Famous Becomes Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Under Siege

by Mahmoud Darwish
 Here on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time 
Close to the gardens of broken shadows, 
We do what prisoners do, 
And what the jobless do: 
We cultivate hope. 

*** 
A country preparing for dawn. We grow less intelligent 
For we closely watch the hour of victory: 
No night in our night lit up...Read more of this...

Broken Love

by William Blake
 MY Spectre around me night and day 
Like a wild beast guards my way; 
My Emanation far within 
Weeps incessantly for my sin. 

‘A fathomless and boundless deep, 
There we wander, there we weep; 
On the hungry craving wind 
My Spectre follows thee behind. 

‘He scents thy footsteps in the snow 
Wheresoever thou dost go, 
Thro’ the wintry hail...Read more of this...

All Distance

by Erin Belieu
 Writing from Boston, where sky is simply
property, a flourish topping crowds
of condos and historic real estate,
I'm trying to imagine blue sky:
the first time, where it happened,
what I was becoming. Being taken there
by car, from a town so newly born that grass
still accounted all distance, an explanation
drawn in measureless yellows, a tone
stubbling the whole world, ten minutes away.

Consider now how...Read more of this...

Meditation on a Bone

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 A piece of bone, found at Trondhjem in 1901, with the following runic inscription (about A.D. 1050) cut on it: I loved her as a maiden; I will not trouble Erlend's detestable wife; better she should be a widow. 

Words scored upon a bone, 
Scratched in despair or rage -- 
Nine hundred years have gone; 
Now, in another age,...Read more of this...

The Picture Of Little T.C. In A Prospect Of Flowers

by Andrew Marvell
 See with what simplicity
This Nimph begins her golden daies!
In the green Grass she loves to lie,
And there with her fair Aspect tames
The Wilder flow'rs, and gives them names:
But only with the Roses playes;
And them does tell
What Colour best becomes them, and what Smell.

Who can foretel for what high cause
This Darling of the Gods was born!
Yet this is She whose...Read more of this...

Pirates' Song

by Victor Hugo
 ("Nous emmenions en esclavage.") 
 
 {VIII., March, 1828.} 


 We're bearing fivescore Christian dogs 
 To serve the cruel drivers: 
 Some are fair beauties gently born, 
 And some rough coral-divers. 
 We hardy skimmers of the sea 
 Are lucky in each sally, 
 And, eighty strong, we send along 
 The dreaded Pirate Galley. 
...Read more of this...

A Funeral Poem on the Death of C.E

by Phillis Wheatley
 Through airy roads he wings his instant flight
To purer regions of celestial light;
Enlarg'd he sees unnumber'd systems roll,
Beneath him sees the universal whole,
Planets on planets run their destin'd round,
And circling wonders fill the vast profound.
Th' ethereal now, and now th' empyreal skies
With growing splendors strike his wond'ring eyes:
The angels view him with delight unknown,
Press his soft hand, and seat...Read more of this...

Self-Portrait At 28

by David Berman
 I know it's a bad title
but I'm giving it to myself as a gift
on a day nearly canceled by sunlight
when the entire hill is approaching
the ideal of Virginia
brochured with goldenrod and loblolly
and I think "at least I have not woken up
with a bloody knife in my hand"
by then having absently wandered
one hundred yards from the house
while still seated in...Read more of this...

Small Game

by Philip Levine
 In borrowed boots which don't fit 
and an old olive greatcoat, 
I hunt the corn-fed rabbit, 
game fowl, squirrel, starved bobcat, 
anything small. I bring down 
young deer wandered from the doe's 
gaze, and reload, and move on 
leaving flesh to inform crows. 

At dusk they seem to suspect 
me, burrowed in a corn field 
verging their stream. The...Read more of this...

Wanting to Die

by Anne Sexton
 Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.

Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.

But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.

Twice I have...Read more of this...

Houses chapter IX

by Kahlil Gibran
 A mason came forth and said, "Speak to us of Houses." 

And he answered and said: 

Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness ere you build a house within the city walls. 

For even as you have home-comings in your twilight, so has the wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone. 

Your house is your larger...Read more of this...

Your words

by Ehsan Sehgal
"Be careful with your words and actions even in joking, that can hurt someone who loves you from the depth of the heart, when someone becomes silent, less active that means person is hurt, be polite, show excuse, give the courage so that person can back again as was, if you love too." 
Ehsan Sehgal...Read more of this...

