Famous Eight Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

eight roundels

by Rg Gregory
 (roundel: variation of the rondeau
consisting of three stanzas of three
lines each, linked together with but
two rhymes and a refrain at the end
of the first and third group)



1.
the blind rose

today's fullness is tomorrow's gone
(the next day after no one knows)
last year's dream now feeds upon
 what blindly grows

imagine if you like a rose
on which no likely sun has shone
a darkness...Read more of this...

A Bushmans Song

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 I’M travellin’ down the Castlereagh, and I’m a station hand, 
I’m handy with the ropin’ pole, I’m handy with the brand, 
And I can ride a rowdy colt, or swing the axe all day, 
But there’s no demand for a station-hand along the Castlereagh. + 

So it’s shift, boys, shift, for there isn’t the slightest doubt 
That we’ve got...Read more of this...

Song of My Cottage Unroofed By Autumn Gales

by Du Fu
 Eight month autumn high wind angry howl Sweep off my house on three layers thatch Thatch fly across river sprinkle river beside High ones catch stick great forest top Low ones float turn sink pool hollow South village mob children bully me old without strength Bear able to face to steal be robbers  Openly carry thatch...Read more of this...

The Battle of Abu Klea

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Ye sons of Mars, come join with me,
And sing in praise of Sir Herbert Stewart's little army,
That made ten thousand Arabs flee
At the charge of the bayonet at Abu Klea. 

General Stewart's force was about fifteen hundred all told,
A brave little band, but, like lions bold,
They fought under their brave and heroic commander,
As gallant and as skilful as the...Read more of this...

Eight forms has Shiva

by Kalidasa
Eight forms has Shiva, lord of all and king:
And these are water, first created thing;
And fire, which speeds the sacrifice begun;
The priest; and time's dividers, moon and sun;
The all-embracing ether, path of sound;
The earth, wherein all seeds of life are found;
And air, the breath of life: may he draw near,
Revealed in these, and bless those gathered here....Read more of this...

Ten Powers, and nine spheres, eight heavens made He,

by Omar Khayyam
Ten Powers, and nine spheres, eight heavens made He,
And planets seven, of six sides, as we see,
Five senses, and four elements, three souls,
Two worlds, but only one, O man, like thee....Read more of this...

The Holy War

by Rudyard Kipling
 "For here lay the excellent wisdom of him that built Mansoul, thatthe
walls could never be broken down nor hurt by the most mighty adverse
potentate unless the townsmen gave consent thereto."--Bunyan's Holy War.)


A tinker out of Bedford,
A vagrant oft in quod,
A privet under Fairfax,
A minister of God--


Two hundred years and thirty
 Ere Armageddon came
His single hand portrayed it,
 And Bunyan...Read more of this...

Sheep

by Carl Sandburg
 Thousands of sheep, soft-footed, black-nosed sheep--
one by one going up the hill and over the fence--one by
one four-footed pattering up and over--one by one wiggling
their stub tails as they take the short jump and go
over--one by one silently unless for the multitudinous
drumming of their hoofs as they move on and go over--
thousands and thousands of them in the grey...Read more of this...

Dream Song 60: Afters eight years be less dan eight percent

by John Berryman
 Afters eight years, be less dan eight percent,
distinguish' friend, of coloured wif de whites
in de School, in de Souf.
-”Is coloured gobs, is coloured officers,
Mr Bones. Dat's nuffin?-”Uncle Tom,
sweep shut yo mouf,

is million blocking from de proper job,
de fairest houses & de churches eben.
-”You may be right, Friend Bones.
Indeed you is. Defy flyin ober de world,
de pilots, ober ofays. Bit...Read more of this...

Nine from Eight

by Sidney Lanier
I was drivin' my two-mule waggin,
With a lot o' truck for sale,
Towards Macon, to git some baggin'
(Which my cotton was ready to bale),
And I come to a place on the side o' the pike
Whar a peert little winter branch jest had throw'd
The sand in a kind of a sand-bar like,
And I seed, a leetle ways up the road,
A man squattin'...Read more of this...

The Trail Of Ninety-Eight

by Robert William Service
 Gold! We leapt from our benches. Gold! We sprang from our stools.
Gold! We wheeled in the furrow, fired with the faith of fools.
Fearless, unfound, unfitted, far from the night and the cold,
Heard we the clarion summons, followed the master-lure--Gold!

Men from the sands of the Sunland; men from the woods of the West;
Men from the farms and the cities, into...Read more of this...

Music Swims Back To Me

by Anne Sexton
 Wait Mister. Which way is home?
They turned the light out
and the dark is moving in the corner.
There are no sign posts in this room,
four ladies, over eighty,
in diapers every one of them.
La la la, Oh music swims back to me
and I can feel the tune they played
the night they left me
in this private institution on a hill.

Imagine it. A...Read more of this...

Boxers Wife

by Robert William Service
 She phoned them when the Round was Eight:
 'How is my Joe?' they heard her say.
They answered: 'Gee! He's going great,
 Your guy's Okay.'

