Famous Elected Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Elected poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous elected poems. These examples illustrate what a famous elected poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
...Deil wad hae’t,
I rade that road before.
Suppose I take a spurt, and mix
Amang the wilds o’ Politics—
Electors and elected,
Where dogs at Court (sad sons of bitches!)
Septennially a madness touches,
Till all the land’s infected.
All hail! Drumlanrig’s haughty Grace,
Discarded remnant of a race
Once godlike-great in story;
Thy forbears’ virtues all contrasted,
The very name of Douglas blasted,
Thine that inverted glory!
Hate, envy, oft the Douglas bore,
But thou ha...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...hat the others (oh, how artful) formed the politic design
To send him to the reichstag; so, one dull November day,
They elected him a member from the Rhine!
Then the other members said:
"Gott im Himmel! what a head!"
But they marvelled when his speeches they listened to or read;
And presently they cried:
"There must be heaps inside
Of the smooth and shiny cranium his constituents deride!"
Well, when at last he up 'nd died--long past his ninetieth year--
The strangest and the...Read more of this...
by
Field, Eugene
...my lips your name.
II
You loved me on that moonlit night long since.
You were my queen and I the charming prince
Elected from a world of mortal men.
You loved me once. . . . What pity was it, then,
You loved not Love. . . . Deep in the emerald west,
Like a returning caravel caressed
By breezes that load all the ambient airs
With clinging fragrance of the bales it bears
From harbors where the caravans come down,
I see over the roof-tops of the town
The new moon ...Read more of this...
by
Seeger, Alan
...ioned gaze.
It comes,¡ªthe beautiful, the free,
The crown of all humanity,¡ª
In silence and alone
To seek the elected one. 20
It lifts the boughs, whose shadows deep
Are Life's oblivion, the soul's sleep,
And kisses the closed eyes
Of him who slumbering lies.
O weary hearts! O slumbering eyes! 25
O drooping souls, whose destinies
Are fraught with fear and pain,
Ye shall be loved again!
No one is so accursed by fate,
No one so utterly desola...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...
The world by sin, does by the same extend.
Hence that blest day still counterpos?d wastes,
The ill delaying what the elected hastes;
Hence landing nature to new seas is tossed,
And good designs still with their authors lost.
And thou, great Cromwell, for whose happy birth
A mould was chosen out of better earth;
Whose saint-like mother we did lately see
Live out an age, long as a pedigree;
That she might seem (could we the Fall dispute),
T' have smelled the blossom...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
.../p>then, well, i thought the sky i'll do a big blue sky poem but all the clouds have winged low since no-Dick was elected so i thought again and it occurred to me maybe i shouldn't write at all but clean my gun and check my kerosene supply perhaps these are not poetic times at all ...Read more of this...
by
Giovanni, Nikki
...iends?”
Lancelot said. “They live that have not any.
Why do they live, Gawaine? Ask why, and answer.”
Two men of an elected eminence,
They stood for a time silent. Then Gawaine,
Acknowledging the ghost of what was gone,
Put out his hand: “Rather, I say, why ask?
If I be not the friend of Lancelot,
May I be nailed alive along the ground
And emmets eat me dead. If I be not
The friend of Lancelot, may I be fried
With other liars in the pans of hell.
What item otherwis...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...s-masks and body-bags,
our air-craft rain down
fire and destruction,
our space-craft broadcast
lies and corruption,
our elected parliaments
parrot their rhetoric
of peace and democracy
while the truth we deny
returns in our dreams
of Armageddon,
the death-wish, the arms-trade,
hatred and slaughter
profitable employment
of our thriving cities,
the arms-race
to the end of the world
of our postmodern,
post-Christian,
post-human nations,
progress to the nihil
of our spent civili...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...arting.
Indicter, who is your claimant?
Bell at the gate. Spiderweb iron bridge.
Cloak, video, aroma, rue, what is your
Elected silence, where was your seed?
What is Imagination
But your lost child born to give birth to you?
Dire one. Desired one.
Savior, sentencer--
Absence,
Or presence ever at play:
Let those scorn you who never
Starved in your dearth. If I
Dare to disparage
Your harp of shadows I taste
Wormwood and motor oil, I pour
Ashes on my head. You are the wound. ...Read more of this...
by
Pinsky, Robert
...pation:
In point of fact, if you must know,
We used to call him years ago,
THE MAYOR AND CORPORATION!
"The day he was elected Mayor
I KNOW that every Sprite meant
To vote for ME, but did not dare -
He was so frantic with despair
And furious with excitement.
