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Famous Classes Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Lawrence, D. H.
...would be fun to upset the apple-cart
and see which way the apples would go a-rolling.

Don't do it for the working classes.
Do it so that we can all of us be little aristocracies on our own
and kick our heels like jolly escaped asses.

Don't do it, anyhow, for international Labour.
Labour is the one thing a man has had too much of.
Let's abolish labour, let's have done with labouring!
Work can be fun, and men can enjoy it; then it's not labour.
Let's ...Read more of this...



by Chesterton, G K
...peace of a harmless folk was shattered; 
When I was twenty and odd years old. 
When the mongrel men that the market classes 
Had slimy hands upon England's rod, 
And sword in hand upon Afric's passes 
Her last Republic cried to God. 
For the men no lords can buy or sell, 
They sit not easy when all goes well, 
They have said to each other what naught can smother, 
They have seen each other, our souls and hell. 

It is all as of old, the empty clangour, 
The Nothin...Read more of this...

by Gregory, Rg
...ight can't be laid at this party's door
so let us look deep in our empty glasses
and puff short of breath at the weaker classes
whose salvation must lie in a further imbibing
of the rush of hot air this party's prescribing

let's all depart from the party friends
and seek other ways of making amends
for the mess that we're all in up to our noses
let's kick the conviction the party is moses
with tablets worth taking for any condition
while the world holds its breath for the bi...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ureless seas, 
On the Soul’s voyage. 

Only a lot of boys and girls?
Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes? 
Only a Public School? 

Ah more—infinitely more; 
(As George Fox rais’d his warning cry, “Is it this pile of brick and
 mortar—these dead floors, windows, rails—you call the church? 
Why this is not the church at all—the Church is living, ever living Souls.”)

And you, America, 
Cast you the real reckoning for your present? 
The lights and shad...Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
...ated down; 
An' we all will meet amidships on this stout old earthly craft, 
An' there won't be any friction 'twixt the classes fore-'n'-aft. 
We'll be brothers, fore-'n'-aft! 
Yes, an' sisters, fore-'n'-aft! 
When the people work together, and there ain't no fore-'n'-aft....Read more of this...



by Service, Robert William
...nger and doom --
I know that I'm safer up there.

I watch the wan faces that flash in the street;
All kinds and all classes I see.
Yet never a one in the million I meet,
Has the smile of a comrade for me.
Just jaded and panting like dogs in a pack;
Just tensed and intent on the goal:
O God! but I'm lonesome -- I wish I was back,
Up there in the land of the Pole.

I wish I was back on the Hunger Plateaus,
And seeking the lost caribou;
I wish I was up where the ...Read more of this...

by Heaney, Seamus
...I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were "sorry...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...
Did you but know of him, New Hampshire has
One real reformer who would change the world
So it would be accepted by two classes,
Artists the minute they set up as artists,
Before, that is, they are themselves accepted,
And boys the minute they get out of college.
I can't help thinking those are tests to go by.

And she has one I don't know what to call him,
Who comes from Philadelphia every year
With a great flock of chickens of rare breeds
He wants to give the educat...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...Impetuously I sprang from bed,
Long before lunch was up,
That I might drain the dizzy dew
From the day's first golden cup.

In swift devouring ecstasy
Each toil in turn was done;
I had done lying on the lawn
Three minutes after one.

For me, as Mr. Wordsworth says,
The duties shine like stars;
I formed my uncle's character,
Decreasing his cigar...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...or nothing from the West but Death
Or Bath or Bournemouth. Here's their ground.
    They fight
Until the middle classes take them back,
One of ten millions plus a C.S.I.
Or drop in harness. Legion of the Lost?
Not altogether -- earnest, narrow men,
But chiefly earnest, and they'll do your work,
And end by writing letters to the Times,
(Shall I write letters, answering H-nt-r -- fawn
With R-p-n on the Yorkshire grocers? Ugh!)
They have their Reputations...Read more of this...

by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...no obstacle to giving as much as possible; and it so happens 
that the real interest of Goethe's Poems centres in those classes 
of them which are not too diffuse to run any risk when translated 
of offending the reader by their too great number. Those by far 
the more generally admired are the Songs and Ballads, which are 
about 150 in number, and the whole of which are contained in this 
volume (with the exception of one or two of the former, which have 
been, on consid...Read more of this...

by Edgar, Marriott
...Where his cause had support of the masses,
And his promise of loot brought a lot of recruits
From the more intellectual classes.

