Famous Epistles Poems by Famous Poets

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

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An Essay on Man in Four Epistles: Epistle 1

...To Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke
Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things 
To low ambition, and the pride of kings.
Let us (since life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die)
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;
A mighty maze! but not without a plan;
A wild, where weeds and flow'rs promiscuous shoot;
Or garden, tempting wi...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander


Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle IV To Richard Boyle

...Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu se 
Impediat verbis lassas onerantibus aures: 
Et sermone opus est modo tristi, saepe jocoso, 
Defendente vicem modo Rhetoris atque Poetae, 
Interdum urbani, parcentis viribus, atque
Extenuantis eas consulto.
(Horace, Satires, I, x, 17-22)
'Tis strange, the miser should his cares employ 
To gain those riches he ...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander

Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot

...Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigu'd, I said, 
Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead.
The dog-star rages! nay 'tis past a doubt,
All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out:
Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand,
They rave, recite, and madden round the land.

What walls can guard me, or what shades can hide?
They pierce my thickets, through my grot t...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander

Hymn 53

...bless'd;
The doctrines are divinely true,
Fit for reproof and comfort too.

Ye British isles, who read his love
In long epistles from above,
(He hath not sent his sacred word
To every land,) praise ye the Lord....Read more of this...
by Watts, Isaac

Imitations of Horace: The First Epistle of the Second Book

...Ne Rubeam, Pingui donatus Munere
(Horace, Epistles II.i.267)
While you, great patron of mankind, sustain 
The balanc'd world, and open all the main;
Your country, chief, in arms abroad defend,
At home, with morals, arts, and laws amend;
How shall the Muse, from such a monarch steal
An hour, and not defraud the public weal?
Edward and Henry, now the boast of fame,
And virtuous Alfred, a more sacred n...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander


Milton's Appeal To Cromwell

...oard 
 To speak my promptings. When awed strangers come 
 Who've seen Fox-Mazarin wince at the stings 
 In my epistles—and bring admiring votes 
 Of learned colleges, they strain to see 
 My figure in the glare—the usher utters, 
 "Behold and hearken! that's my Lord Protector's 
 Cousin—that, his son-in-law—that next"—who cares! 
 Some perfumed puppet! "Milton?" "He in black— 
 Yon silent scribe who trims their eloquence!" 
 Still 'chronicling small-beer,'—su...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

Piety

...The pig is taught by sermons and epistles
To think the God of Swine has snout and bristles....Read more of this...
by Bierce, Ambrose

The Task: Book IV The Winter Evening (excerpts)

...some;
To him indiff'rent whether grief or joy.
Houses in ashes, and the fall of stocks,
Births, deaths, and marriages, epistles wet
With tears that trickled down the writer's cheeks
Fast as the periods from his fluent quill,
Or charg'd with am'rous sighs of absent swains,
Or nymphs responsive, equally affect
His horse and him, unconscious of them all.
But oh th' important budget! usher'd in
With such heart-shaking music, who can say
What are its tidings? have our troops awak...Read more of this...
by Cowper, William

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