Famous Co Poems by Famous Poets

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

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How many masks wear we, and undermasks,

by Fernando Pessoa
How many masks wear we, and undermasks,

Upon our countenance of soul, and when,

If for self-sport the soul itself unmasks,

Knows it the last mask off and the face plain?

The true mask feels no inside to the mask

But looks out of the mask by co-masked eyes.

Whatever consciousness begins the task

The task's accepted use to sleepness ties.

Like a child frighted by its mirrored...Read more of this...

Partners

by Ellis Parker Butler
 Love took chambers on our street
 Opposite to mine;
On his door he tacked a neat,
 Clearly lettered sign.

Straightway grew his custom great,
 For his sign read so:
“Hearts united while you wait.
 Step in. Love and Co.”

Much I wondered who was “Co.”
 In Love’s partnership;
Thought across the street I’d go—
 Learn from Love’s own lip.

So I went; and since that...Read more of this...

To Beethoven

by Sidney Lanier
 In o'er-strict calyx lingering,
Lay music's bud too long unblown,
Till thou, Beethoven, breathed the spring:
Then bloomed the perfect rose of tone.

O Psalmist of the weak, the strong,
O Troubadour of love and strife,
Co-Litanist of right and wrong,
Sole Hymner of the whole of life,

I know not how, I care not why, --
Thy music sets my world at ease,
And melts my passion's mortal...Read more of this...

The Lights of Cobb and Co

by Henry Lawson
 Fire lighted; on the table a meal for sleepy men; 

A lantern in the stable; a jingle now and then; 

The mail-coach looming darkly by light on moon and star; 

The growl of sleepy voices; a candle in the bar; 

A stumble in the passage of folk with wits abroad; 

A swear-word from a bedroom---the shout of "All aboard!"...Read more of this...

Holy Sonnet XV: Wilt Thou Love God As He Thee? Then Digest

by John Donne
 Wilt thou love God, as he thee? Then digest,
My soul, this wholesome meditation,
How God the Spirit, by angels waited on
In heaven, doth make his Temple in thy breast.
The Father having begot a Son most blest,
And still begetting, (for he ne'er be gone)
Hath deigned to choose thee by adoption,
Co-heir t' his glory, and Sabbath' endless rest.
And as a robbed man,...Read more of this...

Peter Anderson And Co

by Henry Lawson
 He had offices in Sydney, not so many years ago, 
And his shingle bore the legend `Peter Anderson and Co.', 
But his real name was Careless, as the fellows understood -- 
And his relatives decided that he wasn't any good. 
'Twas their gentle tongues that blasted any `character' he had -- 
He was fond of beer and leisure --...Read more of this...

Prayer In Bad Weather

by Charles Bukowski
 by God, I don't know what to
do.
they're so nice to have around.
they have a way of playing with
the balls
and looking at the cock very
seriously
turning it
tweeking it
examining each part
as their long hair falls on
your belly.
it's not the fucking and sucking
alone that reaches into a man
and softens him, it's the extras,
it's all the extras.
now it's raining tonight
and there's nobody
they are elsewhere
examining...Read more of this...

Death and Co

by Sylvia Plath
 Two, of course there are two.
It seems perfectly natural now——
The one who never looks up, whose eyes are lidded
And balled¸ like Blake's.
Who exhibits

The birthmarks that are his trademark——
The scald scar of water,
The nude
Verdigris of the condor.
I am red meat. His beak

Claps sidewise: I am not his yet.
He tells me how badly I photograph.
He tells me how sweet
The babies look...Read more of this...

Cain and Abel

by Rudyard Kipling
 Cain and Abel were brothers born.
 (Koop-la! Come along, cows!)
One raised cattle and one raised corn.
 (Koop-la! Come along! Co-hoe!)

And Cain he farmed by the river-side,
So he did not care how much it dried.

For he banked, and he sluiced, and he ditched and he led
 (And the Corn don't care for the Horn)--
A-half Euphrates out of her bed
 To...Read more of this...

Indefinite space, which, by co-substance night,

by Fernando Pessoa
Indefinite space, which, by co-substance night,

In one black mystery two void mysteries blends;

The stray stars, whose innumerable light

Repeats one mystery till conjecture ends;

The stream of time, known by birth-bursting bubbles;

The gulf of silence, empty even of nought;

Thought's high-walled maze, which the outed owner troubles

Because the string's lost and the plan forgot:

When I think on this and that here I stand,

The...Read more of this...

The Lost Pilot

by Edward Taylor
 for my father, 1922-1944

Your face did not rot
like the others--the co-pilot,
for example, I saw him

yesterday. His face is corn-
mush: his wife and daughter,
the poor ignorant people, stare

as if he will compose soon.
He was more wronged than Job.
But your face did not rot

like the others--it grew dark,
and hard like ebony;
the features progressed in their

distinction. If I could cajole
you to come...Read more of this...

The Lost Pilot

by James Tate
 for my father, 1922-1944

Your face did not rot
like the others--the co-pilot,
for example, I saw him

yesterday. His face is corn-
mush: his wife and daughter,
the poor ignorant people, stare

as if he will compose soon.
He was more wronged than Job.
But your face did not rot

like the others--it grew dark,
and hard like ebony;
the features progressed in their

distinction. If I could cajole
you to come...Read more of this...

