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Famous Display Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Gibran, Kahlil
...ty I obey is the knowledge of guarding and acquiescing in the Natural Law of Justice. 

What justice does authority display when it kills the killer? When it imprisons the robber? When it descends on a neighborhood country and slays its people? What does justice think of the authority under which a killer punishes the one who kills, and a thief sentences the one who steals? 

You are my brother, and I love you; and Love is justice with its full intensity and dignity. ...Read more of this...



by Pope, Alexander
...ryly plain, without Invention's Aid,
Write dull Receits how Poems may be made:
These leave the Sense, their Learning to display,
And theme explain the Meaning quite away

You then whose Judgment the right Course wou'd steer,
Know well each ANCIENT's proper Character,
His Fable, Subject, Scope in ev'ry Page,
Religion, Country, Genius of his Age:
Without all these at once before your Eyes,
Cavil you may, but never Criticize.
Be Homer's Works your Study, and Delight,
Read th...Read more of this...

by Wheatley, Phillis
...he feather'd race resume,
Dart the bright eye, and shake the painted plume.

Ye shady groves, your verdant gloom display
To shield your poet from the burning day:
Calliope awake the sacred lyre,
While thy fair sisters fan the pleasing fire:
The bow'rs, the gales, the variegated skies
In all their pleasures in my bosom rise.

See in the east th' illustrious king of day!
His rising radiance drives the shades away--
But Oh! I feel his fervid beams too strong,...Read more of this...

by Sidney, Sir Philip
...is pen doth moue.
I can speake what I feele, and feele as much as they,
But thinke that all the map of my state I display
When trembling voyce brings forth, that I do Stella loue. 
VII 

When Nature made her chief worke, Stellas eyes,
In colour blacke why wrapt she beames so bright?
Would she in beamy blacke, like Painter wise,
Frame daintiest lustre, mixt of shades and light?
Or did she else that sober hue deuise,
In obiect best to knitt and strength our s...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...lept in beams of light.
God appears, and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night,
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day....Read more of this...



by Browning, Robert
...my faculty) 
With actually living?--Otherwise 
Where is the artist's vantage o'er the king? 
Because in my great epos I display 
How divers men young, strong, fair, wise, can act-- 
Is this as though I acted? if I paint, 
Carve the young Ph{oe}bus, am I therefore young? 
Methinks I'm older that I bowed myself 
The many years of pain that taught me art! 
Indeed, to know is something, and to prove 
How all this beauty might be enjoyed, is more: 
But, knowing nought, to enjoy is...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...as she spake, into her face there came
Light, as reflected from a silver flame:
Her long black hair swell'd ampler, in display
Full golden; in her eyes a brighter day
Dawn'd blue and full of love. Aye, he beheld
Phoebe, his passion! joyous she upheld
Her lucid bow, continuing thus; "Drear, drear
Has our delaying been; but foolish fear
Withheld me first; and then decrees of fate;
And then 'twas fit that from this mortal state
Thou shouldst, my love, by some unlook'd for c...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...
 Of craft and violence, and blood and ill, 
 And fire and shocking deeds, his sword was still 
 God's counterpoise displayed. Ever alert 
 More evil from the wretched to avert, 
 Those hapless ones who 'neath Heaven's vault at night 
 Raise suppliant hands. His lance loved not the plight 
 Of mouldering in the rack, of no avail, 
 His battle-axe slipped from supporting nail 
 Quite easily; 'twas ill for action base 
 To come so near that he the thing could trace. ...Read more of this...

by Dryden, John
...m:
Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command
Some peaceful province in acrostic land.
There thou may'st wings display and altars raise,
And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.
Or if thou would'st thy diff'rent talents suit,
Set thy own songs, and sing them to thy lute.
He said, but his last words were scarcely heard,
For Bruce and Longvil had a trap prepar'd,
And down they sent the yet declaiming bard.
Sinking he left his drugget robe behind,
Born u...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...itadel
O'erlooks the purging landscape's swell.
Let not unto the stones the day
Her lily and rose, her sea and land display;
Read the celestial sign!
Lo! the South answers to the North;
Bookworm, break this sloth urbane;
A greater Spirit bids thee forth,
Than the gray dreams which thee detain.

Mark how the climbing Oreads
Beckon thee to their arcades;
Youth, for a moment free as they,
Teach thy feet to feel the ground,
Ere yet arrive the wintry day
When Time thy feet...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...dge
Over Morello with squib and cracker.

