Famous Fifty Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Fifty poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous fifty poems. These examples illustrate what a famous fifty poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Robert William Service
Oh Maggie, do you mind the day
We went to school together,
And as we stoppit by the way
I rolled you in the heather?
My! but you were the bonny lass
And we were awfu' late for class.
Your locks are now as white as snow,
And you are ripe and wrinkled,
A grandmother ten times or so,
Yet how your blue...Read more of this...
by
Hilaire Belloc
Remote and ineffectual Don
That dared attack my Chesterton,
With that poor weapon, half-impelled,
Unlearnt, unsteady, hardly held,
Unworthy for a tilt with men--
Your quavering and corroded pen;
Don poor at Bed and worse at Table,
Don pinched, Don starved, Don miserable;
Don stuttering, Don with roving eyes,
Don nervous, Don of crudities;
Don clerical, Don ordinary,
Don self-absorbed and solitary;
Don here-and-there, Don epileptic;
Don puffed and empty, Don dyspeptic;
Don...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I
Let others sing of Empire and of pomp beyond the sea,
A song of Little Puddleton is good enough for me,
A song of kindly living, and of coming home to tea.
I seldom read the papers, so I don't know what goes on.
I go to bed at sunset, and I leap alert at dawn,
To gossip with my garden, which I'll have...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
1917
(To Lyde of the Music Halls)
What boots it on the Gods to call?
Since, answered or unheard,
We perish with the Gods and all
Things made--except the Word.
Ere certain Fate had touched a heart
By fifty years made cold,
I judged thee, Lyde, and thy art
O'erblown and over-bold.
But he--but he, of whom bereft
I suffer vacant days--
He on his shield...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
(To Paul Sykes, author of 'Sweet Agony')
He demolished five doors at a sitting
And topped it off with an outsize window
One Christmas afternoon, when drunk;
Sober he smiled like an angel, bowed,
Kissed ladies’ hands and courtesy
Was his middle name.
She tried to pass for thirty at fifty-six,
Called him "My Sweet piglet" and laid out
Dainty doylies for his teatime treats; always
She wore black...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
This was the way of it, don't you know --
Ryan was "wanted" for stealing sheep,
And never a trooper, high or low,
Could find him -- catch a weasel asleep!
Till Trooper Scott, from the Stockman's Ford --
A bushman, too, as I've heard them tell --
Chanced to find him drunk as a lord
Round at the...Read more of this...
by
Linda Pastan
I remember what my father told me:
There is an age when you are most yourself.
He was just past fifty then,
Was it something about the trees that make him speak?
There is an age when you are most yourself.
I know more than I did once.
Was it something about the trees that make him speak?
Only a single leaf had turned so far.
I...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Full fifty merry maids I heard
One summer morn a-singing;
And each was like a joyous bird
With spring-clear not a-ringing.
It was an old-time soldier song
That held their happy voices:
Oh how it's good to swing along
When youth rejoices!
Then lo! I dreamed long years had gone,
They passed again ungladly.
Their backs were bent, their cheeks were wan,
Their eyes...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
When I was young my teachers were the old.
I gave up fire for form till I was cold.
I suffered like a metal being cast.
I went to school to age to learn the past.
Now when I am old my teachers are the young.
What can't be molded must be cracked and sprung.
I strain at lessons fit to start a suture.
I go...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
I never did fit in – at six or sixty one –
I stand out in a crowd, too young or old
And gather pity like a shroud. "Is that real silk?"
A teenager inquired. "As real as Oxfam ever is
For one pound fifty." The vast ballroom was growing misty
And blurred with alcohol I’ve never had the taste for.
"**** off" a forty-plus...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
The 27th Regiment has mutinied at Kalapore;
That was the substance of a telegram, which caused great uproar,
At Sattara, on the evening of the 8th of July,
And when the British officers heard it, they heaved a bitter sigh.
'Twas in the year of 1857,
Which will long be remembered: Oh! Heaven!
That the Sepoys revolted, and killed their British officers and their...Read more of this...
by
Delmore Schwartz
"little soul, little flirting,
little perverse one
where are you off to now?
little wan one, firm one
little exposed one...
and never make fun of me again."
Now I must betray myself.
The feast of bondage and unity is near,
And none engaged in that great piety
When each bows to the other, kneels, and takes
Hand in hand, glance and glance, care...Read more of this...
by
Richard Hugo
You might come here Sunday on a whim.
