Famous Bought Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Mowglis Song

by Rudyard Kipling
 The Song of Mowgli -- I, Mowgli, am singing. Let
 the jungle listen to the things I have done.
Shere Khan said he would kill -- would kill! At the
 gates in the twilight he would kill Mowgli, the
 Frog!
He ate and he drank. Drink deep, Shere Khan, for
 when wilt thou drink again? Sleep and dream
 of the kill.
I...Read more of this...

The Battle

by Robert William Service
 Dames should be doomed to dungeons
Who masticate raw onions.

She was the cuddly kind of Miss
 A man can love to death;
But when I sought to steal a kiss
 I wilted from a breath
With onion odour so intense
 I lost my loving sense.

Yet she was ever in my thought
 Like some exotic flower,
And so a garlic bulb I bought
 And...Read more of this...

Localities

by Carl Sandburg
 WAGON WHEEL GAP is a place I never saw
And Red Horse Gulch and the chutes of Cripple Creek.

Red-shirted miners picking in the sluices,
Gamblers with red neckties in the night streets,
The fly-by-night towns of Bull Frog and Skiddoo,
The night-cool limestone white of Death Valley,
The straight drop of eight hundred feet
From a shelf road in the Hasiampa Valley:
Men and places they...Read more of this...

from The Tenth Elegy

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Ah, but the City of Pain: how strange its streets are:
the false silence of sound drowning sound,
and there--proud, brazen, effluence from the mold of emptiness--
the gilded hubbub, the bursting monument.
How an Angel would stamp out their market of solaces,
set up alongside their church bought to order:
clean and closed and woeful as a post office on Sunday.
Outside, though, there's always...Read more of this...

Lip-Stick Liz

by Robert William Service
 Oh Lip-Stick Liz was in the biz, That's the oldest known in history;
She had a lot of fancy rags, Of her form she made no myst'ry.
She had a man, a fancy man, His name was Alexander,
And he used to beat her up because he couldn't understand her. 

Now Lip-Stick Liz she loved her man And she couldn't love no...Read more of this...

The Death of Fred Marsden the American Playwright

by William Topaz McGonagall
 A pathetic tragedy I will relate,
Concerning poor Fred. Marsden's fate,
Who suffocated himself by the fumes of gas,
On the 18th of May, and in the year of 1888, alas! 

Fred. Marsden was a playwright, the theatrical world knows,
And was highly esteemed by the people, and had very few foes;
And in New York, in his bedroom, he took his life away,
And...Read more of this...

366. Song—The weary Pund o' Tow

by Robert Burns
 Chorus.—The weary pund, the weary pund,
 The weary pund o’ tow;
I think my wife will end her life,
 Before she spin her tow.


I BOUGHT my wife a stane o’ lint,
 As gude as e’er did grow,
And a’ that she has made o’ that
 Is ae puir pund o’ tow.
 The weary pund, &c.


There sat a bottle in a bole,
...Read more of this...

The Wrangler

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 ONE day a shameless and impudent wight
Went into a shop full of steel wares bright,
Arranged with art upon ev'ry shelf.
He fancied they were all meant for himself;
And so, while the patient owner stood by,
The shining goods needs must handle and try,
And valued,--for how should a fool better know?--
The bad things high, and the good ones low,
And all with an...Read more of this...

The Bride Of Corinth

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [First published in Schiller's Horen, in connection 
with a
friendly contest in the art of ballad-writing between the two
great poets, to which many of their finest works are owing.]

ONCE a stranger youth to Corinth came,

Who in Athens lived, but hoped that he
From a certain townsman there might claim,

As his father's friend, kind courtesy.

Son and daughter, they

Had been wont to say

Should...Read more of this...

The Star-Splitter

by Robert Frost
 `You know Orion always comes up sideways.
Throwing a leg up over our fence of mountains,
And rising on his hands, he looks in on me
Busy outdoors by lantern-light with something
I should have done by daylight, and indeed,
After the ground is frozen, I should have done
Before it froze, and a gust flings a handful
Of waste leaves at my smoky lantern chimney
To...Read more of this...

Ninth Inning

by David Lehman
 He woke up in New York City on Valentine's Day,
Speeding. The body in the booth next to his was still warm,
Was gone. He had bought her a sweater, a box of chocolate
Said her life wasn't working he looked stricken she said
You're all bent out of shape, accusingly, and when he
She went from being an Ivy League professor of French
To...Read more of this...

So large my Will

by Emily Dickinson
 So large my Will
The little that I may
Embarrasses
Like gentle infamy --

Affront to Him
For whom the Whole were small
Affront to me
Who know His Meed of all.

Earth at the best
Is but a scanty Toy --
Bought, carried Home
To Immortality.

