Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Describes Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...[This little song describes the different members 
of the party just spoken of.]

WHY pacest thou, my neighbour fair,

The garden all alone?
If house and land thou seek'st to guard,

I'd thee as mistress own.

My brother sought the cellar-maid,

And suffered her no rest;
She gave him a refreshing draught,

A kiss, too, she impress'd.

My cousin is a prudent wight,...Read more of this...



by Estep, Maggie
...ght to support her boyfriend named Rocco. Suzee loves Rocco,
she loves him so much she's got her eyes closed as she describes him:
"6 foot 2, 193 pounds and, girlfriend, his arms so big and long they
wrap around me twice like I'm a little Suzee sandwich."

Little Suzee Sandwich is rapt, she blindly snips and clips at my poor punk
head. She snips and clips and snips and clips, she pauses, I look in the
mirror: "Holy ****, I'm bald."

"Holy ****, baby, you're ba...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...izia was so blamed, that time, 
 Unheeded rang the call: 
 Away, ye merry maids, etc. 
 
 Although, above, the hawk describes 
 The circle round the lark, 
 It sleeps, unconscious, and our lass 
 Had eyes but for her spark— 
 A spark?—a sun! 'Twas Juan, King! 
 Who wears our coronal,— 
 Away, ye merry maids, etc. 
 
 A love so far above one's state 
 Ends sadly. Came a black 
 And guarded palanquin to bear 
 The girl that ne'er comes back; 
 By royal writ, som...Read more of this...

by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...[I feel considerable hesitation in venturing 
to offer this version of a poem which Carlyle describes to be 'a 
beautiful piece (a very Hans Sacks beatified, both in character 
and style), which we wish there was any possibility of translating.' 
The reader will be aware that Hans Sachs was the celebrated Minstrel- 
Cobbler of Nuremberg, who Wrote 208 plays, 1700 comic tales, and 
between 4000 and 5000 lyric poems. He flourished throughout ...Read more of this...

by Pinsky, Robert
...luting again, "Rabinowitz," he answered:

A joke that seems at first to be a story
About the Jews. But as the renga describes
Religious meaning by moving in drifting petals

And brittle leaves that touch and die and suffer
The changing winds that riffle the gutter swirl,
So in the joke, just under the raucous music

Of Fleming, Jew, Walloon, a courtly allegiance
Moves to the dulcimer, gavotte and bow,
Over the banana tree the moon in autumn--

Allegiance to a state imposs...Read more of this...



by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...[Goethe describes this much-admired Poem, which 
he wrote in honour of his love Lily, as being "designed to change 
his surrender of her into despair, by drolly-fretful images."]

THERE'S no menagerie, I vow,

Excels my Lily's at this minute;

She keeps the strangest creatures in it,
And catches them, she knows not how.

Oh, how they hop, and run, and rave,
...Read more of this...

by Petrarch, Francesco
...MADRIGALE III. Nova angeletta sovra l' ale accorta. HE ALLEGORICALLY DESCRIBES THE ORIGIN OF HIS PASSION.  From heaven an angel upon radiant wings,New lighted on that shore so fresh and fair,To which, so doom'd, my faithful footstep clings:Alone and friendless, when s...Read more of this...

by Graham, Jorie
...The slow overture of rain, 
each drop breaking 
without breaking into 
the next, describes 
the unrelenting, syncopated 
mind. Not unlike 
the hummingbirds 
imagining their wings 
to be their heart, and swallows 
believing the horizon 
to be a line they lift 
and drop. What is it 
they cast for? The poplars, 
advancing or retreating, 
lose their stature 
equally, and yet stand firm, 
making arrangements 
in order to become 
imagi...Read more of this...

by Justice, Donald
...dage
To speak of that other world we might have borne,
The lost world buried before it could be born.

4
Burchfield describes the pinched white souls of violets
Frothing the mouth of a derelict old mine
Just as an evil August night comes down,
All umber, but for one smudge of dusky carmine.
It is the sky of a peculiar sadness—
The other side perhaps of some rare gladness.

