Famous Believed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Long I Thought that Knowledge

by Walt Whitman
 LONG I thought that knowledge alone would suffice me—O if I could but obtain
 knowledge! 
Then my lands engrossed me—Lands of the prairies, Ohio’s land, the southern
 savannas,
 engrossed me—For them I would live—I would be their orator; 
Then I met the examples of old and new heroes—I heard of warriors, sailors, and all
 dauntless persons—And it seemed to...Read more of this...

Truth said a traveller

by Stephen Crane
 "Truth," said a traveller,
"Is a rock, a mighty fortress;
Often have I been to it,
Even to its highest tower,
From whence the world looks black."

"Truth," said a traveller,
"Is a breath, a wind,
A shadow, a phantom;
Long have I pursued it,
But never have I touched
The hem of its garment."

And I believed the second traveller;
For truth was to me
A breath, a wind,
A shadow, a...Read more of this...

Encouraged

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
 Because you love me I have much achieved, 
Had you despised me then I must have failed, 
But since I knew you trusted and believed, 
I could not disappoint you and so prevailed....Read more of this...

You Remember Ellen

by Thomas Moore
 You remember Ellen, our hamlet's pride, 
How meekly she bless'd her humble lot, 
When the stranger, William, had made her his bride, 
And love was the light of their lowly cot. 
Together they toil'd through winds and rains, 
Till William, at length, in sadness said, 
"We must seek our fortune on other plains;" -- 
Then, sighing, she left her...Read more of this...

Job Interview

by William Matthews
 Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife
 He would have written sonnets all his life?
 DON JUAN, III, 63-4

"Where do you see yourself five years from now?"
the eldest male member (or is "male member"
a redundancy?) of the committee
asked me. "Not here," I thought. A good thing I
speak fluent Fog. I craved that job like some
unappeasable, taunting woman.
What did...Read more of this...

South of my Days

by Judith Wright
 South of my days' circle, part of my blood's country, 
rises that tableland, high delicate outline 
of bony slopes wincing under the winter, 
low trees, blue-leaved and olive, outcropping granite- 
clean, lean, hungry country. The creek's leaf-silenced, 
willow choked, the slope a tangle of medlar and crabapple 
branching over and under, blotched with a green lichen; 
and the old...Read more of this...

Wedding Song

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 THE tale of the Count our glad song shall record

Who had in this castle his dwelling,
Where now ye are feasting the new-married lord,

His grandson of whom we are telling.
The Count as Crusader had blazon'd his fame,
Through many a triumph exalted his name,
And when on his steed to his dwelling he came,

His castle still rear'd its proud head,
But servants and...Read more of this...

The Black Cottage

by Robert Frost
 We chanced in passing by that afternoon 
To catch it in a sort of special picture 
Among tar-banded ancient cherry trees, 
Set well back from the road in rank lodged grass, 
The little cottage we were speaking of, 
A front with just a door between two windows, 
Fresh painted by the shower a velvet black. 
We paused, the minister...Read more of this...

Gerontion

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 Thou hast nor youth nor age
But as it were an after dinner sleep
Dreaming of both.


HERE I am, an old man in a dry month,
Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.
I was neither at the hot gates
Nor fought in the warm rain
Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass,
Bitten by flies, fought.
My house is a decayed...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXIX

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XXIX. S' io credessi per morte essere scarco. HE PRAYS FOR DEATH, BUT IN VAIN.  Had I believed that Death could set me freeFrom the anxious amorous thoughts my peace that mar,With these my own hands which yet stainless are,Life had I loosed, long hateful grown to me.Yet, for I...Read more of this...

I Sleep a Lot

by Czeslaw Milosz
 I sleep a lot and read St. Thomas Aquinas
Or The Death of God (that's a Protestant book).
To the right the bay as if molten tin,
Beyond the bay, city, beyond the city, ocean,
Beyond the ocean, ocean, till Japan.
To the left dry hills with white grass,
Beyond the hills an irrigated valley where rice is grown,
Beyond the valley, mountains and Ponderosa pines,
Beyond...Read more of this...

John Brown

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Though for your sake I would not have you now 
So near to me tonight as now you are, 
God knows how much a stranger to my heart 
Was any cold word that I may have written; 
And you, poor woman that I made my wife,
You have had more of loneliness, I fear, 
Than I—though I have been the...Read more of this...

Hymn 121

by Isaac Watts
 Children devoted to God. [For those who practise infant Baptism.]

Gen. 17:7,10; Acts 16:14,15,33. 

