Famous Five Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Five poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous five poems. These examples illustrate what a famous five poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Mother Goose
This little pig went to market;
This little pig stayed at home;
This little pig had roast beef;
This little pig had none;
This little pig said, "Wee, wee!
I can't find my way home."...Read more of this...
by
Paul Eluard
The wind
Undecided
Rolls a cigarette of air
The mute girl talks:
It is art's imperfection.
This impenetrable speech.
The motor car is truly launched:
Four martyrs' heads
Roll under the wheels.
Ah! a thousand flames, a fire,
The light, a shadow!
The sun is following me.
A feather gives to a hat
A touch of lightness:
The chimney...Read more of this...
by
Allen Ginsberg
Elan that lifts me above the clouds
into pure space, timeless, yea eternal
Breath transmuted into words
Transmuted back to breath
in one hundred two hundred years
nearly Immortal, Sappho's 26 centuries
of cadenced breathing -- beyond time, clocks, empires, bodies, cars,
chariots, rocket ships skyscrapers, Nation empires
brass walls, polished marble, Inca Artwork
of the mind -- but where's it come from?
Inspiration? The muses drawing...Read more of this...
by
Dylan Thomas
When all my five and country senses see,
The fingers will forget green thumbs and mark
How, through the halfmoon's vegetable eye,
Husk of young stars and handfull zodiac,
Love in the frost is pared and wintered by,
The whispering ears will watch love drummed away
Down breeze and shell to a discordant beach,
And, lashed to syllables, the lynx tongue cry
That her fond wounds are...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
This, no song of an ingénue,
This, no ballad of innocence;
This, the rhyme of a lady who
Followed ever her natural bents.
This, a solo of sapience,
This, a chantey of sophistry,
This, the sum of experiments, --
I loved them until they loved me.
Decked in garments of sable hue,
Daubed with ashes of myriad Lents,
Wearing...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Reason not of the five, nor of the four,
Be their dark problems one, or many score;
We are but earth, go, minstrel, bring the lute,
We are but air, bring wine, I ask no more!...Read more of this...
by
Kenneth Slessor
Time that is moved by little fidget wheels
Is not my time, the flood that does not flow.
Between the double and the single bell
Of a ship's hour, between a round of bells
From the dark warship riding there below,
I have lived many lives, and this one life
Of Joe, long dead, who lives between five bells....Read more of this...
by
Jack Gilbert
I'd walk her home after work
buying roses and talking of Bechsteins.
She was full of soul.
Her small room was gorged with heat
and there were no windows.
She'd take off everything
but her pants
and take the pins from her hair
throwing them on the floor
with a great noise.
Like Crete.
We wouldn't make love.
She'd get on the bed
with those nipples
and we'd lie
sweating
and talking of my best...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them,--ding-dong, bell....Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
Still dark.
The unknown bird sits on his usual branch.
The little dog next door barks in his sleep
inquiringly, just once.
Perhaps in his sleep, too, the bird inquires
once or twice, quavering.
Questions--if that is what they are--
answered directly, simply,
by day itself.
Enormous morning, ponderous, meticulous;
gray light streaking each bare branch,
each single twig, along one side,
making another tree, of glassy veins...
The bird still sits...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Because I have ten thousand pounds I sit upon my stern,
And leave my living tranquilly for other folks to earn.
For in some procreative way that isn't very clear,
Ten thousand pounds will breed, they say, five hundred every year.
So as I have a healthy hate of economic strife,
I mean to stand aloof from it the balance of my life.
And yet...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Brock
There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.
You can make him carry a plank of wood
to the top of a hill and nail him to it. To do this
properly you require a crowd of people
wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak
to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one
man to hammer the nails home.
Or you can take a...Read more of this...
by
John Betjeman
This is the time of day when we in the Mens's ward
Think "one more surge of the pain and I give up the fight."
Whe he who strggles for breath can struggle less strongly:
This is the time of day which is worse than night.
A haze of thunder hangs on the hospital rose-beds,
A doctors' foursome out of the links is played,
Safe...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
THERE was five Carlins in the South,
They fell upon a scheme,
To send a lad to London town,
To bring them tidings hame.