XXXIII.

This time we'll shoot better game and bag 'em hot---
No mere display at the stone of Dante,
But a kind of sober Witanagemot
(Ex: ``Casa Guidi,'' _quod videas ante_)
Shall ponder, once Freedom restored to Florence,
How Art may return that departed with her. 
Go, hated house, go each trace of the Loraine's,
And bring us the days of Orgagna hither!

XXXIV.

How we shall prologize, how we shall perorate,
Utter fit...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...t the right-hand

tree. There were some garlic sausages and some bread sit-

ting in his wheelchair as if it were a display counter in a

strange grocery store.

 The baby ran down there and tried to make off with one of

his sausages.

 Trout Fishing in America Shorty was instantly alerted,

then he saw it was a baby and relaxed. He tried to coax her

to come over and sit on his legless lap. She hid behind his

wheelchair, staring past the metal at him, o...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...lone, I marry the bed. 
I break out of my body this way, 
an annoying miracle. Could I 
put the dream market on display? 
I am spread out. I crucify. 
My little plum is what you said. 
At night, alone, I marry the bed. 
Then my black-eyed rival came. 
The lady of water, rising on the beach, 
a piano at her fingertips, shame 
on her lips and a flute's speech. 
And I was the knock-kneed broom instead. 
At night, alone, I marry the bed. 
S...Read more of this...

by Atwood, Margaret
...ght swath in the discouraged grass.

But though the driveways neatly
sidestep hysteria
by being even, the roofs all display
the same slant of avoidance to the hot sky,
certain things:
the smell of spilled oil a faint
sickness lingering in the garages,
a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise,
a plastic hose poised in a vicious
coil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows


give momentary access to
the landscape behind or under
the future cracks in the plast...Read more of this...

by Goldsmith, Oliver
...ourtier glitters in brocade,
There the pale artist plies the sickly trade;
Here, while the proud their long-drawn pomps display,
There the black gibbet glooms beside the way.
The dome where Pleasure holds her midnight reign
Here, richly decked, admits the gorgeous train;
Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square,
The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare.
Sure scenes like these no troubles e'er annoy!
Sure these denote one universal joy!
Are these thy serious...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...Humanity learn to adore, 
For that is My spirit of life. 
Awake, arise to spiritual strife, 
And Thy revenge abroad display 
In terrors at the last Judgement Day. 
God’s mercy and long suffering 
Is but the sinner to judgement to bring. 
Thou on the Cross for them shalt pray— 
And take revenge at the Last Day.’ 
Jesus replied, and thunders hurl’d: 
‘I never will pray for the world. 
Once I did so when I pray’d in the Garden; 
I wish’d to take with Me a bod...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...e could not brook that his humility,
So little wonted, and so tremulous,
Should first before a stranger make such great display.

19
"Come here to-morrow as the bells ring noon,
I sail at the full sea, my daughter then
I will make known to you. 'Twill be a boon
If after I have bid good-by, and when
Her eyeballs scorch with watching me depart,
You bring her home again. She lives with one
Old serving-woman, who has brought her up.
But that is no friend for so fr...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...and Ardors, were no sooner read,
But all the Vision vanish'd from thy Head. 

And now, unveil'd, the Toilet stands display'd,
Each Silver Vase in mystic Order laid.
First, rob'd in White, the Nymph intent adores
With Head uncover'd, the cosmetic Pow'rs.
A heav'nly Image in the Glass appears,
To that she bends, to that her Eyes she rears;
Th' inferior Priestess, at her Altar's side,
Trembling, begins the sacred Rites of Pride.
Unnumber'd Treasures ope at once,...Read more of this...

by Petrarch, Francesco
...PAN>That bound me, and, alas! now sets me free:How Fortune doth her fickleness display!None ever grieved for loss of libertyOr doom of death as I for freedom grieve,And life prolong'd, who only ask to die.Due to the world it had been her to leave,And me, of earlier birth, to have laid low,Read more of this...

by Dyke, Henry Van
...od down the weak; the helpless poor
Groaned under burdens grievous to endure.
The nation's wealth was spent in vain display,
And weakness wore the nation's heart away.

Yet think not Earth is blind to human woes ---
Man has more friends and helpers than he knows;
And when a patient people are oppressed,
The land that bore them feels it in her breast.
Spirits of field and flood, of heath and hill,
Are grieved and angry at the spreading ill;
The trees complain toget...Read more of this...

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