Famous Chosen Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Chosen poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous chosen poems. These examples illustrate what a famous chosen poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Isaac Watts
v.1-5
L. M.
Praise to God; or, Communion with saints.
To God, the great, the ever-blest,
Let songs of honor be addressed;
His mercy firm for ever stands
Give him the thanks his love demands.
Who knows the wonders of thy ways?
Who shall fulfil thy boundless praise?
Blest are the souls that fear thee still,
And pay their duty to thy will.
Remember what thy mercy did
For Jacob's...Read more of this...
by
Carolyn Kizer
for Maxine Kumin
Where did these enormous children come from,
More ladylike than we have ever been?
Some of ours look older than we feel.
How did they appear in their long dresses
More ladylike than we have ever been?
But they moan about their aging more than we do,
In their fragile heels and long black dresses.
They say they admire our youthful spontaneity.
They moan about...Read more of this...
by
William Allingham
Through grass, through amber'd cornfields, our slow Stream--
Fringed with its flags and reeds and rushes tall,
And Meadowsweet, the chosen of them all
By wandering children, yellow as the cream
Of those great cows--winds on as in a dream
By mill and footbridge, hamlet old and small
(Red roofs, gray tower), and sees the sunset gleam
On mullion'd...Read more of this...
by
Charlotte Bronte
I've quenched my lamp, I struck it in that start
Which every limb convulsed, I heard it fall
The crash blent with my sleep, I saw depart
Its light, even as I woke, on yonder wall;
Over against my bed, there shone a gleam
Strange, faint, and mingling also with my dream.
It sunk, and I am wrapt in utter gloom;
How far is...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
The lot of love is chosen. I learnt that much
Struggling for an image on the track
Of the whirling Zodiac.
Scarce did he my body touch,
Scarce sank he from the west
Or found a subtetranean rest
On the maternal midnight of my breast
Before I had marked him on his northern way,
And seemed to stand although in bed I lay.
I struggled with the horror...Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Roman Virgil, thou that singest
Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire,
Ilion falling, Rome arising,
wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre;
Landscape-lover, lord of language
more than he that sang the "Works and Days,"
All the chosen coin of fancy
flashing out from many a golden phrase;
Thou that singest wheat and woodland,
tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd;
All the charm of all the Muses
often...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LXXXIV. Morte ha spento quel Sol ch' abbagliar suolmi. WEARY OF LIFE, NOW THAT SHE IS NO LONGER WITH HIM, HE DEVOTES HIMSELF TO GOD. Death has the bright sun quench'd which wont to burn;Her pure and constant eyes his dark realms hold:[Pg 314]She now is dust, who dealt...Read more of this...
by
David Lehman
"My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way:
anyone who understands them eventually recognizes them as
nonsensical, when he has used them -- as steps -- to climb
up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder
after he has climbed up it.)" -- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus
1.
The first time...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
HERE in silence the lover fondly mused on his loved one;
Gladly he spake to me thus: "Be thou my witness, thou stone!
Yet thou must not be vainglorious, thou hast many companions;
Unto each rock on the plain, where I, the happy one, dwell,
Unto each tree of the wood that I cling to, as onward I ramble,
'Be thou a sign of...Read more of this...
by
Alan Seeger
Over the radiant ridges borne out on the offshore wind,
I have sailed as a butterfly sails whose priming wings unfurled
Leave the familiar gardens and visited fields behind
To follow a cloud in the east rose-flushed on the rim of the world.
I have strayed from the trodden highway for walking with upturned eyes
On the way of...Read more of this...
by
Emily Brontë
Oh, thy bright eyes must answer now,
When Reason, with a scornful brow,
Is mocking at my overthrow!
Oh, thy sweet tongue must plead for me
And tell, why I have chosen thee!
Stern Reason is to judgment come,
Arrayed in all her forms of gloom:
Wilt thou, my advocate, be dumb?
No, radiant angel, speak and say,
Why I did cast the world away.
Why I...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
I hid my heart in a nest of roses,
Out of the sun's way, hidden apart;
In a softer bed then the soft white snow's is,
Under the roses I hid my heart.
Why would it sleep not? why should it start,
When never a leaf of the rose-tree stirred?
