Famous Enterprise Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Among School Children

by William Butler Yeats
 I

I walk through the long schoolroom questioning;
A kind old nun in a white hood replies;
The children learn to cipher and to sing,
To study reading-books and histories,
To cut and sew, be neat in everything
In the best modern way - the children's eyes
In momentary wonder stare upon
A sixty-year-old smiling public man.

 II

I dream of a Ledaean body, bent
Above a sinking fire....Read more of this...

Persuasion

by John Drinkwater
Persuasion

I 	At any moment love unheralded
Comes, and is king. Then as, with a fall
Of frost, the buds upon the hawthorn spread
Are withered in untimely burial,
So love, occasion gone, his crown puts by,
And as a beggar walks unfriended ways,
With but remembered beauty to defy
The frozen sorrows of unsceptred days.
Or in that later travelling he comes
Upon a bleak oblivion, and tells
Himself, again,...Read more of this...

Womens Suffrage

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Fellow men! why should the lords try to despise
And prohibit women from having the benefit of the parliamentary Franchise?
When they pay the same taxes as you and me,
I consider they ought to have the same liberty. 

And I consider if they are not allowed the same liberty,
From taxation every one of them should be set free;
And if they are...Read more of this...

Motives

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 IF to a girl who loves us truly
Her mother gives instruction duly
In virtue, duty, and what not,--
And if she hearkens ne'er a jot,
But with fresh-strengthen'd longing flies

To meet our kiss that seems to burn,--

Caprice has just as much concerned
As love in her bold enterprise.

But if her mother can succeed
In gaining for her maxims heed,
And softening the girl's heart too,
So...Read more of this...

A Coat

by William Butler Yeats
 I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But he fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they'd wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked....Read more of this...

from the Ansty Experience

by Rg Gregory
 (a)
they seek to celebrate the word
not to bring their knives out on a poem
dissecting it to find a heart
whose beat lies naked on a table
not to score in triumph on a line
no sensitive would put a nostril to
but simply to receive it as an
offering glimpsing the sacred there

poem probes the poet's once-intention
but each time said budges its truth
afresh (leaving...Read more of this...

If I should die

by Emily Dickinson
 If I should die,
And you should live --
And time should gurgle on --
And morn should beam --
And noon should burn --
As it has usual done --
If Birds should build as early
And Bees as bustling go --
One might depart at option
From enterprise below!
'Tis sweet to know that stocks will stand
When we with Daisies lie --
That Commerce will continue --
And Trades...Read more of this...

When Gassy Thompson Struck It Rich

by Vachel Lindsay
 He paid a Swede twelve bits an hour 
Just to invent a fancy style
To spread the celebration paint
So it would show at least a mile.

Some things they did I will not tell.
They're not quite proper for a rhyme.
But I will say Yim Yonson Swede
Did sure invent a sunflower time.

One thing they did that I can tell 
And not offend...Read more of this...

Two Gardens in Linndale

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Two brothers, Oakes and Oliver, 
Two gentle men as ever were, 
Would roam no longer, but abide 
In Linndale, where their fathers died, 
And each would be a gardener.

“Now first we fence the garden through, 
With this for me and that for you,” 
Said Oliver.—“Divine!” said Oakes, 
“And I, while I raise artichokes, 
Will do what I was born...Read more of this...

The Long Love

by Sir Thomas Wyatt
 The long love that in my thought doth harbour, 
And in mine heart doth keep his residence, 
Into my face presseth with bold pretence, 
And therein campeth, spreading his banner. 
She that me learneth to love and suffer, 
And wills that my trust and lust's negligence 
Be reined by reason, shame, and reverence, 
With his hardiness taketh displeasure. 
Wherewithal,...Read more of this...

Marriage

by Marianne Moore
 This institution,
perhaps one should say enterprise
out of respect for which
one says one need not change one's mind
about a thing one has believed in,
requiring public promises
of one's intention
to fulfill a private obligation:
I wonder what Adam and Eve
think of it by this time,
this firegilt steel
alive with goldenness;
how bright it shows --
"of circular traditions and impostures,
committing many spoils,"
requiring all one's criminal ingenuity
to...Read more of this...

El Mahdi to the Australian Troops

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 And wherefore have they come, this warlike band, 
That o'er the ocean many a weary day 
Have tossed; and now beside Suakim's Bay, 
With faces stern and resolute, do stand, 
Waking the desert's echoes with the drum -- 
Men of Australia, wherefore have ye come? 
To keep the Puppet Khedive on the throne, 
To strike a blow for tyranny...Read more of this...

The Lovers of the Poor

by Gwendolyn Brooks
 arrive. The Ladies from the Ladies' Betterment
League
Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
Here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall. 
Cutting with knives served by their softest care,
Served by their...Read more of this...

