Famous Cent Poems by Famous Poets

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

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61. Second Epistle to J. Lapraik

by Robert Burns
 WHILE new-ca’d kye rowte at the stake
An’ pownies reek in pleugh or braik,
This hour on e’enin’s edge I take,
 To own I’m debtor
To honest-hearted, auld Lapraik,
 For his kind letter.


Forjesket sair, with weary legs,
Rattlin the corn out-owre the rigs,
Or dealing thro’ amang the naigs
 Their ten-hours’ bite,
My awkart Muse sair pleads and begs
 I would na write.


The tapetless, ramfeezl’d...Read more of this...

Interior

by Carl Sandburg
 IN the cool of the night time
The clocks pick off the points
And the mainsprings loosen.
They will need winding.
One of these days…
 they will need winding.

Rabelais in red boards,
Walt Whitman in green,
Hugo in ten-cent paper covers,
Here they stand on shelves
In the cool of the night time
And there is nothing…
To be said against them…
Or for them…
In the cool of the night...Read more of this...

7. Ah woe is me my Mother dear

by Robert Burns
 AH, woe is me, my mother dear!
 A man of strife ye’ve born me:
For sair contention I maun bear;
 They hate, revile, and scorn me.


I ne’er could lend on bill or band,
 That five per cent. might blest me;
And borrowing, on the tither hand,
 The deil a ane wad trust me.


Yet I, a coin-deni?d wight,
 By Fortune quite discarded;
Ye...Read more of this...

Vain Venture

by Robert William Service
 To have a business of my own
 With toil and tears,
I wore my fingers to the bone
 For weary years.
With stoic heart, for sordid gold
 In patient pain
My life and liberty I sold
 For others gain.

I scrimped and scraped, as cent by cent
 My savings grew;
I found a faded shop for rent,
 Made it like new.
Above the door the...Read more of this...

Bewick Finzer

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Time was when his half million drew 
The breath of six per cent; 
But soon the worm of what-was-not 
Fed hard on his content; 
And something crumbled in his brain 
When his half million went. 

Time passed, and filled along with his 
The place of many more; 
Time came, and hardly one of us 
Had credence to restore, 
From...Read more of this...

Five-Per-Cent

by Robert William Service
 Because I have ten thousand pounds I sit upon my stern,
And leave my living tranquilly for other folks to earn.
For in some procreative way that isn't very clear,
Ten thousand pounds will breed, they say, five hundred every year.
So as I have a healthy hate of economic strife,
I mean to stand aloof from it the balance of my life.
And yet...Read more of this...

Certain Maxims Of Hafiz

by Rudyard Kipling
  I.
If It be pleasant to look on, stalled in the packed serai,
Does not the Young Man try Its temper and pace ere he buy?
If She be pleasant to look on, what does the Young Man say?
"Lo! She is pleasant to look on, give Her to me to-day!"

 II.
Yea, though a Kafir die, to him is remitted Jehannum
If he...Read more of this...

The Prospector

by Robert William Service
 I strolled up old Bonanza, where I staked in ninety-eight,
A-purpose to revisit the old claim.
I kept thinking mighty sadly of the funny ways of Fate,
And the lads who once were with me in the game.
Poor boys, they're down-and-outers, and there's scarcely one to-day
Can show a dozen colors in his poke;
And me, I'm still prospecting, old and battered, gaunt and...Read more of this...

The Parsons Son

by Robert William Service
 This is the song of the parson's son, as he squats in his shack alone,
On the wild, weird nights, when the Northern Lights shoot up from the frozen zone,
And it's sixty below, and couched in the snow the hungry huskies moan:

"I'm one of the Arctic brotherhood, I'm an old-time pioneer.
I came with the first -- O God! how I've...Read more of this...

The Old Cow Man

by Badger Clark
  I rode across a valley range
    I hadn't seen for years.
  The trail was all so spoilt and strange
    It nearly fetched the tears.
  I had to let ten fences down
    (The fussy lanes ran wrong)
  And each new line would make me frown
  ...Read more of this...

A Summer Pastoral

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
It's hot to-day. The bees is buzzin'
Kinder don't-keer-like aroun'
An' fur off the warm air dances
O'er the parchin' roofs in town.
In the brook the cows is standin';
Childern hidin' in the hay;
Can't keep none of 'em a workin',
'Cause it's hot to-day.
It's hot to-day. The sun is blazin'
Like a great big ball o' fire;
Seems as ef instead o' settin'
It keeps mountin' higher an'...Read more of this...

The Ghost of Miltiades

by Thomas Moore
 The Ghost of Miltiades came at night,
And he stood by the bed of the Benthamite,
And he said, in a voice, that thrill'd the frame,
"If ever the sound of Marathon's name
Hath fir'd they blood or flush'd thy brow,
Lover of Liberty, rise thee now!"


