Famous Flawless Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Empty Quatrain

by Henry Van Dyke
 A flawless cup: how delicate and fine
The flowing curve of every jewelled line!
Look, turn it up or down, 't is perfect still,--
But holds no drop of life's heart-warming wine....Read more of this...

Behind the Arras

by Bliss Carman
 I like the old house tolerably well, 
Where I must dwell 
Like a familiar gnome; 
And yet I never shall feel quite at home. 
I love to roam. 
Day after day I loiter and explore 
From door to door; 
So many treasures lure 
The curious mind. What histories obscure 
They must immure! 

I hardly know which room I care...Read more of this...

Tales Of Arabia

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 YES, friend, I own these tales of Arabia
Smile not, as smiled their flawless originals,
Age-old but yet untamed, for ages
Pass and the magic is undiminished.

Thus, friend, the tales of the old Camaralzaman,
Ayoub, the Slave of Love, or the Calendars,
Blind-eyed and ill-starred royal scions,
Charm us in age as they charmed in childhood.

Fair ones, beyond all numerability,
Beam from the palace, beam on...Read more of this...

The Lovers of the Poor

by Gwendolyn Brooks
 arrive. The Ladies from the Ladies' Betterment
League
Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
Here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall. 
Cutting with knives served by their softest care,
Served by their...Read more of this...

A Swimmers Dream

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Somno mollior unda 

I 
Dawn is dim on the dark soft water, 
Soft and passionate, dark and sweet. 
Love's own self was the deep sea's daughter, 
Fair and flawless from face to feet, 
Hailed of all when the world was golden, 
Loved of lovers whose names beholden 
Thrill men's eyes as with light of olden 
Days more glad than...Read more of this...

The Olive Tree

by Karl Shapiro
 Save for a lusterless honing-stone of moon
The sky stretches its flawless canopy
Blue as the blue silk of the Jewish flag
Over the valley and out to sea.
It is bluest just above the olive tree.
You cannot find in twisted Italy
So straight a one; it stands not on a crag,
Is not humpbacked with bearing in scored stone,
But perfectly erect in my front...Read more of this...

1954

by Sharon Olds
 Then dirt scared me, because of the dirt
he had put on her face. And her training bra
scared me—the newspapers, morning and evening,
kept saying it, training bra,
as if the cups of it had been calling
the breasts up—he buried her in it,
perhaps he had never bothered to take it
off. They found her underpants
in a garbage can. And I feared the word
eczema,...Read more of this...

The Bishop Orders His Tomb At Saint Praxeds Church

by Robert Browning
 Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!
Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?
Nephews -- sons mine -- ah God, I know not! Well --
She, men would have to be your mother once,
Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!
What's done is done, and she is dead beside,
Dead long ago, and I am Bishop since,
And as she died so must we...Read more of this...

On The Wire

by Robert William Service
 O God, take the sun from the sky!
 It's burning me, scorching me up.
God, can't You hear my cry?
 Water! A poor, little cup!
It's laughing, the cursed sun!
 See how it swells and swells
Fierce as a hundred hells!
 God, will it never have done?
It's searing the flesh on my bones;
 It's beating with hammers red
My eyeballs into my head;
...Read more of this...

Stepping Backward

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...

The Thread of Life

by Christina Rossetti
 I
The irresponsive silence of the land, 
The irresponsive sounding of the sea, 
Speak both one message of one sense to me:--
Aloof, aloof, we stand aloof, so stand
Thou too aloof bound with the flawless band
Of inner solitude; we bind not thee;
But who from thy self-chain shall set thee free?
What heart shall touch thy heart? what hand thy hand?--
And I am...Read more of this...

Lord Roberts

by Rudyard Kipling
 1914

He passed in the very battle-smoke
 Of the war that he had descried.
Three hundred mile of cannon spoke
 When the Master-Gunner died.

He passed to the very sound of the guns;
 But, before his eye grew dim,
He had seen the faces of the sons
 Whose sires had served with him,

He had touched their sword-hilts and greeted
 With the old sure...Read more of this...

Aloof

by Christina Rossetti
 THE irresponsive silence of the land, 
 The irresponsive sounding of the sea, 
 Speak both one message of one sense to me:-- 
Aloof, aloof, we stand aloof, so stand 
Thou too aloof, bound with the flawless band 
 Of inner solitude; we bind not thee; 
 But who from thy self-chain shall set thee free? 
What heart shall...Read more of this...

Sonnets 08: And You As Well Must Die Beloved Du

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 And you as well must die, beloved dust,
And all your beauty stand you in no stead;
This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,
This body of flame and steel, before the gust
Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,
Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead
Than the first leaf that fell,--this wonder fled.
Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.
Nor shall my love avail you...Read more of this...

God-Forgotten

by Thomas Hardy
 I towered far, and lo! I stood within 
 The presence of the Lord Most High, 
Sent thither by the sons of earth, to win 
 Some answer to their cry. 

 --"The Earth, say'st thou? The Human race? 
 By Me created? Sad its lot? 
Nay: I have no remembrance of such place: 
 Such world I fashioned...Read more of this...

The Human Face

by Paul Eluard
 I. Soon 

Of all the springtimes of the world 
This one is the ugliest 
Of all of my ways of being 
To be trusting is the best 

Grass pushes up snow 
Like the stone of a tomb 
But I sleep within the storm 
And awaken eyes bright 

Slowness, brief time ends 
Where all streets must pass 
Through my innermost...Read more of this...

Crab

by Sharon Olds
 When I eat crab, slide the rosy
rubbery claw across my tongue
I think of my mother. She'd drive down
to the edge of the Bay, tiny woman in a
huge car, she'd ask the crab-man to
crack it for her. She'd stand and wait as the
pliers broke those chalky homes, wild-
red and knobby, those cartilage wrists, the
thin orange roof of the back.
I'd come...Read more of this...

Otherwise

by Jane Kenyon
 I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a...Read more of this...

Winter Promises

by Marge Piercy
 Tomatoes rosy as perfect baby's buttocks, 
eggplants glossy as waxed fenders, 
purple neon flawless glistening 
peppers, pole beans fecund and fast 
growing as Jack's Viagra-sped stalk, 
big as truck tire zinnias that mildew 
will never wilt, roses weighing down 
a bush never touched by black spot, 
brave little fruit trees shouldering up 
their spotless ornaments of glass fruit: 

I...Read more of this...

To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Triumph

by Anne Sexton
 Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wintgs on, 
testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade, 
and think of that first flawless moment over the lawn 
of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made! 
There below are the trees, as awkward as camels; 
and here are the shocked starlings pumping past 
and think of innocent Icarus who is...Read more of this...

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