Famous Beware Poems by Famous Poets

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

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43. Song—O Leave Novels!

by Robert Burns
 O LEAVE novels, 1 ye Mauchline belles,
 Ye’re safer at your spinning-wheel;
Such witching books are baited hooks
 For rakish rooks, like Rob Mossgiel;
Your fine Tom Jones and Grandisons,
 They make your youthful fancies reel;
They heat your brains, and fire your veins,
 And then you’re prey for Rob Mossgiel.


Beware a tongue that’s smoothly hung,
 A heart that warmly seems to...Read more of this...

256. Song—Beware o' Bonie Ann

by Robert Burns
 YE gallants bright, I rede you right,
 Beware o’ bonie Ann;
Her comely face sae fu’ o’ grace,
 Your heart she will trepan:
Her een sae bright, like stars by night,
 Her skin sae like the swan;
Sae jimply lac’d her genty waist,
 That sweetly ye might span.


Youth, Grace, and Love attendant move,
 And pleasure leads the van:
In a’ their charms, and...Read more of this...

Kubla Khan

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic...Read more of this...

Excelsior

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
THE SHADES of night were falling fast  
As through an Alpine village passed 
A youth who bore 'mid snow and ice  
A banner with the strange device  
Excelsior! 5 

His brow was sad; his eye beneath  
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath  
And like a silver clarion rung 
The accents of that unknown tongue...Read more of this...

Movimiento estudiantil

by Taja Kramberger
My dear students,
little pigeons from the Forja factory in Buenos Aires.
The institution we built together has become
a hangar for hanging pieces of discounted meat.

Go out into the world with bright faces –
leave the twilight of ignorance and dullness, you have experienced all
that is necessary to understand the meaning
and responsibility of the creative person in the world.

Göttingen 1937, Tlatelolco 1968, Koper...Read more of this...

The Broncho That Would Not Be Broken

by Vachel Lindsay
 A little colt — broncho, loaned to the farm
To be broken in time without fury or harm,
Yet black crows flew past you, shouting alarm,
Calling "Beware," with lugubrious singing...
The butterflies there in the bush were romancing,
The smell of the grass caught your soul in a trance,
So why be a-fearing the spurs and the traces,
O broncho that would not be broken...Read more of this...

Lady Lazarus

by Sylvia Plath
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it_____
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?-------
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on...Read more of this...

Little Brother

by Robert William Service
 Wars have been and wars will be
Till the human race is run;
Battles red by land and sea,
Never peace beneath the sun.
I am old and little care;
I'll be cold, my lips be dumb:
Brother mine, beware, beware . . .
Evil looms the wrath to come.

Eastern skies are dark with strife,
Western lands are stark with fear;
Rumours of world-war are rife,
Armageddon draweth near.
If...Read more of this...

Kubla Khan

by
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 
A stately pleasure-dome decree : 
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 
Through caverns measureless to man 
Down to a sunless sea. 
So twice five miles of fertile ground 
With walls and towers were girdled round : 
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, 
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ; 
And here were forests...Read more of this...

The Philosopher the Young Man and his Statue

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 A Fond Athenian Mother brought 
A Sculptor to indulge her Thought, 
And carve her Only Son; 
Who to such strange perfection wrought, 
That every Eye the Statue caught 
Nor ought was left undone. 

A youthful Smile adorn'd the Face, 
The polish gave that Smile a Grace; 
And through the Marble reigns 
(Which well the Artist's Skill cou'd trace, 
And...Read more of this...

The Seven Ages of Wise

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Parliament's a stage, 
And all the Politicians merely players! 
They have their exits and entrances, 
And Wise doth in his time play many parts, 
His acts being seven changes. 
First the Runner, 
With spiked shoe he spurns the cinder track, 
And just for once runs straight. 

The next the Student, 
Burning the midnight oil with Adam Smith 
For Cobden...Read more of this...

The wind drew off

by Emily Dickinson
 The wind drew off
Like hungry dogs
Defeated of a bone --
Through fissures in
Volcanic cloud
The yellow lightning shone --
The trees held up
Their mangled limbs
Like animals in pain --
When Nature falls upon herself
Beware an Austrian....Read more of this...

Julian and Maddalo (excerpt)

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 I rode one evening with Count Maddalo 
Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand
Of hillocks, heap'd from ever-shifting sand,
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,
Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds,
Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,
Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
Abandons; and no other object breaks
The waste, but...Read more of this...

526. Song—The Dumfries Volunteers

by Robert Burns
 DOES haughty Gaul invasion threat?
 Then let the louns beware, Sir;
There’s wooden walls upon our seas,
 And volunteers on shore, Sir:
The Nith shall run to Corsincon,
 And Criffel sink in Solway,
Ere we permit a Foreign Foe
 On British ground to rally!
We’ll ne’er permit a Foreign Foe
 On British ground to rally!