The Benthamite, yawning, left his bed --
Away to the Stock Exchange he sped,
And he found the Scrip of...Read more of this...

The Hypnotist

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 A man once read with mind surprised 
Of the way that people were "hypnotised"; 
By waving hands you produced, forsooth, 
A kind of trance where men told the truth! 
His mind was filled with wond'ring doubt; 
He grabbed his hat and he started out, 
He walked the street and he made a "set" 
At the first half-dozen folk he...Read more of this...

O We Are The Outcasts

by Charles Bukowski
 ah, christ, what a CREW:
more
poetry, always more
P O E T R Y .

if it doesn't come, coax it out with a 
laxative. get your name in LIGHTS,
get it up there in
8 1/2 x 11 mimeo.

keep it coming like a miracle.

ah christ, writers are the most sickening
of all the louts!
yellow-toothed, slump-shouldered,
gutless, flea-bitten and
obvious . . . in tinker-toy rooms
with their...Read more of this...

The Sins of Kalamazoo

by Carl Sandburg
 THE SINS of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson.

The sins of Kalamazoo are a convict gray, a dishwater drab.

And the people who sin the sins of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson.

They run to drabs and grays—and some of them sing they shall be washed whiter than snow—and some: We should worry.

Yes, Kalamazoo is a spot on the map
And...Read more of this...

Zone

by Guillaume Apollinaire
ZONE 


In the end you are tired of this ancient world 
Shepherd oh Eiffel Tower the herd of bridges is bleating this morning 

You've had enough of living in Greek and Roman antiquity 

Here even the cars look antique 
Only religion has stayed new religion 
Has stayed simple like the hangars at Port-Aviation 

You alone in Europe are not ancient...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...

Who dares to take this life from me Knows no better

by T Wignesan
for Eric Mottram

"Nur wenn das Herz erschlossen,

Dann ist die Erde schön."

Goethe.

I

An important thing in living
Is to know when to go;
He who does not know this
Has not far to go,
Though death may come and go
When you do not know.


Come, give me your hand,
Together shoulder and cheek to shoulder
We'll go, sour kana in cheeks
And in the mornings cherry sticks
To gum: the infectious...Read more of this...

A St. Valentine's Day Tragedy

by Ellis Parker Butler
 Oh! Montmorency Vere de Vere,
To think that one I held so dear
Should use a base deceiver’s art
To trifle with my loving heart.

A brand new ten-cent valentine
With lace and hearts and verses fine,
I sent to show my love for thee
And in return you send to me
The one I sent to you last year,
Oh! Montmorency Vere de Vere....Read more of this...

Five Cent Balloons

by Carl Sandburg
 PIETRO has twenty red and blue balloons on a string.
They flutter and dance pulling Pietro’s arm.
A nickel apiece is what they sell for.

Wishing children tag Pietro’s heels.

He sells out and goes the streets alone....Read more of this...

The Four Brothers

by Carl Sandburg
 MAKE war songs out of these;
Make chants that repeat and weave.
Make rhythms up to the ragtime chatter of the machine guns;
Make slow-booming psalms up to the boom of the big guns.
Make a marching song of swinging arms and swinging legs,
 Going along,
 Going along,
On the roads from San Antonio to Athens, from Seattle to Bagdad—
The boys and men in...Read more of this...

Possessions Are Nine Points Of Conversation

by Ogden Nash
 Some people, and it doesn't matter whether they are paupers or millionaires, Think that anything they have is the best in the world just because it is theirs. If they happen to own a 1921 jalopy, They look at their neighbor's new de luxe convertible like the wearer of a 57th Street gown at a 14th Street copy. If...Read more of this...

The Power of the Dog

by Rudyard Kipling
 There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie --
Perfect passion and worship fed
By...Read more of this...

The Conversazzhony

by Eugene Field
 What conversazzhyonies wuz I really did not know,
For that, you must remember, wuz a powerful spell ago;
The camp wuz new 'nd noisy, 'nd only modrit sized,
So fashionable sossiety wuz hardly crystallized.
There hadn't been no grand events to interest the men,
But a lynchin', or a inquest, or a jackpot now an' then.
The wimmin-folks wuz mighty scarce, for wimmin, ez a...Read more of this...

90. Epistle to James Smith

by Robert Burns
 DEAR SMITH, the slee’st, pawkie thief,
That e’er attempted stealth or rief!
Ye surely hae some warlock-brief
 Owre human hearts;
For ne’er a bosom yet was prief
 Against your arts.


For me, I swear by sun an’ moon,
An’ ev’ry star that blinks aboon,
Ye’ve cost me twenty pair o’ shoon,
 Just gaun to see you;
An’ ev’ry ither pair that’s done,
 Mair taen I’m wi’...Read more of this...

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