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Famous Beaten Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...of real things, old times and present times, 
Surrounding just found shores, islands, tribes of red aborigines,
Weather-beaten vessels, landings, settlements, embryo stature and muscle, 
The haughty defiance of the Year 1—war, peace, the formation of the Constitution, 
The separate States, the simple, elastic scheme, the immigrants, 
The Union, always swarming with blatherers, and always sure and impregnable, 
The unsurvey’d interior, log-houses, clearings, wild animals, hunt...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt



...ht, then sweetly she,
With words wherein the Muses treasures be,
Shewes loue and pitie to my absent case.
Now I, wit-beaten long by hardest fate,
So dull am, that I cannot looke into
The ground of this fierce loue and louely hate.
Then, some good body, tell me how I do,
Whose presence absence, absence presence is;
Blest in my curse, and cursed in my blisse. 
LXI 

Oft with true sighs, oft with vncalled teares,
Now with slow words, now with dumbe eloquence,
I Stel...Read more of this...
by Sidney, Sir Philip
...by a little bit, just as the strength of women,
war-terrible women is compared to weaponed men
when the bound blade, beaten by hammers,
the sword shimmering in blood shears off the boar-crest
present upon the helmet, proof against edges. (ll. 1279-87)

Then in the hall hardened edges were drawn,
swords above the seats, many broad shields
heaved up in fists. Helmets were not remembered,
nor the broad byrnie, when they perceived the terror.
She was hurrying, wishing ...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,
...ats in rush of battle,
lord of his folk, in the Frisian land,
son of Hrethel, by sword-draughts died,
by brands down-beaten. Thence Beowulf fled
through strength of himself and his swimming power,
though alone, and his arms were laden with thirty
coats of mail, when he came to the sea!
Nor yet might Hetwaras {31b} haughtily boast
their craft of contest, who carried against him
shields to the fight: but few escaped
from strife with the hero to seek their homes!
Then...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,
...his tower;
A bloody, arrogant power
Rose out of the race
Uttering, mastering it,
Rose like these walls from these
Storm-beaten cottages -
In mockery I have set
A powerful emblem up,
And sing it rhyme upon rhyme
In mockery of a time
Half dead at the top.

II

Alexandria's was a beacon tower, and Babylon's
An image of the moving heavens, a log-book of the sun's journey and the moon's;
And Shelley had his towers, thought's crowned powers he called them once.

I declare this towe...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler



...dry its wings. 

That's how I was. 
Somebody found my chrysalis 
And shut it in a match-box. 
My shrivelled wings were beaten, 
Shed their colours in dusty scales 
Before the box was opened 
For the moth to fly. 

III 

I hate that town; 
I hate the town I lived in when I was little; 
I hate to think of it. 
There wre always clouds, smoke, rain 
In that dingly little valley. 
It rained; it always rained. 
I think I never saw the sun until I was nine -- 
And then it was too l...Read more of this...
by Aldington, Richard
...r'd that at last
A luckier or a bolder fisherman,
A carefuller in peril, did not breathe
For leagues along that breaker-beaten coast
Than Enoch. Likewise had he served a year
On board a merchantman, and made himself
Full sailor; and he thrice had pluck'd a life
From the dread sweep of the down-streaming seas:
And all me look'd upon him favorably:
And ere he touch'd his one-and-twentieth May
He purchased his own boat, and made a home
For Annie, neat and nestlike, halfway up
Th...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Who made her laws her lawless lusts to kiss, 
 So was she broken by desire; and this 
 Who comes behind, back-blown and beaten thus, 
 Love's fool, who broke her faith to Sich?us, 
 Dido; and bare of all her luxury, 
 Nile's queen, who lost her realm for Antony." 

 And after these, amidst that windy train, 
 Helen, who soaked in blood the Trojan plain, 
 And great Achilles I saw, at last whose feet 
 The same net trammelled; and Tristram, Paris, he showed; 
 And thousand oth...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante
...achine.
I am the *****, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America th...Read more of this...
by Hughes, Langston
...trange alteration! Sin and Death amain, 
Following his track (such was the will of Heaven) 
Paved after him a broad and beaten way 
Over the dark Abyss, whose boiling gulf 
Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length, 
From Hell continued, reaching th' utmost orb 
Of this frail World; by which the Spirits perverse 
With easy intercourse pass to and fro 
To tempt or punish mortals, except whom 
God and good Angels guard by special grace. 
 But now at last the sacred influence 
...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...Do not leave me? 
Do you say, Venture not? If you leave me, you are lost? 
Do you say, I am already prepared—I am well-beaten and undenied—adhere to me? 