5
What is it to be happy, after all? Think
Of the first small joys. Think of how our par...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...To the Memory of the Household It Describes

This Poem is Dedicated by the Author

"As the Spirit of Darkness be stronger in the dark, so Good Spirits, which be Angels of Light, are augmented not only by the Divine light of the Sun, but also by our common Wood Fire: and as the Celestial Fire drives away dark spirits, so also this our fire of Wood doth the same." 
Cor. Agrippa, Occult...Read more of this...

by Petrarch, Francesco
...92] SONNET LXXIII. Quando giugne per gli occhi al cor profondo. HE DESCRIBES THE STATE OF TWO LOVERS, AND RETURNS IN THOUGHT TO HIS OWN SUFFERINGS.  When reaches through the eyes the conscious heartIts imaged fate, all other thoughts depart;The powers which from the soul their functions take...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...neck, wrist, or arm, is still universal in the East. The Koorsee (throne) verse in the second chapter of the Koran describes the attributes of the Most High, and is engraved in this manner, and worn by the pious, as the most esteemed and sublime of all sentences. 

(27) "Comboloio," a Turkish rosary. The MSS., particularly those of the Persians, are richly adorned and illuminated. The Greek females are kept in utter ignorance; but many of the Turkish girl...Read more of this...

by Turner Smith, Charlotte
...e,
We ask anew, where happiness is found?------
Alas! in rural life, where youthful dreams
See the Arcadia that Romance describes,
Not even Content resides!--In yon low hut
Of clay and thatch, where rises the grey smoke
Of smold'ring turf, cut from the adjoining moor,
The labourer, its inhabitant, who toils
From the first dawn of twilight, till the Sun
Sinks in the rosy waters of the West,
Finds that with poverty it cannot dwell; 
For bread, and scanty bread, is all he earns
...Read more of this...

by Kowit, Steve
...A noun's a thing. A verb's the thing it does.
An adjective is what describes the noun.
In "The can of beets is filled with purple fuzz"

of and with are prepositions. The's
an article, a can's a noun,
a noun's a thing. A verb's the thing it does.

A can can roll - or not. What isn't was
or might be, might meaning not yet known.
"Our can of beets is filled with purple fuzz"

is present tense. Whil...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...tructive hours they past,
Who gave the Ball, or paid the Visit last:
One speaks the Glory of the British Queen,
And one describes a charming Indian Screen.
A third interprets Motions, Looks, and Eyes;
At ev'ry Word a Reputation dies.
Snuff, or the Fan, supply each Pause of Chat,
With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that.

Mean while declining from the Noon of Day,
The Sun obliquely shoots his burning Ray; 
The hungry Judges soon the Sentence sign,
And Wretches ...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...ive hours they pass'd,
Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last;
One speaks the glory of the British queen,
And one describes a charming Indian screen;
A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes;
At ev'ry word a reputation dies.
Snuff, or the fan, supply each pause of chat,
With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that.

Meanwhile, declining from the noon of day,
The sun obliquely shoots his burning ray;
The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretc...Read more of this...

by Bronk, William
...erhaps, 
and this carved stone remembers him 
not as he may have looked, but as if to define
the naked virtue the stone describes as his. 
One foot is forward, the eyes look out, the arms
drop downward past the narrow waist to hands 
hanging in burdenless fullness by the heavy flanks. 
The boy was dead, and the stone smiles in his death 
lightening the lips with the pleasure of something achieved:
an end. To come to an end. To come to death 
as an end. And...Read more of this...

by Strand, Mark
...failure
because it did not change his mind."
You narrow your eyes.
You have the impulse to close the book
which describes my resistance:
how when I lean back I imagine
my life without you, imagine moving
into another life, another book.
It describes your dependence on desire,
how the momentary disclosures
of purpose make you afraid.
The book describes much more than it should.
It wants to divide us.

3
This morning I woke and believed
there was no more...Read more of this...

by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...o pay a visit to a hypochondriacal 
friend, and also to see the mining in the Hartz mountains. The ode 
alternately describes, in a very fragmentary and peculiar manner, 
the naturally happy disposition of the Poet himself and the unhappiness 
of his friend; it pictures the wildness of the road and the dreariness 
of the prospect, which is relieved at one spot by the distant sight 
of a town, a very vague allusion to which is made in the third strophe; 
it recalls the hun...Read more of this...

by Duhamel, Denise
...ng," I tell him, "but you have to try too."
"Yes," he says, then makes tampo,
a sulking that the book Culture Shock describes as
"subliminal hostility . . . withdrawal of customary cheerfulness
in the presence of the one who has displeased" him.
The book says it's up to me to make things all right,
"to restore goodwill, not by talking the problem out,
but by showing concern about the wounded person's
well-being." Forget it, I think, even though I know
...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Describes poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs