Famous Copying Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Astrophel and Stella: III

by Sir Philip Sidney
 Let dainty wits cry on the sisters nine,
That, bravely mask'd, their fancies may be told;
Or, Pindar's apes, flaunt they in phrases fine,
Enam'ling with pied flowers their thoughts of gold.
Or else let them in statelier glory shine,
Ennobling newfound tropes with problems old;
Or with strange similes enrich each line,
Of herbs or beasts which Ind or Afric hold.
For me, in sooth, no...Read more of this...

The Gift

by Barry Tebb
 We were three weeks

Into term, Sheila,

When you came

Through the classroom door;

Forty-four children

Bent over books,

Copying Roethke’s

‘The Lost Son’.

You wrote your

First poem on the ‘Moses’

Of Michelangelo.

Words cut like stone.

I taught you Greek

But your painting of

‘The Essence of the Rose’

Was pure Platonic form.

You drew the masks

Of Comedy and Tragedy

In perfect harmony.

Having seen neither;

So Socrates was right.

Those who have the Spirit’s gift

Will one...Read more of this...

Favrile

by Mark Doty
 Glassmakers,
at century's end,
compounded metallic lusters

in reference
to natural sheens (dragonfly
and beetle wings,

marbled light on kerosene)
and invented names
as coolly lustrous

as their products'
scarab-gleam: Quetzal,
Aurene, Favrile.

Suggesting,
respectively, the glaze
of feathers,

that sun-shot fog
of which halos
are composed,

and -- what?
What to make of Favrile,
Tiffany's term

for his coppery-rose
flushed with gold
like the alchemized

atmosphere of sunbeams
in a Flemish room?
Faux Moorish,

fake Japanese,
his lamps illumine
chiefly themselves,

copying waterlilies'
bronzy stems,
wisteria or trout scales;

surfaces burnished
like...Read more of this...

Just Once

by Anne Sexton
 Just once I knew what life was for.
In Boston, quite suddenly, I understood;
walked there along the Charles River,
watched the lights copying themselves,
all neoned and strobe-hearted, opening
their mouths as wide as opera singers;
counted the stars, my little campaigners,
my scar daisies, and knew that I walked my love
on the night green side of it and cried
my heart to the eastbound cars...Read more of this...

Couplets on Wit

by Alexander Pope
 I

But our Great Turks in wit must reign alone
And ill can bear a Brother on the Throne.


II

Wit is like faith by such warm Fools profest
Who to be saved by one, must damn the rest.


III

Some who grow dull religious strait commence
And gain in morals what they lose in sence.


IV

Wits starve as useless to a Common weal
While Fools have places purely...Read more of this...

The Evil Seekers

by Anne Sexton
 We are born with luck
which is to say with gold in our mouth.
As new and smooth as a grape,
as pure as a pond in Alaska,
as good as the stem of a green bean--
we are born and that ought to be enough,
we ought to be able to carry on from that
but one must learn about evil,
learn what is subhuman,
learn how...Read more of this...

Marginalia

by Billy Collins
 Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up...Read more of this...

Sonnet LX

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LX. Ite, rime dolenti, al duro sasso. HE PRAYS THAT SHE WILL BE NEAR HIM AT HIS DEATH, WHICH HE FEELS APPROACHING.  Go, plaintive verse, to the cold marble go,Which hides in earth my treasure from these eyes;[Pg 291]There call on her who answers from yon skies,Although the...Read more of this...

Zone

by Guillaume Apollinaire
ZONE 


In the end you are tired of this ancient world 
Shepherd oh Eiffel Tower the herd of bridges is bleating this morning 

You've had enough of living in Greek and Roman antiquity 

Here even the cars look antique 
Only religion has stayed new religion 
Has stayed simple like the hangars at Port-Aviation 

You alone in Europe are not ancient...Read more of this...

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