Famous Aught Poems by Famous Poets

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

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She Cannot End

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 WHEN unto thee I sent the page all white,

Instead of first thereon inscribing aught,

The space thou doubtless filledst up in sport.
And sent it me, to make my joy grow bright.

As soon as the blue cover met my sight,

As well becomes a woman, quick as thought

I tore it open, leaving hidden nought,
And read the well-known words of pure delight:

MY ONLY...Read more of this...

Astrophel and Stella: LXIV

by Sir Philip Sidney
 No more, my dear, no more these counsels try;
Oh, give my passions leave to run their race;
Let Fortune lay on me her worst disgrace;
Let folk o'ercharg'd with brain against me cry;
Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye;
Let me no steps but of lost labour trace;
Let all the earth with scorn recount my case,
But do not will me...Read more of this...

Athor and Asar

by Aleister Crowley
 [Dedicated to Frank Harris, editor of Vanity Fair]

On the black night, beneath the winter moon,
I clothed me in the limbs of Codia,
Swooning my soul out into her red throat,
So that the glimmer of our skins, the tune
Og our ripe rythm, seemed the hideous play
Of death-worms crawling on a corpse,afloat
With life that takes its thirst
Only from things accurst.

Closer than Clodia's...Read more of this...

To Originals

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 In these numbers be express'd
Meaning deep, 'neath merry jest.
-----

TO ORIGINALS.

A FELLOW says: "I own no school or college;
No master lives whom I acknowledge;
And pray don't entertain the thought
That from the dead I e'er learnt aught."
This, if I rightly understand,
Means: "I'm a blockhead at first hand."

 1815....Read more of this...

Sestina I

by Francesco Petrarch
SESTINA I. Mia benigna fortuna e 'l viver lieto. IN HIS MISERY HE DESIRES DEATH THE MORE HE REMEMBERS HIS PAST CONTENTMENT AND COMFORT.  My favouring fortune and my life of joy,My days so cloudless, and my tranquil nights,The tender sigh, the pleasing power of song,Which gently wont to sound in verse...Read more of this...

Story by Lalla-ji, the Priest

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   He loved the Plant with a keen delight,
     A passionate fervour, strange to see,
   Tended it ardently, day and night,
     Yet never a flower lit up the tree.

   The leaves were succulent, thick, and green,
     And, sessile, out of the snakelike...Read more of this...

In Springtime

by Rudyard Kipling
 My garden blazes brightly with the rose-bush and the peach,
 And the koil sings above it, in the siris by the well,
From the creeper-covered trellis comes the squirrel's chattering speech,
 And the blue jay screams and flutters where the cheery sat-bhai dwell.
But the rose has lost its fragrance, and the koil's note is strange;
 I am sick of endless...Read more of this...

Thus the Mayne glideth

by Robert Browning
 THUS the Mayne glideth 
Where my Love abideth; 
Sleep 's no softer: it proceeds 
On through lawns, on through meads, 
On and on, whate'er befall, 
Meandering and musical, 
Though the niggard pasturage 
Bears not on its shaven ledge 
Aught but weeds and waving grasses 
To view the river as it passes, 
Save here and there a scanty patch 
Of...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXIV: No More My Dear

by Sir Philip Sidney
 No more, my dear, no more these counsels try;
Oh, give my passions leave to run their race;
Let Fortune lay on me her worst disgrace;
Let folk o'ercharg'd with brain against me cry;
Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye;
Let me no steps but of lost labour trace;
Let all the earth with scorn recount my case,
But do not will me...Read more of this...

56. Epistle to Davie A Brother Poet

by Robert Burns
 WHILE winds frae aff Ben-Lomond blaw,
An’ bar the doors wi’ driving snaw,
 An’ hing us owre the ingle,
I set me down to pass the time,
An’ spin a verse or twa o’ rhyme,
 In hamely, westlin jingle.
While frosty winds blaw in the drift,
 Ben to the chimla lug,
I grudge a wee the great-folk’s gift,
 That live sae bien an’ snug:
...Read more of this...

Sonnet 125: Weret aught to me I bore the canopy

by William Shakespeare
 Were't aught to me I bore the canopy,
With my extern the outward honouring,
Or laid great bases for eternity,
Which proves more short than waste or ruining?
Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour
Lose all, and more, by paying too much rent
For compound sweet forgoing simple savour,
Pitiful thrivers in their gazing spent?
No, let me be obsequious in thy heart,
And take...Read more of this...

Quoth fish to duck, Twill be a sad affair,

by Omar Khayyam
Quoth fish to duck, «Twill be a sad affair,
If this brook leaves its channel dry and bare»;
To whom the duck, «When I am dead and roasted
The brook may run with wine for aught I care.»...Read more of this...

Fridolin (The Walk To The Iron Factory)

by Friedrich von Schiller
 A gentle was Fridolin,
And he his mistress dear,
Savern's fair Countess, honored in
All truth and godly fear.
She was so meek, and, ah! so good!
Yet each wish of her wayward mood,
He would have studied to fulfil,
To please his God, with earnest will.

