Famous Decided Poems by Famous Poets

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

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75. Halloween

...ld guid-wife’s weel-hoordit nits 8
 Are round an’ round dividend,
An’ mony lads an’ lasses’ fates
 Are there that night decided:
Some kindle couthie side by side,
 And burn thegither trimly;
Some start awa wi’ saucy pride,
 An’ jump out owre the chimlie
 Fu’ high that night.


Jean slips in twa, wi’ tentie e’e;
 Wha ’twas, she wadna tell;
But this is Jock, an’ this is me,
 She says in to hersel’:
He bleez’d owre her, an’ she owre him,
 As they wad never mair part:
Till fuff! ...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert


Beowulf (Modern English)

...rom Wealhtheow
and then, bucking to fight, spoke eloquently,
making a speech, the son of Ecgtheow: (ll. 620-30)

“I decided that, when I mounted the waves,
sitting in a sea-boat, among my cadre of warriors,
that I would work the will of your people
completely, or else I would succumb to the slaughter,
fixed in the fiend’s grip. I must perform
this deed of manly courage, or else I will await
my final day here in this mead-hall.” (ll. 631-38)

These words were most ...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Bridge Over The Aire Book 1

...chance made hearts

Beat like a butterfly’s wing

In January cold?



Good and bad are choice not chance

At sixteen I decided to be a poet,

Writing another’s love poems,

Earning my first praise. My verses

Were appalling until I learned

From Eliot and Alvarez - praise

Where praise is due.



10



The caf? staff are chatting in subdued tones,

Wearing white, wondering if they’ll survive

The winter, so do I; at fifty-four I must decide

For poetry, my sons educated just...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

Coffee

...had to go outside. It was foggy and cold in San
Francisco. I wondered about the fog and felt very human and exposed.
I decided to go visit another girl. We had not been friends for over a year. Once we
were very close. I wondered what she was thinking about now.
I went to her house. She didn't have a door bell. That was a small victory. One must
keep track of all the small victories. I do, anyway.
She answered the door. She was holding a robe in front of her. She didn't beli...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard

Death and Fame

...
Thousands of readers, "Howl changed my life in Libertyville Illinois"
"I saw him read Montclair State Teachers College decided be a poet-- "
"He turned me on, I started with garage rock sang my songs in Kansas 
 City"
"Kaddish made me weep for myself & father alive in Nevada City"
"Father Death comforted me when my sister died Boston l982"
"I read what he said in a newsmagazine, blew my mind, realized 
 others like me out there"
Deaf & Dumb bards with hand signing quick bril...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen


Forgetfulness

...hich suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, th...Read more of this...
by Collins, Billy

Four Riddles

...bsolute prostration. 

At such a moment ladies learn to give,
To partners who would urge them over-much,
A flat and yet decided negative -
Photographers love such. 

There comes a welcome summons - hope revives,
And fading eyes grow bright, and pulses quicken:
Incessant pop the corks, and busy knives
Dispense the tongue and chicken. 

Flushed with new life, the crowd flows back again:
And all is tangled talk and mazy motion -
Much like a waving field of golden grain,
Or a tem...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

Gioconda And Si-Ya-U

...than Florence.
I am bored with the Louvre Museum.
And since you get sick soon enough 
 of conversing with the past,

I decided 
 from now on
to keep a diary.
Writing of today may be of some help
 in forgetting yesterday...
However, the Louvre is a strange place.
Here you might find
Alexander the Great's
 Longines watch complete with chronometer,

but 
not a single sheet of clean notebook paper
or a pencil worth a piaster.
Damn your Louvre, your Paris.
I'll write these entrie...Read more of this...
by Hikmet, Nazim

Lucretius

...Nor her that o'er her wounded hunter wept
Her deity false in human-amorous tears; 
Nor whom her beardless apple-arbiter
Decided fairest. Rather, O ye Gods,
Poet-like, as the great Sicilian called
Calliope to grace his golden verse -- 
Ay, and this Kypris also -- did I take
That popular name of thine to shadow forth
The all-generating powers and genial heat
Of Nature, when she strikes thro' the thick blood
Of cattle, and light is large, and lambs are glad
Nosing the mother's u...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Part 7 of Trout Fishing in America

...of bad debts, " he said.

 I was going to say that a sick person should never under

any conditions be abad debt, but I decided to forget it. Noth-

ing was going to be proved or changed on the shores of Little

Redfish Lake, and as that chub had discovered, it was not a

good place to have cosmetic surgery done.

