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Best Famous Sorted Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Sorted poems. This is a select list of the best famous Sorted poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Sorted poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of sorted poems.

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Written by Lewis Carroll | Create an image from this poem

The Walrus and the Carpenter

The sun was shining on the sea,
   Shining with all his might;
He did his very best to make
   The billows smooth and bright—
And this was odd, because it was
   The middle of the night.
The moon was shining sulkily, Because she thought the sun Had got no business to be there After the day was done— "It's very rude of him," she said, "To come and spoil the fun!" The sea was wet as wet could be, The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because No cloud was in the sky; No birds were flying overhead— There were no birds to fly.
The Walrus and the Carpenter Were walking close at hand; They wept like anything to see Such quantities of sand.
"If this were only cleared away," They said, "it would be grand!" "If seven maids with seven mops Swept it for half a year, Do you suppose," the Walrus said, "That they could get it clear?" "I doubt it," said the Carpenter, And shed a bitter tear.
"O Oysters, come and walk with us!" The Walrus did beseech.
"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, Along the briny beach; We cannot do with more than four, To give a hand to each.
" The eldest Oyster looked at him, But never a word he said; The eldest Oyster winked his eye, And shook his heavy head— Meaning to say he did not choose To leave the oyster-bed.
But four young Oysters hurried up, All eager for the treat; Their coats were brushed, their faces washed, Their shoes were clean and neat— And this was odd, because, you know, They hadn't any feet.
Four other Oysters followed them, And yet another four; And thick and fast they came at last, And more, and more, and more— All hopping through the frothy waves, And scrambling to the shore.
The Walrus and the Carpenter Walked on a mile or so, And then they rested on a rock Conveniently low; And all the little Oysters stood And waited in a row.
"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax— And cabbages—and kings— And why the sea is boiling hot— And whether pigs have wings.
" "But wait a bit," the Oysters cried, "Before we have our chat; For some of us are out of breath, And all of us are fat!" "No hurry!" said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.
"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said, "Is what we chiefly need; Pepper and vinegar besides Are very good indeed— Now if you're ready, Oysters dear, We can begin to feed.
" "But not on us!" the Oysters cried, Turning a little blue.
"After such kindness, that would be A dismal thing to do!" "The night is fine," the Walrus said, "Do you admire the view?" "It was so kind of you to come! And you are very nice!" The Carpenter said nothing but "Cut us another slice.
I wish you were not quite so deaf— I've had to ask you twice!" "It seems a shame," the Walrus said, "To play them such a trick, After we've brought them out so far, And made them trot so quick!" The Carpenter said nothing but "The butter's spread too thick!" "I weep for you," the Walrus said; "I deeply sympathize.
" With sobs and tears he sorted out Those of the largest size, Holding his pocket-handkerchief Before his streaming eyes.
"O Oysters," said the Carpenter, "You've had a pleasant run! Shall we be trotting home again?" But answer came there none— And this was scarcely odd, because They'd eaten every one.


