Famous Authentic Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Tiger

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 At noon thepaper tigers roar 
-- Miroslav Holub

The paper tigers roar at noon; 
The sun is hot, the sun is high. 
They roar in chorus, not in tune, 
Their plaintive, savage hunting cry.

O, when you hear them, stop your ears 
And clench your lids and bite your tongue. 
The harmless paper tiger bears 
Strong fascination for the young.

His forest...Read more of this...

The Mantra-Yoga

by Aleister Crowley
 I

How should I seek to make a song for thee
When all my music is to moan thy name?
That long sad monotone - the same - the same -
Matching the mute insatiable sea
That throbs with life's bewitching agony,
Too long to measure and too fierce to tame!
An hurtful joy, a fascinating shame
Is this great ache that grips the heart of me.

Even...Read more of this...

Delights Despair at setting

by Emily Dickinson
 Delight's Despair at setting
Is that Delight is less
Than the sufficing Longing
That so impoverish.

Enchantment's Perihelion
Mistaken oft has been
For the Authentic orbit
Of its Anterior Sun....Read more of this...

Tale Of A Tub

by Sylvia Plath
 The photographic chamber of the eye
records bare painted walls, while an electric light
lays the chromium nerves of plumbing raw;
such poverty assaults the ego; caught
naked in the merely actual room,
the stranger in the lavatory mirror
puts on a public grin, repeats our name
but scrupulously reflects the usual terror.

Just how guilty are we when the ceiling
reveals no cracks that can be decoded?...Read more of this...

Let me be to Thee as the circling bird

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 Let me be to Thee as the circling bird, 
Or bat with tender and air-crisping wings
That shapes in half-light his departing rings, 
From both of whom a changeless note is heard.
I have found my music in a common word, 
Trying each pleasurable throat that sings
And every praised sequence of sweet strings, 
And know infallibly which I preferred.

The authentic cadence...Read more of this...

An Ancient Gesture

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can't keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and...Read more of this...

Lyman King

by Edgar Lee Masters
 You may think, passer-by, that Fate
Is a pit-fall outside of yourself,
Around which you may walk by the use of foresight
And wisdom.
Thus you believe, viewing the lives of other men,
As one who in God-like fashion bends over an anthill,
Seeing how their difficulties could be avoided.
But pass on into life:
In time you shall see Fate approach you
In the shape of your...Read more of this...

Logos

by Aleister Crowley
 Out of the night forth flamed a star -mine own!
Now seventy light-years nearer as I urge
Constant my heart through the abyss unknown,
Its glory my sole guide while space surge
About me. Seventy light-yaers! As I near
That gate of light that men call death, its cold
Pale gleam begins to pulse, a throbbing sphere,
Systole and diastole of eager gold,
New life immortal, wartmth...Read more of this...

Heroic Stanzas

by John Dryden
 Consecrated to the Glorious Memory of His 
Most Serene and Renowned Highness, Oliver,
Late Lord Protector of This Commonwealth, etc.
(Oliver Cromwell)

Written After the Celebration of his Funeral 


1

And now 'tis time; for their officious haste, 
Who would before have borne him to the sky, 
Like eager Romans ere all rites were past 
Did let too soon the sacred eagle fly....Read more of this...

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