Say your life broke down. The last good kiss
you had was years ago. You walk these streets
laid out by the insane, past hotels
that didn't last, bars that did, the tortured try
of local drivers to accelerate their lives.
Only churches are kept up. The jail
turned 70 this year. The only prisoner
is always in, not...Read more of this...
by
Marriott Edgar
I'll tell you an old-fashioned story
That Grandfather used to relate,
Of a joiner and building contractor;
'Is name, it were Sam Oglethwaite.
In a shop on the banks of the Irwell,
Old Sam used to follow 'is trade,
In a place you'll have 'eard of, called Bury;
You know, where black puddings is made.
One day, Sam were filling a...Read more of this...
by
Stanley Kunitz
1
On my way home from school
up tribal Providence Hill
past the Academy ballpark
where I could never hope to play
I scuffed in the drainage ditch
among the sodden seethe of leaves
hunting for perfect stones
rolled out of glacial time
into my pitcher’s hand;
then sprinted lickety-
split on my magic Keds
from a crouching start,
scarcely touching the ground
with my flying skin
as I poured it on
for the prize...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
The white men played all sorts of jokes on me.
They took big fish off my hook
And put little ones on, while I was away
Getting a stringer, and made me believe
I hadn't seen aright the fish I had caught.
When Burr Robbins circus came to town
They got the ring master to let a tame leopard
Into the ring, and made me believe
I...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
Horses and men are just alike.
There was my stallion, Billy Lee,
Black as a cat and trim as a deer,
With an eye of fire, keen to start,
And he could hit the fastest speed
Of any racer around Spoon River.
But just as you'd think he couldn't lose,
With his lead of fifty yards or more,
He'd rear himself and throw the rider,
And fall back...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
Welcome, grinned Henry, welcome, fifty-one!
I never cared for fifty, when nothing got done.
The hospitals were fun
in certain ways, and an honour or so,
but on the whole fifty was a mess as though
heavy clubs from below
and from-”God save the bloody mark-”above
were loosed upon his skull & soles. O love,
what was you loafing of
that fifty put you off, out & away,
leaving...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
The speaker in this case
is a middle-aged witch, me-
tangled on my two great arms,
my face in a book
and my mouth wide,
ready to tell you a story or two.
I have come to remind you,
all of you:
Alice, Samuel, Kurt, Eleanor,
Jane, Brian, Maryel,
all of you draw near.
Alice,
at fifty-six do you remember?
Do you remember when you
were read to as a child?
Samuel,
at twenty-two have...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Up the old hill to the old house again
Where fifty years ago the friend was young
Who should be waiting somewhere there among
Old things that least remembered most remain,
He toiled on with a pleasure that was pain
To think how soon asunder would be flung
The curtain half a century had hung
Between the two ambitions they...Read more of this...
by
Adrienne Rich
Good-by to you whom I shall see tomorrow,
Next year and when I'm fifty; still good-by.
This is the leave we never really take.
If you were dead or gone to live in China
The event might draw your stature in my mind.
I should be forced to look upon you whole
The way we look upon the things we lose.
We see each other daily...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
Said the soldier to the Surgeon, "I've got noises in me head
And a kind o' filled up feeling after every time I'm fed;
I can sleep all night on picket, but I can't sleep in my bed".
And the Surgeon said,
"That's Lead!"
Said the soldier to the Surgeon, "Do you think they'll send me back?
For I...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
"OLD Norbert with the flat blue cap--
A German said to be--
Why let your pipe die on your lap,
Your eyes blink absently?"--
--"Ah!... Well, I had thought till my cheek was wet
Of my mother--her voice and mien
When she used to sing and pirouette,
And touse the tambourine
"To the march that yon street-fiddler plies;
She told me 'twas the same
She'd heard from the trumpets,...Read more of this...
by
Alexander Pope
Not with more glories, in th' etherial plain,
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main,
Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams
Launch'd on the bosom of the silver Thames.
Fair nymphs, and well-dress'd youths around her shone,
But ev'ry eye was fix'd on her alone.
On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.
Her lively...Read more of this...
by
Nazim Hikmet
I was born in 1902
I never once went back to my birthplace
I don't like to turn back
at three I served as a pasha's grandson in Aleppo
at nineteen as a student at Moscow Communist University
at forty-nine I was back in Moscow as the Tcheka Party's guest
and I've been a poet since I was fourteen
some people know all about plants some...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Fifty poems.