Written by Ruth Padel | Create an image from this poem

WRITING TO ONEGIN

 (After Pushkin) 
Look at the bare wood hand-waxed floor and long 
White dressing-gown, the good child's writing-desk 
And passionate cold feet
Summoning music of the night - tumbrils, gongs
And gamelans - with one neat pen, one candle
Puttering its life out hour by hour.
Is "Tell Him I love him" never a good idea? You can't wish this Unlived - this world on fire, on storm Alert, till the shepherd's song Outside, some hyper-active yellowhammer, bulbul, Wren, amplified in hills and woods, tell her to bestow A spot of notice on the dawn.
* "I'm writing to you.
Well, that's it, that's everything.
You'll laugh, but you'll pity me too.
I'm ashamed of this.
I meant to keep it quiet.
You'd never have known, if - I wish - I could have seen you once a week.
To mull over, day And night, the things you say, or what we say together.
But word is, you're misogynist.
Laddish.
A philanderer Who says what he doesn't mean.
(That's not how you come across To me.
) Who couldn't give a toss for domestic peace - Only for celebrity and showing off - And won't hang round in a provincial zone Like this.
We don't glitter.
Though we do, Warmly, truly, welcome you.
* "Why did you come? I'd never have set eyes On a star like you, or blundered up against This crazed not-sleeping, hour after hour In the dark.
I might have got the better of My clumsy fury with constraint, my fret For things I lack all lexica and phrase-book art To say.
I might have been a faithful wife; a mother.
But that's all done with.
This is Fate.
God.
Sorted.
Here I am - yours, to the last breath.
I couldn't give my heart to anyone else.
My life till now has been a theorem, to demonstrate How right it is to love you.
This love is love to death.
* "I knew you anyway.
I loved you, I'm afraid, In my sleep.
Your eyes, that denim-lapis, grey-sea- Grey-green blue, that Chinese fold of skin At the inner corner, that shot look Bleeping "vulnerable" under the screensaver charm, Kept me alive.
Every cell, every last gold atom Of your body, was engraved in me Already.
Don't tell me that was dream! When you came in, Staring round in your stripey coat and brocade Vest, I nearly died! I fainted, I was flame! I recognized The you I'd always listened to alone, when I wrote Or tried to wrestle my scatty soul into calm.
* "Wasn't it you who slipped through the transparent Darkness to my bed and whispered love? Aren't you My guardian angel? Or is this arrant Seeming, hallucination, thrown Up by that fly engineering a novel does So beguilingly, or poems? Is this mad? Are there ways of dreaming I don't know? Too bad.
My soul has made its home In you.
I'm here and bare before you: shy, In tears.
But if I didn't heft my whole self up and hold it there - A crack-free mirror - loving you, or if I couldn't share It, set it out in words, I'd die.
* "I'll wait to hear from you.
I must.
Please let me hope.
Give me one look, from eyes I hardly dare To look back at.
Or scupper my dream By scolding me.
I've given you rope To hang me: tell me I'm mistaken.
You're so much in The world; while I just live here, bent on jam And harvest, songs and books.
That's not complaint.
We live such different lives.
So - this is the end.
It's taken All night.
I'm scared to read it back.
I'm faint With shame and fear.
But this is what I am.
My crumpled bed, My words, my open self.
All I can do is trust The whole damn lot of it to you.
" * She sighs.
The paper trembles as she presses down The pink wax seal.
Outside, a milk mist clears From the shimmering valley.
If I were her guardian Angel, I'd divide myself.
One half would holler Don't! Stay on an even keel! Don't dollop over All you are, to a man who'll go to town On his next little fling.
If he's entranced today By the way you finger your silk throat inside your collar, Tomorrow there'll be Olga, Sally, Jane.
But then I'd whisper Go for it, petal.
Nothing's as real as what you write.
His funeral, if he's not up to it.
What we feel Is mortal, and won't come again.
* So cut, weeks later, to an outside shot: the same girl Taking cover ("Dear God, he's here, he's come!") Under fat red gooseberries, glimmering hairy stars: The old, rude bushes she has hide-and-seeked in all Her life, where mother commands the serfs to sing While picking, so they can't hurl The odd gog into their mouths.
No one could spy Her here, not even the sun in its burn-time.
Her cheeks Are simmering fire.
We're talking iridescence, a Red Admiral's last tremble Before the avid schoolboy plunks his net.
Or imagine * A leveret - like the hare you shot, remember? Which ran round screaming like a baby? Only mine is shivering in papery winter corn, While the hunter (as it might be, you) stomps his Hush Puppies through dead brush.
Everything's quiet.
She's waited - how long? - ages: stoking pebbly embers Under the evening samovar, filling The Chinese teapot, sending coils of Lapsang Suchong Floating to the ceiling in the shadows, tracing O and E In the window's black reflection, one finger Tendrilling her own breath on the glass.
Like putting a shell to your ear to hear the sea * When it's really your own red little sparkle, the echo Of marching blood.
She's asking a phantom World of pearled-up mist for proof That her man exists: that gamelans and tumbrils Won't evade her.
But now, among The kitchen garden's rose-haws, mallow, Pernod- Coloured pears, she unhooks herself thorn by thorn For the exit aria.
For fade-out.
Suddenly there he is In the avenue, the man she's written to - Charon Gazing at her with blazing eyes! Darth Vader From Star Wars.
She's trapped, in a house she didn't realize Was burning.
Her letter was a gate to the inferno.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
(This poem appeared in Pushkin: An Anthology, ed.
E.
Feinstein, Carcanet 1999)
Written by Anne Sexton | Create an image from this poem

