Famous Couplet Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Couplet poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous couplet poems. These examples illustrate what a famous couplet poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Ben Jonson
***. ? TO PERSON GUILTY. GUILTY, be wise ; and though thou know'st the crimes Be thine, I tax, yet do not own my rhymes ; 'Twere madness in thee, to betray thy fame, And person to the world; ere I thy name....Read more of this...
by
Jonathan Swift
Stella this day is thirty-four,
(We shan't dispute a year or more:)
However, Stella, be not troubled,
Although thy size and years are doubled,
Since first I saw thee at sixteen,
The brightest virgin on the green;
So little is thy form declin'd;
Made up so largely in thy mind.
Oh, would it please the gods to split
Thy beauty, size, and years, and wit;
No age could...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Me! Come! My dazzled face
In such a shining place!
Me! Hear! My foreign ear
The sounds of welcome near!
The saints shall meet
Our bashful feet.
My holiday shall be
That they remember me;
My paradise, the fame
That they pronounce my name....Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
COME earth’s little children pit-pat from their burrows on the hill;
Hangs within the gloom its weary head the shining daffodil.
In the valley underneath us through the fragrance flit along
Over fields and over hedgerows little quivering drops of song.
All adown the pale blue mantle of the mountains far away
Stream the tresses of the twilight flying in the wake of day.
Night...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Best Gains -- must have the Losses' Test --
To constitute them -- Gains --...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Khaja! grant one request, and only one,
Wish me God-speed, and get your preaching done;
I walk aright, 'tis you who see awry;
Go! heal your purblind eyes, leave me alone....Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
All, thou gentle one, lies embraced in thy kingdom; the graybeard
Back to the days of his youth, childish and child-like, returns....Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
THE MOUNTAIN and the squirrel
Had a quarrel;
And the former called the latter "Little Prig."
Bun replied
You are doubtless very big; 5
But all sorts of things and weather
Must be taken in together,
To make up a year
And a sphere.
And I think it no disgrace 10
To occupy my place.
If I'm not as...Read more of this...
by
Hilaire Belloc
Three Graces; and the mother were a Grace,
But for profounder meaning in her face....Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
To Ridgely Torrence
On Last Looking into His 'Hesperides'
I often see flowers from a passing car
That are gone before I can tell what they are.
I want to get out of the train and go back
To see what they were beside the track.
I name all the flowers I am sure they weren't;
Not fireweed loving where woods have burnt--
Not bluebells gracing a...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
X. ? TO MY LORD IGNORANT. Thou call'st me POET, as a term of shame ; But I have my revenge made, in thy name. ...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I PICKED a rustic nosegay lately,
And bore it homewards, musing greatly;
When, heated by my hand, I found
The heads all drooping tow'rd the ground.
I plac'd them in a well-cool'd glass,
And what a wonder came to pass
The heads soon raised themselves once more.
The stalks were blooming as before,
And all were in as good a case
As when they left their native place.
...Read more of this...
by
Anne Kingsmill Finch
Through ev'ry Age some Tyrant Passion reigns:
Now Love prevails, and now Ambition gains
Reason's lost Throne, and sov'reign Rule maintains.
Tho' beyond Love's, Ambition's Empire goes;
For who feels Love, Ambition also knows,
And proudly still aspires to be possest
Of Her, he thinks superior to the rest.
As cou'd be prov'd, but that our plainer Task
Do's...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
They hail you as their morning star
Because you are the way you are.
If you return the sentiment,
They'll try to make you different;
And once they have you, safe and sound,
They want to change you all around.
Your moods and ways they put a curse on;
They'd make of you another person.
They cannot let you go your gait;
They influence and educate.
They'd alter all...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
Till I shall come again, let this suffice,
I send my salt, my sacrifice
To thee, thy lady, younglings, and as far
As to thy Genius and thy Lar;
To the worn threshold, porch, hall, parlour, kitchen,
The fat-fed smoking temple, which in
The wholesome savour of thy mighty chines,
Invites to supper him who dines:
Where laden spits, warp'd with large ribs of beef,
Not represent, but...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
The Lion is a kingly beast.
He likes a Hindu for a feast.
And if no Hindu he can get,
The lion-family is upset.
He cuffs his wife and bites her ears
Till she is nearly moved to tears.
Then some explorer finds the den
And all is family peace again....Read more of this...
by
John Wilmot
After Death nothing is, and nothing, death,
The utmost limit of a gasp of breath.
Let the ambitious zealot lay aside
His hopes of heaven, whose faith is but his pride;
Let slavish souls lay by their fear
Nor be concerned which way nor where
After this life they shall be hurled.
Dead, we become the lumber of the world,
And to that mass of matter shall...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
NATURE, to prove her heav'n-taught pow'r,
That gems the earth, and paints the flow'r;
That bids the soft enchanting note
Steal from the LINNET'S downy throat;
That from young MAY'S ambrosial wings,
The balmy dew of HYBLA flings;
With partial hand, each charm combin'd,
To deck THY Form, and grace THY Mind.
She gave her ROSE, to tint thy...Read more of this...
by
John Keats
Fill for me a brimming bowl
And in it let me drown my soul:
But put therein some drug, designed
To Banish Women from my mind:
For I want not the stream inspiring
That fills the mind with--fond desiring,
But I want as deep a draught
As e'er from Lethe's wave was quaff'd;
From my despairing heart to charm
The Image of the fairest form
That e'er my reveling...Read more of this...
by
John Milton
What needs my Shakespear for his honour'd Bones,
The labour of an age in piled Stones,
Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid
Under a Star-ypointing Pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame,
What need'st thou such weak witnes of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thy self a live-long Monument.
For whilst to th'sharne of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easie numbers...Read more of this...
by
Phillis Wheatley
NO more the flow'ry scenes of pleasure rife,
Nor charming prospects greet the mental eyes,
No more with joy we view that lovely face
Smiling, disportive, flush'd with ev'ry grace.
The tear of sorrow flows from ev'ry eye,
Groans answer groans, and sighs to sighs reply;
What sudden pangs shot thro' each aching heart,
When, Death, thy messenger dispatch'd his dart?
Thy dread attendants, all-destroying Pow'r,
Hurried the...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
THOU! whose sublime poetic art
Can pierce the pulses of the heart,
Can force the treasur'd tear to flow
In prodigality of woe;
Or lure each jocund bliss to birth
Amid the sportive bow'rs of mirth:
LAURA DIVINE! I call thee now
To yonder promontory's brow
That props the skies; while at its feet
With fruitless ire the billows...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Khayyam! rejoice that wine you still can pour,
And still the charms of tulip cheeks adore;
You'll soon not be, rejoice then that you are,
Think how 'twould be in case you were no more!...Read more of this...
by
William Strode
What are thy gaines, O death, if one man ly
Stretch'd in a bed of clay, whose charity
Doth hereby get occasion to redeeme
Thousands out of the grave: though cold hee seeme
He keepes those warme that else would sue to thee,
Even thee, to ease them of theyr penury.
Sorrow I would, but cannot thinke him dead,
Whose parts are rather all distributed
To those...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
Authors and actors and artists and such
Never know nothing, and never know much.
Sculptors and singers and those of their kidney
Tell their affairs from Seattle to Sydney.
Playwrights and poets and such horses' necks
Start off from anywhere, end up at sex.
Diarists, critics, and similar roe
Never say nothing, and never say no.
People Who Do Things exceed my endurance;
God, for a man that...Read more of this...
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