Famous Brown Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Brown Girl Dead

by Countee Cullen
 With two white roses on her breasts, 
White candles at head and feet, 
Dark Madonna of the grave she rests; 
Lord Death has found her sweet.

Her mother pawned her wedding ring
To lay her out in white; 
She'd be so proud she'd dance and sing
to see herself tonight....Read more of this...

To A Brown Beggar-maid

by Charles Baudelaire
 WHITE maiden with the russet hair, 
Whose garments, through their holes, declare 
That poverty is part of you, 
And beauty too. 

To me, a sorry bard and mean, 
Your youthful beauty, frail and lean, 
With summer freckles here and there, 
Is sweet and fair. 

Your sabots tread the roads of chance, 
And not one queen of old romance 
Carried...Read more of this...

Specula

by Thomas Edward Brown
 When He appoints to meet thee, go thou forth— 
It matters not 
If south or north, 
Bleak waste or sunny plot. 
Nor think, if haply He thou seek’st be late, 
He does thee wrong. 
To stile or gate 
Lean thou thy head, and long! 
It may be that to spy thee He is mounting 
Upon a tower, 
Or in...Read more of this...

Dream Song 62: That dark brown rabbit lightness in his ears

by John Berryman
 That dark brown rabbit, lightness in his ears
& underneath, gladdened our afternoon
munching a crab-'.
That rabbit was a fraud, like a black bull
prudent I admired in Zaragoza, who
certainly was brave as a demon

but would not charge, being willing not to die.
The rabbit's case, a little different,
consisted in alert
& wily looks down the lawn, where nobody was,
with prickt ears, while rapt...Read more of this...

Sarah Brown

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Maurice, weep not, I am not here under this pine tree.
The balmy air of spring whispers through the sweet grass,
The stars sparkle, the whippoorwill calls,
But thou grievest, while my soul lies rapturous
In the blest Nirvana of eternal light!
Go to the good heart that is my husband,
Who broods upon what he calls our guilty love: --
Tell him that my love...Read more of this...

Pain

by Thomas Edward Brown
 The Man that hath great griefs I pity not; 
’Tis something to be great 
In any wise, and hint the larger state, 
Though but in shadow of a shade, God wot! 

Moreover, while we wait the possible, 
This man has touched the fact, 
And probed till he has felt the core, where, packed 
In pulpy folds, resides the ironic...Read more of this...

A slant of sun on dull brown walls

by Stephen Crane
 A slant of sun on dull brown walls,
A forgotten sky of bashful blue.

Toward God a mighty hymn,
A song of collisions and cries,
Rumbling wheels, hoof-beats, bells,
Welcomes, farewells, love-calls, final moans,
Voices of joy, idiocy, warning, despair,
The unknown appeals of brutes,
The chanting of flowers,
The screams of cut trees,
The senseless babble of hens and wise men --
A cluttered incoherency that says at the...Read more of this...

Ibant Obscur?

by Thomas Edward Brown
 To-night I saw three maidens on the beach,
Dark-robed descending to the sea,
So slow, so silent of all speech,
And visible to me
Only by that strange drift-light, dim, forlorn,
Of the sun's wreck and clashing surges born.

Each after other went,
And they were gathered to his breast--
It seemed to me a sacrament
Of some stern creed unblest:
As when to rocks, that cheerless girt the...Read more of this...

Opifex

by Thomas Edward Brown
 As I was carving images from clouds,
And tinting them with soft ethereal dyes
Pressed from the pulp of dreams, one comes, and cries:--
"Forbear!" and all my heaven with gloom enshrouds.

"Forbear!" Thou hast no tools wherewith to essay
The delicate waves of that elusive grain:
Wouldst have due recompense of vulgar pain?
The potter's wheel for thee, and some coarse clay!

"So work, if work...Read more of this...

The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives

by Fleda Brown
She reads, of course, what he's doing, shaking Nixon's hand, 
dating this starlet or that, while he is faithful to her 
like a stone in her belly, like the actual love child, 
its bills and diapers. Once he had kissed her 
and time had stood still, at least some point seems to 
remain back there as a place to return...Read more of this...

Now O Now in This Brown Land

by James Joyce
 Now, O now, in this brown land 
Where Love did so sweet music make 
We two shall wander, hand in hand, 
Forbearing for old friendship' sake, 
Nor grieve because our love was gay 
Which now is ended in this way. 

A rogue in red and yellow dress 
Is knocking, knocking at the tree; 
And all around our loneliness 
The...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...