O let us not, like snarling curs,
 In wrangling...Read more of this...

Variations of Greek Themes

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I
A HAPPY MAN
(Carphyllides)

When these graven lines you see, 
Traveler, do not pity me; 
Though I be among the dead, 
Let no mournful word be said. 

Children that I leave behind,
And their children, all were kind; 
Near to them and to my wife, 
I was happy all my life. 

My three sons I married right, 
And their sons I rocked...Read more of this...

Where is the pious doer? I the estray'd one

by Hafez
Where is the pious doer? & I the estray’d one, where?
Behold how far the distance, from his safe home to here!

Dark is the stony desert, trackless & vast & dim,
Where is hope’s guiding lantern? Where is faith’s star so fair?

My heart fled from the cloister, & chant of monkish hymn,
What can avail me sainthood, fasting & punctual prayer?

What is the...Read more of this...

The Tournament

by Sidney Lanier
 Joust First.


I.

Bright shone the lists, blue bent the skies,
And the knights still hurried amain
To the tournament under the ladies' eyes,
Where the jousters were Heart and Brain.

II.

Flourished the trumpets: entered Heart,
A youth in crimson and gold.
Flourished again: Brain stood apart,
Steel-armored, dark and cold.

III.

Heart's palfrey caracoled gayly round,
Heart tra-li-ra'd merrily;
But Brain sat still, with never a sound,
So cynical-calm was he.

IV.

Heart's helmet-crest...Read more of this...

Hiawathas Childhood

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Downward through the evening twilight, 
In the days that are forgotten, 
In the unremembered ages, 
From the full moon fell Nokomis, 
Fell the beautiful Nokomis, 
She a wife, but not a mother.
She was sporting with her women, 
Swinging in a swing of grape-vines, 
When her rival the rejected, 
Full of jealousy and hatred, 
Cut the leafy swing asunder, 
Cut...Read more of this...

Security

by Robert William Service
 There once was a limpet puffed with pride
Who said to the ribald sea:
"It isn't I who cling to the rock,
It's the rock that clings to me;
It's the silly old rock who hugs me tight,
Because he loves me so;
And though I struggle with all my might,
He will not let me go."

Then said the sea, who hates the rock
That defies him...Read more of this...

Of all those who have taken the long road, who is there

by Omar Khayyam
Of all those who have taken the long road, who is there
now returned of whom I may ask news? O friend! beware
of putting any hope whatever in this sordid world,
for, know well that thou here shalt ne'er return....Read more of this...

The Twins

by Robert Browning
 Give'' and ``It-shall-be-given-unto-you.''

I.

Grand rough old Martin Luther
Bloomed fables---flowers on furze,
The better the uncouther:
Do roses stick like burrs?

II.

A beggar asked an alms
One day at an abbey-door,
Said Luther; but, seized with qualms,
The abbot replied, ``We're poor!

III.

``Poor, who had plenty once,
``When gifts fell thick as rain:
``But they give us nought, for the nonce,
``And how should we give again?''

IV.

Then the beggar, ``See your...Read more of this...

Dame Fortune's smiles are full of guile, beware!

by Omar Khayyam
Dame Fortune's smiles are full of guile, beware!
Her scimitar is sharp to smite, take care!
If e'er she drop a sweetmeat in thy mouth,
'Tis poisonous,—to swallow it forbear!...Read more of this...

The Warning

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Beware! The Israelite of old, who tore
The lion in his path,--when, poor and blind,
He saw the blessed light of heaven no more,
Shorn of his noble strength and forced to grind
In prison, and at last led forth to be
A pander to Philistine revelry,--

Upon the pillars of the temple laid
His desperate hands, and in its overthrow
Destroyed himself, and with him those...Read more of this...

Cuckoo Song

by Rudyard Kipling
 (Spring begins in southern England on the 14th April, on which date the Old Woman lets the Cuckoo out of her basket at Heathfield Fair -- locally known as Heffle Cuckoo Fair.)
Tell it to the locked-up trees,
Cuckoo, bring your song here!
Warrant, Act and Summons, please,
For Spring to pass along here!
Tell old Winder, if he doubt,
Tell him squat and square...Read more of this...

A Rat surrendered here

by Emily Dickinson
 A Rat surrendered here
A brief career of Cheer
And Fraud and Fear.

Of Ignominy's due
Let all addicted to
Beware.

The most obliging Trap
Its tendency to snap
Cannot resist --

Temptation is the Friend
Repugnantly resigned
At last....Read more of this...

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