Famous Consummate Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Dream

by Helen Hunt Jackson
 I dreamed that I ws dead and crossed the heavens,-- 
Heavens after heavens with burning feet and swift,-- 
And cried: "O God, where art Thou?" I left one 
On earth, whose burden I would pray Thee lift." 

I was so dead I wondered at no thing,-- 
Not even that the angels slowly turned 
Their faces, speechless, as I hurried...Read more of this...

Special Pleading

by Sidney Lanier
 Time, hurry my Love to me:
Haste, haste! Lov'st not good company?
Here's but a heart-break sandy waste
'Twixt Now and Then. Why, killing haste
Were best, dear Time, for thee, for thee!

Oh, would that I might divine
Thy name beyond the zodiac sign
Wherefrom our times-to-come descend.
He called thee `Sometime'. Change it, friend:
`Now-time' sounds so much more fine!

Sweet Sometime, fly fast to me:
Poor Now-time...Read more of this...

Two Lengths has every Day --

by Emily Dickinson
 Two Lengths has every Day --
Its absolute extent
And Area superior
By Hope or Horror lent --

Eternity will be
Velocity or Pause
At Fundamental Signals
From Fundamental Laws.

To die is not to go --
On Doom's consummate Chart
No Territory new is staked --
Remain thou as thou art....Read more of this...

Deaths Waylaying not the sharpest

by Emily Dickinson
 Death's Waylaying not the sharpest
Of the thefts of Time --
There Marauds a sorer Robber,
Silence -- is his name --
No Assault, nor any Menace
Doth betoken him.
But from Life's consummate Cluster --
He supplants the Balm....Read more of this...

The Field of Glory

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 War shook the land where Levi dwelt, 
And fired the dismal wrath he felt, 
That such a doom was ever wrought 
As his, to toil while others fought; 
To toil, to dream -- and still to dream, 
With one day barren as another; 
To consummate, as it would seem 
The dry despair of his old mother. 

Far off one...Read more of this...

The Titanic

by Aleister Crowley
 Forth flashed the serpent streak of steel,
Consummate crown of man's device;
Down crashed upon an immobile
And brainless barrier of ice.
Courage!
The grey gods shoot a laughing lip: -
Let not faith founder with the ship!

We reel before the blows of fate;
Our stout souls stagger at the shock.
Oh! there is Something ultimate
Fixed faster than the living rock.
Courage!
Catastrophe beyond belief
Harden our hearts to fear...Read more of this...

Sensibility

by Robert William Service
 I

Once, when a boy, I killed a cat.
I guess it's just because of that
A cat evokes my tenderness,
And takes so kindly my caress.
For with a rich, resonant purr
It sleeks an arch or ardent fur
So vibrantly against my shin;
And as I tickle tilted chin
And rub the roots of velvet ears
Its tail in undulation rears.
Then tremoring with all its might,
In blissful...Read more of this...

The Philistine And The Bohemian

by Robert William Service
 She was a Philistine spick and span,
He was a bold Bohemian.
She had the mode, and the last at that;
He had a cape and a brigand hat.
She was so riant and chic and trim;
He was so shaggy, unkempt and grim.
On the rue de la Paix she was wont to shine;
The rue de la Gaîté was more his line.
She doted on...Read more of this...

From Pauline

by Robert Browning
 O God, where does this tend—these struggling aims? 
What would I have? What is this ‘sleep’, which seems 
To bound all? can there be a ‘waking’ point 
Of crowning life? The soul would never rule— 
It would be first in all things—it would have 
Its utmost pleasure filled,—but that complete 
Commanding for commanding sickens it. 
The last point I...Read more of this...

To earn it by disdaining it

by Emily Dickinson
 To earn it by disdaining it
Is Fame's consummate Fee --
He loves what spurns him --
Look behind -- He is pursuing thee.

So let us gather -- every Day --
The Aggregate of
Life's Bouquet
Be Honor and not shame --...Read more of this...

Softened by Times consummate plush

by Emily Dickinson
 Softened by Time's consummate plush,
How sleek the woe appears
That threatened childhood's citadel
And undermined the years.

Bisected now, by bleaker griefs,
We envy the despair
That devastated childhood's realm,
So easy to repair....Read more of this...

