Famous Costs Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Daisy Fraser

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Did you ever hear of Editor Whedon
Giving to the public treasury any of the money he received
For supporting candidated for office?
Or for writing up the canning factory
To get people to invest?
Or for suppressing the facts about the bank,
When it was rotten and ready to break?
Did you ever hear of the Circuit Judge
Helping anyone except the "Q" railroad,
Or the bankers?...Read more of this...

Perception of an object costs

by Emily Dickinson
 Perception of an object costs
Precise the Object's loss --
Perception in itself a Gain
Replying to its Price --

The Object Absolute -- is nought --
Perception sets it fair
And then upbraids a Perfectness
That situates so far --...Read more of this...

Onion Days

by Carl Sandburg
 MRS. GABRIELLE GIOVANNITTI comes along Peoria Street
every morning at nine o'clock
With kindling wood piled on top of her head, her eyes
looking straight ahead to find the way for her old feet.
Her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti, whose
husband was killed in a tunnel explosion through
the negligence of a fellow-servant,
Works ten hours a day, sometimes twelve, picking onions
for Jasper on the Bowmanville...Read more of this...

Mock Panegyric on a Young Friend

by Jane Austen
 In measured verse I'll now rehearse 
The charms of lovely Anna: 
And, first, her mind is unconfined 
Like any vast savannah.

Ontario's lake may fitly speak 
Her fancy's ample bound: 
Its circuit may, on strict survey 
Five hundred miles be found.

Her wit descends on foes and friends 
Like famed Niagara's fall; 
And travellers gaze in wild amaze, 
And listen, one...Read more of this...

America

by Allen Ginsberg
 America I've given you all and now I'm nothing. 
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 
 17, 1956. 
I can't stand my own mind. 
America when will we end the human war? 
Go **** yourself with your atom bomb. 
I don't feel good don't bother me. 
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind. 
America...Read more of this...

A Satyre on Charles II

by John Wilmot
 [Rochester had to flee the court for several months
after handing this to the King by mistake.]


In th' isle of Britain, long since famous grown
For breeding the best cunts in Christendom,
There reigns, and oh! long may he reign and thrive,
The easiest King and best bred man alive.
Him no ambition moves to get reknown
Like the French fool, that wanders up and...Read more of this...

A Bush Lawyer

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 When Ironbark the turtle came to Anthony's lagoon 
The hills were hid behind a mist of equinoctal rain, 
The ripple of the rivulets was like a cheerful tune 
And wild companions waltzed among the grass as tall as grain. 
But Ironbark the turtle cared no whit for all of these; 
The ripple of the rivulets, the rustle of the...Read more of this...

Gilhooleys Estate

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Oh, Mr Gilhooley he turned up his toes, 
As most of you know, soon or late; 
And Jones was a lawyer, as everyone knows, 
So they took him to Gilhooley's Estate. 
Gilhooley in life had been living so free 
'Twas thought his possessions were great, 
So Jones, with a smile, says, "There's many a fee 
For me in Gilhooley's...Read more of this...

Interior

by Carl Sandburg
 IN the cool of the night time
The clocks pick off the points
And the mainsprings loosen.
They will need winding.
One of these days…
 they will need winding.

Rabelais in red boards,
Walt Whitman in green,
Hugo in ten-cent paper covers,
Here they stand on shelves
In the cool of the night time
And there is nothing…
To be said against them…
Or for them…
In the cool of the night...Read more of this...

Storm Fear

by Robert Frost
 WHEN the wind works against us in the dark,
And pelts with snow
The lowest chamber window on the east,
And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,
The beast,
‘Come out! Come out!’--
It costs no inward struggle not to go,
Ah, no!
I count our strength,
Two and a child,
Those of us not asleep subdued to mark
How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,--
How...Read more of this...

Touched by An Angel

by Maya Angelou
We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare...Read more of this...

At Cheyenne

by Eugene Field
 Young Lochinvar came in from the West,
With fringe on his trousers and fur on his vest; 
The width of his hat-brim could nowhere be beat, 
His No. 

brogans were chuck full of feet, 
His girdle was horrent with pistols and things, 
And he flourished a handful of aces on kings. 
The fair Mariana sate watching a star, 
When who...Read more of this...