If Thou Couldst Empty All Thyself Of Self

by Thomas Edward Brown
 If thou could'st empty all thyself of self, 
Like to a shell dishabited,
Then might He find thee on the ocean shelf, 
And say, "This is not dead,"
And fill thee with Himself instead.

But thou are all replete with very thou
And hast such shrewd activity,
That when He comes He says, "This is enow
Unto itself - 'twere better let it be,
It is...Read more of this...

Pain

by Thomas Edward Brown
 MEN have made them gods of love,
Sun-gods, givers of the rain,
Deities of hill and grove:
I have made a god of Pain.


Of my god I know this much,
And in singing I repeat,
Though there’s anguish in his touch,
Yet his soul within is sweet....Read more of this...

My Garden

by Thomas Edward Brown
 A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Ferned grot--
The veriest school
Of peace; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not--
Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool?
Nay, but I have a sign;
'Tis very sure God walks in mine....Read more of this...

Little Brown Baby

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
 Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes, 
Come to yo' pappy an' set on his knee.
What you been doin', suh -- makin' san' pies?
Look at dat bib -- you's es du'ty ez me.
Look at dat mouf -- dat's merlasses, I bet;
Come hyeah, Maria, an' wipe off his han's.
Bees gwine to ketch you an' eat you up yit,
Bein' so sticky an...Read more of this...

I Write My Mother a Poem

by Fleda Brown
Sometimes I feel her easing further into her grave, 
resigned, as always, and I have to come to her rescue. 
Like now, when I have so much else to do. Not that 

she'd want a poem. She would have been proud, of course, 
of all its mystery, involving her, but scared a little. 
Her eyes would have filled with tears....Read more of this...

Mid My Gold-Brown Curls

by George Eliot
 'Mid my gold-brown curls 
There twined a silver hair: 
I plucked it idly out 
And scarcely knew 'twas there. 
Coiled in my velvet sleeve it lay 
And like a serpent hissed: 
"Me thou canst pluck & fling away, 
One hair is lightly missed; 
But how on that near day 
When all the wintry army muster in array?"...Read more of this...

Faithless Sally Brown

by Thomas Hood
 Young Ben he was a nice young man,
A carpenter by trade;
And he fell in love with Sally Brown,
That was a lady's maid.

But as they fetch'd a walk one day,
They met a press-gang crew;
And Sally she did faint away,
Whilst Ben he was brought to.

The Boatswain swore with wicked words,
Enough to shock a saint,
That though she did seem in a fit,
'Twas...Read more of this...

Disguises

by Thomas Edward Brown
 High stretched upon the swinging yard, 
I gather in the sheet; 
But it is hard 
And stiff, and one cries haste. 
Then He that is most dear in my regard 
Of all the crew gives aidance meet; 
But from His hands, and from His feet, 
A glory spreads wherewith the night is starred: 
Moreover of a cup most bitter-sweet...Read more of this...

Dora

by Thomas Edward Brown
 SHE knelt upon her brother's grave, 
 My little girl of six years old-- 
He used to be so good and brave, 
 The sweetest lamb of all our fold; 
He used to shout, he used to sing, 
Of all our tribe the little king-- 
And so unto the turf her ear she laid, 
To hark if still in...Read more of this...

Salve!

by Thomas Edward Brown
 TO live within a cave--it is most good; 
 But, if God make a day, 
 And some one come, and say, 
'Lo! I have gather'd faggots in the wood!' 
 E'en let him stay, 
And light a fire, and fan a temporal mood! 

So sit till morning! when the light is grown 
 That he the path can...Read more of this...

Brown Penny

by William Butler Yeats
 I whispered, 'I am too young,'
And then, 'I am old enough';
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
'Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.'
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.

O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all...Read more of this...

Land Ho!

by Thomas Edward Brown
 I know ’tis but a loom of land, 
Yet is it land, and so I will rejoice, 
I know I cannot hear His voice 
Upon the shore, nor see Him stand; 
Yet is it land, ho! land. 

The land! the land! the lovely land! 
‘Far off,’ dost say? Far off—ah, bless?d home! 
Farewell! farewell! thou salt sea-foam! 
Ah, keel...Read more of this...

I bended unto me a Bough

by Thomas Edward Brown
 I bended unto me a bough of May,
That I might see and smell:
It bore it in a sort of way,
It bore it very well.
But, when I let it backward sway,
Then it were hard to tell
With what a toss, with what a swing,
The dainty thing
Resumed its proper level,
And sent me to the devil.
I know it did--you doubt it?
I turned, and...Read more of this...

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