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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...are for my poor sprites.
How then? euen thus: in Stellaes face I reed
What Loue and Beautie be; then all my deed
But copying is, what in her Nature writes.
IV
Vertue, alas, now let me take some rest;
Thou setst a bate betweene my will and wit;
If vaine Loue haue my simple soule opprest,
Leaue what thou lik'st not, deale thou not with it.
Thy scepter vse in some old Catoes brest,
Churches or Schooles are for thy seat more fit;
I do confesse (pardon a fault confe...Read more of this...
by
Sidney, Sir Philip
...oo dear for my poor sprites.
How then? even thus: in Stella's face I read
What love and beauty be; then all my deed
But copying is, what in her Nature writes....Read more of this...
by
Sidney, Sir Philip
...
IV
Wits starve as useless to a Common weal
While Fools have places purely for their Zea.
V
Now wits gain praise by copying other wits
As one Hog lives on what another sh---.
VI
Wou'd you your writings to some Palates fit
Purged all you verses from the sin of wit
For authors now are so conceited grown
They praise no works but what are like their own....Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...emized
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 a tidal stream
on which an excitation
of minnows boils
and blooms, artifice
made to show us
the lavish wardrobe
of things, the world's
glaze of appearances
worked into the thin
and gleaming stuff
of craft. A story:
at the puppet opera
--where one man animated
the entire...Read more of this...
by
Doty, Mark
...ew 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 and cried
my heart to the westbound cars and took
my truth across a small humped bridge
and hurried m...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...rge.
Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.
And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.
Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me l...Read more of this...
by
Collins, Billy
...wearied make her know,Of stemming these dread waves that round me rise:But, copying all her virtues I so prize,Her track I follow, yet my steps are slow.I sing of her, living, or dead, alone;(Dead, did I say? She is immortal made!)That by the world she should be loved, and known.Oh! in my passage hence may she be near,Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...as arrived. That old despot,
The Bishop of Salzburg, had let him come
Himself to lead it, and the parts, still hot
From copying, had been tried over. Never
Had any music started such a fever.
The orchestra had cheered till they were hoarse,
The singers clapped and clapped. The town was made,
With such a great attraction through the course
Of Carnival time. In what utter shade
All other cities would be left! The trade
In music would all drift here naturally.
In his excitement ...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...d stuff, you'd say.
But I'd say
you must die a little,
have a book of matches go off in your hand,
see your best friend copying your exam,
visit an Indian reservation and see
their plastic feathers,
the dead dream.
One must be a prisoner just once to hear
the lock twist into his gut.
After all that
one is free to grasp at the trees, the stones,
the sky, the birds that make sense out of air.
But even in a telephone booth
evil can seep out of the receiver
and we must cover it w...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...ere 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
Wi...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
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