The Division Of Parts

 1.
Mother, my Mary Gray, once resident of Gloucester and Essex County, a photostat of your will arrived in the mail today.
This is the division of money.
I am one third of your daughters counting my bounty or I am a queen alone in the parlor still, eating the bread and honey.
It is Good Friday.
Black birds pick at my window sill.
Your coat in my closet, your bright stones on my hand, the gaudy fur animals I do not know how to use, settle on me like a debt.
A week ago, while the hard March gales beat on your house, we sorted your things: obstacles of letters, family silver, eyeglasses and shoes.
Like some unseasoned Christmas, its scales rigged and reset, I bundled out gifts I did not choose.
Now the houts of The Cross rewind.
In Boston, the devout work their cold knees toward that sweet martyrdom that Christ planned.
My timely loss is too customary to note; and yet I planned to suffer and I cannot.
It does not please my yankee bones to watch where the dying is done in its usly hours.
Black birds peck at my window glass and Easter will take its ragged son.
The clutter of worship that you taught me, Mary Gray, is old.
I imitate a memory of belief that I do not own.
I trip on your death and jesus, my stranger floats up over my Christian home, wearing his straight thorn tree.
I have cast my lot and am one third thief of you.
Time, that rearranger of estates, equips me with your garments, but not with grief.
2.
This winter when cancer began its ugliness I grieved with you each day for three months and found you in your private nook of the medicinal palace for New England Women and never once forgot how long it took.
I read to you from The New Yorker, ate suppers you wouldn't eat, fussed with your flowers, joked with your nurses, as if I were the balm among lepers, as if I could undo a life in hours if I never said goodbye.
But you turned old, all your fifty-eight years sliding like masks from your skull; and at the end I packed your nightgowns in suitcases, paid the nurses, came riding home as if I'd been told I could pretend people live in places.
3.
Since then I have pretended ease, loved with the trickeries of need, but not enough to shed my daughterhood or sweeten him as a man.
I drink the five o' clock martinis and poke at this dry page like a rough goat.
Fool! I fumble my lost childhood for a mother and lounge in sad stuff with love to catch and catch as catch can.
And Christ still waits.
I have tried to exorcise the memory of each event and remain still, a mixed child, heavy with cloths of you.
Sweet witch, you are my worried guide.
Such dangerous angels walk through Lent.
Their walls creak Anne! Convert! Convert! My desk moves.
Its cavr murmurs Boo and I am taken and beguiled.
Or wrong.
For all the way I've come I'll have to go again.
Instead, I must convert to love as reasonable as Latin, as sold as earthenware: an equilibrium I never knew.
And Lent will keep its hurt for someone else.
Christ knows enough staunch guys have hitched him in trouble.
thinking his sticks were badges to wear.
4.
Spring rusts on its skinny branch and last summer's lawn is soggy and brown.
Yesterday is just a number.
All of its winters avalanche out of sight.
What was, is gone.
Mother, last night I slept in your Bonwit Teller nightgown.
Divided, you climbed into my head.
There in my jabbering dream I heard my own angry cries and I cursed you, Dame keep out of my slumber.
My good Dame, you are dead.
And Mother, three stones slipped from your glittering eyes.
Now it's Friday's noon and I would still curse you with my rhyming words and bring you flapping back, old love, old circus knitting, god-in-her-moon, all fairest in my lang syne verse, the gauzy bride among the children, the fancy amid the absurd and awkward, that horn for hounds that skipper homeward, that museum keeper of stiff starfish, that blaze within the pilgrim woman, a clown mender, a dove's cheek among the stones, my Lady of first words, this is the division of ways.
And now, while Christ stays fastened to his Crucifix so that love may praise his sacrifice and not the grotesque metaphor, you come, a brave ghost, to fix in my mind without praise or paradise to make me your inheritor.
Written by Ogden Nash | Create an image from this poem