O public road! I say back, I am not afraid to leave you—yet I love you;
You express me better than I can express myself; 
You shall be more to me than my poem. 

I think heroic deeds were all conceiv’d in the open air, and all great poems also; 
I think I could stop here myself, and do miracles; 
(My judgments, thoughts, I...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...way. 

`And I was lifted up in heart, and thought 
Of all my late-shown prowess in the lists, 
How my strong lance had beaten down the knights, 
So many and famous names; and never yet 
Had heaven appeared so blue, nor earth so green, 
For all my blood danced in me, and I knew 
That I should light upon the Holy Grail. 

`Thereafter, the dark warning of our King, 
That most of us would follow wandering fires, 
Came like a driving gloom across my mind. 
Then every evil word I ...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...iles from long ago . . .

She turns to him and smiles . . . Sunlight above him
Roars like a vast invisible sea,
Gold is beaten before him, shrill bells of silver;
He is released of weight, his body is free,
He lifts his arms to swim,
Dark years like sinister tides coil under him . . .
The lazy sea-waves crumble along the beach
With a whirring sound like wind in bells,
He lies outstretched on the yellow wind-worn sands
Reaching his lazy hands
Among the golden grains and sea-wh...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad
..., side by side,
     Emblems of punishment and pride,
     Grouped their dark hues with every stain
     The weather-beaten crags retain.
     With boughs that quaked at every breath,
     Gray birch and aspen wept beneath;
     Aloft, the ash and warrior oak
     Cast anchor in the rifted rock;
     And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung
     His shattered trunk, and frequent flung,
     Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high,
     His boughs athwart the narrowed sk...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...And drawing somewhat backward she replied, 
`Can he be wronged who is not even his own, 
But save for dread of thee had beaten me, 
Scratched, bitten, blinded, marred me somehow--Mark? 
What rights are his that dare not strike for them? 
Not lift a hand--not, though he found me thus! 
But harken! have ye met him? hence he went 
Today for three days' hunting--as he said-- 
And so returns belike within an hour. 
Mark's way, my soul!--but eat not thou with Mark, 
Because he hate...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ther men fools, sinners, &
nothings?
The Devil answer'd; bray a fool in a morter with wheat. yet
shall not his folly be beaten out of him: if Jesus Christ is the
greatest man, you ought to love him in the greatest degree; now
hear how he has given his sanction to the law of ten
commandments: did he not mock at the sabbath, and so mock the
sabbaths God? murder those who were murderd because of him? turn away 
the law from the woman taken in adultery? steal the labor of others ...Read more of this...
by Blake, William
...other inside 

 my head I played back pictures 
 of my childhood, of my wife 
 even, for it was in her 
 I found myself beaten, safe, 
 and furthest from the present. 
 It is her face I see now 
 though all I say is meant 
 for you, her face in the slow 

 agony of sexual 
 release. I cannot see you. 
 The dark wall ribbed with spittle 
 on which I play my childhood 
 brings me to this bed, mastered 
 by what I was, betrayed by 
 those I trusted. The one word 
 my mouth must ...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip
...am the woman who worked in the field 
Bringing the cotton and the corn to yield. 
I am the one who labored as a slave, 
Beaten and mistreated for the work that I gave -- 
Children sold away from me, I'm husband sold, too. 
No safety , no love, no respect was I due.

Three hundred years in the deepest South: 
But God put a song and a prayer in my mouth . 
God put a dream like steel in my soul. 
Now, through my children, I'm reaching the goal. 

Now, through my children, young ...Read more of this...
by Hughes, Langston
...est,

The yesses had it, the children remained, our last real garden.



VI1

in memory of Emily Bronte



I

Besieged, beaten and bruised

I had proved my oracle lied

There was no peace in poetry and flight.

Yet as I sat and watched the night

Gather in the shallows of heather

I remembered the steep stone streets,

The ginnels of my childhood,

The walls of Roman York.



On this last June day, hidden by a haze of walls,

I found a cottage so overgrown I had to part a mas...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...sh and gay,
And therewithal so well he could me glose,* *flatter
When that he woulde have my belle chose,
Though he had beaten me on every bone,
Yet could he win again my love anon.
I trow, I lov'd him better, for that he
Was of his love so dangerous* to me. *sparing, difficult
We women have, if that I shall not lie,
In this matter a quainte fantasy.
Whatever thing we may not lightly have,
Thereafter will we cry all day and crave.
Forbid us thing, and that desire we;
Press on...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things