Famous Fix Up Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Ballade of Unfortunate Mammals

by Dorothy Parker
 Love is sharper than stones or sticks;
Lone as the sea, and deeper blue;
Loud in the night as a clock that ticks;
Longer-lived than the Wandering Jew.
Show me a love was done and through,
Tell me a kiss escaped its debt!
Son, to your death you'll pay your due-
Women and elephants never forget.

Ever a man, alas, would mix,
Ever a man, heigh-ho, must woo;
So...Read more of this...

Marksman Sam

by Marriott Edgar
 When Sam Small joined the regiment,
'E were no' but a raw recruit,
And they marched 'im away one wint'ry day,
'Is musket course to shoot.

They woke 'im up at the crack o' dawn,
Wi' many a nudge and shake,
'E were dreaming that t' Sergeant 'ad broke 'is neck,
And 'e didn't want to wake.

Lieutenant Bird came on parade,
And chided the lads for mooning,
'E...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXVIII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LXVIII. Conobbi, quanto il ciel gli occhi m' aperse. HER PRAISES ARE, COMPARED WITH HER DESERTS, BUT AS A DROP TO THE OCEAN.  So far as to mine eyes its light heaven show'd,So far as love and study train'd my wings,Novel and beautiful but mortal thingsFrom every star I found on...Read more of this...

The Morning Half-Life Blues

by Marge Piercy
 Girls buck the wind in the grooves toward work
in fuzzy coats promised to be warm as fur.
The shop windows snicker
flashing them hurrying over dresses they cannot afford:
you are not pretty enough, not pretty enough.

Blown with yesterday’s papers through the boiled coffee morning
we dream of the stop on the subway without a name,
the door in the heart of the grove...Read more of this...

Witchcraft By A Picture

by John Donne
 I fix mine eye on thine, and there
Pity my picture burning in thine eye;
My picture drowned in a transparent tear,
When I look lower I espy.
Hadst thou the wicked skill
By pictures made and mard, to kill,
How many ways mightst thou perform thy will?

But now I have drunk thy sweet salt tears,
And though thou pour more I'll depart;
My picture vanished, vanish...Read more of this...

Upon The Hill And Grove At Bill-borow

by Andrew Marvell
 To the Lord Fairfax.

See how the arched Earth does here
Rise in a perfect Hemisphere!
The stiffest Compass could not strike
A line more circular and like;
Nor softest Pensel draw a Brow.
So equal as this Hill does bow.
It seems as for a Model laid,
And that the World by it was made.

Here learn ye Mountains more unjust,
Which to abrupter greatness thrust,
That do with...Read more of this...

Alexander And Zenobia

by Anne Bronte
 Fair was the evening and brightly the sun
Was shining on desert and grove,
Sweet were the breezes and balmy the flowers
And cloudless the heavens above. 
It was Arabia's distant land
And peaceful was the hour;
Two youthful figures lay reclined
Deep in a shady bower.

One was a boy of just fourteen
Bold beautiful and bright;
Soft raven curls hung clustering round
A brow of marble white.

The...Read more of this...

Sonnet VI: Is It to Love

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Is it to love, to fix the tender gaze,
To hide the timid blush, and steal away;
To shun the busy world, and waste the day
In some rude mountain's solitary maze?
Is it to chant one name in ceaseless lays,
To hear no words that other tongues can say,
To watch the pale moon's melancholy ray,
To chide in fondness, and in folly praise?
Is it...Read more of this...

Father

by Edgar Albert Guest
 My father knows the proper way 
The nation should be run;
He tells us children every day
Just what should now be done.
He knows the way to fix the trusts,
He has a simple plan;
But if the furnace needs repairs,
We have to hire a man.
My father, in a day or two
Could land big thieves in jail;
There's nothing that he cannot do,
He knows...Read more of this...

the adventures (from frederick and the enchantress – dance drama)

by Rg Gregory
  (i) introduction

  his home in ruins
  his parents gone
  frederick seeks
  to reclaim his throne

   to the golden mountain
   he sets his path
   the enchantress listening
   schemes with wrath

  four desperate trials
  which she takes from store
  to silence frederick
  for ever...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXXVIII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LXXVIII. Poi che voi ed io più volte abbiam provato. TO A FRIEND, COUNSELLING HIM TO ABANDON EARTHLY PLEASURES.  Still has it been our bitter lot to proveHow hope, or e'er it reach fruition, flies!Up then to that high good, which never dies,Lift we the heart—to heaven's pure bliss above.Read more of this...

Cocotte

by Robert William Service
 When a girl's sixteen, and as poor as she's pretty,
 And she hasn't a friend and she hasn't a home,
Heigh-ho! She's as safe in Paris city
 As a lamb night-strayed where the wild wolves roam;
And that was I; oh, it's seven years now
 (Some water's run down the Seine since then),
And I've almost forgotten the pangs and the tears...Read more of this...

