Famous Common Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Common poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous common poems. These examples illustrate what a famous common poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
William Strode
Where are yee now, Astrologers, that looke
For petty accidents in Heavens booke?
Two Twins, to whom one Influence gave breath,
Differ in more than Fortune, Life and Death.
While both were warme (for that was all they were
Unlesse some feeble cry sayd Life was there
By wavering change of health they seem'd to trie
Which of the two should live, for one must...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
As if I asked a common Alms,
And in my wondering hand
A Stranger pressed a Kingdom,
And I, bewildered, stand --
As if I asked the Orient
Had it for me a Morn --
And it should lift its purple Dikes,
And shatter me with Dawn!...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I'm part of people I have known
And they are part of me;
The seeds of thought that I have sown
In other minds I see.
There's something of me in the throne
And in the gallows tree.
There's something of me in each one
With whom I work and play,
For islanded there can be none
In this dynamic day;
And meshed with...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
WITH antecedents;
With my fathers and mothers, and the accumulations of past ages;
With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am:
With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece and Rome;
With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb, and the Saxon;
With antique maritime ventures,—with laws, artizanship, wars and journeys;
With the poet, the skald,...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
I like to hear of wealth and gold,
And El Doradoes in their glory;
I like for silks and satins bold
To sweep and rustle through a story.
The nightingale is sweet of song;
The rare exotic smells divinely;
And knightly men who stride along,
The role heroic carry finely.
But then, upon the other hand,
Our minds have got a...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
BE composed—be at ease with me—I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as Nature;
Not till the sun excludes you, do I exclude you;
Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you, and the leaves to rustle for you, do my
words
refuse
to glisten and rustle for you.
My girl, I appoint with you an appointment—and I...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
CANZONE XXI. I' vo pensando, e nel pensier m' assale. SELF-CONFLICT. Ceaseless I think, and in each wasting thoughtSo strong a pity for myself appears,[Pg 227]That often it has broughtMy harass'd heart to new yet natural tears;Seeing each day my end of life draw nigh,Instant in prayer,...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
There came a Day at Summer's full,
Entirely for me --
I thought that such were for the Saints,
Where Resurrections -- be --
The Sun, as common, went abroad,
The flowers, accustomed, blew,
As if no soul the solstice passed
That maketh all things new --
The time was scarce profaned, by speech --
The symbol of a word
Was needless, as at Sacrament,
The Wardrobe -- of our...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
the great thing about the tall white daisy
is that it knows how to laugh at itself
some flowers for all their rich displays
won't preen themselves without a primness
in their sap - nor let their stalks abide
bending this way that way in the thick wind
the large daisy is happy to be slapdash
is not snooty about the company it keeps
it does have...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Marvell
My Mind was once the true survey
Of all these Medows fresh and gay;
And in the greenness of the Grass
Did see its Hopes as in a Glass;
When Juliana came, and she
What I do to the Grass, does to my Thoughts and Me.
But these, while I with Sorrow pine,
Grew more luxuriant still and fine;
That not one Blade of Grass you spy'd,
But...Read more of this...
by
Robert Southey
Hold your mad hands! for ever on your plain
Must the gorged vulture clog his beak with blood?
For ever must your Niger's tainted flood,
Roll to the ravenous shark his banquet slain?
Hold your mad hands! and learn at length to know,
And turn your vengeance on the common foe,
Yon treacherous vessel and her godless crew!
Let...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
My Daddy used to wallop me for every small offense:
"Its takes a hair-brush back," said he, "to teach kids common-sense."
And still to-day I scarce can look a hair-brush in the face.
Without I want in sympathy to pat a tender place.
For Dad declared with unction: "Spare the brush and spoil the brat."
The dear old man! What e'er his faults he...Read more of this...
by
Phillis Wheatley
THROUGH thickest glooms look back, immortal
shade,
On that confusion which thy death has made:
Or from Olympus' height look down, and see
A Town involv'd in grief bereft of thee.
Thy Lucy sees thee mingle with the dead,
And rends the graceful tresses from her head,
Wild in her woe, with grief unknown opprest
Sigh follows sigh deep heaving from her breast.
Too quickly fled, ah! whither...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Drama's Vitallest Expression is the Common Day
That arise and set about Us --
Other Tragedy
Perish in the Recitation --
This -- the best enact
When the Audience is scattered
And the Boxes shut --
"Hamlet" to Himself were Hamlet --
Had not Shakespeare wrote --
Though the "Romeo" left no Record
Of his Juliet,
It were infinite enacted
In the Human Heart --
Only Theatre recorded
Owner cannot shut --...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
A Toad, can die of Light --
Death is the Common Right
Of Toads and Men --
Of Earl and Midge
The privilege --
Why swagger, then?
The Gnat's supremacy is large as Thine --
Life -- is a different Thing --
So measure Wine --
Naked of Flask -- Naked of Cask --
Bare Rhine --
Which Ruby's mine?...Read more of this...
by
Ogden Nash
Go hang yourself, you old M.D.!
You shall not sneer at me.
Pick up your hat and stethoscope,
Go wash your mouth with laundry soap;
I contemplate a joy exquisite
I'm not paying you for your visit.
I did not call you to be told
My malady is a common cold.
By pounding brow and swollen lip;
By fever's...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Ye, who cease not to drink on common days,
Do not on Friday quit your drinking ways;
Adopt my creed, and count all days the same,
Be worshippers of God, and not of days....Read more of this...
by
Marge Piercy
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
It would never be Common -- more -- I said --
Difference -- had begun --
Many a bitterness -- had been --
But that old sort -- was done --
Or -- if it sometime -- showed -- as 'twill --
Upon the Downiest -- Morn --
Such bliss -- had I -- for all the years --
'Twould give an Easier -- pain --
I'd...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
The man who cloaked his bitterness within
This winding-sheet of puns and pleasantries,
God never gave to look with common eyes
Upon a world of anguish and of sin:
His brother was the branded man of Lynn;
And there are woven with his jollities
The nameless and eternal tragedies
That render hope and hopelessness akin.
We laugh, and crown him; but anon we feel
A still chord sorrow-swept,...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Her little head just topped the window-sill;
She even mounted on a stool, maybe;
She pressed against the pane, as children will,
And watched us playing, oh so wistfully!
And then I missed her for a month or more,
And idly thought: "She's gone away, no doubt,"
Until a hearse drew up beside the door . . .
I saw a tiny coffin carried out.
And after...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
The quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping,
Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame;
Above them, exultant, the peewits are sweeping:
They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadness their screamings proclaim.
Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lie
Low-rounded on the mournful grass they have bitten down to the quick.
Are they asleep? -- Are they alive? --...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
I was tired of being a woman,
tired of the spoons and the post,
tired of my mouth and my breasts,
tired of the cosmetics and the silks.
There were still men who sat at my table,
circled around the bowl I offered up.
The bowl was filled with purple grapes
and the flies hovered in for the scent
and even my father came with his white...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
Or I shall live your epitaph to make,
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten;
From hence your memory death cannot take,
Although in me each part will be forgotten.
Your name from hence immortal life shall have,
Though I, once gone, to all the world must die:
The earth can yield me but a common grave,
When you entombed in men's eyes shall...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
When the man I was denounces all the things that I was not,
When the true souls stand like granite, while the souls of liars not –
When the quids I gave are counted, and the trays I cadged forgot;
Shall my spirit see the country that it wrote for once again?
Shall it see the old selections, and...Read more of this...
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