Famous Argued Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Argued poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous argued poems. These examples illustrate what a famous argued poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...he Sixties -
Art was life and life was art and in the
Staff-room we talked of poetry and politics
And passionately I argued with John. a clinical
Psychologist, on Freud and Jung; Anne, at forty
One, wanted to be sterilised and amazingly asked
My advice but that was how it was then: Dianne
Went off to join weekly rep at Brighton, Dave
Clark had given up law to teach a ‘D’ stream in the
Inner city. I was more lucky and had the brightest
Children - Sheila Pritchard my ...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...every one that ask’d, stood up for the stupid and crazy, devoted
my
income and labor to others,
I have hated tyrants, argued not concerning God, had patience and indulgence toward the
people,
taken off my hat to nothing known or unknown,
I have gone freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the
mothers
of families,
I have read these leaves to myself in the open air—I have tried them by trees, stars,
rivers,
I have dismiss’d whatever insul...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...a sand-beach long ago.
He bounded and enclosed it
With angles thus and so.
His set of solemn greybeards
Nodded and argued much
Of arc and circumference,
Diameter and such.
A silent child stood by them
From morning until noon
Because they drew such charming
Round pictures of the moon....Read more of this...
by
Lindsay, Vachel
...ifferant curioes that I obtained..."
In Sydney, by the spent aquarium-flare
Of penny gaslight on pink wallpaper,
We argued about blowing up the world,
But you were living backward, so each night
You crept a moment closer to the breast,
And they were living, all of them, those frames
And shapes of flesh that had perplexed your youth,
And most your father, the old man gone blind,
With fingers always round a fiddle's neck,
That graveyard mason whose fair monuments
An...Read more of this...
by
Slessor, Kenneth
...He preached upon "Breadth" till it argued him narrow --
The Broad are too broad to define
And of "Truth" until it proclaimed him a Liar --
The Truth never flaunted a Sign --
Simplicity fled from his counterfeit presence
As Gold the Pyrites would shun --
What confusion would cover the innocent Jesus
To meet so enabled a Man!...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...o his life.
Presbyter Holles the first point should clear,
The second Coventry the Cavalier;
But, whould they not be argued back from sea,
Then to return home straight, infecta re.
But Harry's ordered, if they won't recall
Their fleet, to threaten--we will grant them all.
The Dutch are then in proclamation shent
For sin against th' eleventh commandment.
Hyde's flippant style there pleasantly curvets,
Still his sharp wit on states and princes whets
(So Spain could n...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...d have time to turn her eyes,
Her lover thought, upon the glass
And on the instant would grow wise.
She. You mean they argued.
He. Put it so;
But bear in mind your lover's wage
Is what your looking-glass can show,
And that he will turn green with rage
At all that is not pictured there.
She. May I not put myself to college?
He. Go pluck Athene by the hair;
For what mere book can grant a knowledge
With an impassioned gravity
Appropriate to that beating breast,
That vigorous...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost.
Of good and evil much they argued then,
Of happiness and final misery,
Passion and apathy, and glory and shame:
Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy!--
Yet, with a pleasing sorcery, could charm
Pain for a while or anguish, and excite
Fallacious hope, or arm th' obdured breast
With stubborn patience as with triple steel.
Another part, in squadrons and gross bands,
On bold adv...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...open when, and when to close
The ridges of grim war: No thought of flight,
None of retreat, no unbecoming deed
That argued fear; each on himself relied,
As only in his arm the moment lay
Of victory: Deeds of eternal fame
Were done, but infinite; for wide was spread
That war and various; sometimes on firm ground
A standing fight, then, soaring on main wing,
Tormented all the air; all air seemed then
Conflicting fire. Long time in even scale
The battle hung; till Sa...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...'s sake:
'The man,' says Johnson, 'that would make
A pun, would pick a pocket!'"
"A man," said he, "is not a King."
I argued for a while,
And did my best to prove the thing -
The Phantom merely listening
With a contemptuous smile.
At last, when, breath and patience spent,
I had recourse to smoking -
"Your AIM," he said, "is excellent:
But - when you call it ARGUMENT -
Of course you're only joking?"
Stung by his cold and snaky eye,
I roused myself at length
To say "At le...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...p, she scavenges the taint.
