Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Behave Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Burns, Robert
...horses, pleughs, and kye.
 The youngster’s artless heart o’erflows wi’ joy,
But blate an’ laithfu’, scarce can weel behave;
 The mother, wi’ a woman’s wiles, can spy
What makes the youth sae bashfu’ and sae grave,
Weel-pleas’d to think her bairn’s respected like the lave.


O happy love! where love like this is found:
 O heart-felt raptures! bliss beyond compare!
I’ve paced much this weary, mortal round,
 And sage experience bids me this declare,—
 “If Heaven a draugh...Read more of this...



by Sandburg, Carl
...n a fizz at the pop of a bottle’s cork.

“Won’t you come and play wiz me” she sang … and “I just can’t make my eyes behave.”
“Higgeldy-Piggeldy,” “Papa’s Wife,” “Follow Me” were plays.

Did she wash her feet in a tub of milk? Was a strand of pearls sneaked from her trunk? The newspapers asked.
Cigarettes, tulips, pacing horses, took her name.

Twenty years old … thirty … forty …
Forty-five and the doctors fathom nothing, the doctors quarrel, the doctors us...Read more of this...

by Milosz, Czeslaw
...hey're put to shame by the disclosure of their frailty.

What reasonable man would like to be a city of demons,
who behave as if they were at home, speak in many tongues,
and who, not satisfied with stealing his lips or hand,
work at changing his destiny for their convenience?

It's true that what is morbid is highly valued today,
and so you may think that I am only joking
or that I've devised just one more means
of praising Art with thehelp of irony.

There was a tim...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...y listen to
a soft uninvented music, fit for the musk deer,
please come flying.

For whom the grim museums will behave 
like courteous male bower-birds,
for whom the agreeable lions lie in wait
on the steps of the Public Library,
eager to rise and follow through the doors
up into the reading rooms,
please come flying.
We can sit down and weep; we can go shopping,
or play at a game of constantly being wrong
with a priceless set of vocabularies,
or we can ...Read more of this...

by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...mers who defy his Trinity 

Feel none the less, and thrill, ur-vater Fear 
Caged in the son. For, though this ghost behave 
Experienced daughters recognize King Leer: 
Lot also had his daughters in a cave. 

Full sail the proud three-decker sandwiches 
With the eye-fumbled priestesses repass; 
On their swan lake the enchanted icecreams freeze, 
The amorous fountain prickles in the glass 

And at the introit of this mass emotion 
She comes, she comes, a balanced pillar...Read more of this...



by Carroll, Lewis
...nd thick)
And rap him on the knuckles! 

"Then carelessly remark 'Old coon!
Perhaps you're not aware
That, if you don't behave, you'll soon
Be chuckling to another tune -
And so you'd best take care!' 

"That's the right way to cure a Sprite
Of such like goings-on -
But gracious me! It's getting light!
Good-night, old Turnip-top, good-night!"
A nod, and he was gone....Read more of this...

by Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor
...t in woman's mind.

    After you've won by urgent plea
the right to tarnish her good name,
you still expect her to behave--
you, that coaxed her into shame.

    You batter her resistance down
and then, all righteousness, proclaim
that feminine frivolity,
not your persistence, is to blame.

    When it comes to bravely posturing,
your witlessness must take the prize:
you're the child that makes a bogeyman,
and then recoils in fear and cries.

    Presumptuou...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...lieve in fairies. 
If you are able, 
Don't have a stable 
With any mangers. 
Be rude to strangers. 

Moral: Behave....Read more of this...

by Hacker, Marilyn
...the grave
beside the aspen grove where adolescent
boys used to cut class, until we went
to the precinct house, eager to behave
like citizens..."
I count my hours and days,
finger for luck the word-scarred table which
is not my witness, shares all innocent
objects' silence: a tin plate, a basement
door, a spade, barbed wire, a ring of keys,
an unwrapped icon, too potent to touch....Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...s!
 For you all love the screw-guns . . .

If a man doesn't work, why, we drills 'im an' teaches 'im 'ow to behave;
If a beggar can't march, why, we kills 'im an' rattles 'im into 'is grave.
You've got to stand up to our business an' spring without snatchin' or fuss.
D'you say that you sweat with the field-guns? By God, you must lather with us -- 'Tss! 'Tss!
 For you all love the screw-guns . . .

