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).
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...gross; and he'll contrive
A sixth, to contradict the other five;
And before certain instinct will prefer
Reason, which fifty times for one does err.
Reason, an ignis fatuus of the mind,
Which leaving light of nature, sense, behind,
Pathless and dangerous wand'ring ways it takes,
Through Error's fenny bogs and thorny brakes;
Whilst the misguided follower climbs with pain
Mountains of whimsey's, heaped in his own brain;
Stumbling from thought to thought, falls headlong down,
I...Read more of this...
by
Wilmot, John
...his triumphant nation. (ll. 2200-06)
Afterwards the broad realm turned to the hand
of Beowulf. He kept it well for fifty winters—
he was a wise king, an elder home-warden—
until a single dragon began to hold sway
over the darkened nights, who kept watch
over his hoard in his high house,
an unyielding stone-shelter, a path lay under it,
unbeknownst to men. I don’t know who, some man,
went inside there, who pressed forward
close to the heathen hoard. His hand could...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...s,
in arms o’erwhelming Hereric’s nephew.
Then Beowulf came as king this broad
realm to wield; and he ruled it well
fifty winters, {29d} a wise old prince,
warding his land, until One began
in the dark of night, a Dragon, to rage.
In the grave on the hill a hoard it guarded,
in the stone-barrow steep. A strait path reached it,
unknown to mortals. Some man, however,
came by chance that cave within
to the heathen hoard. {29e} In hand he took
a golden goblet, nor gav...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...screen is pretty furniture,
A piano-forte is a fine resource,
All Balzac's novels occupy one shelf,
The new edition fifty volumes long;
And little Greek books, with the funny type
They get up well at Leipsic, fill the next:
Go on! slabbed marble, what a bath it makes!
And Parma's pride, the Jerome, let us add!
'T were pleasant could Correggio's fleeting glow
Hang full in face of one where'er one roams,
Since he more than the others brings with him
Italy's self,--t...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...Let it not your wonder move,
Less your laughter, that I love.
Though I now write fifty years,
I have had, and have, my peers.
Poets, though divine, are men;
Some have loved as old again.
And it is not always face,
Clothes, or fortune gives the grace,
Or the feature, or the youth;
But the language and the truth,
With the ardor and the passion,
Gives the lover weight and fashion.
If you then would hear the story,
Firs...Read more of this...
by
Jonson, Ben
...the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse
I’m with you in Rockland
where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void
I’m with you in Rockland
where you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha
I’m with you in Rockland
where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your livin...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...ot is on the gunwale—my right arm throws the coils of slender rope,
In sight around me the quick veering and darting of fifty skiffs, my companions.
7
O boating on the rivers!
The voyage down the Niagara, (the St. Lawrence,)—the superb scenery—the
steamers,
The ships sailing—the Thousand Islands—the occasional timber-raft, and the
raftsmen
with long-reaching sweep-oars,
The little huts on the rafts, and the stream of smoke when they cook their supper at
evening.
O s...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...Texas in my early youth;
(I tell not the fall of Alamo,
Not one escaped to tell the fall of Alamo,
The hundred and fifty are dumb yet at Alamo;)
’Tis the tale of the murder in cold blood of four hundred and twelve young
men.
Retreating, they had form’d in a hollow square, with their baggage for
breastworks;
Nine hundred lives out of the surrounding enemy’s, nine times their number,
was the price they took in advance;
Their colonel was wounded and their amm...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...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 and in segments;
Parting might make us meet anew, entire.
You asked me once, and I could give no answe...Read more of this...
by
Rich, Adrienne
...n brief, my friend, set all the devils in hell free
And turn them out to carouse in a belfry
And treat the priests to a fifty-part canon,
And then you may guess how that tongue of hers ran on!
Well, somehow or other it ended at last
And, licking her whiskers, out she passed;
And after her,---making (he hoped) a face
Like Emperor Nero or Sultan Saladin,
Stalked the Duke's self with the austere grace
Of ancient hero or modern paladin,
From door to staircase---oh such a solemn
U...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...nbsp;Is not more still and mute than he. His heart it was so full of glee, That till full fifty yards were gone, He quite forgot his holly whip, And all his skill in horsemanship, Oh! happy, happy, happy John. And Betty's standing at the door, And Betty's face with joy o'erflows, Proud of herself, and proud of him, She sees him in his travelling trim; ...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...for the best,
That evereach of you shall go where *him lest*, *he pleases
Freely without ransom or danger;
And this day fifty weekes, *farre ne nerre*, *neither more nor less*
Evereach of you shall bring an hundred knights,
Armed for listes up at alle rights
All ready to darraine* her by bataille, *contend for
And this behete* I you withoute fail *promise
Upon my troth, and as I am a knight,
That whether of you bothe that hath might,
That is to say, that whether he or thou
M...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...good?"
And that aged Hobden answered "'Tain't for me not interfere.
But I've known that bit o' meadow now for five and fifty year.
Have it jest as you've a mind to, but I've proved it time on ' time,
If you want to change her nature you have got to give her lime!"
Ogier sent his wains to Lewes, twenty hours' solemn walk,
And drew back great abundance of the cool, grey, healing chalk.
And old Hobden spread it broadcast, never heeding what was
in't.--
Which is why in cleanin...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...lla, let the Watch be thine;
Do thou, Crispissa, tend her fav'rite Lock;
Ariel himself shall be the Guard of Shock.
To Fifty chosen Sylphs, of special Note,
We trust th' important Charge, the Petticoat.
Oft have we known that sev'nfold Fence to fail;
Tho' stiff with Hoops, and arm'd with Ribs of Whale.
Form a strong Line about the Silver Bound,
And guard the wide Circumference around.
Whatever spirit, careless of his Charge,
His Post neglects, or leaves the Fair at large,
S...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...ght. But then the beauteous bill of moss Before their eyes began to stir; And for full fifty yards around, The grass it shook upon the ground; But all do still aver The little babe is buried there. Beneath that hill of moss so fair. XXIII. I cannot tell how this may be, But plain it is, the thorn is bound With heavy tufts of moss, that strive &nb...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...h our immortality.'
LXIV
Satan replied, 'To me the matter is
Indifferent, in a personal point of view;
I can have fifty better souls than this
With far less trouble than we have gone through
Already; and I merely argued his
Late majesty of Britain's case with you
Upon a point of form: you may dispose
Of him; I've kings enough below, God knows!'
LXV
Thus spoke the Demon (late call'd 'multifaced'
By multo-scribbling Southey). 'Then we'll call
One or two persons...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...ot forgetting,
'Till death us do part,'
Was outrageously happy
With death in my heart.
Lovers in peacetime
With fifty years to live,
Have time to tease and quarrel
And question what to give;
But lovers in wartime
Better understand
The fullness of living,
With death close at hand.
XXIV
My father wrote me a letter—
My father, scholarly, indolent, strong,
Teaching Greek better
Than high-school students repay—
Teaching Greek in the winter, but all summer l...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...not call his friends to mind;
Forgets the place where last he dined;
Plyes you with stories o'er and o'er,
He told them fifty times before.
How does he fancy we can sit
To hear his out-of-fashioned wit?
But he takes up with younger folks,
Who for his wine will bear his jokes.
Faith! he must make his stories shorter,
Or change his comrades once a quarter:
In half the time he talks them round,
There must another set be found.
"For poetry he's past his prime:
He takes an hour t...Read more of this...
by
Swift, Jonathan
...man to earth, —It is the hour of feeling. One moment now may give us more Than fifty years of reason; Our minds shall drink at every pore The spirit of the season. Some silent laws our hearts may make, Which they shall long obey; We for the year to come may take Our temper from to-day. And from the blessed power that rolls About, bel...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...night of late,
Lose a band from a stiff, tight plait.
Best for me your child to rock and sway,
And for you to make fifty rubles in a day,
And to go on memory day to cemetery
There to look upon the white God's lilac tree.
x x x
I will lead a man to dear one --
I don't want the little joy --
And I'll quietly lay to sleep
The glad, tired little boy.
In a chilly room once more
I will pray to Mother of God,
It is hard to be a hermit,
To be happy is al...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
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