Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Assume Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Aiken, Conrad
...age,
margining her phrases, parsing forth
the sevenfold prism of meaning, up the scale
from chicory pink to blue, is to assume
Li Po himself: as he before assumed
the poets and the sages who were his.
Like him, we too have eaten of the word:
with him are somewhere lost beyond the Gorge:
and write, in rain, a letter to lost children,
a letter long as time and brief as love.

II

And yet not love, not only love. Not caritas
or only that. Nor the pink chicory lov...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...works made here in the spirit of other lands, are so much poison in The States.


(How dare such insects as we see assume to write poems for America? 
For our victorious armies, and the offspring following the armies?)

Piety and conformity to them that like! 
Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like! 
I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations, 
Crying, Leap from your seats, and contend for your lives! 

I am he who walks the States with a barb’d tongue, qu...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...t of no meaning. 
One of these days, if I were seeing many 
To live, I might erect a cenotaph 
To Job’s wife. I assume that you remember; 
If you forget, she’s extant in your Bible.”

Now this was not the language of a man 
Whom I had known as Avon, and I winced 
Hearing it—though I knew that in my heart 
There was no visitation of surprise. 
Unwelcome as it was, and off the key
Calamitously, it overlived a silence 
That was itself a story and affirmed 
A sava...Read more of this...

by Gibran, Kahlil
...o life - while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness. 

And you receivers - and you are all receivers - assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives. 

Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings; 

For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the free-hearted earth for mother, and God for father....Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...the dark gray walls. 

XVI. 

Vain thought! that hour of ne'er unravell'd gloom 
Came not again, or Lara could assume 
A seeming of forgetfulness that made 
His vassals more amazed nor less afraid — 
Had memory vanish'd then with sense restored? 
Since word, nor look, nor gesture of their lord 
Betray'd a feeling that recall'd to these 
That fever'd moment of his mind's disease. 
Was it a dream? was his the voice that spoke 
Those strange wild accents; his the cr...Read more of this...



by Dyke, Henry Van
...y heart's long thirst?
I pray thee lay thy golden girdle down,
And put away thy starry crown:
For one dear restful hour
Assume a state more mild.
Clad only in thy blossom-broidered gown
That breathes familiar scent of many a flower,
Take the low path that leads thro' pastures green;
And though thou art a Queen,
Be Rosamund awhile, and in thy bower,
By tranquil love and simple joy beguiled,
Sing to my soul, as mother to her child.


IV

O lead me by the hand,
And let m...Read more of this...

by Campbell, Thomas
...on his native storm, 
Deflowering Nature's grassy robe, 
And trampling on her faded form:- 
Till light's returning lord assume 
The shaft the drives him to his polar field, 
Of power to pierce his raven plume 
And crystal-covered shield. 
Oh, sire of storms! whose savage ear 
The Lapland drum delights to hear, 
When frenzy with her blood-shot eye 
Implores thy dreadful deity, 
Archangel! power of desolation! 
Fast descending as thou art, 
Say, hath mortal invocation 
Spel...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...general names 
Of Baalim and Ashtaroth--those male, 
These feminine. For Spirits, when they please, 
Can either sex assume, or both; so soft 
And uncompounded is their essence pure, 
Not tried or manacled with joint or limb, 
Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones, 
Like cumbrous flesh; but, in what shape they choose, 
Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure, 
Can execute their airy purposes, 
And works of love or enmity fulfil. 
For those the race of Israel oft...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...
And judged of public moment in the shape 
Of difficulty or danger, could deter 
Me from attempting. Wherefore do I assume 
These royalties, and not refuse to reign, 
Refusing to accept as great a share 
Of hazard as of honour, due alike 
To him who reigns, and so much to him due 
Of hazard more as he above the rest 
High honoured sits? Go, therefore, mighty Powers, 
Terror of Heaven, though fallen; intend at home, 
While here shall be our home, what best may ease 
The pr...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
..., 
Equally free; for orders and degrees 
Jar not with liberty, but well consist. 
Who can in reason then, or right, assume 
Monarchy over such as live by right 
His equals, if in power and splendour less, 
In freedom equal? or can introduce 
Law and edict on us, who without law 
Err not? much less for this to be our Lord, 
And look for adoration, to the abuse 
Of those imperial titles, which assert 
Our being ordained to govern, not to serve. 
Thus far his bold discou...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...
Before him naked to the air, that now 
Must suffer change, disdained not to begin 
Thenceforth the form of servant to assume; 
As when he washed his servants feet; so now, 
As father of his family, he clad 
Their nakedness with skins of beasts, or slain, 
Or as the snake with youthful coat repaid; 
And thought not much to clothe his enemies; 
Nor he their outward only with the skins 
Of beasts, but inward nakedness, much more. 
Opprobrious, with his robe of righteousnes...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...ngs have become too hard.
I have turned out the lights and opened the door
For you, so simple and so wonderful.
Assume whatever shape you wish. Burst in
Like a shell of noxious gas. Creep up on me
Like a practised bandit with a heavy weapon.
Poison me, if you want, with a typhoid exhalation,
Or, with a simple tale prepared by you
(And known by all to the point of nausea), take me
Before the commander of the blue caps and let me
glimpse
The house administra...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...1
I CELEBRATE myself; 
And what I assume you shall assume; 
For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you. 

