Famous Career Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Career poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous career poems. These examples illustrate what a famous career poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Edward Field
The Baron has decided to mate the monster,
to breed him perhaps,
in the interests of pure science, his only god.
So he goes up into his laboratory
which he has built in the tower of the castle
to be as near the interplanetary forces as possible,
and puts together the prettiest monster-woman you ever saw
with a body like a pin-up girl
and hardly any stitching...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
MY DEAR LADY GRANVILLE,--
THE reluctance which must naturally be felt by any one in
venturing to give to the world a book such as the present, where
the beauties of the great original must inevitably be diminished,
if not destroyed, in the process of passing through the
translator's hands, cannot but be felt in all its force when that
translator has not penetrated beyond...Read more of this...
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...
by
Max Ehrmann
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
"Break me my bounds, and let me fly
To regions vast of boundless sky;
Nor I, like piteous Daphne, be
Root-bound. Ah, no! I would be free
As yon same bird that in its flight
Outstrips the range of mortal sight;
Free as the mountain streams that gush
From bubbling springs, and downward rush
Across the serrate mountain's side,—
The rocks o'erwhelmed, their banks defied,—
And like the passions in...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants --
At Evening, it is not --
At Morning, in a Truffled Hut
It stop upon a Spot
As if it tarried always
And yet its whole Career
Is shorter than a Snake's Delay
And fleeter than a Tare --
'Tis Vegetation's Juggler --
The Germ of Alibi --
Doth like a Bubble antedate
And like a Bubble, hie --
I feel as if...Read more of this...
by
William Drummond
Phoebus, arise!
And paint the sable skies
With azure, white, and red:
Rouse Memnon's mother from her Tithon's bed
That she may thy career with roses spread:
The nightingales thy coming each-where sing:
Make an eternal spring!
Give life to this dark world which lieth dead;
Spread forth thy golden hair
In larger locks than thou wast wont before,
And emperor-like decore
With diadem of pearl thy temples fair:
Chase hence...Read more of this...
by
Pablo Neruda
The artichoke
With a tender heart
Dressed up like a warrior,
Standing at attention, it built
A small helmet
Under its scales
It remained
Unshakeable,
By its side
The crazy vegetables
Uncurled
Their tendrills and leaf-crowns,
Throbbing bulbs,
In the sub-soil
The carrot
With its red mustaches
Was sleeping,
The grapevine
Hung out to dry its branches
Through which...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
I
"Percussus sum sicut foenum, et aruit cor meum."
- Ps. ci
Wintertime nighs;
But my bereavement-pain
It cannot bring again:
Twice no one dies.
Flower-petals flee;
But, since it once hath been,
No more that severing scene
Can harrow me.
Birds faint in dread:
I shall not lose old strength
In the lone...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
Good people of high and low degree,
I pray ye all be advised by me,
And don't believe what the clergy doth say,
That by going to the theatre you will be led astray.
No, in the theatre we see vice punished and virtue rewarded,
The villain either hanged or shot, and his career retarded;
Therefore the theatre is useful in every way,
And has...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
It isn't the foe that we fear;
It isn't the bullets that whine;
It isn't the business career
Of a shell, or the bust of a mine;
It isn't the snipers who seek
To nip our young hopes in the bud:
No, it isn't the guns,
And it isn't the Huns --
It's the MUD,
MUD,
MUD.
It isn't the melee we mind.
That often...Read more of this...
by
Hilaire Belloc
Who was too Freely Moved to Tears, and thereby ruined his Political Career
Lord Lundy from his earliest years
Was far too freely moved to Tears.
For instance if his Mother said,
"Lundy! It's time to go to Bed!"
He bellowed like a Little Turk.
Or if his father Lord Dunquerque
Said "Hi!" in a Commanding Tone,
"Hi, Lundy! Leave the Cat alone!"
