I did always love

by Emily Dickinson
 That I did always love
I bring thee Proof
That till I loved
I never lived -- Enough --

That I shall love alway --
I argue thee
That love is life --
And life hath Immortality --

This -- dost thou doubt -- Sweet --
Then have I
Nothing to show
But Calvary --...Read more of this...

And what matters the wherefores and the reasons

by Emile Verhaeren
And what matters the wherefores and the reasons, and who we were and who we are; all doubt is dead in this garden of blossoms that opens up in us and about us, so far from men.
I do not argue, and do not desire to know, and nothing will disturb what is but mystery and gentle raptures and involuntary fervour...Read more of this...

Meditation on the A30

by John Betjeman
 A man on his own in a car
Is revenging himself on his wife;
He open the throttle and bubbles with dottle
and puffs at his pitiful life

She's losing her looks very fast,
she loses her temper all day;
that lorry won't let me get past,
this Mini is blocking my way.

"Why can't you step on it and shift her!
I can't go on crawling like...Read more of this...

Justice Arnett

by Edgar Lee Masters
  It is true, fellow citizens,
That my old docket lying there for years
On a shelf above my head and over
The seat of justice, I say it is true
That docket had an iron rim
Which gashed my baldness when it fell --
(Somehow I think it was shaken loose
By the heave of the air all over town
When the gasoline tank at the...Read more of this...

Do People moulder equally

by Emily Dickinson
 Do People moulder equally,
They bury, in the Grave?
I do believe a Species
As positively live

As I, who testify it
Deny that I -- am dead --
And fill my Lungs, for Witness --
From Tanks -- above my Head --

I say to you, said Jesus --
That there be standing here --
A Sort, that shall not taste of Death --
If Jesus was sincere --

I...Read more of this...

Argument

by Elizabeth Bishop
 Days that cannot bring you near
or will not,
Distance trying to appear
something more obstinate,
argue argue argue with me
endlessly
neither proving you less wanted nor less dear.

Distance: Remember all that land
beneath the plane;
that coastline
of dim beaches deep in sand
stretching indistinguishably
all the way,
all the way to where my reasons end?

Days: And think
of all those cluttered instruments,
one to a fact,
canceling each other's experience;
how they...Read more of this...

A Womans Reason

by Gelett Burgess
 I'm Sure every Word that you say is Absurd; 
I Say it's All Gummidge and Twaddle; 
You may Argue away till the 19th of May, 
But I don't like the Sound of the Moddle!...Read more of this...

June 11

by David Lehman
 It's my birtday I've got an empty
stomach and the desire to be
lazy in the hammock and maybe
go for a cool swim on a hot day
with the trombone in Sinatra's
"I've Got You Under My Skin"
in my head and then to break for
lunch a corned-beef sandwich and Pepsi
with plenty of ice cubes unlike France
where they put one measly ice cube
in your...Read more of this...

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