Childrens Party

 May I join you in the doghouse, Rover?
I wish to retire till the party's over.
Since three o'clock I've done my best To entertain each tiny guest.
My conscience now I've left behind me, And if they want me, let them find me.
I blew their bubbles, I sailed their boats, I kept them from each other's throats.
I told them tales of magic lands, I took them out to wash their hands.
I sorted their rubbers and tied their laces, I wiped their noses and dried their faces.
Of similarities there's lots Twixt tiny tots and Hottentots.
I've earned repose to heal the ravages Of these angelic-looking savages.
Oh, progeny playing by itself Is a lonely little elf, But progeny in roistering batches Would drive St.
francis from here to Natchez.
Shunned are the games a parent proposes, They prefer to squirt each other with hoses, Their playmates are their natural foemen And they like to poke each other's abdomen.
Their joy needs another woe's to cushion it, Say a puddle, and someone littler to push in it.
They observe with glee the ballistic results Of ice cream with spoons for catapults, And inform the assembly with tears and glares That everyone's presents are better than theirs.
Oh, little women and little men, Someday I hope to love you again, But not till after the party's over, So give me the key to the doghouse, Rover
Written by Andrew Marvell | Create an image from this poem

The Unfortunate Lover

 Alas, how pleasant are their dayes
With whom the Infant Love yet playes!
Sorted by pairs, they still are seen
By Fountains cool, and Shadows green.
But soon these Flames do lose their light, Like Meteors of a Summers night: Nor can they to that Region climb, To make impression upon Time.
'Twas in a Shipwrack, when the Seas Rul'd, and the Winds did what they please, That my poor Lover floting lay, And, e're brought forth, was cast away: Till at the last the master-Wave.
Upon the Rock his Mother drave; And there she split against the Stone, In a Cesarian Section.
The Sea him lent these bitter Tears Which at his Eyes he alwaies bears.
And from the Winds the Sighs he bore, Which through his surging Breast do roar.
No Day he saw but that which breaks, Through frighted Clouds in forked streaks.
While round the ratling Thunder hurl'd, As at the Fun'ral of the World.
While Nature to his Birth presents This masque of quarrelling Elements; A num'rous fleet of Corm'rants black, That sail'd insulting o're the Wrack, Receiv'd into their cruel Care, Th' unfortunate and abject Heir: Guardians most fit to entertain The Orphan of the Hurricane.
They fed him up with Hopes and Air, Which soon digested to Despair.
And as one Corm'rant fed him, still Another on his Heart did bill.
Thus while they famish him, and feast, He both consumed, and increast: And languished with doubtful Breath, Th' Amphibium of Life and Death.
And now, when angry Heaven wou'd Behold a spectacle of Blood, Fortune and He are call'd to play At sharp before it all the day: And Tyrant Love his brest does ply With all his wing'd Artillery.
Whilst he, betwixt the Flames and Waves, Like Ajax, the mad Tempest braves.
See how he nak'd and fierce does stand, Cuffing the Thunder with one hand; While with the other he does lock, And grapple, with the stubborn Rock: From which he with each Wave rebounds, Torn into Flames, and ragg'd with Wounds.
And all he saies, a Lover drest In his own Blood does relish best.
This is the only Banneret That ever Love created yet: Who though, by the Malignant Starrs, Forced to live in Storms and Warrs; Yet dying leaves a Perfume here, And Musick within every Ear: And he in Story only rules, In a Field Sable a Lover Gules.