Baseball and Writing

by Marianne Moore
 Fanaticism?No.Writing is exciting
and baseball is like writing.
You can never tell with either
how it will go
or what you will do;
generating excitement--
a fever in the victim--
pitcher, catcher, fielder, batter.
Victim in what category?
Owlman watching from the press box?
To whom does it apply?
Who is excited?Might it be I?

It's a pitcher's battle all the way--a duel--
a catcher's, as, with cruel
puma paw, Elston Howard lumbers...Read more of this...

The Song of the Shirt

by Thomas Hood
 With fingers weary and worn, 
With eyelids heavy and red, 
A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, 
Plying her needle and thread-- 
Stitch! stitch! stitch! 
In poverty, hunger, and dirt, 
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch 
She sang the "Song of the Shirt."

"Work! work! work! 
While the cock is crowing aloof! 
And work — work — work, 
Till...Read more of this...

For life and death of a Poet

by Marcin Malek
Poets
In literal meaning
Are not responsive
To normative rules of dying

Moreover 
Just like the Saints
They do not fit into a
Written conventions

Of the existence
Of the survival
At all costs
At the cost of their own greatness

They rather resemble
Orphaned fortresses
Which has to be taken
Meter by meter - as in the past

With the severe blood loss

Or permanently straining
Among the yellow fields
Mossy towers with no vaults
But with the...Read more of this...

Fit the Sixth ( Hunting of the Snark )

by Lewis Carroll
 The Barrister's Dream 

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope; 
They threatened its life with a railway-share; 
They charmed it with smiles and soap. 
But the Barrister, weary of proving in vain
That the Beaver's lace-making was wrong, 
Fell asleep, and in dreams saw the creature quite plain
That his fancy had...Read more of this...

In the Shadow of the Palace

by Carl Sandburg
 LET us go out of the fog, John, out of the filmy persistent drizzle on the streets of Stockholm, let us put down the collars of our raincoats, take off our hats and sit in the newspapers office.

Let us sit among the telegrams—clickety-click—the kaiser’s crown goes into the gutter and the Hohenzollern throne of a thousand years falls to...Read more of this...

Up At A Villa— Down In The City

by Robert Browning
 (As Distinguished by an Italian Person of Quality)

I

Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to spare,
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city-square;
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window there!

II

Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at least!
There, the whole day long, one's life is a...Read more of this...

Tar and Feathers

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Oh! the circus swooped down 
On the Narrabri town, 
For the Narrabri populace moneyed are; 
And the showman he smiled 
At the folk he beguiled 
To come all the distance from Gunnedah. 
But a juvenile smart, 
Who objected to "part", 
Went in on the nod, and to do it he 
Crawled in through a crack 
In the tent at...Read more of this...

Sonnet 91: Some Glory In Their Birth Some In Their Skill

by William Shakespeare
 Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in their body's force,
Some in their garments though new-fangled ill,
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest,
But these particulars are not my measure;
All these I better in one general best.
Thy love...Read more of this...

Ballade Of A Great Weariness

by Dorothy Parker
 There's little to have but the things I had,
There's little to bear but the things I bore.
There's nothing to carry and naught to add,
And glory to Heaven, I paid the score.

There's little to do but I did before,
There's little to learn but the things I know;
And this is the sum of a lasting lore:
Scratch a lover, and find a...Read more of this...

Stoves and sunshine

by Eugene Field
 Prate, ye who will, of so-called charms you find across the sea--
The land of stoves and sunshine is good enough for me!
I've done the grand for fourteen months in every foreign clime,
And I've learned a heap of learning, but I've shivered all the time;
And the biggest bit of wisdom I've acquired--as I can see--
Is that which teaches that this...Read more of this...

The Hard Road - 1 of 3

by Li Bai
Pure wine costs, for the golden cup,

ten thousand coppers a flagon,

And a jade plate of dainty food calls for million coins.

I fling aside my chop-sticks and cup, I cannot eat nor drink...

I pull out my dagger, I peer four ways in vain.

I would cross the Yellow River, but ice chokes the ferry;

I would climb the Tai-hang Mountains,

but the sky is...Read more of this...

Thought For A Sunshiny Morning

by Dorothy Parker
 It costs me never a stab nor squirm
To tread by chance upon a worm.
"Aha, my little dear," I say,
"Your clan will pay me back one day."...Read more of this...

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