She phoned them when the Round was Nine:
 'How is my hero in the fray?'
They yelled: 'He leads; he's doing fine,--
 Joe's sure Okay.'

She phoned them when the Round was Ten:
 'Is it still Okay with...Read more of this...

The Pencil Seller

by Robert William Service
 A pencil, sir; a penny -- won't you buy?
I'm cold and wet and tired, a sorry plight;
Don't turn your back, sir; take one just to try;
I haven't made a single sale to-night.
Oh, thank you, sir; but take the pencil too;
I'm not a beggar, I'm a business man.
Pencils I deal in, red and black and blue;
It's hard, but still I...Read more of this...

Hard Rock Returns To Prison From The Hospital For The Criminal Insane

by Etheridge Knight
 Hard Rock/ was/ "known not to take no **** 
From nobody," and he had the scars to prove it:
Split purple lips, lumbed ears, welts above
His yellow eyes, and one long scar that cut
Across his temple and plowed through a thick 
Canopy of kinky hair. 

The WORD/ was/ that Hard Rock wasn't a mean ******
Anymore, that the doctors had bored...Read more of this...

The Tenor Man

by Adrian Green
 Pottering around the stage,
a hyperactive ancient in his own backyard -
independent of the band it seems.

Disrhythmic shuffling of ashtray,
beer, a pack of cigarettes,
adjusting microphones,

then in the middle eight
he draws, exhales, and catches breath,
stoops forward to the mouthpiece

and blows,
  a tumbling counterpoint,
scales soaring from his horn.

The melody flows

until the break,
and then he shoulders arms,
a truce between the music and...Read more of this...

The Burning of the Peoples Variety Theatre Aberdeen

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1896, and on the 30th of September,
Which many people in Aberdeen will long remember;
The burning of the People's Variety Theatre, in Bridge Place
Because the fire spread like lightning at a rapid pace. 

The fire broke out on the stage, about eight o'clock,
Which gave to the audience a very fearful shock;
Then a stampede ensued, and...Read more of this...

Eight OClock

by A E Housman
 He stood, and heard the steeple 
Sprinkle the quarters on the morning town. 
One, two, three, four, to market-place and people 
It tossed them down. 

Strapped, noosed, nighing his hour, 
He stood and counted them and cursed his luck; 
And then the clock collected in the tower 
Its strength, and struck....Read more of this...

World Take Good Notice

by Walt Whitman
 WORLD, take good notice, silver stars fading, 
Milky hue ript, weft of white detaching, 
Coals thirty-eight, baleful and burning, 
Scarlet, significant, hands off warning, 
Now and henceforth flaunt from these shores. 5...Read more of this...

Puttin' The Baby Away

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Eight of 'em hyeah all tol' an' yet
Dese eyes o' mine is wringin' wet;
My haht's a-achin' ha'd an' so',
De way hit nevah ached befo';
My soul's a-pleadin', "Lawd, give back
Dis little lonesome baby black,
Dis one, dis las' po' he'pless one
Whose little race was too soon run."
Po' Little Jim, des fo' yeahs ol'
A-layin' down so still an' col'.
Somehow hit don' seem ha'dly...Read more of this...

Autobiography

by Nazim Hikmet
 I was born in 1902
I never once went back to my birthplace
I don't like to turn back
at three I served as a pasha's grandson in Aleppo
at nineteen as a student at Moscow Communist University
at forty-nine I was back in Moscow as the Tcheka Party's guest
and I've been a poet since I was fourteen
some people know all about plants some...Read more of this...

On the Night of a Friends Wedding

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 If ever I am old, and all alone, 
I shall have killed one grief, at any rate; 
For then, thank God, I shall not have to wait 
Much longer for the sheaves that I have sown. 
The devil only knows what I have done,
But here I am, and here are six or eight 
Good friends, who most ingenuously prate...Read more of this...

Home After Three Months Away

by Robert Lowell
 Gone now the baby's nurse,
a lioness who ruled the roost
and made the Mother cry.
She used to tie
gobbets of porkrind to bowknots of gauze—
three months they hung like soggy toast
on our eight foot magnolia tree,
and helped the English sparrows
weather a Boston winter.

Three months, three months!
Is Richard now himself again?
Dimpled with exaltation,
my daughter holds her levee in the tub.
Our noses rub,
each...Read more of this...

The Sinking Fund Cried

by Thomas Moore
 ["Now what, we ask, is become of this Sinking Fund - these eight millions of surplus above expenditure, which were to reduce the interest of the national debt by the amount of four hundred thousand pounds annually? Where, indeed, is the Sinking Fund itself?" - The Times] 

Take your bell, take your bell,
Good Crier, and tell
To the Bulls and...Read more of this...

I cannot go to school today!

by Shel Silverstein
"I cannot go to school today"
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
"I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.

My mouth is wet, my throat is dry.
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox.

And there's one more - that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?
My leg is...Read more of this...

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