The eagles is screamin' around us, the river's ...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood; 
I see that the elementary laws never apologize; 
(I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by, after all.)

I exist as I am—that is enough; 
If no other in the world be aware, I sit content; 
And if each and all be aware, I sit content. 

One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself; 
And whether I come to my own to-day, or in ten thousand or ten million years...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...anning Town,
Who's name ought to be to posterity handed down,
Because he leapt into the River Thames and heroically did behave,
And rescued five persons from a watery grave. 

Mr. Wilson, a young electrician, got a terrible fright,
When he saw his mother and sister dead-- he was shocked at the sight,
Because his sister had not many days returned from her honeymoon,
And in his countenance, alas! there was a sad gloom. 

His Majesty has sent a message of sympathy to...Read more of this...

by Nash, Ogden
...iewed his antics with a grin,
Till they were told by Jabez Dawes,
'There isn't any Santa Claus!'


Deploring how he did behave,
His parents swiftly sought their grave.
They hurried through the portals pearly,
And Jabez left the funeral early.


Like whooping cough, from child to child,
He sped to spread the rumor wild:
'Sure as my name is Jabez Dawes
There isn't any Santa Claus!'
Slunk like a weasel of a marten
Through nursery and kindergarten,
Whispering low to every...Read more of this...

by Collins, Billy
...
how he felt its breath on his bare neck.

Then again, the first dream could have come
to a woman, though she would behave,
I suppose, much the same way,
moving off by herself to be alone near water,

except that the curve of her young shoulders
and the tilt of her downcast head
would make her appear to be terribly alone,
and if you were there to notice this,

you might have gone down as the first person
to ever fall in love with the sadness of another....Read more of this...

by Pythagoras,
... In the next place, observe justice in your actions and in your words.
14. And do not accustom yourself to behave yourself in any thing without rule, and without reason.
15. But always make this reflection, that it is ordained by destiny that all men shall die.
16. And that the goods of fortune are uncertain; and that just as they may be acquired, they may likewise be lost.
17. Concerning all the calamities that men suffer by divine for...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...ticular friend: we often read the Bible together in its
infernal or diabolical sense which the world shall have if they
behave well 
I have also: The Bible of Hell: which the world shall have
whether they will or no.

One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression


PLATE 25
A Song of Liberty

The Eternal Female groand! it was heard over all the Earth:
Albions coast is sick silent; the American meadows faint!
Shadows of Prophecy shiver along by the lakes and the rivers
and mutte...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...knife, or bodekin.
For jealous folk be per'lous evermo':
Algate* they would their wives *wende so*. *unless *so behave*
And eke for she was somewhat smutterlich*, *dirty
She was as dign* as water in a ditch, *nasty
And all so full of hoker*, and bismare**. *ill-nature **abusive speech
Her thoughte that a lady should her spare*, *not judge her hardly
What for her kindred, and her nortelrie* *nurturing, education
That she had learned in the nunnery.

One daughte...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...me to tell you that he'd be late 
At the Foreign Office and not to wait 
Supper for him, but to go with me, 
And try to behave as if I were he." 
I should have told him on the spot 
That I had no cousin—that I was not 
Australian Nancy—that my name 
Was Susan Dunne, and that I came 
From a small white town on a deep-cut bay 
In the smallest state in the U.S.A. 
I meant to tell him, but changed my mind—
I needed a friend, and he seemed kind; 
So I put my gloved...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ied, "Peace, and that anon;"
And saide, "Let the woman tell her tale.
Ye fare* as folk that drunken be of ale. *behave
Do, Dame, tell forth your tale, and that is best."
"All ready, sir," quoth she, "right as you lest,* *please
If I have licence of this worthy Frere."
"Yes, Dame," quoth he, "tell forth, and I will hear."


Notes to the Prologue to the Wife of Bath's Tale


1. Among the evidences that Chaucer's great work was left
incomplete, is the abs...Read more of this...

by Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor
...plant in woman's mind.

After you've won by urgent plea
the right to tarnish her good name,
you still expect her to behave--
you, that coaxed her into shame.

You batter her resistance down
and then, all righteousness, proclaim
that feminine frivolity,
not your persistence, is to blame.

When it comes to bravely posturing,
your witlessness must take the prize:
you're the child that makes a bogeyman,
and then recoils in fear and cries.

Presumptuous beyond bel...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Behave poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things