Essay On The Personal

by Stephen Dunn
 Because finally the personal
is all that matters,
we spend years describing stones,
chairs, abandoned farmhouses—
until we're ready. Always
it's a matter of precision,
what it feels like
to kiss someone or to walk
out the door. How good it was
to practice on stones
which were things we could love
without weeping over. How good
someone else abandoned the farmhouse,
bankrupt and desperate.
Now we can bring a fine edge
to our...Read more of this...

The Faerie Queene Book III Canto VI

by Edmund Spenser
The birth of faire Belphoebe and
Of Amoret is told.
The Gardins of Adonis fraught
With pleasures manifold.
 
And gentle sprite deforme with rude rusticity.
 But to this faire Belphoebe in her berth
The heauens so fauourable were and free,
Looking with myld aspect vpon the earth,
In th'Horoscope of her natiuitee,
That all the gifts of grace and chastitee
On her they poured forth of plenteous horne;
Ioue...Read more of this...

Auguries Of Innocence

by William Blake
 To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all heaven in a rage.
A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell through all its regions.
A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.
A horse...Read more of this...

Delight becomes pictorial

by Emily Dickinson
Delight becomes pictorial
When viewed through pain,--
More fair, because impossible
That any gain.

The mountain at a given distance
In amber lies;
Approached, the amber flits a little,--
And that's the skies!...Read more of this...

Delight -- becomes pictorial --

by Emily Dickinson
 Delight -- becomes pictorial --
When viewed through Pain --
More fair -- because impossible
Than any gain --

The Mountain -- at a given distance --
In Amber -- lies --
Approached -- the Amber flits -- a little --
And That's -- the Skies --...Read more of this...

A Midnight Meditation

by George William Russell
 HOW often have I said,
“We may not grieve for the immortal dead.”
And now, poor blenchèd heart,
Thy ruddy hues all tremulous depart.
Why be with fate at strife
Because one passes on from death to life,
Who may no more delay
Rapt from our strange and pitiful dream away
By one with ancient claim
Who robes her with the spirit like a flame.
Not lost this high...Read more of this...

reflections of caernarvon

by Rg Gregory
 i
i shall die yearning

a hand
reaching out to
a face that isn't there

a face
seeking a hand

a stone
leaving its mountain-
wall in a wind
anxious to be a bird

a bird
crying to be a wall

ii
north wales

the goat pisses
the hawk hangs
the mountain leans forward out of the mist

iii
on this hill

between the stone wind
and the wall of stones
i am a hollow
scooped out by the sun
my substance dropped
over...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXX

by William Shakespeare
 That you were once unkind befriends me now,
And for that sorrow which I then did feel
Needs must I under my transgression bow,
Unless my nerves were brass or hammer'd steel.
For if you were by my unkindness shaken
As I by yours, you've pass'd a hell of time,
And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken
To weigh how once I suffered in your...Read more of this...

Freedom XIV

by Kahlil Gibran
 And an orator said, "Speak to us of Freedom." 

And he answered: 

At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom, 

Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them. 

Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the...Read more of this...

Hymn To Intellectual Beauty

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats through unseen among us, -- visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower, --
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening, --
Like clouds in starlight widely spread, --
Like memory of music fled,...Read more of this...

You Are The Mountain

by Lisa Zaran
 At one end of the couch
you sit, mute as a pillow
tossed onto the upholstery.

I watch you sometimes
when you don't know I'm watching
and I see you. Who you are.

You are a self made man.
Hard suffering. You are grey
stone and damp earth.
A long scar on a pale sky.

The television is tuned to CNN.
The world's tragedies flicker
across your face like some
foreign film.

You...Read more of this...

The Broken Balance

by Robinson Jeffers
 I. Reference to a Passage in Plutarch's Life of Sulla

The people buying and selling, consuming pleasures, talking in the archways,
Were all suddenly struck quiet
And ran from under stone to look up at the sky: so shrill and mournful,
So fierce and final, a brazen
Pealing of trumpets high up in the air, in the summer blue over Tuscany.
They marvelled; the soothsayers...Read more of this...

Poem in Prose

by Archibald MacLeish
 This poem is for my wife.
I have made it plainly and honestly:
The mark is on it
Like the burl on the knife.

I have not made it for praise.
She has no more need for praise
Than summer has
Or the bright days.

In all that becomes a woman
Her words and her ways are beautiful:
Love's lovely duty,
the well-swept room.

Wherever she is there is sun
And time...Read more of this...

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