 "I worked three years ago for a union in Southern Utah

that had a health plan, " the surgeon said. "I would not care

to practice medicine under such conditions. ...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard

Part 9 of Trout Fishing in America

...ooked better to her than Trout Fish-

ing in America Shorty. She didn't care about his sausages

any more either.

 She decided to take advantage of the green light, and she

crossed over to the sandbox.

 Trout Fishing in America Shorty stared after her as if

the space between them were a river growing larger and

larger....Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

...Urgency: Rome where Francesco
Was at work during the Sack: his inventions
Amazed the soldiers who burst in on him;
They decided to spare his life, but he left soon after;
Vienna where the painting is today, where
I saw it with Pierre in the summer of 1959; New York
Where I am now, which is a logarithm
Of other cities. Our landscape
Is alive with filiations, shuttlings;
Business is carried on by look, gesture,
Hearsay. It is another life to the city,
The backing of the looking...Read more of this...
by Ashbery, John

So I Say GOODBYE

...Im going in 2 this not knowing what i"ll find
but I've decided 2 follow my heart and abandon my mind
and if there be pain i know that at least i gave my all
and it's better to have loved and lost than 2 not love at all
in the morning i may wake 2 smile or maybe 2 cry
but first to those of my past i must say goodbye ...Read more of this...
by Shakur, Tupac

The Flight Of The Duchess

...laws, and sealed her eyes,
And clipped her wings, and tied her beak,
Would it cause you any great surprise
If, when you decided to give her an airing,
You found she needed a little preparing?
---I say, should you be such a curmudgeon,
If she clung to the perch, as to take it in dudgeon?
Yet when the Duke to his lady signified,
Just a day before, as he judged most dignified,
In what a pleasure she was to participate,---
And, instead of leaping wide in flashes,
Her eyes just li...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

The Moon

...here a small gas leak causes him
to have visions; visions that are rooted in nothing but gas.

Next door, a man who has decided to buy a car part by part
excitedly unpacks a wheel and an ashtray.

He arranges them every which way. It’s really beginning to take
shape.

Out the garage window he sees a group of ugly children
enter the forest. Their mouths look like coin slots.



A neighbor plays keyboards in a local cover band.
Preparing for an engagement at the high school pro...Read more of this...
by Berman, David

The Most Beautiful Woman In Town

...could. It was like joy out of fire. Through the talking we kissed and
moved closer together. We became quite heated and decided to go to bed. It was then that
Cass took off her high -necked dress and I saw it- the ugly jagged scar across her throat.
It was large and thick. 
"God damn you, woman," I said from the bed, "god damn you, what have you
done?
"I tried it with a broken bottle one night. Don't you like me any more? Am I still
beautiful?" 
I pulled her down on the bed a...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles

The Vision of Judgment

...e devils ran howling, deafen'd, down to hell; 
The ghosts fled, gibbering, for their own dominions — 
(For 'tis not yet decided where they dwell, 
And I leave every man to his opinions); 
Michael took refuge in his trump — but, lo! 
His teeth were set on edge, he could not blow! 

CIV 

Saint Peter, who has hitherto been known 
For an impetuous saint, upraised his keys, 
And at the fifth line knock'd the poet down; 
Who fell like Phaeton, but more at ease, 
Into his lake, for...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Waste Land

...ded, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence; 
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding th...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

To Think of Time

...ot to diffuse you that you were born of your mother and father—it is to
 identify
 you; 
It is not that you should be undecided, but that you should be decided;
Something long preparing and formless is arrived and form’d in you, 
You are henceforth secure, whatever comes or goes. 

The threads that were spun are gather’d, the weft crosses the warp, the pattern is
 systematic. 

The preparations have every one been justified, 
The orchestra have sufficiently tuned their instru...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Wittgensteins Ladder

...notebook entries 
into the Tractatus, Since it provided 
the definitive solution to all the problems 
of philosophy, he decided to broaden 
his interests. He became a schoolteacher, 
then a gardener's assistant at a monastery 
near Vienna. He dabbled in architecture. 

4. 

He returned to Cambridge in 1929, 
receiving his doctorate for the Tractatus, 
"a work of genius," in G. E. Moore's opinion. 
Starting in 1930 he gave a weekly lecture 
and led a weekly discussion group. H...Read more of this...
by Lehman, David

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