To a Contemporary Bunkshooter

by Carl Sandburg
 YOU come along. . . tearing your shirt. . . yelling about
Jesus.
Where do you get that stuff?
What do you know about Jesus?
Jesus had a way of talking soft and outside of a few
bankers and higher-ups among the con men of Jerusalem
everybody liked to have this Jesus around because
he never made any fake passes and everything
he said went and he...Read more of this...

The Dream

by George (Lord) Byron
 I

Our life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off waking toils,
They do divide our being;...Read more of this...

Easter Morning

by A R Ammons
 I have a life that did not become,
that turned aside and stopped,
astonished:
I hold it in me like a pregnancy or
as on my lap a child
not to grow old but dwell on

it is to his grave I most
frequently return and return
to ask what is wrong, what was
wrong, to see it all by
the light of a different necessity
but the grave will...Read more of this...

A Story For Rose On The Midnight Flight To Boston

by Anne Sexton
 Until tonight they were separate specialties, 
different stories, the best of their own worst. 
Riding my warm cabin home, I remember Betsy's 
laughter; she laughed as you did, Rose, at the first 
story. Someday, I promised her, I'll be someone 
going somewhere and we plotted it in the humdrum 
school for proper girls. The next April the plane 
bucked...Read more of this...

Jack Dunn of Nevertire

by Henry Lawson
 It chanced upon the very day we'd got the shearing done, 
A buggy brought a stranger to the West-o'-Sunday Run; 
He had a round and jolly face, and he was sleek and stout, 
He drove right up between the huts and called the super out. 
We chaps were smoking after tea, and heard the swell enquire 
For one as...Read more of this...

Canzone IV

by Francesco Petrarch
CANZONE IV. Si è debile il filo a cui s' attene. HE GRIEVES IN ABSENCE FROM LAURA.  The thread on which my weary life dependsSo fragile is and weak,If none kind succour lends,Soon 'neath the painful burden will it break;Since doom'd to take my sad farewell of her,In whom begins...Read more of this...

Pain

by Thomas Edward Brown
 The Man that hath great griefs I pity not; 
’Tis something to be great 
In any wise, and hint the larger state, 
Though but in shadow of a shade, God wot! 

Moreover, while we wait the possible, 
This man has touched the fact, 
And probed till he has felt the core, where, packed 
In pulpy folds, resides the ironic...Read more of this...

166. Epitaph for William Nicol High School Edinburgh

by Robert Burns
 YE maggots, feed on Nicol’s brain,
 For few sic feasts you’ve gotten;
And fix your claws in Nicol’s heart,
 For deil a bit o’t’s rotten....Read more of this...

Sailor Son

by Robert William Service
 When you come home I'll not be round
 To welcome you.
They'll take you to a grassy mound
 So neat and new;
Where I'll be sleeping--O so sound!
 The ages through.

I'll not be round to broom the hearth,
 To feed the chicks;
And in the wee room of your birth
 Your bed to fix;
Rose room that knew your baby mirth
 Your tiny...Read more of this...

An Ode

by Matthew Prior
 The merchant, to secure his treasure, 
Conveys it in a borrowed name: 
Euphelia serves to grace my measure; 
But Cloe is my real flame.

My softest verse, my darling lyre 
Upon Euphelia's toilet lay; 
When Cloe noted her desire, 
That I should sing, that I should play.

My lyre I tune, my voice I raise; 
But with my numbers mix my...Read more of this...

A Bush Lawyer

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 When Ironbark the turtle came to Anthony's lagoon 
The hills were hid behind a mist of equinoctal rain, 
The ripple of the rivulets was like a cheerful tune 
And wild companions waltzed among the grass as tall as grain. 
But Ironbark the turtle cared no whit for all of these; 
The ripple of the rivulets, the rustle of the...Read more of this...

Hymn 151

by Isaac Watts
 Prophecy and inspiration.

'Twas by an order from the Lord
The ancient prophets spoke his word;
His Spirit did their tongues inspire,
And warmed their hearts with heav'nly fire.

The works and wonders which they wrought
Confirmed the messages they brought;
The prophet's pen succeeds his breath,
To save the holy words from death.

Great God, mine eyes with pleasure look
On the dear volume of thy book;
There my...Read more of this...

Doctors

by Anne Sexton
 They work with herbs
and penicillin
They work with gentleness
and the scalpel.
They dig out the cancer,
close an incision
and say a prayer
to the poverty of the skin.
They are not Gods
though they would like to be;
they are only a human
trying to fix up a human.
Many humans die.
They die like the tender,
palpitating berries
in November.
But all along the doctors remember:
First do no harm.
They would kiss...Read more of this...

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