Famous Ends Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Hanchen the Maid of the Mill

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Near the village of Udorf, on the banks of the Rhine,
There lived a miller and his family, once on a time;
And there yet stands the mill in a state of decay,
And concerning the miller and his family, attend to my lay. 

The miller and his family went to Church one Sunday morn,
Leaving behind their darling child, the youngest born,
In...Read more of this...

An Alphabet of Famous Goops

by Gelett Burgess
 AN ALPHABET OF FAMOUS GOOPS.
Which you 'll Regard with Yells and Whoops.
Futile Acumen! 
For you Yourselves are Doubtless Dupes
Of Failings Such as Mar these Groups --
We all are Human!

1 ABEDNEGO was Meek and Mild; he Softly Spoke, he Sweetly Smiled.
2 He never Called his Playmates Names, and he was Good in Running Games;
3 But he was Often in Disgrace...Read more of this...

To the President of Magdalen College Oxford

by Robert Seymour Bridges
 Since now from woodland mist and flooded clay 
I am fled beside the steep Devonian shore, 
Nor stand for welcome at your gothic door, 
'Neath the fair tower of Magdalen and May, 
Such tribute, Warren, as fond poets pay 
For generous esteem, I write, not more 
Enhearten'd than my need is, reckoning o'er 
My life-long wanderings on the heavenly...Read more of this...

An answer to Various Bards

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Well, I've waited mighty patient while they all came rolling in, 
Mister Lawson, Mister Dyson, and the others of their kin, 
With their dreadful, dismal stories of the Overlander's camp, 
How his fire is always smoky, and his boots are always damp; 
And they paint it so terrific it would fill one's soul with gloom -- 
But you know...Read more of this...

Book Ends

by Tony Harrison
 I

Baked the day she suddenly dropped dead
we chew it slowly that last apple pie.

Shocked into sleeplessness you're scared of bed.
We never could talk much, and now don't try.

You're like book ends, the pair of you, she'd say,
Hog that grate, say nothing, sit, sleep, stare…

The 'scholar' me, you, worn out on poor pay,
only our silence made us seem a pair.

Not...Read more of this...

To the Name above every Name the Name of Jesus

by Richard Crashaw
 I sing the Name which None can say
But touch’t with An interiour Ray:
The Name of our New Peace; our Good:
Our Blisse: and Supernaturall Blood:
The Name of All our Lives and Loves.
Hearken, And Help, ye holy Doves!
The high-born Brood of Day; you bright
Candidates of blissefull Light,
The Heirs Elect of Love; whose Names belong
Unto The everlasting life of Song;
All ye wise...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 04: 06: Cinema

by Conrad Aiken
 As evening falls,
The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls
Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving,
Moving like music, secret and rich and warm.
How shall we live to-night, where shall we turn?
To what new light or darkness yearn?
A thousand winding stairs lead down before us;
And one by one in myriads we descend
By lamplit flowered walls, long balustrades,
Through half-lit...Read more of this...

A Ballad of Jakkko Hill

by Rudyard Kipling
 One moment bid the horses wait,
 Since tiffin is not laid till three,
Below the upward path and straight
 You climbed a year ago with me.
Love came upon us suddenly
 And loosed -- an idle hour to kill --
A headless, armless armory
 That smote us both on Jakko Hill.

Ah Heaven! we would wait and wait 
 Through Time and to...Read more of this...

The Place Where The Rainbow Ends

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
There's a fabulous story
Full of splendor and glory,
That Arabian legends transcends;
Of the wealth without measure,
The coffers of treasure,
At the place where the rainbow ends.
Oh, many have sought it,
And all would have bought it,
With the blood we so recklessly spend;
But none has uncovered,
The gold, nor discovered
The spot at the rainbow's end.
They have sought it in battle,
And e'en where the rattle
Of dice...Read more of this...

Goody for Our Side and Your Side Too

by Ogden Nash
 Foreigners are people somewhere else,
Natives are people at home;
If the place you’re at
Is your habitat,
You’re a foreigner, say in Rome.
But the scales of Justice balance true,
And tit leads into tat,
So the man who’s at home
When he stays in Rome
Is abroad when he’s where you’re at.

When we leave the limits of the land in which
Our birth certificates sat us,
It does...Read more of this...

To Kate. (In Lieu Of A Valentine)

by Ellis Parker Butler
 Sweet Love and I had oft communed;
 We were, indeed, great friends,
And oft I sought his office, near
 Where Courtship Alley ends.