Possibly that's the reason I write these poems.
But they did speak: on the phone. Wept and argued,
So fiercely one or the other often cut off
A sentence by hanging up in rage--like lovers,
But all that year she never saw her face.
They lived on the same block, four doors apart.
"Absence my presence is; strangeness my grace;
With them that walk against me is my sun."
"Synagogue" is a word I never heard,
We called it shul, the Yiddish word for sch...Read more of this...
by
Pinsky, Robert
...th an insane sailor
who kept a .38 Smith and Wesson in his shorts.
In the same room were twins, oilers
from Toledo, who argued for hours
each night whose turn it was
to get breakfast and should he turn
the eggs or not. On the way north
I lived for three days on warm water
in a DC-6 with a burned out radio
on the runway at Athens, Georgia. We sang
a song, "Georgia's Big Behind," and prayed
for WWIII and complete, unconditional surrender.
Napping in an open field near Newport N...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...h a furtive questioning,
Hovered, and he could not yet understand.
He knew that she was gone—there was no need
Of any argued proof to tell him that,
For they had buried her that afternoon,
Under the leaves and snow; and still there was
A doubt, a pitiless doubt, a plunging doubt,
That struck him, and upstartled when it struck,
The vision, the old thought in him. There was
A lack, and one that wrenched him; but it was
Not that—not that. There was a present sense
Of so...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...reason,—
Ascending, you would say, to intuition,—
You predicate this ghost of yours, as well.
Of course, you might have argued,—and you should have,—
That no such deep appearance of design
Could shape our world without entailing purpose:
For can design exist without a purpose?
Without conceiving mind? . . . We are like children
Who find, upon the sands, beside a sea,
Strange patterns drawn,—circles, arcs, ellipses,
Moulded in sand . . . Who put them there, we wonder?
Did som...Read more of this...
by
Aiken, Conrad
...a Might-have-been.
In a luckless moment he discovered men
Rise to high position through a ready pen.
Boanerges Blitzen argued therefore -- "I,
With the selfsame weapon, can attain as high."
Only he did not possess when he made the trial,
Wicked wit of C-lv-n, irony of L--l.
[Men who spar with Government need, to back their blows,
Something more than ordinary journalistic prose.]
Never young Civilian's prospects were so bright,
Till an Indian paper found that he could write...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...r stroke implanted
In our hearts fair virtue's seed;
While my father, man of wisdom,
Lawyer keen, and farmer stout,
Argued long with neighbor Dobbins
How the corn crops would turn out.
Then the quiltings and the dances—
How my feet were wont to fly,
While the moon peeped through the barn chinks
From her stately place on high.
Oh, those days, so sweet, so happy,
Ever backward o'er me roll;
Still the music of that farm life
Rings an echo in my soul.
Now the old pl...Read more of this...
by
Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...were in neutral space, before
The gates of heaven; like eastern thresholds is
The place where Death's grand cause is argued o'er,
And souls despatch'd to that world or to this;
And therefore Michael and the other wore
A civil aspect: though they did not kiss,
Yet still between his Darkness and his Brightness
There pass'd a mutual glance of great politeness.
XXXVI
The Archangel bow'd, not like a modern beau,
But with a graceful Oriental bend,
Pressing one radiant...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...you.
In the dispute whate'er I said,
My heart was by my tongue belied;
And in my looks you might have read
How much I argued on your side.
You, far from danger as from fear,
Might have sustain'd an open fight:
For seldom your opinions err:
Your eyes are always in the right.
Why, fair one, would you not rely
On Reason's force with Beauty's join'd?
Could I their prevalence deny,
I must at once be deaf and blind.
Alas! not hoping to subdue,
I only to the fight aspir'd:
To k...Read more of this...
by
Prior, Matthew
...marsh
or old home ground. The next day you saw,
one town over, remains of shell
in front of the little liquor store. I argued
it was too far from where we'd seen him,
too small to be his... though who could tell
what the day's heat might have taken
from his body. For days he became a stain,
a blotch that could have been merely
oil. I did not want to believe that
was what we saw alive in the firm center
of his authority and right
to walk the center of the road,
head up like...Read more of this...
by
Doty, Mark
...h the bones and the beak--
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"
"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life."
"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eyes was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose--
What made you so awfully clever?"
"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
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