What made sleep flutter his wings and part?
Only the song of a secret bird.
Lie still,...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
O Thou who in the universe art the object chosen
of my heart! Thou who art more dear than the soul
which gives me life, than the eyes which give me light!
O Idol, though in life there be no thing more precious
than this life, Thou art indeed a hundred times more
precious than that life....Read more of this...
by
Rupert Brooke
Swings the way still by hollow and hill,
And all the world's a song;
"She's far," it sings me, "but fair," it rings me,
"Quiet," it laughs, "and strong!"
Oh! spite of the miles and years between us,
Spite of your chosen part,
I do remember; and I go
With laughter in my heart.
So above the little folk that know not,
Out of the white hill-town,
High up...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
'Twas on the 26th of August, the sun was burning hot,
In the year of 1346, which will never be forgot,
Because the famous field of Cressy was slippery and gory,
By the loss of innocent blood which I'11 relate in story.
To the field of Cressy boldly King Philip did advance,
Aided by the Bohemian Army and chosen men of France,
And treble...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
In the house chosen by our love as its birth-place, with its cherished furniture peopling the shadows and the nooks, where we live together, having as sole witnesses the roses that watch us through the windows,
Certain days stand out of so great a consolation, certain hours of summer so lovely in their silence, that sometimes I stop time that swings...Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Written at the Request of the Mantuans for the Nineteenth Centenary of
Virgil's Death
Roman Virgil, thou that singest
Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire,
Ilion falling, Rome arising,
wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre;
Landscape-lover, lord of language
more than he that sang the Works and Days,
All the chosen coin of fancy
flashing out from many a golden phrase;
Thou that singest wheat and woodland,
tilth...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Lux
What I love about this little leaning mark
is how it divides
without divisiveness. The left
or bottom side prying that choice up or out,
the right or top side pressing down upon
its choice: either/or,
his/her. Sometimes called a slash (too harsh), a slant
(a little dizzy, but the Dickinson association
nice: "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--"), solidus (sounding
too much like a Roman...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
HAND in hand! and lip to lip!
Oh, be faithful, maiden dear!
Fare thee well! thy lover's ship
Past full many a rock must steers
But should he the haven see,
When the storm has ceased to break,
And be happy, reft of thee,--
May the Gods fierce vengeance take!
Boldly dared is well nigh won!
Half my task is solved aright;
Ev'ry star's to me a sun,
Only cowards deem...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Now plead my cause, Almighty God,
With all the sons of strife;
And fight against the men of blood,
Who fight against my life.
Draw out thy spear and stop their way,
Lift thine avenging rod;
But to my soul in mercv say,
"I am thy Savior God!"
They plant their snares to catch my feet,
And nets of mischief spread;
Plunge the destroyers in the pit
That their own...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
At the time when the stars are grey,
And the gold of the molten moon
Fades, and the twilight is thinned,
And the sun leaps up, and the wind,
A light rose, not of the day,
A stronger light than of noon.
As the light of a face much loved
Was the face of the light that clomb;
As a mother's whitened with woes
Her adorable head that...Read more of this...
by
Oliver Wendell Holmes
YES, write, if you want to, there's nothing like trying;
Who knows what a treasure your casket may hold?
I'll show you that rhyming's as easy as lying,
If you'll listen to me while the art I unfold.
Here's a book full of words; one can choose as he fancies,
As a painter his tint, as a workman his tool;
Just think! all the poems...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
"They have not chosen me," he said,
"But I have chosen them!"
Brave -- Broken hearted statement --
Uttered in Bethlehem!
I could not have told it,
But since Jesus dared --
Sovereign! Know a Daisy
They dishonor shared!...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
He stood among a crowd at Dromahair;
His heart hung all upon a silken dress,
And he had known at last some tenderness,
Before earth took him to her stony care;
But when a man poured fish into a pile,
It Seemed they raised their little silver heads,
And sang what gold morning or evening sheds
Upon a woven world-forgotten isle
Where people love beside the ravelled...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
It is the rim of the wine-jar which we have chosen for
our place of prayer; it is in making use of wine that we
are rendered worthy of the name of man; it is in the
tavern that we get back the time lost in the mosque....Read more of this...
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