"When it was over, for a whim,
He ran to tell the King;
And being the reverse of slim,
A two-mile trot was not for him
A very easy thing.
"So, to reward him for his run
(As it was baking hot,
And he was over twenty s...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...o fortunate
As to be told their task and to be given
A skill to do it with a tool too keen
For timid safety, bow your elected head
Under the stars tonight, and whip your devils
Each to his nest in hell. Forget your days,
And so forgive the years that may not be
So many as to be more than you may need
For your particular consistency
In your peculiar folly. You are counting
Some fewer years than forty at your heels;
And they have not pursued your gait so fast
As your o...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...his is where I live!"
Each screaming
"Get up! Stop dreaming!"
Roosters, what are you projecting?
You, whom the Greeks elected
to shoot at on a post, who struggled
when sacrificed, you whom they labeled
"Very combative..."
what right have you to give
commands and tell us how to live,
cry "Here!" and "Here!"
and wake us here where are
unwanted love, conceit and war?
The crown of red
set on your little head
is charged with all your fighting blood
Yes, that excrescence
mak...Read more of this...
by
Bishop, Elizabeth
...oose about
Grow up and perish, as the summer flie,
Heads without name no more rememberd,
But such as thou hast solemnly elected,
With gifts and graces eminently adorn'd
To some great work, thy glory,
And peoples safety, which in part they effect:
Yet toward these thus dignifi'd, thou oft
Amidst thir highth of noon,
Changest thy countenance, and thy hand with no regard
Of highest favours past
From thee on them, or them to thee of service.
Nor only dost degrade them, or remit
...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...the slave ceases, and the master of slaves ceases;
Where the populace rise at once against the never-ending audacity of elected persons;
Where fierce men and women pour forth, as the sea to the whistle of death pours its
sweeping
and
unript waves;
Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of inside authority;
Where the citizen is always the head and ideal—and President, Mayor, Governor, and what
not,
are
agents for pay;
Where children are taught to ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...Elected Silence, sing to me
And beat upon my whorlèd ear,
Pipe me to pastures still and be
The music that I care to hear.
Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb:
It is the shut, the curfew sent
From there where all surrenders come
Which only makes you eloquent.
Be shellèd, eyes, with double dark
And find the uncreated light:
This ruck and reel which you rem...Read more of this...
by
Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...under it
and in need of some paint. It was no more
than a group of boards. But you hoisted her, rigged her.
She's been elected.
My nerves are turned on. I hear them like
musical instruments. Where there was silence
the drums, the strings are incurably playing. You did this.
Pure genius at work. Darling, the composer has stepped
into fire....Read more of this...
by
Nesbit, Edith
...they were dust and then
We found them living by their dying.
Like dogs we penmen have our day,
To brief best-sellerdom elected;
And then, "thumbs down," we slink away
And die forgotten and neglected.
Ah well, my lyric fling I've had;
A thousand bits of verse I've minted;
And some, alas! were very bad,
And some, alack! were best unprinted.
But if I've made my muse a bawd
(Since I am earthy as a ditch is),
I'll answer humbly to my God:
Most men at times have toyed with bitche...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...'s simple Art pursue
Thro' crusting Frosts, and penetrating Dew:
Till wondring Jesse saw six Brothers past,
And Thou Elected, Thou the Least and Last;
A Sceptre to thy Rural Hand convey'd,
And in thy Bosom Royal Beauties laid;
A lovely Princess made thy Prize that Day,
When on the shaken Ground the Giant lay
Stupid in Death, beyond the Reach of Cries
That bore thy shouted Fame to list'ning Skies,
And drove the flying Foe as fast away,
As Winds, of old, Locusts to E...Read more of this...
by
Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...ed in bronze and gold her wasted emperors,
This is the hour when the infinite penetrates the heart of man.
Like the elected orb of the great sacred haloes
With which the head of future saints should be encircled,
The moon in blossom smiles her ethereal dreams
In sidereal incense brushing against the holy land.
Far in the blue sands of the biblical desert,
Reclining in her secrecy and beatitude,
The Egyptian monster, with her half-open eye,
Gazes at eternity amid ...Read more of this...
by
Delville, Jean
...e was, in which temptingly spread
All that elaborative nature can.
Matchless potential! but unlimited
Only so long as I elected nothing;
Simply to choose stopped all ways up but one,
And sent the tease-birds from the bushes flapping.
No future now. I and you now, alone.
So for your face I have exchanged all faces,
For your few properties bargained the brisk
Baggage, the mask-and-magic-man's regalia.
Now you become my boredom and my failure,
Another way of suffering, a risk,
...Read more of this...
by
Larkin, Philip
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Elected poems.