Famous Chapter Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Chapter poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous chapter poems. These examples illustrate what a famous chapter poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...r three)
And started for Australia--there, I hope,
By this time he has tested his first plough,
And studied his last chapter of St. John....Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...Ornamental clouds
compose an evening love song;
a road leaves evasively.
The new moon begins
a new chapter of our nights,
of those frail nights
we stretch out and which mingle
with these black horizontals....Read more of this...
by
Rilke, Rainer Maria
...it to read,
And under the arbute and laurustine
Read it, so help me grace in my need,
From title-page to closing line.
Chapter on chapter did I count,
As a curious traveller counts Stonehenge;
Added up the mortal amount;
And then proceeded to my revenge.
III.
Yonder's a plum-tree with a crevice
An owl would build in, were he but sage;
For a lap of moss, like a fine pont-levis
In a castle of the Middle Age,
Joins to a lip of gum, pure amber;
When he'd be private, there migh...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...Then said a rich man, "Speak to us of Giving."
And he answered:
You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow?
And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow bring to the overprudent dog burying bones in...Read more of this...
by
Gibran, Kahlil
...want to be the politician who never lies
I want to be the girl who never cries
I want to go down in history
in a chapter marked miscellaneous
because the writers could find
no other way to categorize me
In this world where classification is key
I want to erase the straight lines
So I can be me...Read more of this...
by
Chin, Staceyann
...Then a woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow."
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup th...Read more of this...
by
Gibran, Kahlil
...profit, her men alive---
My business was hardly with them, I trow,
But with empty cells of the human hive;
---With the chapter-room, the cloister-porch,
The church's apsis, aisle or nave,
Its crypt, one fingers along with a torch,
Its face set full for the sun to shave.
VI.
Wherever a fresco peels and drops,
Wherever an outline weakens and wanes
Till the latest life in the painting stops,
Stands One whom each fainter pulse-tick pains:
One, wishful each scrap should clutch ...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...g out Witness
for trout fishing in America peace tracts to innocent children
riding the cable cars.
FOOTNOTE CHAPTER TO
"RED LIP"
Living in the California bush we had no garbage service. Our
garbage was never greeted in the early morning by a man
with a big smile on his face and a kind word or two. We
couldn't burn any of the garbage because it was the dry seas-
on and everything was ready to catch on fire anyway, includ-
ing ourselves. The garbage wa...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...
chrome-plated steel wheelchair.
He was a legless, screaming middle-aged wine.
He descended upon North Beach like a chapter from the
Old Testament. He was the reason birds migrate in the
autumn. They have to. He was the cold turning of the earth;
the bad wind that blows off sugar.
He would stop children on the street and say to them, "I
ain't got no legs. The trout chopped my legs off in Fort
Lauderdale. You kids got legs. The trout didn't chop your
legs off. Whee...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...t down on the left lens
facing the Sawtooth Mountains. Like astigmatism, I made
myself at home.
FOOTNOTE CHAPTER TO "THE
SHIPPING OF TROUT FISHING
IN AMERICA SHORTY TO
NELSON ALGREN"
Well, well, Trout Fishing in America Shorty's back in town,
but I don't think it's going to be the same as it was before.
Those good old days are over because Trout Fishing in Am-
erica Shorty is famous. The movies have discovered him.
Last week "The New Wave" took hi...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...nd fear some courage extinguished
at disaster's denouement come back
daily, banal: is that brownish-black
mole the next chapter? Was the ache enmeshed
between my chest and armpit when I washed
rogue cells' new claw, or just a muscle ache?
I'm not yet desperate enough to take
comfort in being predeceased: the anguish
when the Harlem doctor, the Jewish dancer,
die of AIDS, the Boston seminary's
dean succumbs "after brief illness" to cancer.
I like mossed slabs in country cemete...Read more of this...
by
Hacker, Marilyn
...the Koran, worn round the neck, wrist, or arm, is still universal in the East. The Koorsee (throne) verse in the second chapter of the Koran describes the attributes of the Most High, and is engraved in this manner, and worn by the pious, as the most esteemed and sublime of all sentences.
(27) "Comboloio," a Turkish rosary. The MSS., particularly those of the Persians, are richly adorned and illuminated. The Greek females are kept in utter ignorance; but many of the Turkish...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...pay in a lump I should prefer it,
But there's no mine to blow up and get done with:
So, I must stay till the end of the chapter.
For, as to our middle-age-manners-adapter,
Be it a thing to be glad on or sorry on,
Some day or other, his head in a morion
And breast in a hauberk, his heels he'll kick up,
Slain by an onslaught fierce of hiccup.
And then, when red doth the sword of our Duke rust,
And its leathern sheath lie o'ergrown with a blue crust,
Then I shall scrape together...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
..., they told it in his ear.
Thus were the wench and he of one assent;
And he would fetch a feigned mandement,
And to the chapter summon them both two,
And pill* the man, and let the wenche go. *plunder, pluck
Then would he say, "Friend, I shall for thy sake
Do strike thee out of oure letters blake;* *black
Thee thar* no more as in this case travail; *need
I am thy friend where I may thee avail."
Certain he knew of bribers many mo'
Than possible is to tell in yeare's two:
For i...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert
How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was
but move to what shall be
A country that is bruised but whole,
benevolent but bold,
fierce and free
We will not be turned around
or...Read more of this...
by
Gorman, Amanda
...was scant of breath.
And sad "Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher,"--
Has he not stamped tbe image on my soul,
In that last chapter, where the worn-out Teacher
Sighs o'er the loosened cord, the broken bowl?
Yes, long, indeed, I 've known him at a distance,
And now my lifted door-latch shows him here;
I take his shrivelled hand without resistance,
And find him smiling as his step draws near.
What though of gilded baubles he bereaves us,
Dear to the heart of youth, to manhood's p...Read more of this...
by
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...Chapter I.
Once on a time, a Dawn, all red and bright
Leapt on the conquered ramparts of the Night,
And flamed, one brilliant instant, on the world,
Then back into the historic moat was hurled
And Night was King again, for many years.
-- Once on a time the Rose of Spring blushed out
But Winter angrily withdrew it back
Into his rough new-bursten husk, and sh...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...ded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes....Read more of this...
by
Kunitz, Stanley
...ears in a soul,
the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul."
425. V. Weston, From Ritual to Romance; chapter on the Fisher
King.
428. V. Purgatorio, xxvi. 148.
"'Ara vos prec
per aquella valor
'que vos guida
al som de l'escalina,
'sovegna vos a
temps de ma dolor.'
Poi
s'ascose nel foco che gli affina."
429. V. Pervigilium Veneris. Cf. Philomela
in Parts II and III.
430. V. Gerard de Nerval, Sonnet El Desdichado.
432. V. Kyd's Spanish Tragedy.
434. Shan...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ing … I blew waterspouts with porpoises … before land was … before the water went down … before Noah … before the first chapter of Genesis.
There is a baboon in me … clambering-clawed … dog-faced … yawping a galoot’s hunger … hairy under the armpits … here are the hawk-eyed hankering men … here are the blond and blue-eyed women … here they hide curled asleep waiting … ready to snarl and kill … ready to sing and give milk … waiting—I keep the baboon because the wilderness say...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
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