Famous Celebrate Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Jet

by Tony Hoagland
 Sometimes I wish I were still out
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel
with the boys, getting louder and louder
as the empty cans drop out of our paws
like booster rockets falling back to Earth

and we soar up into the summer stars.
Summer. The big sky river rushes overhead,
bearing asteroids and mist, blind fish
and old space suits with skeletons inside.
On Earth, men...Read more of this...

Just Before April Came

by Carl Sandburg
 THE SNOW piles in dark places are gone.
Pools by the railroad tracks shine clear.
The gravel of all shallow places shines.
A white pigeon reels and somersaults.

Frogs plutter and squdge—and frogs beat the air with a recurring thin steel sliver of melody.
Crows go in fives and tens; they march their black feathers past a blue pool; they celebrate an old festival.
A...Read more of this...

To a Historian

by Walt Whitman
 YOU who celebrate bygones! 
Who have explored the outward, the surfaces of the races—the life that has
 exhibited itself; 
Who have treated of man as the creature of politics, aggregates, rulers and
 priests; 
I, habitan of the Alleghanies, treating of him as he is in himself, in his own
 rights, 
Pressing the pulse of the life that has seldom...Read more of this...

A Man Young And Old: XI. From Oedipus At Colonus

by William Butler Yeats
 Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span;
Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man;
Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain.

Even from that delight memory treasures so,
Death, despair, division of families, all entanglements of mankind grow,
As that old wandering beggar and these God-hated children know.

In the long echoing street the laughing dancers throng,
The...Read more of this...

Sonnet LX

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LX. Ite, rime dolenti, al duro sasso. HE PRAYS THAT SHE WILL BE NEAR HIM AT HIS DEATH, WHICH HE FEELS APPROACHING.  Go, plaintive verse, to the cold marble go,Which hides in earth my treasure from these eyes;[Pg 291]There call on her who answers from yon skies,Although the...Read more of this...

Occasional Poems

by Delmore Schwartz
 I Christmas Poem for Nancy

Noel, Noel
We live and we die
Between heaven and hell
Between the earth and the sky
And all shall be well
And all shall be unwell
And once again! all shall once again!
 All shall be well
By the ringing and the swinging
 of the great beautiful holiday bell
Of Noel! Noel!

II Salute Valentine

I'll drink to thee only with my eyes
When two...Read more of this...

To Stella Who Collected and Transcribed His Poems

by Jonathan Swift
 As, when a lofty pile is raised,
We never hear the workmen praised,
Who bring the lime, or place the stones;
But all admire Inigo Jones:
So, if this pile of scattered rhymes
Should be approved in aftertimes;
If it both pleases and endures,
The merit and the praise are yours.
Thou, Stella, wert no longer young,
When first for thee my harp was strung,
Without one word of...Read more of this...

Plutonian Ode

by Allen Ginsberg
 I

What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there
 a new thing under the Sun?
At last inquisitive Whitman a modern epic, detonative,
 Scientific theme
First penned unmindful by Doctor Seaborg with poison-
 ous hand, named for Death's planet through the 
 sea beyond Uranus
whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared Lord of 
 Hades, Sire of avenging Furies, billionaire Hell-
...Read more of this...

Luna Lake Haiku

by Adrian Green
 New moon on the lake.
Your voice and the nightingale 
serenade springtime. 
Full moon on the lake. 
Your voice and the waterbirds 
celebrate summer. 
Old moon on the lake. 
Owls hunting autumnal food -
your voice still singing....Read more of this...

A Fever

by John Donne
 Oh do not die, for I shall hate
 All women so, when thou art gone,
That thee I shall not celebrate,
 When I remember, thou wast one.
But yet thou canst not die, I know,
 To leave this world behind, is death,
But when thou from this world wilt go,
 The whole world vapors with thy breath.

Or if, when thou, the world's...Read more of this...

Mercian Hymns XXV

by Geoffrey Hill
 Brooding on the eightieth letter of Fors Clavigera, I speak this in
memory of my grandmother, whose childhood and prime womanhood were spent
in the nailer's darg.

The nailshop stood back of the cottage, by the fold. It reeked stale
mineral sweat. Sparks had furred its low roof. In dawn-light the
troughed water floated a damson-bloom of dust ---

not to be shaken by posthumous...Read more of this...

Alexandreis

by Anne Killigrew
 I Sing the Man that never Equal knew, 
Whose Mighty Arms all Asia did subdue, 
Whose Conquests through the spacious World do ring, 
That City-Raser, King-destroying King, 
Who o're the Warlike Macedons did Reign, 
And worthily the Name of Great did gain. 
This is the Prince (if Fame you will believe,
To ancient Story any credit give.) 
Who when the...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXXXIX

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 317] SONNET LXXXIX. Deh porgi mano all' affannato ingegno. HE BEGS LOVE TO ASSIST HIM, THAT HE MAY WORTHILY CELEBRATE HER.  Ah, Love! some succour to my weak mind deign,Lend to my frail and weary style thine aid,To sing of her who is immortal made,A citizen of the...Read more of this...

