Famous Common Man Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Common Man 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 man poems. These examples illustrate what a famous common man poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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April 21

...I'm a very average person,
and I think most people are.
I vote with the common man.
I have two kids, a boy and a girl.
Last Sunday I played golf with the boss.
Hey, it beats working.
I'm his wife. I may be brainless but
I'm her husband. I played golf with her
Last Sunday I played golf with the boss
and it was the first warm morning in May
and like every other moron driving a lawnmower
I'm their husband. I may be brainless but
I'...Read more of this...
by Lehman, David


Memories of West Street and Lepke

...Lepke,
there piling towels on a rack,
or dawdling off to his little segregated cell full
of things forbidden to the common man:
a portable radio, a dresser, two toy American
flags tied together with a ribbon of Easter palm.
Flabby, bald, lobotomized,
he drifted in a sheepish calm,
where no agonizing reappraisal
jarred his concentration on the electric chair
hanging like an oasis in his air
of lost connections. . . ....Read more of this...
by Lowell, Robert

Our Lady

...God! no lady thou:
Common woman of common earth
Our Lady ladies call thee now,
But Christ was never of gentle birth;
A common man of the common earth.

For God’s ways are not as our ways:
The noblest lady in the land
Would have given up half her days,
Would have cut off her right hand,
To bear the child that was God of the land.

Never a lady did He choose,
Only a maid of low degree,
So humble she might not refuse
The carpenter of Galilee:
A daughter of the people, she.

Out...Read more of this...
by Coleridge, Mary Elizabeth

Sohrab and Rustum

...they who were call'd champions in their time,
And through whose death I won that fame I have--
And I were nothing but a common man,
A poor, mean soldier, and without renown,
So thou mightest live too, my son, my son!
Or rather would that I, even I myself,
Might now be lying on this bloody sand,
Near death, and by an ignorant stroke of thine,
Not thou of mine! and I might die, not thou;
And I, not thou, be borne to Seistan;
And Zal might weep above my grave, not thine;
And say...Read more of this...
by Arnold, Matthew

Stream And Sun At Glendalough

...entance keeps my heart impure;
But what am I that dare
Fancy that I can
Better conduct myself or have more
Sense than a common man?

What motion of the sun or stream
Or eyelid shot the gleam
That pierced my body through?
What made me live like these that seem
Self-born, born anew?...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler


The Wanderer

...rn. 

Only like one who having formed a plan 
Beyond the pitch of common minds, she sailed, 
Mocked and deserted by the common man, 
Made half divine to me for having failed. 

We learned the reason soon: below the town 
A stay had parted like a snapping reed, 
"Warning," the men thought, "not to take her down." 
They took the omen, they would not proceed. 

Days passed before another crew would sign. 
The Wanderer lay in dock alone, unmanned, 
Feared as a thing possessed by ...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

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