Nor only bring them tidings hame,
But do their errands there,
And aiblins gowd and honor baith
Might be that laddie’s share.
There was Maggy by the banks o’ Nith,
A dame wi’ pride eneugh;
And Marjory o’ the mony...Read more of this...
by
Aleister Crowley
I praise Thee, God, whose rays upstart beneath the Bright
and Morning Star:
Nowit asali fardh salat assobhi allahu akbar.
I praise Thee, God, the fierce and swart; at noon Thou ridest
forth to war!
Nowit asali fardh salat assohri allahu akabr.
I praise Thee, God, whose arrows dart their royal radiance
o'er the scar:
Nowit asali fardh salat asasri allahu akabr.
I praise Thee, God, whose fires...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
Old man, you surface seldom.
Then you come in with the tide's coming
When seas wash cold, foam-
Capped: white hair, white beard, far-flung,
A dragnet, rising, falling, as waves
Crest and trough. Miles long
Extend the radial sheaves
Of your spread hair, in which wrinkling skeins
Knotted, caught, survives
The old myth of orgins
Unimaginable. You float near
As kneeled ice-mountains
Of the north, to be steered clear
Of, not fathomed....Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
How long these arguments upon the five and the four,
O cupbearer? In comprehending one, O cupbearer! it is
difficult to grasp a hundred thousand. We are all of earth,
O cupbearer! strike the harp: we are all as the wind,
bring the wine, O cupbearer!...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
I stood there in front of forty-five faces
The first day of term, not especially fancying
"Exercises in Mechanical Arithmetic" and so instead
I read a poem from Kirkup in Japan, about Nijinsky,
Hand-written on a fan of rice-paper.
Thirty years later, taking a Sri Lankan girl
In search of her first job around London schools,
A Head-of-English announced "You wouldn’t get away
With that now!" as...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
BY day … tireless smokestacks … hungry smoky shanties hanging to the slopes … crooning: We get by, that’s all.
By night … all lit up … fire-gold bars, fire-gold flues … and the shanties shaking in clumsy shadows … almost the hills shaking … all crooning: By God, we’re going to find out or know why....Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
A spot of poontang on a five-foot piece,
Diminutive, but room enough . . like clay
To finger eager on some torrid day . .
Who'd throw her black hair back, and hang, and tease.
Never, not once in all one's horny lease
To'have had a demi-lay, a pretty, gay,
Snug, slim and supple-breasted girl for play . .
She bats her big, warm eyes, and...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Three score and ten, the psalmist saith,
And half my course is well-nigh run;
I've had my flout at dusty death,
I've had my whack of feast and fun.
I've mocked at those who prate and preach;
I've laughed with any man alive;
But now with sobered heart I reach
The Great Divide of Thirty-five.
And looking back I must confess
I've little cause to feel elate.
I've played...Read more of this...
by
Andre Breton
There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.
You can make him carry a plank of wood
to the top of a hill and nail him to it. To do this
properly you require a crowd of people
wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak
to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one
man to hammer the nails home.
Or you can take a...Read more of this...
by
Joyce Kilmer
(For Edward J. Wheeler)
Within the Jersey City shed
The engine coughs and shakes its head,
The smoke, a plume of red and white,
Waves madly in the face of night.
And now the grave incurious stars
Gleam on the groaning hurrying cars.
Against the kind and awful reign
Of darkness, this our angry train,
A noisy little rebel, pouts
Its brief defiance, flames and shouts --
And passes on,...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
PIETRO has twenty red and blue balloons on a string.
They flutter and dance pulling Pietro’s arm.
A nickel apiece is what they sell for.
Wishing children tag Pietro’s heels.
He sells out and goes the streets alone....Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Brave Thackeray has trolled of days when he was twenty-one,
And bounded up five flights of stairs, a gallant garreteer;
And yet again in mellow vein when youth was gaily run,
Has dipped his nose in Gascon wine, and told of Forty Year.
But if I worthy were to sing a richer, rarer time,
I'd tune my pipes before the fire and merrily I'd...Read more of this...
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