Famous Chose Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Meditations In Time Of Civil War

by William Butler Yeats
 I. Ancestral Houses

Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
Life overflows without ambitious pains;
And rains down life until the basin spills,
And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills
And never stoop to a mechanical
Or servile shape, at others' beck and call.

Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had...Read more of this...

Amos Sibley

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Not character, not fortitude, not patience
Were mine, the which the village thought I had
In bearing with my wife, while preaching on,
Doing the work God chose for me.
I loathed her as a termagant, as a wanton.
I knew of her adulteries, every one.
But even so, if I divorced the woman
I must forsake the ministry.
Therefore to do God's work and have it...Read more of this...

Doubt

by Helen Hunt Jackson
 1 They bade me cast the thing away, 
2 They pointed to my hands all bleeding,
3 They listened not to all my pleading;
4 The thing I meant I could not say;
5 I knew that I should rue the day
6 If once I cast that thing away.

7 I grasped it firm, and bore the pain;
8 The thorny husks I stripped...Read more of this...

The Bed By The Window

by Robinson Jeffers
 I chose the bed downstairs by the sea-window for a good death-bed
When we built the house, it is ready waiting,
Unused unless by some guest in a twelvemonth, who hardly suspects
Its latter purpose. I often regard it,
With neither dislike nor desire; rather with both, so equalled
That they kill each other and a crystalline interest
Remains alone. We are safe to finish...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXXXV

by Edmund Spenser
 THe world that cannot deeme of worthy things,
when I doe praise her, say I doe but flatter:
so does the Cuckow, when the Mauis sings,
begin his witlesse note apace to clatter.
But they that skill not of so heauenly matter,
all that they know not, enuy or admyre,
rather then enuy let them wonder at her,
but not to deeme of her desert aspyre.
Deepe...Read more of this...

Sonnet 95: How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame

by William Shakespeare
 How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
O, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
That tongue that tells the story of thy days,
Making lascivious comments on thy sport,
Cannot dispraise, but in a kind of praise,
Naming thy name, blesses an ill report.
O, what a...Read more of this...

Montjuich

by Philip Levine
 "Hill of Jews," says one, 
named for a cemetery 
long gone."Hill of Jove," 
says another, and maybe 
Jove stalked here 
once or rests now 
where so many lie 
who felt God swell 
the earth and burn 
along the edges 
of their breath. 
Almost seventy years 
since a troop of cavalry 
jingled up the silent road, 
dismounted, and loaded 
their...Read more of this...

The Squaw Man

by Robert William Service
 The cow-moose comes to water, and the beaver's overbold,
The net is in the eddy of the stream;
The teepee stars the vivid sward with russet, red and gold,
And in the velvet gloom the fire's a-gleam.
The night is ripe with quiet, rich with incense of the pine;
From sanctuary lake I hear the loon;
The peaks are bright against the blue, and drenched...Read more of this...

On The Morning Of Christ's Nativity

by John Milton
 I

This is the Month, and this the happy morn
Wherin the Son of Heav'ns eternal King,
Of wedded Maid, and Virgin Mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing,
That he our deadly forfeit should release,
And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.

II

That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty,
Wherwith he...Read more of this...

Psalm 106 part 2

by Isaac Watts
 v.7,8,12ff 
S. M.
Israel punished and pardoned; or, God's unchangeable love.

God of eternal love,
How fickle are our ways!
And yet how oft did Isr'el prove
Thy constancy of grace!

They saw thy wonders wrought,
And then thy praise they sung;
But soon thy works of power forgot,
And murmured with their tongue.

Now they believe his word
While rocks with rivers flow;
Now with their lusts provoke the Lord,
And...Read more of this...

Testament

by Carl Sandburg
 I GIVE the undertakers permission to haul my body
to the graveyard and to lay away all, the head, the
feet, the hands, all: I know there is something left
over they can not put away.

Let the nanny goats and the billy goats of the shanty
people eat the clover over my grave and if any yellow
hair or any blue smoke of flowers...Read more of this...

The Double Image

by Anne Sexton
 1.

I am thirty this November.
You are still small, in your fourth year.
We stand watching the yellow leaves go *****,
flapping in the winter rain.
falling flat and washed. And I remember
mostly the three autumns you did not live here.
They said I'd never get you back again.
I tell you what you'll never really know:
all the medical hypothesis
that explained my brain will never...Read more of this...

Last Words To A Dumb Friend

by Thomas Hardy
 Pet was never mourned as you,
Purrer of the spotless hue,
Plumy tail, and wistful gaze
While you humoured our ***** ways,
Or outshrilled your morning call
Up the stairs and through the hall--
Foot suspended in its fall--
While, expectant, you would stand
Arched, to meet the stroking hand;
Till your way you chose to wend
Yonder, to your tragic end.