The Country were split in two parties
In a manner you'd hardly believe, 
The West with a will shouted: "Up with Matilda !" 
The East hollered: Come along, Steve!

The two armies met up in Yorkshire, 
Both leaders the same tactics tried.
To each soldier they gave a big standard to wave, 
In hopes they'd impress t 'other side.

It were kn...Read more of this...

by Nash, Ogden
...anybody's joy.
Although his name was Jabez Dawes,
His character was full of flaws.


In school he never led his classes,
He hid old ladies' reading glasses,
His mouth was open when he chewed,
And elbows to the table glued.
He stole the milk of hungry kittens,
And walked through doors marked NO ADMITTANCE.
He said he acted thus because
There wasn't any Santa Claus.


Another trick that tickled Jabez
Was crying 'Boo' at little babies.
He brushed his teet...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
..."eight and twenty day of April,
that is messenger to May."

2. Dante, in the "Vita Nuova," distinguishes three classes of
pilgrims: palmieri - palmers who go beyond sea to the East,
and often bring back staves of palm-wood; peregrini, who go
the shrine of St Jago in Galicia; Romei, who go to Rome. Sir
Walter Scott, however, says that palmers were in the habit of
passing from shrine to shrine, living on charity -- pilgrims on the
other hand, made the journey to an...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...r>
Some will say, Is not God alone the Prolific? I answer, God
only Acts & Is, in existing beings or Men.
These two classes of men are always upon earth, & they should
be enemies; whoever tries [PL 17] to reconcile them seeks to
destroy existence. 
Religion is an endeavour to reconcile the two.
Note. Jesus Christ did not wish to unite but to seperate
them, as in the Parable of sheep and goats! & he says I came not
to send Peace but a Sword.
Messiah or Sata...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...The Robin is a Gabriel
In humble circumstances --
His Dress denotes him socially,
Of Transport's Working Classes --
He has the punctuality
Of the New England Farmer --
The same oblique integrity,
A Vista vastly warmer --

A small but sturdy Residence
A self denying Household,
The Guests of Perspicacity
Are all that cross his Threshold --
As covert as a Fugitive,
Cajoling Consternation
By Ditties to the Enemy
And Sylvan Punctuation --...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...her nations, living in clover—
Not any more. That's done and over.
No one nowadays cares a button
For the upper classes— they're dead as mutton.
Go home. SUSAN: I notice that you don't go.

ROSAMUND: My dear, that shows how little you know.
I'm escaping the fate of my peers,
Marrying one of the profiteers,
Who hasn't an 'aitch' where an 'aitch' should be,
But millions and millions to spend on me.
Not much fun— but there wasn't any
Other way out.Read more of this...

by Brecht, Bertolt
...hat you've not had to face:

Days when we were used to changing countries
More often than shoes,
Through the war of the classes despairing
That there was only injustice and no outrage.

Even so we realised
Hatred of oppression still distorts the features,
Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly.
Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness,
Could never be friendly ourselves.

And in the future when no longer
Do human beings...Read more of this...

by Field, Eugene
...foreign speech,
Since with two phrases may be got
Whatever's in his reach;
For Europe is a soulless shrine
In which all classes kneel
Before twin idols, deemed divine--
"Comme bien" and "Wie viel."...Read more of this...

by Skenderija, Sasha
...s, who I met as grown-up people,
I could unerringly pick out in their photo albums 
on group pictures of their school classes. 
They've always been like that.

They remember every detail I've ever told them about myself, 
and even some I left untold.
There's always one of them around to remind me
of important things about myself
when I sink or soar too high
in my petty existential delirium.

Some of them had nearly given up on themselves
and on me...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Classes poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things