I used to sit with him, and smoke,
 And talk of your blue eyes,
And argue how I best might act
 To make your heart my prize.

He always seemed to have much time
 To hear me tell my joy,
So...Read more of this...

Another Reason Why I Dont Keep A Gun In The House

by Billy Collins
 The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking,...Read more of this...

Stout Marches Lead To Certain Ends

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 STOUT marches lead to certain ends,
We seek no Holy Grail, my friends -
That dawn should find us every day
Some fraction farther on our way.

The dumb lands sleep from east to west,
They stretch and turn and take their rest.
The cock has crown in the steading-yard,
But priest and people slumber hard.

We two are early forth, and hear
The nations snoring far and...Read more of this...

My Last Will

by Sir Walter Raleigh
 When I am safely laid away, 
Out of work and out of play, 
Sheltered by the kindly ground 
From the world of sight and sound, 
One or two of those I leave 
Will remember me and grieve, 
Thinking how I made them gay 
By the things I used to say; 
-- But the crown of their distress 
Will be...Read more of this...

Under Siege

by Mahmoud Darwish
 Here on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time 
Close to the gardens of broken shadows, 
We do what prisoners do, 
And what the jobless do: 
We cultivate hope. 

*** 
A country preparing for dawn. We grow less intelligent 
For we closely watch the hour of victory: 
No night in our night lit up...Read more of this...

Where the Sidewalk Ends

by Shel Silverstein
 There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We...Read more of this...

All Souls Night

by William Butler Yeats
 Epilogue to "A Vision'

MIDNIGHT has come, and the great Christ Church Bell
And may a lesser bell sound through the room;
And it is All Souls' Night,
And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel
Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come;
For it is a ghost's right,
His element is so fine
Being sharpened by his death,
To drink from the wine-breath
While our gross palates drink...Read more of this...

Refrain

by Helen Hunt Jackson
 Of all the songs which poets sing 
The ones which are most sweet 
Are those which at close intervals 
A low refrain repeat; 
Some tender word, some syllable, 
Over and over, ever and ever, 
While the song lasts, 
Altering never, 
Music if sung, music if said, 
Subtle like some golden thread 
A shuttle casts, 
In and out on a...Read more of this...

The Waving Of The Corn

by Sidney Lanier
 Ploughman, whose gnarly hand yet kindly wheeled
Thy plough to ring this solitary tree
With clover, whose round plat, reserved a-field,
In cool green radius twice my length may be --
Scanting the corn thy furrows else might yield,
To pleasure August, bees, fair thoughts, and me,
That here come oft together -- daily I,
Stretched prone in summer's mortal ecstasy,
Do stir with thanks to thee,...Read more of this...

From Loves First Fever To Her Plague

by Dylan Thomas
 From love's first fever to her plague, from the soft second
And to the hollow minute of the womb,
From the unfolding to the scissored caul,
The time for breast and the green apron age
When no mouth stirred about the hanging famine,
All world was one, one windy nothing,
My world was christened in a stream of milk.
And earth and sky were as one...Read more of this...

The Tearful Tale Of Captain Dan

by Ellis Parker Butler
 A sinner was old Captain Dan;
 His wives guv him no rest:
He had one wife to East Skiddaw
 And one to Skiddaw West.

Now Ann Eliza was the name
 Of her at East Skiddaw;
She was the most cantankerous
 Female you ever saw.

I don’t know but one crosser-grained,
 And of this Captain Dan
She was the wife at Skiddaw West—
 She was...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...

The Months have ends -- the Years -- a knot

by Emily Dickinson
 The Months have ends -- the Years -- a knot --
No Power can untie
To stretch a little further
A Skein of Misery --

The Earth lays back these tired lives
In her mysterious Drawers --
Too tenderly, that any doubt
An ultimate Repose --

The manner of the Children --
Who weary of the Day --
Themself -- the noisy Plaything
They cannot put away --...Read more of this...

Commination

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 He that is filthy let him be filthy still. 
Rev. 22.11 

Like John on Patmos, brooding on the Four 
Last Things, I meditate the ruin of friends 
Whose loss, Lord, brings this grand new curse to mind 
Now send me foes worth cursing, or send more 
- Since means should be proportionate to ends - 
For mine are few...Read more of this...

Almswomen

by Edmund Blunden
    At Quincey's moat the squandering village ends,
    And there in the almshouse dwell the dearest friends
    Of all the village, two old dames that cling
    As close as any trueloves in the spring.
    Long, long ago they passed threescore-and-ten,
    And in...Read more of this...

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