Famous Elite Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Requiem

by Anna Akhmatova
 Not under foreign skies
 Nor under foreign wings protected -
 I shared all this with my own people
 There, where misfortune had abandoned us.
 [1961]

INSTEAD OF A PREFACE

During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I
spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in
Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone 'picked me out'.
On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me,
her...Read more of this...

Bohemia

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Bohemia, o'er thy unatlassed borders 
How many cross, with half-reluctant feet, 
And unformed fears of dangers and disorders, 
To find delights, more wholesome and more sweet 
Than ever yet were known to the "elite."

Herein can dwell no pretence and no seeming; 
No stilted pride thrives in this atmosphere, 
Which stimulates a tendency to dreaming. 
The shores of the ideal...Read more of this...

Maktoob

by Alan Seeger
 A shell surprised our post one day 
And killed a comrade at my side. 
My heart was sick to see the way 
He suffered as he died. 

I dug about the place he fell, 
And found, no bigger than my thumb, 
A fragment of the splintered shell 
In warm aluminum. 

I melted it, and made a mould, 
And poured...Read more of this...

The Hosts

by Alan Seeger
 Purged, with the life they left, of all 
That makes life paltry and mean and small, 
In their new dedication charged 
With something heightened, enriched, enlarged, 
That lends a light to their lusty brows 
And a song to the rhythm of their tramping feet, 
These are the men that have taken vows, 
These are the hardy, the flower, the...Read more of this...

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