Written by Anne Sexton | Create an image from this poem

Elizabeth Gone

 1.
You lay in the nest of your real death, Beyond the print of my nervous fingers Where they touched your moving head; Your old skin puckering, your lungs' breath Grown baby short as you looked up last At my face swinging over the human bed, And somewhere you cried, let me go let me go.
You lay in the crate of your last death, But were not you, not finally you.
They have stuffed her cheeks, I said; This clay hand, this mask of Elizabeth Are not true.
From within the satin And the suede of this inhuman bed, Something cried, let me go let me go.
2.
They gave me your ash and bony shells, Rattling like gourds in the cardboard urn, Rattling like stones that their oven had blest.
I waited you in the cathedral of spells And I waited you in the country of the living, Still with the urn crooned to my breast, When something cried, let me go let me go.
So I threw out your last bony shells And heard me scream for the look of you, Your apple face, the simple creche Of your arms, the August smells Of your skin.
Then I sorted your clothes And the loves you had left, Elizabeth, Elizabeth, until you were gone.
Written by George Herbert | Create an image from this poem

Sin

 Lord, with what care hast Thou begirt us round!
Parents first season us; then schoolmasters
Deliver us to laws;—they send us bound
To rules of reason, holy messengers,
Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin,
Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes,
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in,
Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,
Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness,
The sound of glory ringing in our ears;
Without, our shame; within, our consciences;
Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears:
Yet all these fences and their whole array
One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away.
Written by Barry Tebb | Create an image from this poem

THE PHILOSOPHERS

 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 Ind To where his strange imaginings had led, to heat and dust, some lust To know Bengali, to translate Tagore, or just, for all we know, Stroll round those sordid alleys and bazaars and ask for toddy If it’s still the same and say it in a tongue they know.
The Classics books lay everywhere around the flat, so many that my mind Grew numb.
Heavy, dusty dictionaries of Mandarin and Greek, Crumbling Victorian commentaries where every men and de was weighed And weighed again, and then, through a scholar’s gloss on Aristotle, That single sentence glowed, ‘And thus we see nobility of soul Comes only with the conquering of loss’; meaning shimmered in that empty space Where we believed there was no way to resurrect two sons we’d watched grow up, One lost to oriental heat and dust, the other to a fate of wards.
It seemed that rainy April Sunday in the musty book-lined rooms Of Brenda’s flat, mourning the death of Beethoven, her favourite cat, Watching Mozart’s ginger fur, his plaintive tone of loss, whether Some miscreant albatross was laid across our deck, or bound around The ship, or tangled about whatever destiny we moved towards Across that frozen sea of dark extremity; fatigued as if our barque Had hardly stirred for all those years of strife, for all the times We’d set the compass right, sorted through those heaped up charts And with fingers weary and bleary-eyed retraced our course.
The books, a thousand books that lined the walls: Plato’s chariot racing across the empty sky, Sartre’s waiters dancing like angels on the heads of pins, And Wittgenstein, nodding in his smoke-filled Cambridge den, Dreaming of a school room in the Austrian hills and walks In mountain air, wondering why he wasn’t there.
We wondered, too, at what, if anything we knew, trying to sift some Single fact that might elicit hope from loss, enough to get us through Another year with other griefs to come, we knew.
Some, by a little, Through God’s grace or chance or simple will, we might delay.
More likely we would have no say.
By words or actions who can stay The rolling balls across the table’s baize, the click of ball on ball, The line of bottles in the hall? We heard the ticking of the Roman -figured clock My mother made us take when all was lost, Together until the last breath had flown Into the blue empyrean with her soul.
Written by Edmund Spenser | Create an image from this poem

Sonnet LXVI

 TO all those happy blessings which ye haue,
with plenteous hand by heauen vpon you thrown:
this one disparagement they to you gaue,
that ye your loue lent to so meane a one.
Yee whose high worths surpassing paragon, could not on earth haue found one fit for mate, ne but in heauen matchable to none, why did ye stoup vnto so lowly state.
But ye thereby much greater glory gate, then had ye sorted with a princes pere: for now your light doth more it selfe dilate, and in my darknesse greater doth appeare.
Yet since your light hath once enlumind me, with my reflex yours shall encreased be.