Everybody Knows

by Leonard Cohen
 (co-written by Sharon Robinson)
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded 
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed 
Everybody knows that the war is over 
Everybody knows the good guys lost 
Everybody knows the fight was fixed 
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich 
That's how it goes 
Everybody knows 
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking 
Everybody knows the...Read more of this...

If that apparent part of life's delight

by Fernando Pessoa
If that apparent part of life's delight

Our tingled flesh-sense circumscribes were seen

By aught save reflex and co-carnal sight,

Joy, flesh and life might prove but a gross screen.

Haply Truth's body is no eyable being,

Appearance even as appearance lies,

Haply our close, dark, vague, warm sense of seeing

Is the choked vision of blindfolded eyes.

Wherefrom what comes to thought's sense of life? Nought.

All is...Read more of this...

39. Ballad on the American War

by Robert Burns
 WHEN Guilford good our pilot stood
 An’ did our hellim thraw, man,
Ae night, at tea, began a plea,
 Within America, man:
Then up they gat the maskin-pat,
 And in the sea did jaw, man;
An’ did nae less, in full congress,
 Than quite refuse our law, man.


Then thro’ the lakes Montgomery takes,
 I wat he was na slaw, man;
Down Lowrie’s Burn...Read more of this...

A Catalpa Tree On West Twelfth Street

by Amy Clampitt
 While the sun stops, or
seems to, to define a term
for the indeterminable,
the human aspect, here
in the West Village, spindles
to a mutilated dazzle—

niched shards of solitude
embedded in these brownstone
walkups such that the Hudson
at the foot of Twelfth Street
might be a thing that's 
done with mirrors: definition

by deracination—grunge,
hip-hop, Chinese takeout,
co-ops—while the globe's
elixir caters, year by year,
to the resurgence of this
climbing tentpole,...Read more of this...

With brutus in st. jo

by Eugene Field
 Of all the opry-houses then obtaining in the West
The one which Milton Tootle owned was, by all odds, the best;
Milt, being rich, was much too proud to run the thing alone,
So he hired an "acting manager," a gruff old man named Krone--
A stern, commanding man with piercing eyes and flowing beard,
And his voice assumed a thunderous tone when Jack...Read more of this...

Poetical Essay

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 Extract from Poetical Essay by Percy Bysshe Shelley


Millions to fight compell'd, to fight or die
In mangled heaps on War's red altar lie . . . 
When the legal murders swell the lists of pride;
When glory's views the titled idiot guide


Lost Shelley poem found after 200 years
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2267433,00.html...Read more of this...

The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo

by Edward Lear
 I 

On the Coast of Coromandel
Where the early pumpkins blow,
In the middle of the woods
Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-B?.
Two old chairs, and half a candle,--
One old jug without a handle,--
These were all his worldly goods:
In the middle of the woods,
These were all the worldly goods,
Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-B?,
Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-B?.

II 

Once, among the Bong-trees walking
Where the early pumpkins blow,
To a little heap...Read more of this...

Unobtainable

by Hugo Williams
 Whether it was putting in an extra beat, 
or leaving one out, I couldn't tell. 
My heart seemed to have forgotten 
everything it ever knew 
about timing and co-ordination 
in its efforts to get through to someone 
on the other side of a wall. 
As I lay in bed, I could hear it 
hammering away inside my pillow, 
being...Read more of this...

The Prisoner of Zenda

by Richard Wilbur
 At the end a
"The Prisoner of Zenda,"
The King being out of danger,
Stewart Granger
(As Rudolph Rassendyll)
Must swallow a bitter pill
By renouncing his co-star,
Deborah Kerr.

It would be poor behavia
In him and in Princess Flavia
Were they to put their own
Concerns before those of the Throne.
Deborah Kerr must wed
The King instead.

Rassendyll turns to go.
Must it be so?
Why can’t they have their cake
And eat...Read more of this...

The Phoenix and the Turtle

by William Shakespeare
 Let the bird of loudest lay,
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.

But thou, shrieking harbinger,
Foul pre-currer of the fiend,
Augur of the fever's end,
To this troop come thou not near.

From this session interdict
Every fowl of tyrant wing,
Save the eagle, feather'd king:
Keep the obsequy so strict.

Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,
Be...Read more of this...

The Recumbent Posture

by Marriott Edgar
 The day after Christmas, young Albert
Were what's called, confined to his bed,
With a tight kind of pain in his stummick
And a light feeling up in his head.

His parents were all in a fluster
When they saw little lad were so sick,
They said, 'Put out your tongue!', When they'd seen it
They said, 'Put it back again - quick!'

Ma made him a...Read more of this...

Waiting For The Miracle

by Leonard Cohen
 (co-written by Sharon Robinson)
Baby, I've been waiting, 
I've been waiting night and day. 
I didn't see the time, 
I waited half my life away. 
There were lots of invitations 
and I know you sent me some, 
but I was waiting 
for the miracle, for the miracle to come. 
I know you really loved me. 
but, you see, my hands...Read more of this...

The Snakes of September

by Stanley Kunitz
 All summer I heard them 
rustling in the shrubbery, 
outracing me from tier 
to tier in my garden,
a whisper among the viburnums, 
a signal flashed from the hedgerow,
a shadow pulsing 
in the barberry thicket.
Now that the nights are chill 
and the annuals spent,
I should have thought them gone, 
in a torpor of blood 
slipped to the nether world 
before...Read more of this...

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