Continuing To Live

by Philip Larkin
 Continuing to live -- that is, repeat
A habit formed to get necessaries --
Is nearly always losing, or going without.
 It varies.

This loss of interest, hair, and enterprise --
Ah, if the game were poker, yes,
You might discard them, draw a full house!
 But it's chess.

And once you have walked the length of your mind, what
You command is clear as a...Read more of this...

Canzone X

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 76] CANZONE X. Poichè per mio destino. IN PRAISE OF LAURA'S EYES: IN THEM HE FINDS EVERY GOOD, AND HE CAN NEVER CEASE TO PRAISE THEM.  Since then by destinyI am compell'd to sing the strong desire,Which here condemns me ceaselessly to sigh,May Love, whose quenchless fireExcites...Read more of this...

Two Sisters Of Persephone

by Sylvia Plath
 Two girls there are : within the house
One sits; the other, without.
Daylong a duet of shade and light
Plays between these. 

In her dark wainscoted room
The first works problems on
A mathematical machine.
Dry ticks mark time 

As she calculates each sum.
At this barren enterprise
Rat-shrewd go her squint eyes,
Root-pale her meager frame. 

Bronzed as earth, the second lies,
Hearing ticks blown gold
Like pollen...Read more of this...

A Tale of Two Cities

by Rudyard Kipling
 Where the sober-colored cultivator smiles
 On his byles;
Where the cholera, the cyclone, and the crow
 Come and go;
Where the merchant deals in indigo and tea,
 Hides and ghi;
Where the Babu drops inflammatory hints
 In his prints;
Stands a City -- Charnock chose it -- packed away
 Near a Bay --
By the Sewage rendered fetid, by the sewer
 Made impure,
By the...Read more of this...

The Torture of Cuauhtemoc

by Alan Seeger
 Their strength had fed on this when Death's white arms 
Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew, 
Curling across the jungle's ferny floor, 
Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides, 
Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold 
That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse, 
Not back to Seville and its sunny plains 
Winged their brief-biding dreams, but once...Read more of this...

From Cocoon forth a Butterfly

by Emily Dickinson
 From Cocoon forth a Butterfly
As Lady from her Door
Emerged -- a Summer Afternoon --
Repairing Everywhere --

Without Design -- that I could trace
Except to stray abroad
On Miscellaneous Enterprise
The Clovers -- understood --

Her pretty Parasol be seen
Contracting in a Field
Where Men made Hay --
Then struggling hard
With an opposing Cloud --

Where Parties -- Phantom as Herself --
To Nowhere -- seemed to go
In...Read more of this...

The Quids

by Laura Riding Jackson
 The little quids, the million quids,
The everywhere, everything, always quids,
The atoms of the Monoton—
Each turned three essences where it stood
And ground a gisty dust from its neighbors' edges
Until a powdery thoughtfall stormed in and out,
The cerebration of a slippery quid enterprise.
Each quid stirred.
The united quids
Waved through a sinuous decision.

The quids, that had never done anything before
But be, be, be,...Read more of this...

Triple Time

by Philip Larkin
 This empty street, this sky to blandness scoured,
This air, a little indistinct with autumn
Like a reflection, constitute the present --
A time traditionally soured,
A time unrecommended by event.

But equally they make up something else:
This is the furthest future childhood saw
Between long houses, under travelling skies,
Heard in contending bells --
An air lambent with adult enterprise,

And on another day will be the...Read more of this...

Sonnet XLVIII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XLVIII. Padre del ciel, dopo i perduti giorni. CONSCIOUS OF HIS FOLLY, HE PRAYS GOD TO TURN HIM TO A BETTER LIFE.  Father of heaven! after the days misspent,After the nights of wild tumultuous thought,In that fierce passion's strong entanglement,One, for my peace too lovely fair, had wrought;Vouchsafe that, by...Read more of this...

Chaplinesque

by Hart Crane
 We will make our meek adjustments,
Contented with such random consolations
As the wind deposits
In slithered and too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world, who find
A famished kitten on the step, and know
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
Or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, and to the final smirk
Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb
That slowly...Read more of this...

John Barleycorn

by Robert Burns
 There were three kings into the east,
Three kings both great and high,
An' they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn should die.

They took a plough and ploughed him down,
Put clods upon his head;
An' they hae sworn a solemn oath
John Barleycorn was dead.

But the cheerfu' spring came kindly on,
And show'rs began to fall;
John Barleycorn got up again,
And sore surprised them all.

The...Read more of this...

The Schoolmaster

by D. H. Lawrence
I

=A Snowy Day in School=

All the slow school hours, round the irregular hum of the class,
Have pressed immeasurable spaces of hoarse silence
Muffling my mind, as snow muffles the sounds that pass
Down the soiled street. We have pattered the lessons ceaselessly--

But the faces of the boys, in the brooding, yellow light
Have shone for me like a crowded constellation of stars,
Like full-blown...Read more of this...

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