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Famous Colleges Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...w’d,
 That was a law:
We’ve lost a birkie weel worth gowd;
 Willie’s awa!


Now gawkies, tawpies, gowks and fools,
Frae colleges and boarding schools,
May sprout like simmer puddock-stools
 In glen or shaw;
He wha could brush them down to mools—
 Willie’s awa!


The brethren o’ the Commerce-chaumer
May mourn their loss wi’ doolfu’ clamour;
He was a dictionar and grammar
 Among them a’;
I fear they’ll now mak mony a stammer;
 Willie’s awa!


Nae mair we see his levee door
Phil...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert



...ae sair wark to craze their banes,
An’ fill auld age wi’ grips an’ granes:
But human bodies are sic fools,
For a’ their colleges an’ schools,
That when nae real ills perplex them,
They mak enow themsel’s to vex them;
An’ aye the less they hae to sturt them,
In like proportion, less will hurt them.
 A country fellow at the pleugh,
His acre’s till’d, he’s right eneugh;
A country girl at her wheel,
Her dizzen’s dune, she’s unco weel;
But gentlemen, an’ ladies warst,
Wi’ ev’n-dow...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert
...mes hontes j’ay beues...


PIPIT sate upright in her chair
Some distance from where I was sitting;
Views of the Oxford Colleges
Lay on the table, with the knitting.

Daguerreotypes and silhouettes,
Here grandfather and great great aunts,
Supported on the mantelpiece
An Invitation to the Dance.
. . . . .
I shall not want Honour in Heaven
For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney
And have talk with Coriolanus
And other heroes of that kidney.

I shall not want Capital in Heaven
For I ...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...,
That frames deep mysteries, then finds them out;
Filling with frantic crowds of thinking fools
The reverend bedlam's, colleges and schools;
Borne on whose wings each heavy sot can pierce
The limits of the boundless universe;
So charming ointments make an old witch fly,
And bear a crippled carcass through the sky.
'Tis the exalted power whose business lies
In nonsense and impossibilities.
This made a whimsical philosopher
Before the spacious world his tub prefer,
And we have...Read more of this...
by Wilmot, John
...in fit words and heavenly eloquence.
The Prophet's sons by such example led,
To learning and to loyalty were bred:
For colleges on bounteous kings depend,
And never rebel was to arts a friend.
To these succeed the pillars of the laws,
Who best could plead, and best can judge a cause.
Next them a train of loyal peers ascend:
Sharp judging Adriel, the Muse's friend,
Himself a Muse:—in Sanhedrin's debate
True to his prince; but not a slave of state.
Whom David's love with honou...Read more of this...
by Dryden, John



...ir fragrant, the bird's bubbling whistle
Succinct in the unknown unsettled trees:
O little Charles, beside the Georgian colleges
And milltown New England; at last the wind soft,
The sky unmoving, and the dead look
Of factory windows separate, at last,
From windows gray and wet:
 for now the sunlight
Thrashes its wet shellac on brickwalk and gutter,
White splinters streak midmorning and doorstep,
Winter passes as the lighted streetcar
Moves at midnight, one scene of the past,
...Read more of this...
by Schwartz, Delmore
...o live:

Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide.
A known bell chimes. I catch my train, ignored.
Canal and clouds and colleges subside
Slowly from view. But Dockery, good Lord,
Anyone up today must have been born
In '43, when I was twenty-one.
If he was younger, did he get this son
At nineteen, twenty? Was he that withdrawn

High-collared public-schoolboy, sharing rooms
With Cartwright who was killed? Well, it just shows
How much . . . How little . . . Yawning, I suppose
I ...Read more of this...
by Larkin, Philip
...There is one thing that ought to be taught in all the colleges,
Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies.
I don't mean the kind of apologies people make when they run over you or borrow five dollars or step on your feet,
Because I think that is sort of sweet;
No, I object to one kind of apology alone,
Which is when people spend their time and yours apologizing for everyth...Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden
...strangers come 
 Who've seen Fox-Mazarin wince at the stings 
 In my epistles—and bring admiring votes 
 Of learned colleges, they strain to see 
 My figure in the glare—the usher utters, 
 "Behold and hearken! that's my Lord Protector's 
 Cousin—that, his son-in-law—that next"—who cares! 
 Some perfumed puppet! "Milton?" "He in black— 
 Yon silent scribe who trims their eloquence!" 
 Still 'chronicling small-beer,'—such is my duty! 
 Yea, one whose thunder roared ...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor
...tin, "manceps," a purchaser or contractor -
- was an officer charged with the purchase of victuals for inns
of court or colleges.

49. Reeve: A land-steward; still called "grieve" -- Anglo-Saxon,
"gerefa" in some parts of Scotland.

50. Sompnour: summoner; an apparitor, who cited delinquents
to appear in ecclesiastical courts.

51. Questio quid juris: "I ask which law (applies)"; a cant law-
Latin phrase.

52 Harlot: a low, ribald fellow; the word was used of both
sexes; it c...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...s a terrible thing
To be so open: it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.

THIRD VOICE:
Today the colleges are drunk with spring.
My black gown is a little funeral:
It shows I am serious.
The books I carry wedge into my side.
I had an old wound once, but it is healing.
I had a dream of an island, red with cries.
It was a dream, and did not mean a thing.

FIRST VOICE:
Dawn flowers in the great elm outside the house.
The swifts are back. They are shrieking...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia
...there, 
And all flags save Australia's flag waved high in sun and air! 

The Girls' High School, and Grammar School and colleges of stone 
Flew all flags from their walls and towers – all flags except our own! 
And down here in the alleys where Premiers never come, 
Nor candidate, nor delegate, nor sound of fife and drum, 
They packed them on the lorries, seared children of the slum. 

Each face seemed soiled and faded, though scrubbed with household soap, 
And older than a m...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry