Famous Filed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Fairy Tale

...ainers come to view
The Christening.
A sudden blare of trumpets, and the throng
About the entrance parted as the guests
Filed singly in with rare and precious gifts.
Our eager fancies noted all they brought,
The glorious, unattainable delights!
But always there was one unbidden guest
Who cursed the child and left it bitterness.
The fire falls asunder, all is changed,
I am no more a child, and what I see
Is not a fairy tale, but life, my life.
The gifts are there, the many ple...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy


Beowulf (Modern English)

...crest contained it from without, woven with wires
about the roof of the helmet, that head-protection
so that the well-filed relic, shower-hardened, could not
grievously harm it, when the shieldsman
must wade into the gruesome fray. (ll. 1020-34)

Then the shelter of nobles ordered eight horses,
with gilded cheeks, to be led onto the floor,
inside the enclosure. One of them stood,
adorned cleverly with a saddle, worthied with treasure—
that was the high-king’s own ba...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Last Instructions to a Painter

...rth, his youth, his brokage all dispraise 
In vain, for always he commands that pays. 
Then the procurers under Progers filed-- 
Gentlest of men-- and his lieutenant mild, 
Brounker--Love's squire--through all the field arrayed, 
No troop was better clad, nor so well paid. 
Then marched the troop of Clarendon, all full 
Haters of fowl, to teal preferring bull: 
Gross bodies, grosser minds, and grossest cheats, 
And bloated Wren conducts them to their seats. 
Charlton advances...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew

Poet As Fisherman

...es.

I have caught little pan fish flashing sunlight
(yellow perch, crappies, blue-gills),
lighthearted reeled them in,
filed them on stringers on the shore.
A nice mess, we called them,
and ate with our fingers, laughing.

Once, dreaming of fish in far-off waters,
I hooked a two-foot carp in Michigan,
on nylon line so fine
a fellow-fisher shook his head:
"He'll break it, sure; he'll roll on it and get away."
A quarter-hour it took to bring him in;
back-and-forth toward my ne...Read more of this...
by Emanuel, James A

Shinto

...brary, or of sandalwood,
the former name of a street,
the colors of a map,
an unforeseen etymology,
the smoothness of a filed fingernail,
the date we were looking for,
the twelve dark bell-strokes, tolling as we count,
a sudden physical pain.

Eight million Shinto deities
travel secretly throughout the earth.
Those modest gods touch us--
touch us and move on....Read more of this...
by Borges, Jorge Luis


Snapshots of a Daughter-In-Law

...blable, ma soeur!

 4

Knowing themselves too well in one another:
their gifts no pure fruition, but a thorn,
the prick filed sharp against a hint of scorn...
Reading while waiting
for the iron to heat,
writing, My Life had stood--a Loaded Gun--
in that Amherst pantry while the jellies boil and scum,
or, more often,
iron-eyed and beaked and purposed as a bird,
dusting everything on the whatnot every day of life.

 5

Dulce ridens, dulce loquens,
she shaves her legs until they...Read more of this...
by Rich, Adrienne

Sohrab and Rustum

...s had risen, and clear'd the fog
From the broad Oxus and the glittering sands.
And from their tents the Tartar horsemen filed
Into the open plain; so Haman bade--
Haman, who next to Peran-Wisa ruled
The host, and still was in his lusty prime.
From their black tents, long files of horse, they stream'd;
As when some grey November morn the files,
In marching order spread, of long-neck'd cranes
Stream over Casbin and the southern slopes
Of Elburz, from the Aralian estuaries,
Or s...Read more of this...
by Arnold, Matthew

The Book of Hours of Sister Clotilde

....
The book seemed a choir
Of rainbow fire.
The Abbess crossed herself, and each nun
Did the same, then one by one,
They filed to the chapel, that incensed prayers
Might plead for the life of this sister of theirs.
Clotilde, the Inspired!
She only felt tired.
* 
* * * *
The old chronicles say she did not die
Until heavy with years. And that is why
There hangs in the convent church a basket
Of osiered silver, a holy casket,
And treasured therein
A dried snake-skin....Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Colonel

...What you have heard is true. I was in his house. 
His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His 
daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the 
night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol 
on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on 
its black cord over the house. On the television 
was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles 
were embedded in the walls around the house to 
scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his 
hands to lace. O...Read more of this...
by Forche, Carolyn

The Expatriates

...y shaft in perfect rows
where its stub branches held and its spokes fell.
It was a place of parallel trees, their lives
filed out in exile where we walked too alien to know
our sameness and how our sameness survives.

Outside of us the village cars followed
the white line we had carefully walked
two nights before toward our single beds.
We lay halfway up an ugly hill and if we fell
it was here in the woods where the woods were caught
in their dying and you held me well.

And ...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

The Giaour

...ew it well
Warned by the voice of stern Taheer,
Deep in whose darkly boding ear
The deathshot pealed of murder near,
As filed the troop to where they fell!
He died too in the battle broil,
A time that heeds nor pain nor toil;
One cry to Mahomet for aid,
One prayer to Allah all he made:
He knew and crossed me in the fray -
I gazed upon him where he lay,
And watched his spirit ebb away:
Though pierced like pard by hunters' steel,
He felt not half that now I feel.
I searched, bu...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Holy War

...ns
 For flame or poison-gas;
The craft that we call modern,
 The crimes that we call new,
John Bunyan had 'em typed and filed
 In sixteen Eighty-two.


Likewise the Lords of Looseness
 That hamper faith and works,
The Perseverance-Doubters,
 And Present-Comfort shirks,
With brittle intellectuals
 Who crack beneath a strain--
John Bunyan met that helpful set
 In Charles the Second's reign.


Emmanuel's vanguard dying
 For right and not for rights,
My Lord Apollyon lying
 To th...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Knights Tale

...y steer,
To hunt the lion or the wilde bear,
And follow'd him, with muzzle fast y-bound,
Collars of gold, and torettes* filed round. *rings
An hundred lordes had he in his rout* *retinue
Armed full well, with heartes stern and stout.

With Arcita, in stories as men find,
The great Emetrius the king of Ind,
Upon a *steede bay* trapped in steel, *bay horse*
Cover'd with cloth of gold diapred* well, *decorated
Came riding like the god of armes, Mars.
His coat-armour was of *a cl...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Lost Legion

...ever a gunboat to help us
 When we're scuppered and left in the lurch.
But we know as the cartridges finish,
 And we're filed on our last little shelves,
That the Legion that never was listed
 Will send us as good as ourselves
 (Good men!),
 Five hundred as good as ourselves!

Then a health (we must drink it in whispers),
 To our wholly unauthorized horde --

To the line of our dusty foreloopers,
 The Gentlemen Rovers abroad --
Yes, a health to ourselves ere we scatter,
 For ...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Queens Jubilee Celebrations

...iage, as it drove along,
Received from the people cheering loud and long. 

And when the Dragoon Guards and the Huasars filed past at the walk,
Then loudly in their praise the people did talk;
And the cavalry took forty minutes to trot past,
While the spectators in silent wonder stood aghast. 

Her Majesty the Empress Frederick a great sensation made,
She was one of the chief attractions in the whole cavalcade;
And in her carriage was the Princess Louise, the Marchioness of L...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

.... 

LXVI.
The Vine has struck a fiber: which about
If clings my Being -- let the Dervish flout;
Of my Base metal may be filed a Key,
That shall unlock the Door he howls without. 

LXVII.
And this I know: whether the one True Light,
Kindle to Love, or Wrath -- consume me quite,
One Glimpse of It within the Tavern caught
Better than in the Temple lost outright. 

LXVIII.
What! out of senseless Nothing to provoke
A conscious Something to resent the yoke
Of unpermitted Pleasure, ...Read more of this...
by Khayyam, Omar

The Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam Of Naishapur

...and Soul.

55

The Vine had struck a Fibre; which about
If clings my being—let the Sufi flout;
Of my Base Metal may be filed a Key,
That shall unlock the Door he howls without.

56

And this I know: whether the one True Light,
Kindle to Love, or Wrath, consume me quite,
One Glimpse of It within the Tavern caught
Better than in the Temple lost outright.

57

Oh Thou, who didst with Pitfall and with Gin
Beset the Road I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with Predestination round...Read more of this...
by Fitzgerald, Edward

The Suicide

...e while I shall have quaffed."

Thus I to Life, and ceased, and slightly smiled,
Looking at nothing; and my thin dreams filed
Before me one by one till once again
I set new words unto an old refrain:

"Treasures thou hast that never have been mine!
Warm lights in many a secret chamber shine
Of thy gaunt house, and gusts of song have blown
Like blossoms out to me that sat alone!
And I have waited well for thee to show
If any share were mine,—and now I go
Nothing I leave, and i...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

To Brooklyn Bridge

...Liberty--

Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
--Till elevators drop us from our day . . .

I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights
With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene
Never disclosed, but hastened to again,
Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;

And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,--
Im...Read more of this...
by Crane, Hart

Waiting

...things for dream there are when specter-like,
Moving amond tall haycocks lightly piled,
I enter alone upon the stubbled filed,
From which the laborers' voices late have died,
And in the antiphony of afterglow
And rising full moon, sit me down
Upon the full moon's side of the first haycock
And lose myself amid so many alike.

I dream upon the opposing lights of the hour,
Preventing shadow until the moon prevail;
I dream upon the nighthawks peopling heaven,
Or plunging headlong...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

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