Famous Equals Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Lovers Complaint

...t,
Threw my affections in his charmed power,
Reserved the stalk and gave him all my flower.

'Yet did I not, as some my equals did,
Demand of him, nor being desired yielded;
Finding myself in honour so forbid,
With safest distance I mine honour shielded:
Experience for me many bulwarks builded
Of proofs new-bleeding, which remain'd the foil
Of this false jewel, and his amorous spoil.

'But, ah, who ever shunn'd by precedent
The destined ill she must herself assay?
Or forced e...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William


An Essay on Man in Four Epistles: Epistle 1

...s the rapt seraph that adores and burns;
To him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.X. 


Cease then, nor order imperfection name:
Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.
Know thy own point: This kind, this due degree
Of blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee.
Submit.--In this, or any other sphere,
Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear:
Safe in the hand of one disposing pow'r,
Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.
All n...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander

Anticipation

...sure fast,
Of youth's delight, when youth is past,
And thou art near thy prime? 

When those who were thy own compeers,
Equals in fortune and in years,
Have seen their morning melt in tears,
To clouded, smileless day;
Blest, had they died untried and young,
Before their hearts went wandering wrong,
Poor slaves, subdued by passions strong,
A weak and helpless prey! 

" Because, I hoped while they enjoyed,
And, by fulfilment, hope destroyed;
As children hope, with trustful brea...Read more of this...
by Brontë, Emily

Dæmonic Love

...each to each, from me to thee,
Perpetually,
Sharing all, daring all,
Levelling, misplacing
Each obstruction, it unites
Equals remote, and seeming opposites.
And ever and forever Love
Delights to build a road;
Unheeded Danger near him strides,
Love laughs, and on a lion rides.
But Cupid wears another face
Born into Dæmons less divine,
His roses bleach apace,
His nectar smacks of wine.
The Dæmon ever builds a wall,
Himself incloses and includes,
Solitude in solitudes:
In like ...Read more of this...
by Emerson, Ralph Waldo

EPISTLE II: TO A LADY (Of the Characters of Women)

...
To that each Passion turns, or soon or late; 
Love, if it makes her yield, must make her hate: 
Superiors? death! and Equals? what a curse! 
But an Inferior not dependant? worse. 
Offend her, and she knows not to forgive; 
Oblige her, and she'll hate you while you live: 
But die, and she'll adore you--Then the Bust 
And Temple rise--then fall again to dust. 
Last night, her Lord was all that's good and great; 
A Knave this morning, and his Will a Cheat. 
Strange! by the Mea...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander


Essay on Man

...the rapt Seraph that adores and burns; 
To him no high, no low, no great, no small; 
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.

X. Cease then, nor ORDER Imperfection name: 
Our proper bliss depends on what we blame. 
Know thy own point: This kind, this due degree 
Of blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee. 
Submit -- In this, or any other sphere, 
Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear: 
Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow'r, 
Or in the natal, or the mortal hour...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander

Faces

...g death-bell tolls there. 

3
Those then are really men—the bosses and tufts of the great round globe! 

Features of my equals, would you trick me with your creas’d and cadaverous march?
Well, you cannot trick me. 

I see your rounded, never-erased flow; 
I see neath the rims of your haggard and mean disguises. 

Splay and twist as you like—poke with the tangling fores of fishes or rats; 
You’ll be unmuzzled, you certainly will.

I saw the face of the most smear’d and slobber...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine

...of either's sleep has run
We leap to life like heralds of the sun;
We from the couch in roseate mornings gay
Salute as equals the exultant day
While they, the unworthy, unrewarded, they
The dank despisers of the Vine, arise
To watch grey dawns and mourn indifferent skies.

Forget them! Form the Dionysian ring
And pulse the ground, and Io, Io, sing.

Father Lenaean, to whom our strength belongs,
Our loves, our wars, our laughter and our songs,
Remember our inheritance, who pr...Read more of this...
by Belloc, Hilaire

Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (Part I)

...sh is not to us,
Nor the saint's vision.
We have the press for wafer;
Franchise for circumcision.

All men, in law, are equals.
Free of Peisistratus,
We choose a knave or an eunuch
To rule over us.

A bright Apollo,

tin andra, tin eroa, tina theon,
What god, man, or hero
Shall I place a tin wreath upon?

IV. 

These fought, in any case,
and some believing, pro domo, in any case ..

