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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The Statesmen

by Ambrose Bierce
 How blest the land that counts among
Her sons so many good and wise,
To execute great feats of tongue
When troubles rise.

Behold them mounting every stump,
By speech our liberty to guard.
Observe their courage--see them jump,
And come down hard!

'Walk up, walk up!' each cries aloud,
'And learn from me what you must do
To turn aside the thunder cloud,
The earthquake too.

'Beware the wiles of...Read more of this...

The Evil Eye

by Anne Sexton
 It comes oozing
out of flowers at night,
it comes out of the rain
if a snake looks skyward,
it comes out of chairs and tables
if you don't point at them and say their names.
It comes into your mouth while you sleep,
pressing in like a washcloth.
Beware. Beware.

If you meet a cross-eyed person
you must plunge into the grass,
alongside the chilly ants,
fish through the green...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...

Song. Good Counsel to a Young Maid

by Thomas Carew
 GAZE not on thy beauty's pride, 
Tender maid, in the false tide 
That from lovers' eyes doth slide. 
Let thy faithful crystal show 
How thy colours come and go : 
Beauty takes a foil from woe. 

Love, that in those smooth streams lies 
Under pity's fair disguise, 
Will thy melting heart surprise. 

Nets of passion's finest thread, 
Snaring poems,...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 jaffa and jerusalem railway

by Eugene Field
 A tortuous double iron track; a station here, a station there;
A locomotive, tender, tanks; a coach with stiff reclining chair;
Some postal cars, and baggage, too; a vestibule of patent make;
With buffers, duffers, switches, and the soughing automatic brake--
This is the Orient's novel pride, and Syria's gaudiest modern gem:
The railway scheme that is to ply 'twixt Jaffa and Jerusalem.

Beware, O...Read more of this...

273. Song—Tam Glen

by Robert Burns
 MY heart is a-breaking, dear Tittie,
 Some counsel unto me come len’,
To anger them a’ is a pity,
 But what will I do wi’ Tam Glen?


I’m thinking, wi’ sic a braw fellow,
 In poortith I might mak a fen;
What care I in riches to wallow,
 If I maunna marry Tam Glen!


There’s Lowrie the Laird o’ Dumeller—
 “Gude day to...Read more of this...

The Ideal And The Actual Life

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Forever fair, forever calm and bright,
Life flies on plumage, zephyr-light,
For those who on the Olympian hill rejoice--
Moons wane, and races wither to the tomb,
And 'mid the universal ruin, bloom
The rosy days of Gods--With man, the choice,
Timid and anxious, hesitates between
The sense's pleasure and the soul's content;
While on celestial brows, aloft and sheen,
The beams of both are blent.

Seekest thou on...Read more of this...

Wisdom of Hafiz: the Philosopher Takes to Racing

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 My son, if you go to the races to battle with Ikey and Mo, 
Remember, it's seldom the pigeon can pick out the eye of the crow; 
Remember, they live by the business; remember, my son, and go slow. 
If ever an owner should tell you, "Back mine" -- don't you be such a flat. 
He knows his own...Read more of this...

The Task: Book II The Time-Piece (excerpts)

by William Cowper
 England, with all thy faults, I love thee still--
My country! and, while yet a nook is left
Where English minds and manners may be found,
Shall be constrain'd to love thee. Though thy clime
Be fickle, and thy year most part deform'd
With dripping rains, or wither'd by a frost,
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies,
And fields without a flow'r, for warmer...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...

Have you got a Brook in your little heart

by Emily Dickinson
 Have you got a Brook in your little heart,
Where bashful flowers blow,
And blushing birds go down to drink,
And shadows tremble so --

And nobody knows, so still it flows,
That any brook is there,
And yet your little draught of life
Is daily drunken there --

Why, look out for the little brook in March,
When the rivers overflow,
And the snows come hurrying from the...Read more of this...

If heaven deny me peace and fame, I said,

by Omar Khayyam
«If heaven deny me peace and fame,» I said,
«Let it be open war and shame instead;
The man who scorns bright wine had best beware,
I'll arm me with a stone, and break his head!»...Read more of this...

Fit the Third ( Hunting of the Snark )

by Lewis Carroll
 The Baker's Tale 

They roused him with muffins--they roused him with ice--
They roused him with mustard and cress--
They roused him with jam and judicious advice--
They set him conundrums to guess. 
When at length he sat up and was able to speak,
His sad story he offered to tell;
And the Bellman cried "Silence! Not even a shriek!"
And excitedly tingled his bell....Read more of this...

Enamored Architect Of Airy Rhyme

by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Enamored architect of airy rhyme,
Build as thou wilt, heed not what each man says.
Good souls, but innocent of dreamers’ ways,
Will come, and marvel why thou wastest time;
Others, beholding how thy turrets climb
’Twixt theirs and heaven, will hate thee all thy days;
But most beware of those who come to praise.
O Wondersmith, O worker in sublime
And heaven-sent dreams, let art be all...Read more of this...

The Rape of the Lock: Canto 1

by Alexander Pope
 Nolueram, Belinda, tuos violare capillos;
Sedjuvat, hoc precibus me tribuisse tuis.
(Martial, Epigrams 12.84)
What dire offence from am'rous causes springs, 
What mighty contests rise from trivial things,
I sing--This verse to Caryl, Muse! is due:
This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view:
Slight is the subject, but not so the praise,
If she inspire, and he approve my lays.
Say what strange motive, Goddess! could compel
A...Read more of this...

The Tale of the Tiger-Tree

by Vachel Lindsay
 A Fantasy, dedicated to the little poet Alice Oliver Henderson, ten years old. 

The Fantasy shows how tiger-hearts are the cause of war in all ages. It shows how the mammoth forces may be either friends or enemies of the struggle for peace. It shows how the dream of peace is unconquerable and eternal.


I

Peace-of-the-Heart, my own for long,
Whose shining...Read more of this...

Sonnet XVII: Love Steals Unheeded

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Love steals unheeded o'er the tranquil mind, 
As Summer breezes fan the sleeping main,
Slow through each fibre creeps the subtle pain,
'Till closely round the yielding bosom twin'd.
Vain is the hope the magic to unbind,
The potent mischief riots in the brain,
Grasps ev'ry thought, and burns in ev'ry vein,
'Till in the heart the Tyrant lives enshrin'd.
Oh! Victor strong! bending the vanquish'd...Read more of this...

John Hancock Otis

by Edgar Lee Masters
 As to democracy, fellow citizens,
Are you not prepared to admit
That I, who inherited riches and was to the manor born,
Was second to none in Spoon River
In my devotion to the cause of Liberty?
While my contemporary, Anthony Findlay,
Born in a shanty and beginning life
As a water carrier to the section hands,
Then becoming a section hand when he was grown,
Afterwards foreman...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...

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...

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...

A Poets Voice XV

by Kahlil Gibran
 Part One


The power of charity sows deep in my heart, and I reap and gather the wheat in bundles and give them to the hungry. 

My soul gives life to the grapevine and I press its bunches and give the juice to the thirsty. 

Heaven fills my lamp with oil and I place it at my window to direct...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...

Nora the Maid of Killarney

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Down by the beautiful Lakes of Killarney,
Off times I have met my own dear Barney,
In the sweet summer time of the year,
In the silvery moonlight so clear,
I've rambled with my sweetheart Barney,
Along the green banks of the Lakes of Killarney. 

The Lakes of Killarney are most lovely to be seen
In the summer season when nature's face is green,
Especially in...Read more of this...

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