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Famous Era Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...r clear what is meant by that phrase.
He has already forgotten all the Yiddish he used to know, and
 the people of that era are dying out one after another.
The number of witnesses keeps diminishing.
Soon there will be no one left to remind the others and their
 children.
That is why he came to this dry place where the bones have come
 to life.
To live in a state of perpetual war puts a tremendous burden on the
 population. As a visitor he felt he had to share that burden.
Wi...Read more of this...
by Lehman, David



...gh.

Your pedantry found its place in the Women's Movement.
You rose fast, seen suddenly as the morning star;
wrote the ERA
found the right man at last, a sensitive artist;
flying too high

not to crash. When the cancer caught you
you went on talk shows to say you had no fear
or faith.
In Baltimore we joked on your bed as you turned into
a witty wraith.

When you died I cleaned out your bureau drawers:
your usual disorder; an assortment of gorgeous wigs
and prosthetic breasts...Read more of this...
by Kizer, Carolyn
...lent.

We, the last who can still draw joy from cynicism.
We, whose cunning is not unlike despair.

A new, humorless generation is now arising
It takes in deadly earnest all we received with laughter.

5
Let your words speak not through their meanings
But through them against whom they are used.

Fashion your weapon from ambiguous words.
Consign clear words to lexical limbo.

Judge no words before the clerks have checked
In their card index by whom they were spoken.

The voic...Read more of this...
by Milosz, Czeslaw
...black that it can grow no blacker, it worsens, 
And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons....Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden
...ercing sight,
     Deep science, like a bashful maid retires,
And but the ardent breast her worth inspires;
By perseverance the coy fair is won,
And Genius, led by Study, wears the crown.
     But some there are who wish not to improve,
Who never can the path of knowledge love,
Whose souls almost with the dull body one,
With anxious care each mental pleasure shun.
Weak is the leveled, enervated mind,
And but while here to vegetate designed.
The torpid spirit mingli...Read more of this...
by Murray, Judith Sargent



...he forest's only part of a tree.
Who needs the whole girl if you've got her knee?
Sick of the dust raised by the modern era,
the Russian eye would rest on an Estonian spire.
I sit by the window. The dishes are done.
I was happy here. But I won't be again.

I wrote: The bulb looks at the flower in fear,
and love, as an act, lacks a verb; the zer-
o Euclid thought the vanishing point became
wasn't math--it was the nothingness of Time.
I sit by the window. And while I sit
my you...Read more of this...
by Brodsky, Joseph
...NFERNO


Inferno: Canto I



 Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura

ch? la diritta via era smarrita.

 Ahi quanto a dir qual era ? cosa dura

esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte

che nel pensier rinova la paura!

 Tant'? amara che poco ? pi? morte;

ma per trattar del ben ch'i' vi trovai,

dir? de l'altre cose ch'i' v'ho scorte.

 Io non so ben ridir com'i' v'intrai,

tant'era pien di sonno a quel punto

che la verace via abbandonai.

 Ma poi...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante
...Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ch? la diritta via era smarrita .

When I had journeyed half of our life's way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
for I had lost the path that does not stray.


Ahi quanto a dir qual era ? cosa dura
esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte
che nel pensier rinova la paura !

Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was,
that savage forest, dense and difficult,
which even in recall...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante
...WISDOM, AND THE PRIMAL LOVE. 


Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create 
se non etterne, e io etterno duro. 
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate ". 

BEFORE ME NOTHING BUT ETERNAL THINGS 
WERE MADE, AND I ENDURE ETERNALLY. 
ABANDON EVERY HOPE, WHO ENTER HERE. 


Queste parole di colore oscuro 
vid'io scritte al sommo d'una porta; 
per ch'io: «Maestro, il senso lor m'? duro ». 

These words-their aspect was obscure-I read 
inscribed above a gateway, and I said: 
"Master, their m...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante
...the bringer
of abundant days
is Time the destroyer —
In the Iron Age
the Kali Yuga
To whom can we pray
at the end of an era
but the Lord Shiva,
the Liberator, the purifier?

Our forests are felled,
our mountains eroded,
the wild places
where the beautiful animals
found food and sanctuary
we have desolated,
a third of our seas,
a third of our rivers
we have polluted
and the sea-creatures dying.
Our civilization’s
blind progress
in wrong courses
through wrong choices
has brough...Read more of this...
by Raine, Kathleen
...ys on which we meet:
Ah me, but where are now the songs I sang
When life was sweet because you call'd them sweet? 

