Famous Doubles Poems by Famous Poets

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

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In Memory Of Major Robert Gregory

by William Butler Yeats
 I

Now that we're almost settled in our house
I'll name the friends that cannot sup with us
Beside a fire of turf in th' ancient tower,
And having talked to some late hour
Climb up the narrow winding stair to bed:
Discoverers of forgotten truth
Or mere companions of my youth,
All, all are in my thoughts to-night being dead.

 II

Always we'd have the new friend...Read more of this...

Spelling

by Margaret Atwood
 My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,
learning how to spell,
spelling,
how to make spells.

 *

I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
drew the curtains
so they could mainline words.

 *

A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child.
There is no either / or.
However.

 *

I return to the story
of the woman caught in...Read more of this...

Sonnet V

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET V. Quand' io movo i sospiri a chiamar voi. HE PLAYS UPON THE NAME LAURETA OR LAURA.  In sighs when I outbreathe your cherish'd name,That name which love has writ upon my heart,LAUd instantly upon my doting tongue,At the first thought of its sweet sound, is heard;Your REgal state, which...Read more of this...

Leaving Early

by Sylvia Plath
 Lady, your room is lousy with flowers.
When you kick me out, that's what I'll remember,
Me, sitting here bored as a loepard
In your jungle of wine-bottle lamps,
Velvet pillows the color of blood pudding
And the white china flying fish from Italy.
I forget you, hearing the cut flowers
Sipping their liquids from assorted pots,
Pitchers and Coronation goblets
Like Monday drunkards. The milky berries
Bow down,...Read more of this...

My World Is Pyramid

by Dylan Thomas
 I

Half of the fellow father as he doubles
His sea-sucked Adam in the hollow hulk,
Half of the fellow mother as she dabbles
To-morrow's diver in her horny milk,
Bisected shadows on the thunder's bone
Bolt for the salt unborn.

The fellow half was frozen as it bubbled
Corrosive spring out of the iceberg's crop,
The fellow seed and shadow as it babbled
The swing of milk was...Read more of this...

For the Better

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 A Quack, to no true Skill in Physick bred, 
With frequent Visits cursed his Patient's Bed; 
Enquiring, how he did his Broths digest, 
How chim'd his Pulse, and how he took his Rest:
If shudd'ring Cold by Burnings was pursu'd,
And at what time the Aguish Fit renew'd. 
The waining Wretch, each day become more faint, 
In like proportion doubles his...Read more of this...

Soldier an Sailor Too

by Rudyard Kipling
 As I was spittin' into the Ditch aboard o' the Crocodile,
I seed a man on a man-o'-war got up in the Reg'lars' style.
'E was scrapin' the paint from off of 'er plates, an' I sez to 'im, "'Oo are you?"
Sez 'e, "I'm a Jolly -- 'Er Majesty's Jolly -- soldier an' sailor too!"
Now 'is work begins by Gawd knows...Read more of this...

Homeward Bound

by Henry Van Dyke
 Home, for my heart still calls me;
Home, through the danger zone;
Home, whatever befalls me,
I will sail again to my own! 

Wolves of the sea are hiding
Closely along the way,
Under the water biding
Their moment to rend and slay. 

Black is the eagle that brands them,
Black are their hearts as the night,
Black is the hate that sends them
To murder but not...Read more of this...

from Venus and Adonis

by William Shakespeare
 But, lo! from forth a copse that neighbours by,
A breeding jennet, lusty, young, and proud,
Adonis' trampling courser doth espy,
And forth she rushes, snorts and neighs aloud;
The strong-neck'd steed, being tied unto a tree,
Breaketh his rein, and to her straight goes he.

Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds,
And now his woven girths he breaks asunder;
The bearing earth with his hard...Read more of this...

Old Pardon the Son of Reprieve

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 You never heard tell of the story? 
Well, now, I can hardly believe! 
Never heard of the honour and glory 
Of Pardon, the son of Reprieve? 
But maybe you're only a Johnnie 
And don't know a horse from a hoe? 
Well, well, don't get angry, my sonny, 
But, really, a young un should know. 
They bred him out back...Read more of this...

One Train May Hide Another

by Kenneth Koch
 (sign at a railroad crossing in Kenya)

In a poem, one line may hide another line,
As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.
That is, if you are waiting to cross
The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at
Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read
Wait until you have read the next line—
Then it...Read more of this...

On A Friends Absence

by William Strode
 Come, come, I faint: thy heavy stay
Doubles each houre of the day:
The winged hast of nimble love
Makes aged Time not seeme to move:
Did not the light,
And then the night
Instruct my sight
I should believe the Sunne forgot his flight.


Show not the drooping marygold
Whose leaves like grieving amber fold:
My longing nothing can explain
But soule and body rent in twain:
Did I not...Read more of this...

Seascape With Sun And Eagle

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
 Freer
than most birds
an eagle flies up
over San Francisco
freer than most places
soars high up
floats and glides high up
in the still
open spaces

flown from the mountains
floated down
far over ocean
where the sunset has begun
a mirror of itself

He sails high over
turning and turning
where seaplanes might turn
where warplanes might burn

He wheels about burning
in the red sun
climbs and glides
and doubles back upon himself
now over ocean
now over...Read more of this...

Moonset

by Carl Sandburg
 LEAVES of poplars pick Japanese prints against the west.
Moon sand on the canal doubles the changing pictures.
 The moon’s good-by ends pictures.
The west is empty. All else is empty. No moon-talk at all now.
 Only dark listening to dark....Read more of this...

Foster The Light

by Dylan Thomas
 Foster the light nor veil the manshaped moon,
Nor weather winds that blow not down the bone,
But strip the twelve-winded marrow from his circle;
Master the night nor serve the snowman's brain
That shapes each bushy item of the air
Into a polestar pointed on an icicle.

Murmur of spring nor crush the cockerel's eggs,
Nor hammer back a season in the figs,
But graft these...Read more of this...

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