I loafe and invite my Soul; 
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes—the shelves are crowded with
 perfumes; 
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it; 
The distillation would intox...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...cow fall, 
Nor strike one stroke for life or death 
Against the curs of Nazareth! 
Go — let thy less than woman's hand 
Assume the distaff — not the brand. 
But, Haroun! — to my daughter speed: 
And hark — of thine own head take heed — 
If thus Zuleika oft takes wing — 
Thou see'st yon bow — it hath a string!" 

V. 

No sound from Selim's lip was heard, 
At least that met old Giaffir's ear, 
But every frown and every word 
Pierced keener than a Christian's sword. ...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...d, letting doom
leak like a broken faucet;
as if doom had flooded my belly and filled your bassinet,
an old debt I must assume.

Death was simpler than I'd thought.
The day life made you well and whole
I let the witches take away my guilty soul.
I pretended I was dead
until the white men pumped the poison out,
putting me armless and washed through the rigamarole
of talking boxes and the electric bed.
I laughed to see the private iron in that hotel.
Today t...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...s of a lively
And full pleasant, and amiable of port, disposition*
And *pained her to counterfeite cheer *took pains to assume
Of court,* and be estately of mannere, a courtly disposition*
And to be holden digne* of reverence. *worthy
But for to speaken of her conscience,
She was so charitable and so pitous,* *full of pity
She woulde weep if that she saw a mouse
Caught in a trap, if it were dead or bled.
Of smalle houndes had she, that she fed
With roasted flesh, and ...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...name.
'Tis strange - he prophesied my doom,
And I have smiled - I then could smile -
When prudence would his voice assume,
And warn - I recked not what - the while:
But now remembrance whispers o'er
Those accents scarcely marked before.
Say - that his bodings came to pass,
And he will start to hear their truth,
And wish his words had not been sooth:
Tell him, unheeding as I was,
Through many a busy bitter scene
Of all our golden youth had been,
In pain, my faltering ...Read more of this...

by Baudelaire, Charles
...onless thus they sit and dream 
Until that melancholy hour 
When, with the sun's last fading gleam, 
The nightly shades assume their power. 

From their still attitude the wise 
Will learn with terror to despise 
All tumult, movement, and unrest; 

For he who follows every shade, 
Carries the memory in his breast, 
Of each unhappy journey made....Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...yet; Whoever fair and chaste
Rejects Mankind, is by some Sylph embrac'd:
For Spirits, freed from mortal Laws, with ease
Assume what Sexes and what Shapes they please. 
What guards the Purity of melting Maids,
In Courtly Balls, and Midnight Masquerades,
Safe from the treach'rous Friend, and daring Spark,
The Glance by Day, the Whisper in the Dark;
When kind Occasion prompts their warm Desires,
When Musick softens, and when Dancing fires?
'Tis but their Sylph, the wise Cele...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ke crape,
Was bent a dun & faint etherial gloom
Tempering the light; upon the chariot's beam
A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume
The guidance of that wonder-winged team.
The Shapes which drew it in thick lightnings
Were lost: I heard alone on the air's soft stream
The music of their ever moving wings.
All the four faces of that charioteer
Had their eyes banded . . . little profit brings
Speed in the van & blindness in the rear,
Nor then avail the beams that ...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Assume poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things