Some quick to arm,
some for adventure,
some from fear of weakness,
some from fear of censure,
...Read more of this...
by Pound, Ezra

Monna Innominata: A Sonnet of Sonnets

...io con lui. - Petrarca

"Love me, for I love you"--and answer me,
"Love me, for I love you"--so shall we stand
As happy equals in the flowering land
Of love, that knows not a dividing sea.
Love builds the house on rock and not on sand,
Love laughs what while the winds rave desperately;
And who hath found love's citadel unmann'd?
And who hath held in bonds love's liberty?
My heart's a coward though my words are brave
We meet so seldom, yet we surely part
So often; there's a pr...Read more of this...
by Rossetti, Christina

Paradise Lost: Book 01

...and bid 
What shall be right: farthest from him is best 
Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme 
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields, 
Where joy for ever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail, 
Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell, 
Receive thy new possessor--one who brings 
A mind not to be changed by place or time. 
The mind is its own place, and in itself 
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. 
What matter where, if I be still the same, 
And what I sho...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Paradise Lost: Book 05

...not with liberty, but well consist. 
Who can in reason then, or right, assume 
Monarchy over such as live by right 
His equals, if in power and splendour less, 
In freedom equal? or can introduce 
Law and edict on us, who without law 
Err not? much less for this to be our Lord, 
And look for adoration, to the abuse 
Of those imperial titles, which assert 
Our being ordained to govern, not to serve. 
Thus far his bold discourse without controul 
Had audience; when among the Se...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Part 9 of Trout Fishing in America

...SANDBOX MINUS JOHN

 DILLINGER EQUALS WHAT?





Often I return to the cover of Trout Fishing in America. I

took the baby and went down there this morning. They were

watering the cover with big revolving sprinklers. I saw some

bread lying on the grass. It had been put there to feed the

pigeons.

 The old Italians are always doing things like that. The

bread had been turned to paste b...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard

Salut au Monde

...due time to my side.) 

My spirit has pass’d in compassion and determination around the whole earth; 
I have look’d for equals and lovers, and found them ready for me in all lands;
I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them. 

13
O vapors! I think I have risen with you, and moved away to distant continents, and fallen
 down
 there, for reasons; 
I think I have blown with you, O winds; 
O waters, I have finger’d every shore with you. 

I have run through what any r...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Samson Agonistes

...retir'd there to sit a while and bemoan his
condition. Where he happens at length to be visited by certain
friends and equals of his tribe, which make the Chorus, who seek
to comfort him what they can ; then by his old Father Manoa, who
endeavours the like, and withal tells him his purpose to procure his
liberty by ransom; lastly, that this Feast was proclaim'd by the
Philistins as a day of Thanksgiving for thir deliverance from the
hands of Samson, which yet more troubles h...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

somewhere

...rt of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands...Read more of this...
by Cummings, Edward Estlin (E E)

Song of Myself

...an there is now.

Urge, and urge, and urge; 
Always the procreant urge of the world. 

Out of the dimness opposite equals advance—always substance and increase,
 always sex; 
Always a knit of identity—always distinction—always a breed of life. 

To elaborate is no avail—learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is
 so.

Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in
 the beams, 
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical, 
I a...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Emigrants: Book I

...ddy with pride, and as ye rise, forgetting
The dust ye lately left, with scorn look down
On those beneath ye (tho' your equals once
In fortune , and in worth superior still ,
They view the eminence, on which ye stand,
With wonder, not with envy; for they know
The means, by which ye reach'd it, have been such
As, in all honest eyes, degrade ye far
Beneath the poor dependent, whose sad heart
Reluctant pleads for what your pride denies);
Ye venal, worthless hirelings of a Court!...Read more of this...
by Turner Smith, Charlotte

The Gods Of Greece

...men, heroes, gods, harmonious then
Love wove sweet links and sympathies divine;
Blest Amathusia, heroes, gods, and men,
Equals before thy shrine!

Not to that culture gay,
Stern self-denial, or sharp penance wan!
Well might each heart be happy in that day--
For gods, the happy ones, were kin to man!
The beautiful alone the holy there!
No pleasure shamed the gods of that young race;
So that the chaste Camoenae favoring were,
And the subduing grace!

A palace every shrine;
Your...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von

The New Hieroglyphics

...book read Nature, two books
Inside an animal, instinct. Rice in bowl with chopsticks
denotes food. Figure 1 lying prone equals other.

Most emotions are mini-faces, and the speech 
balloon is ubiquitous. A bull inside one is dialect
for placards inside one. Sun and moon together

inside one is poetry. Sun and moon over palette,
over shoes etc are all art forms — but above
a cracked heart and champagne glass? Riddle that

and you're starting to think in World, whose grammar 
i...Read more of this...
by Murray, Les

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