2 

Era gi? 1'ora che volge il desio. - Dante
Ricorro al tempo ch' io vi vidi prima. - Petrarca

I wish I could remember that first day,
First hour, first moment of your meeting me,
If bright or dim the season, it might be
Summer or winter for aught I can say;
So unrecorded did it slip away,
So blind was I to see and to foresee,
So dull to mark the budding of my...Read more of this...
by Rossetti, Christina
...tmouth' needed to produce him.

I call her old. She has one family
Whose claim is good to being settled here
Before the era of colonization,
And before that of exploration even.
John Smith remarked them as be coasted by,
Dangling their legs and fishing off a wharf
At the Isles of Shoals, and satisfied himself
They weren't Red Indians but veritable
Pre-primitives of the white race, dawn people,
Like those who furnished Adam's sons with wives;
However uninnocent they may have b...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...scende;
 perch? appressando s? al suo disire,
nostro intelletto si profonda tanto,
che dietro la memoria non pu? ire.
 Veramente quant'io del regno santo
ne la mia mente potei far tesoro,
sar? ora materia del mio canto.
 O buono Appollo, a l'ultimo lavoro
fammi del tuo valor s? fatto vaso,
come dimandi a dar l'amato alloro.
 Infino a qui l'un giogo di Parnaso
assai mi fu; ma or con amendue
m'? uopo intrar ne l'aringo rimaso.
 Entra nel petto mio, e spira tue
s? come quando Ma...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante
...ui Caliopè alquanto surga,
 seguitando il mio canto con quel suono
di cui le Piche misere sentiro
lo colpo tal, che disperar perdono.
 Dolce color d'oriental zaffiro,
che s'accoglieva nel sereno aspetto
del mezzo, puro infino al primo giro,
 a li occhi miei ricominciò diletto,
tosto ch'io usci' fuor de l'aura morta
che m'avea contristati li occhi e 'l petto.
 Lo bel pianeto che d'amar conforta
faceva tutto rider l'oriente,
velando i Pesci ch'erano in sua scorta.
 I' mi volsi ...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante
...n this truth
in this faith we trust
For while we have our eyes on the future
history has its eyes on us
This is the era of just redemption
We feared at its inception
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert
How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
W...Read more of this...
by Gorman, Amanda
...anged by years, forgotten and forgetting,
Dull-eared, dim-sighted, slow of speech and thought,
Still o'er the sad, degenerate present fretting,
Where all goes wrong, and nothing as it ought?

Old age, the graybeard! Well, indeed, I know him,--
Shrunk, tottering, bent, of aches and ills the prey;
In sermon, story, fable, picture, poem,
Oft have I met him from my earliest day:

In my old Aesop, toiling with his bundle,--
His load of sticks,-- politely asking Death,
Who comes wh...Read more of this...
by Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...earth. 
That hour is the root which must flourish. 
That hour of meditation, the hour of 
Prayer, and the hour of a new era of good. 


And that century is a life of Nero spent 
On self-investment taken solely from 
Earthly substance. 


This is life. 
Portrayed on the stage for ages; 
Recorded earthly for centuries; 
Lived in strangeness for years; 
Sung as a hymn for days; 
Exalted but for an hour, but the 
Hour is treasured by Eternity as a jewel....Read more of this...
by Gibran, Kahlil
..., by any species of stupidity, natural or acquired, be worse. The gross flattery, the dull impudence, the renegado intolerance, and impious cant, of the poem by the author if 'Wat Tyler,' are something so stupendous as to form the sublime of himself — containing the quintessence of his own attributes. 

So much for his poem — a word on his preface. In this preface it has pleased the magnanimous Laureate to draw the picture of a supposed 'Satanic School,' the which he doth rec...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...house effect or whatever
but it just doesn't rain like it used to.
I particularly remember the rains of the 
depression era.
there wasn't any money but there was
plenty of rain.
it wouldn't rain for just a night or
a day,
it would RAIN for 7 days and 7
nights
and in Los Angeles the storm drains
weren't built to carry off taht much
water
and the rain came down THICK and 
MEAN and
STEADY
and you HEARD it banging against
the roofs and into the ground
waterfalls of it came down
f...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles
...en in the universe.

Ripe apples fall about them.
What else can they do but eat?

When he says, "Ours is a transitional era."
"That's very original of you," she replies,
dry as the Martini he is sipping.

They fight all the time
It's fun
What do I owe you?
Let's start with an apology
Ok, I'm sorry, you dickhead.
A sign is held up saying "Laughter."
It's a silent picture.
"I've been fucked without a kiss," she says,
"and you can quote me on that,"
which sounds great in an Engl...Read more of this...
by Lehman, David

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things