Never another pet for me!
Let your place all...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXXVIII

by Edmund Spenser
 ARion, when through tempests cruel wracke,
He forth was thrown into the greedy seas:
through the sweet musick which his harp did make
allu'rd a Dolphin him from death to ease.
But my rude musick, which was wont to please
some dainty eares, cannot with any skill,
the dreadfull tempest of her wrath appease,
nor moue the Dolphin from her stubborne will,
But in her pride she...Read more of this...

Waring

by Robert Browning
 I

What's become of Waring
Since he gave us all the slip,
Chose land-travel or seafaring,
Boots and chest, or staff and scrip,
Rather than pace up and down
Any longer London-town?

Who'd have guessed it from his lip,
Or his brow's accustomed bearing,
On the night he thus took ship,
Or started landward?—little caring
For us, it seems, who supped together,
(Friends of his too, I remember)
And walked home through...Read more of this...

Corinnas Going A-Maying

by Robert Herrick
 Get up, get up for shame! the blooming morn
Upon her wings presents the god unshorn.
See how Aurora throws her fair
Fresh-quilted colours through the air!
Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see
The dew bespangled herb and tree.
Each flower has wept and bowed toward the east
Above an hour since,—yet you not dressed;
Nay! not so much as out of bed?
When all the birds have...Read more of this...

Careers

by Robert Graves
 Father is quite the greatest poet 
 That ever lived anywhere. 
You say you’re going to write great music— 
 I chose that first: it’s unfair. 
Besides, now I can’t be the greatest painter and 
 do Christ and angels, or lovely pears 
 and apples and grapes on a green dish, 
 or storms at sea, or anything...Read more of this...

Bianca Among The Nightingales

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 The cypress stood up like a church
That night we felt our love would hold,
And saintly moonlight seemed to search
And wash the whole world clean as gold;
The olives crystallized the vales'
Broad slopes until the hills grew strong:
The fireflies and the nightingales
Throbbed each to either, flame and song.
The nightingales, the nightingales.

Upon the angle of its shade
The cypress stood, self-balanced high;
Half up,...Read more of this...

The Incarnate One

by Edwin Muir
 The windless northern surge, the sea-gull's scream,
And Calvin's kirk crowning the barren brae.
I think of Giotto the Tuscan shepherd's dream,
Christ, man and creature in their inner day.
How could our race betray
The Image, and the Incarnate One unmake
Who chose this form and fashion for our sake? 

The Word made flesh here is made word again
A word made word in flourish...Read more of this...

Sonnet LVII: You Best Discernd

by Michael Drayton
 You best discern'd of my mind's inward eyes, 
And yet your graces outwardly divine, 
Whose dear remembrance in my bosom lies, 
Too rich a relic for so poor a shrine; 
You, in whom Nature chose herself to view 
When she her own perfection would admire, 
Bestowing all her excellence on you, 
At whose pure eyes Love lights his hallow'd...Read more of this...

The Scapegoat

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 We have all of us read how the Israelites fled 
From Egypt with Pharaoh in eager pursuit of 'em, 
And Pharaoh's fierce troop were all put "in the soup" 
When the waters rolled softly o'er every galoot of 'em. 
The Jews were so glad when old Pharaoh was "had" 
That they sounded their timbrels and capered like mad. 
You...Read more of this...

Horace Lib. I Epist. IX Imitated

by Matthew Prior
 [To the right honourable Mr. Harley]


Dear Dick, how e'er it comes into his head,
Believes, as firmly as he does his creed,
That you and I, sir, are extremely great;
Though I plain Mat, you minister of state.
One word from me, without all doubt, he says,
Would fix his fortune in some little place.
Thus better than myself, it seems, he knows
How far my...Read more of this...

No Notice gave She but a Change --

by Emily Dickinson
 No Notice gave She, but a Change --
No Message, but a Sigh --
For Whom, the Time did not suffice
That She should specify.

She was not warm, though Summer shone
Nor scrupulous of cold
Though Rime by Rime, the steady Frost
Upon Her Bosom piled --

Of shrinking ways -- she did not fright
Though all the Village looked --
But held Her gravity aloft --
And met...Read more of this...

The Faerie Queene: Book I Canto I

by Edmund Spenser
Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,
As time her taught in lowly Shepheards weeds,
Am now enforst a far unfitter taske,
For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,
And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds;
Whose prayses having slept in silence long,
Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds
To blazon broad emongst her learned throng:
Fierce warres and faithful loves shall...Read more of this...

Don Rodrigo

by Victor Hugo
 A MOORISH BALLAD. 
 
 ("Don Roderique est à la chasse.") 
 
 {***., May, 1828.} 


 Unto the chase Rodrigo's gone, 
 With neither lance nor buckler; 
 A baleful light his eyes outshone— 
 To pity he's no truckler. 
 
 He follows not the royal stag, 
 But, full of fiery hating, 
 Beside the way...Read more of this...

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