The Poets Calendar

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 January

Janus am I; oldest of potentates; 
Forward I look, and backward, and below 
I count, as god of avenues and gates, 
The years that through my portals come and go. 
I block the roads, and drift the fields with snow; 
I chase the wild-fowl from the frozen fen; 
My frosts congeal the rivers in their flow, 
My fires light...Read more of this...

Music on Christmas Morning

by Anne Bronte
 Music I love -­ but never strain
Could kindle raptures so divine,
So grief assuage, so conquer pain,
And rouse this pensive heart of mine -­
As that we hear on Christmas morn,
Upon the wintry breezes borne. 
Though Darkness still her empire keep,
And hours must pass, ere morning break;
From troubled dreams, or slumbers deep,
That music kindly bids us wake:
It calls us, with an...Read more of this...

Deliverance from Another Sore Fit

by Anne Bradstreet
 In my distress I sought the Lord 
When naught on earth could comfort give, 
And when my soul these things abhorred, 
Then, Lord, Thou said'st unto me, "Live."

Thou knowest the sorrows that I felt; 
My plaints and groans were heard of Thee, 
And how in sweat I seemed to melt 
Thou help'st and Thou regardest me.

My wasted flesh Thou...Read more of this...

Recollection of the Arabian Nights

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 WHEN the breeze of a joyful dawn blew free 
In the silken sail of infancy, 
The tide of time flow'd back with me, 
The forward-flowing tide of time; 
And many a sheeny summer-morn, 
Adown the Tigris I was borne, 
By Bagdat's shrines of fretted gold, 
High-walled gardens green and old; 
True Mussulman was I and sworn, 
For it was...Read more of this...

The Death of Grandfather

by Aleksandr Blok
 We waited commonly for sleep or even death. 
The instances were wearisome as ages. 
But suddenly the wind's refreshing breath 
Touched through the window the Holy Bible's pages: 

An old man goes there - who's now all white-haired - 
With rapid steps and merry eyes, alone, 
He smiles to us, and often calls with hand, 
And leaves us with...Read more of this...

On My Birthday July 21

by Matthew Prior
 I, MY dear, was born to-day-- 
So all my jolly comrades say: 
They bring me music, wreaths, and mirth, 
And ask to celebrate my birth: 
Little, alas! my comrades know 
That I was born to pain and woe; 
To thy denial, to thy scorn, 
Better I had ne'er been born: 
I wish to die, even whilst I say-- 
'I,...Read more of this...

Celebrate

by Anna Akhmatova
 Celebrate our anniversary – can’t you see
tonight the snowy night of our first winter
comes back again in every road and tree -
that winter night of diamantine splendour.

Steam is pouring out of yellow stables,
the Moika river’s sinking under snow,
the moonlight’s misted as it is in fables,
and where we are heading – I don’t know.

There are icebergs on the Marsovo Pole.
The...Read more of this...

Psalm 06

by John Milton
 Aug. 13. 1653.


Lord in thine anger do not reprehend me
Nor in thy hot displeasure me correct;
Pity me Lord for I am much deject
Am very weak and faint; heal and amend me,
For all my bones, that even with anguish ake,
Are troubled, yea my soul is troubled sore
And thou O Lord how long? turn Lord, restore
My soul, O save me for...Read more of this...

(From) The Nowhere Man

by Pritish Nandy
When you first came, quiet as the rain that never fell,
in the sunlight that never shone, I whispered words
I had never known and now shall never forget. These
words have grown into secret songs. We have known, and
loved, and shared what only lovers can share in lyric
guilt. There can be nothing simpler than this love of
ours, nothing truer when this darkness...Read more of this...

Hush'd be the Camps To-day

by Walt Whitman
 1
HUSH’D be the camps to-day; 
And, soldiers, let us drape our war-worn weapons; 
And each with musing soul retire, to celebrate, 
Our dear commander’s death. 

No more for him life’s stormy conflicts;
Nor victory, nor defeat—no more time’s dark events, 
Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky. 

2
But sing, poet, in our name; 
Sing of the love we bore him—because...Read more of this...

Dram-Shop Ditty

by Robert William Service
 I drink my fill of foamy ale
I sing a song, I tell a tale,
I play the fiddle;
My throat is chronically dry,
Yet savant of a sort am I,
And Life's my riddle.

For look! I raise my arm to drink-
A voluntary act, you think
(Nay, Sir, you're grinning)>
You're wrong: this stein of beer I've drained
to emptiness was pre-ordained
Since Time's beginning.

But stay! 'Tis I...Read more of this...

The delectable ballad of the waller lot

by Eugene Field
 Up yonder in Buena Park
There is a famous spot,
In legend and in history
Yclept the Waller Lot.

There children play in daytime
And lovers stroll by dark,
For 't is the goodliest trysting-place
In all Buena Park.

Once on a time that beauteous maid,
Sweet little Sissy Knott,
Took out her pretty doll to walk
Within the Waller Lot.

While thus she fared, from Ravenswood
Came Injuns o'er the plain,
And...Read more of this...

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