Making Good

by Robert William Service
 No man can be a failure if he thinks he's a success;
he may not own his roof-tree overhead,
He may be on his uppers and have hocked his evening dress -
(Financially speaking - in the red)
He may have chronic shortage to repay the old home mortgage,
And almost be a bankrupt in his biz.,
But though he skips his dinner,
And each day...Read more of this...

One Anguish -- in a Crowd --

by Emily Dickinson
 One Anguish -- in a Crowd --
A Minor thing -- it sounds --
And yet, unto the single Doe
Attempted of the Hounds

'Tis Terror as consummate
As Legions of Alarm
Did leap, full flanked, upon the Host --
'Tis Units -- make the Swarm --

A Small Leech -- on the Vitals --
The sliver, in the Lung --
The Bung out -- of an Artery --
Are...Read more of this...

How dare the robins sing

by Emily Dickinson
 How dare the robins sing,
When men and women hear
Who since they went to their account
Have settled with the year! --
Paid all that life had earned
In one consummate bill,
And now, what life or death can do
Is immaterial.
Insulting is the sun
To him whose mortal light
Beguiled of immortality
Bequeaths him to the night.
Extinct be every hum
In deference to him
Whose garden wrestles with the...Read more of this...

The Seraph and Poet

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 The seraph sings before the manifest
God-One, and in the burning of the Seven,
And with the full life of consummate
Heaving beneath him like a mother's
Warm with her first-born's slumber in that
The poet sings upon the earth grave-riven,
Before the naughty world, soon self-forgiven
For wronging him,--and in the darkness prest
From his own soul by worldly weights.
Even so,
Sing, seraph with the glory !...Read more of this...

The Battle Of The Bulge

by Robert William Service
 This year an ocean trip I took, and as I am a Scot
And like to get my money's worth I never missed a meal.
In spite of Neptune's nastiness I ate an awful lot,
Yet felt as fit as if we sailed upon an even keel.
But now that I am home again I'm stricken with disgust;
How many pounds of fat I've...Read more of this...

Memorial

by Claude McKay
 Your body was a sacred cell always, 
A jewel that grew dull in garish light, 
An opal which beneath my wondering gaze 
Gleamed rarely, softly throbbing in the night. 

I touched your flesh with reverential hands, 
For you were sweet and timid like a flower 
That blossoms out of barren tropic sands, 
Shedding its perfume in one golden hour....Read more of this...

The Seraph and the Poet

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 THE seraph sings before the manifest
God-One, and in the burning of the Seven,
And with the full life of consummate
Heaving beneath him like a mother's
Warm with her first-born's slumber in that
The poet sings upon the earth grave-riven,
Before the naughty world, soon self-forgiven
For wronging him,--and in the darkness prest
From his own soul by worldly weights.
Even so,
Sing, seraph with the glory !...Read more of this...

Pan and Luna

by Robert Browning
 Si credere dignum est.--Virgil, Georgics, III, 390


Oh, worthy of belief I hold it was, 
Virgil, your legend in those strange three lines! 
No question, that adventure came to pass 
One black night in Arcadia: yes, the pines, 
Mountains and valleys mingling made one mass 
Of black with void black heaven: the earth's confines, 
The sky's embrace,--below, above, around, 
All...Read more of this...

To Walt Whitman In America

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Send but a song oversea for us,
Heart of their hearts who are free,
Heart of their singer, to be for us
More than our singing can be;
Ours, in the tempest at error,
With no light but the twilight of terror;
Send us a song oversea!

Sweet-smelling of pine-leaves and grasses,
And blown as a tree through and through
With the winds of the keen mountain-passes,
And tender...Read more of this...

Spanish Men

by Robert William Service
 The Men of Seville are, they say,
The laziest of Spain.
Consummate artists in delay,
Allergical to strain;
Fr if you have a job for them,
And beg them to be spry,
They only look at you with phlegm:
"Mañana," they reply.

The Men of gay Madrid, I'm told,
Siesta's law revere;
The custom is so ages old,
And to tradition dear;
So if you want a job done soon,
And shyly...Read more of this...

Rabbi Ben Ezra

by Robert Browning
 Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith 'A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!'

Not that, amassing flowers,
Youth sighed 'Which rose make ours,
Which lily leave and then as best recall?'
Not that, admiring stars,
It yearned 'Nor...Read more of this...

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