From the first hour when daylight shone
Till rang the vesper-chime,
He lived but for her will alone,
And deemed e'en that scarce...Read more of this...

The Resignation

by Thomas Chatterton
 O God, whose thunder shakes the sky, 
Whose eye this atom globe surveys, 
To thee, my only rock, I fly, 
Thy mercy in thy justice praise. 

The mystic mazes of thy will, 
The shadows of celestial light, 
Are past the pow'r of human skill,-- 
But what th' Eternal acts is right. 

O teach me in the trying hour, 
When...Read more of this...

Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances

by Walt Whitman
 OF the terrible doubt of appearances, 
Of the uncertainty after all—that we may be deluded, 
That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all, 
That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only, 
May-be the things I perceive—the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing
 waters,
The skies of day and night—colors, densities, forms—May-be these are, (as
...Read more of this...

Week-Night Service

by D. H. Lawrence
 The five old bells
Are hurrying and eagerly calling, 
Imploring, protesting 
They know, but clamorously falling 
Into gabbling incoherence, never resting,
Like spattering showers from a bursten sky-rocket dropping
In splashes of sound, endlessly, never stopping.

The silver moon 
That somebody has spun so high 
To settle the question, yes or no, has caught 
In the net of the night’s balloon, 
And sits...Read more of this...

Nature

by George Herbert
 Full of rebellion, I would die, 
Or fight, or travel, or deny
That thou has aught to do with me.
O tame my heart; 
It is thy highest art
To captivate strong holds to thee.

If thou shalt let this venom lurk, 
And in suggestions fume and work, 
My soul will turn to bubbles straight, 
And thence by kind
Vanish into a wind, 
Making...Read more of this...

Stanzas Composed During A Thunderstorm

by George (Lord) Byron
 Chill and mirk is the nightly blast,
Where Pindus' mountains rise,
And angry clouds are pouring fast
The vengeance of the skies.

Our guides are gone, our hope is lost,
And lightnings, as they play,
But show where rocks our path have crost,
Or gild the torrent's spray.

Is yon a cot I saw, though low?
When lightning broke the gloom---
How welcome were its shade!---ah, no!
'Tis but a...Read more of this...

Samuel Gardner

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I who kept the greenhouse,
Lover of trees and flowers,
Oft in life saw this umbrageous elm,
Measuring its generous branches with my eye,
And listened to its rejoicing leaves
Lovingly patting each other
With sweet aeolian whispers.
And well they might:
For the roots had grown so wide and deep
That the soil of the hill could not withhold
Aught of its virtue, enriched by rain,
And warmed by...Read more of this...

The Jingo and the Minstrel

by Vachel Lindsay
 AN ARGUMENT FOR THE MAINTENANCE OF PEACE AND GOODWILL WITH THE JAPANESE PEOPLE

Glossary for the uninstructed and the hasty: Jimmu Tenno, ancestor of all the Japanese Emperors; Nikko, Japan's loveliest shrine; Iyeyasu, her greatest statesman; Bushido, her code of knighthood; The Forty-seven Ronins, her classic heroes; Nogi, her latest hero; Fuji, her most beautiful mountain.


"Now do you know of...Read more of this...

The First Black Flag

by Victor Hugo
 ("Avez-vous oui dire?") 
 
 {LES BURGRAVES, Part I., March, 1843.} 


 JOB. Hast thou ne'er heard men say 
 That, in the Black Wood, 'twixt Cologne and Spire, 
 Upon a rock flanked by the towering mountains, 
 A castle stands, renowned among all castles? 
 And in this fort, on piles of lava built, 
 A burgrave...Read more of this...

Living Remembrance

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 HALF vex'd, half pleased, thy love will feel,
Shouldst thou her knot or ribbon steal;
To thee they're much--I won't conceal;

Such self-deceit may pardon'd be;
A veil, a kerchief, garter, rings,
In truth are no mean trifling things,

But still they're not enough for me.

She who is dearest to my heart,
Gave me, with well dissembled smart,
Of her own life, a living part,

No charm in...Read more of this...

The Obdurate Beauty

by Victor Hugo
 ("A Juana la Grenadine!") 
 
 {XXIX., October, 1843.} 


 To Juana ever gay, 
 Sultan Achmet spoke one day 
 "Lo, the realms that kneel to own 
 Homage to my sword and crown 
 All I'd freely cast away, 
 Maiden dear, for thee alone." 
 
 "Be a Christian, noble king! 
 For it were a...Read more of this...

All Thats Not Love . .

by Alan Seeger
 All that's not love is the dearth of my days, 
The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit, 
The temple in times without prayer, without praise, 
The altar unset and the candle unlit. 


Let me survive not the lovable sway 
Of early desire, nor see when it goes 
The courts of Life's abbey in ivied decay, 
Whence sometime sweet...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXCV

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXCV. I' mi vivea di mia sorte contento. HE FEARS THAT AN ILLNESS WHICH HAS ATTACKED THE EYES OF LAURA MAY DEPRIVE HIM OF THEIR SIGHT.  I lived so tranquil, with my lot content,No sorrow visited, nor envy pined,To other loves if fortune were more kindOne pang of mine their thousand...Read more of this...

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