Thus saith the mercy of the Lord,
"I'll be a God to thee;
I'll bless thy num'rous race, and they
Shall be a seed for me."

Abram believed the promised grace,
And gave his sons to God;
But water seals the blessing now,
That once was sealed with blood.

Thus Lydia sanctified her house,
When...Read more of this...

London Bridge

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 “Do I hear them? Yes, I hear the children singing—and what of it? 
Have you come with eyes afire to find me now and ask me that? 
If I were not their father and if you were not their mother, 
We might believe they made a noise…. What are you—driving at!” 

“Well, be glad that you can hear them,...Read more of this...

Hero-Worship

by Amy Lowell
 A face seen passing in a crowded street,
A voice heard singing music, large and free;
And from that moment life is changed, and we
Become of more heroic temper, meet
To freely ask and give, a man complete
Radiant because of faith, we dare to be
What Nature meant us. Brave idolatry
Which can conceive a hero! No deceit,
No knowledge taught by unrelenting years,
Can quench...Read more of this...

The Philosophers

by Barry Tebb
 Lavender musk rose from the volume I was reading through,

The college crest impressed in gold, tooled gold lettering on the spine.

It was not mine but my son’s, jammed in the corner of a cardboard box

With dozens more; just one box of a score, stored in a heap

Across my ex-wife’s floor, our son gone far, as far as Samarkand and...Read more of this...

Father Malloy

by Edgar Lee Masters
 You are over there, Father Malloy,
Where holy ground is, and the cross marks every grave,
Not here with us on the hill --
Us of wavering faith, and clouded vision
And drifting hope, and unforgiven sins.
You were so human, Father Malloy,
Taking a friendly glass sometimes with us,
Siding with us who would rescue Spoon River
From the coldness and the dreariness of village morality.
You...Read more of this...

You smiled you spoke and I believed

by Walter Savage Landor
 You smiled, you spoke, and I believed,
By every word and smile deceived.
Another man would hope no more;
Nor hope I what I hoped before:
But let not this last wish be vain;
Deceive, deceive me once again!...Read more of this...

Amanda Barker

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Henry got me with child, 
Knowing that I could not bring forth life 
Without losing my own. 
In my youth therefore I entered the portals of dust. 
Traveler, it is believed in the village where I lived 
That Henry loved me with a husband's love, 
But I proclaim from the dust 
That he slew me to gratify his hatred....Read more of this...

Protus

by Robert Browning
 Among these latter busts we count by scores,
Half-emperors and quarter-emperors,
Each with his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest,
Loricand low-browed Gorgon on the breast,---
One loves a baby face, with violets there,
Violets instead of laurel in the hair,
As those were all the little locks could bear.

Now read here. ``Protus ends a period
``Of empery beginning with a god;
``Born in the porphyry chamber at Byzant,
``Queens...Read more of this...

The Explorer

by Rudyard Kipling
 There's no sense in going further -- it's the edge of cultivation,"
 So they said, and I believed it -- broke my land and sowed my crop --
Built my barns and strung my fences in the little border station
 Tucked away below the foothills where the trails run out and stop.

Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable...Read more of this...

Dream Song 105: As a kid I believed in democracy: I

by John Berryman
 As a kid I believed in democracy: I
'saw no alternative'-”teaching at The Big Place I ah
put it in practice:
we'd time for one long novel: to a vote-”
Gone with the Wind they voted: I crunched 'No'
and we sat down with War & Peace.

As a man I believed in democracy (nobody 
ever learns anything): only one lazy day
my assistant, called James...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXL

by William Shakespeare
 Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press
My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain;
Lest sorrow lend me words and words express
The manner of my pity-wanting pain.
If I might teach thee wit, better it were,
Though not to love, yet, love, to tell me so;
As testy sick men, when their deaths be near,
No news but health from their physicians know;
For...Read more of this...

An Ending

by Philip Levine
 Early March. 
The cold beach deserted. My kids 
home in a bare house, bundled up 
and listening to rock music 
pirated from England. My wife 
waiting for me in a bar, alone 
for an hour over her sherry, and none 
of us knows why I have to pace 
back and forth on this flat 
and birdless stretch of gleaming...Read more of this...

The Man From Ironbark

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 It was a man from Ironbark who struck the Sydney town,
He wandered over street and park, he wandered up and down,
He loitered here, he loitered there, till he was like to drop,
Until at last in sheer despair he sought a barber's shop.
" 'Ere! shave me beard and whiskers off, I'll be a man of mark,
I'll go and do the...Read more of this...

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