It looks so small
We chiefly wonder then
At our Conceit
In purchasing....Read more of this...

Psalm 69 part 3

by Isaac Watts
 Christ's obedience and death; or, God glorified and sinners saved.

Father, I sing thy wondrous grace,
I bless my Savior's name;
He bought salvation for the poor,
And bore the sinner's shame.

His deep distress has raised us high;
His duty and his zeal
Fulfilled the law which mortals broke,
And finished all thy will.

His dying groans, his living songs,
Shall better please my God
Than harp or trumpet's...Read more of this...

Simon the Cyrenian Speaks

by Countee Cullen
 He never spoke a word to me,
And yet He called my name;
He never gave a sign to me,
And yet I knew and came. 
At first I said, "I will not bear
His cross upon my back;
He only seeks to place it there
Because my skin is black."

But He was dying for a dream,
And He was very meek,
And in His eyes there...Read more of this...

Youth And Beauty

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 I bought a dishmop— 
having no daughter— 
for they had twisted 
fine ribbons of shining copper 
about white twine 
and made a tousled head
of it, fastened it 
upon a turned ash stick
slender at the neck 
straight, tall— 
when tied upright 
on the brass wallbracket
to be a light for me 
and naked 
as a girl should seem 
to her father....Read more of this...

The Four Zoas (excerpt)

by William Blake
 1.1 "What is the price of Experience? do men buy it for a song? 
1.2 Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
1.3 Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children.
1.4 Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy,
1.5 And in the wither'd field...Read more of this...

The Crooked Sixpence

by Mother Goose
There was a crooked man, and he went a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence beside a crooked stile;
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house....Read more of this...

Expectation

by Robert William Service
 My flask of wine was ruby red
And swift I ran my sweet to see;
With eyes that snapped delight I said:
"How mad with love a lad can be!"
The moon was laughing overhead;
I danced as nimbly as a flea.

Thought I: In two weeks time we'll wed;
No more a lonesome widow she;
For I have bought a double bed
And I will father children...Read more of this...

Wishes To His (Supposed) Mistress

by Richard Crashaw
 Whoe'er she be,
That not impossible she
That shall command my heart and me;

Where'er she lie,
Locked up from mortal eye
In shady leaves of destiny:

Till that ripe birth
Of studied fate stand forth,
And teach her fair steps to our earth;

Till that divine
Idea take a shrine
Of crystal flesh, through which to shine:

Meet you her, my wishes,
Bespeak her to my blisses,
And be ye called my...Read more of this...

Fit the First: ( Hunting of the Snark )

by Lewis Carroll
 The Landing 

"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair. 
"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell...Read more of this...

To Bessie Drennan

by Mark Doty
 Because she could find no one else to paint a picture of the old family place where she and her sisters lived. . .she attended an adult education class in Montpelier. In one evening Bessie Drennan learned everything she would need to accomplish her goals. . .
The Vermont Folklife Center Newsletter


Bessie, you've made space dizzy
with your perfected technique for...Read more of this...

The Negro Girl

by Mary Darby Robinson
 I. 

Dark was the dawn, and o'er the deep
The boist'rous whirlwinds blew;
The Sea-bird wheel'd its circling sweep,
And all was drear to view--
When on the beach that binds the western shore
The love-lorn ZELMA stood, list'ning the tempest's roar.


II. 

Her eager Eyes beheld the main,
While on her DRACO dear
She madly call'd, but call'd in vain,
No sound could DRACO hear,
Save the shrill...Read more of this...

A Cooking Egg

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 En l’an trentiesme do mon aage
Que toutes mes hontes j’ay beues...


PIPIT sate upright in her chair
Some distance from where I was sitting;
Views of the Oxford Colleges
Lay on the table, with the knitting.

Daguerreotypes and silhouettes,
Here grandfather and great great aunts,
Supported on the mantelpiece
An Invitation to the Dance.
. . . . .
I shall not want Honour in Heaven
For I shall meet...Read more of this...

Christmass

by John Clare
 Christmass is come and every hearth
Makes room to give him welcome now
Een want will dry its tears in mirth
And crown him wi a holly bough
Tho tramping neath a winters sky
Oer snow track paths and ryhmey stiles
The huswife sets her spining bye
And bids him welcome wi her smiles
Each house is swept the day before
And windows stuck wi evergreens
The snow is...Read more of this...

The New Freethinker

by G K Chesterton
 John Grubby who was short and stout 
And troubled with religious doubt, 
Refused about the age of three 
To sit upon the curate's knee; 
(For so the eternal strife must rage 
Between the spirit of the age 
And Dogma, which, as is well known, 
Does simply hate to be outgrown). 
Grubby, the young idea that shoots, 
Outgrew the ages...Read more of this...

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