Lord Lundy, letting go...Read more of this...
by
Christopher Smart
Sweet is the dew that falls betimes,
And drops upon the leafy limes;
Sweet Hermon's fragrant air:
Sweet is the lily's silver bell,
And sweet the wakeful tapers smell
That watch for early pray'r.
Sweet the young nurse with love intense,
Which smiles o'er sleeping innocence;
Sweet when the lost arrive:
Sweet the musician's ardour beats,
While his vague mind's in quest of sweets,
The choicest flow'rs to hive.
Sweeter in...Read more of this...
by
Aleister Crowley
Hear me, Lord of the Stars!
For thee I have worshipped ever
With stains and sorrows and scars,
With joyful, joyful endeavour.
Hear me, O lily-white goat!
O crisp as a thicket of thorns,
With a collar of gold for Thy throat,
A scarlet bow for Thy horns!
Here, in the dusty air,
I build Thee a shrine of yew.
All green is the garland I wear,
But I feed...Read more of this...
by
John Milton
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stoln on his wing my three and twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on wtih full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
That I to manhood am arrived so near,
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some...Read more of this...
by
Ogden Nash
Master I may be,
But not of my fate.
Now come the kisses, too many too late.
Tell me, O Parcae,
For fain would I know,
Where were these kisses three decades ago?
Girls there were plenty,
Mint julep girls, beer girls,
Gay younger married and headstrong career girls,
The girls of my friends
And the wives of my friends,
Some smugly settled and some at loose ends,
Sad girls, serene...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
AS a strong bird on pinions free,
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,
Such be the thought I’d think to-day of thee, America,
Such be the recitative I’d bring to-day for thee.
The conceits of the poets of other lands I bring thee not,
Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long,
Nor rhyme—nor the classics—nor perfume of...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
How soft a Caterpillar steps --
I fond one on my Hand
From such a velvet world it comes
Such plushes at command
Its soundless travels just arrest
My slow -- terrestrial eye
Intent upon its own career
What use has it for me --...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Whose Pink career may have a close
Portentous as our own, who knows?
To imitate these Neighbors fleet
In awe and innocence, were meet....Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
TO her, for I must still regard her
As feminine in her degree,
Who has been my unkind bombarder
Year after year, in grief and glee,
Year after year, with oaken tree;
And yet betweenwhiles my laudator
In terms astonishing to me -
To the Right Reverend The Spectator
I here, a humble dedicator,
Bring the last apples from my tree.
In tones of love, in tones of warning,
She...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
TERRIFIC FIEND! thou Monster fell,
Condemn'd in haunts profane to dwell,
Why quit thy solitary Home,
O'er wide Creation's paths to roam?
Pale Tyrant of the timid Heart,
Whose visionary spells can bind
The strongest passions of the mind,
Freezing Life's current with thy baneful Art.
Nature recoils when thou art near,
For round thy form all plagues are...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
1917
They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,
The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave:
But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung,
Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?
They shall not return to us; the strong men coldly slain
In sight of help denied from day to day:
But...Read more of this...
by
George (Lord) Byron
When Friendship or Love
Our sympathies move;
When Truth, in a glance, should appear,
The lips may beguile,
With a dimple or smile,
But the test of affection's a Tear:
Too oft is a smile
But the hypocrite's wile,
To mask detestation, or fear;
Give me the soft sigh,
Whilst the soultelling eye
Is dimm'd, for a time, with a Tear:
Mild Charity's glow,
To us mortals below,
Shows the soul from barbarity...Read more of this...
by
John Keats
To one who has been long in city pent,
'Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven,--to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.
Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,
Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair
And gentle tale of love and languishment?
Returning...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
He was my one and only love;
My world was mirror for his face.
We were as close as hand and glove,
Until he came with smiling grace
To say: 'We must be wise, my dear.
You are the idol of today,
But I too plan a proud career,--
Let's kiss and go our way.'
And then he soared to sudden fame,
And even queens applauded him.
A halo...Read more of this...
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