Famous For Free Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Lying in me

by Anna Akhmatova
 Lying in me, as though it were a white 
Stone in the depths of a well, is one 
Memory that I cannot, will not, fight: 
It is happiness, and it is pain. 
Anyone looking straight into my eyes 
Could not help seeing it, and could not fail 
To become thoughtful, more sad and quiet 
Than if he were listening...Read more of this...

France the 18th year of These States

by Walt Whitman
 1
A GREAT year and place; 
A harsh, discordant, natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother’s heart closer
 than
 any yet. 

I walk’d the shores of my Eastern Sea, 
Heard over the waves the little voice, 
Saw the divine infant, where she woke, mournfully wailing, amid the roar of cannon,
 curses,
 shouts, crash of falling buildings;
Was not so sick from...Read more of this...

If I could bribe them by a Rose

by Emily Dickinson
 If I could bribe them by a Rose
I'd bring them every flower that grows
From Amherst to Cashmere!
I would not stop for night, or storm --
Or frost, or death, or anyone --
My business were so dear!

If they would linger for a Bird
My Tambourin were soonest heard
Among the April Woods!
Unwearied, all the summer long,
Only to break in wilder song
When Winter shook...Read more of this...

Garden Wireless

by Carl Sandburg
 HOW many feet ran with sunlight, water, and air?

What little devils shaken of laughter, cramming their little ribs with chuckles,

Fixed this lone red tulip, a woman’s mouth of passion kisses, a nun’s mouth of sweet thinking, here topping a straight line of green, a pillar stem?

Who hurled this bomb of red caresses?—nodding balloon-film shooting its wireless every fraction of...Read more of this...

Penniwit the Artist

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I lost my patronage in Spoon River
From trying to put my mind in the camera
To catch the soul of the person.
The very best picture I ever took
Was of Judge Somers, attorney at law.
He sat upright and had me pause
Till he got his cross-eye straight.
Then when he was ready he said "all right."
And I yelled "overruled" and his eye turned...Read more of this...

The Sharks Parlor

by James Dickey
 Memory: I can take my head and strike it on a wall on Cumberland Island 
Where the night tide came crawling under the stairs came up the first 
Two or three steps and the cottage stood on poles all night 
With the sea sprawled under it as we dreamed of the great fin circling 
Under the bedroom floor. In...Read more of this...

Des refus

by Dimitris P Kraniotis
 Le bruit des autos
ferme à clé l’aube
avec des réponses coupées
et des refus inadmis
qui se répètent
sévèrement
a chaque couché du soleil....Read more of this...

Repeat That Repeat

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 Repeat that, repeat,
Cuckoo, bird, and open ear wells, heart-springs, delightfully sweet,
With a ballad, with a ballad, a rebound 
Off trundled timber and scoops of the hillside ground, hollow hollow hollow ground:
The whole landscape flushes on a sudden at a sound....Read more of this...

The Bible is an antique Volume --

by Emily Dickinson
 The Bible is an antique Volume --
Written by faded men
At the suggestion of Holy Spectres --
Subjects -- Bethlehem --
Eden -- the ancient Homestead --
Satan -- the Brigadier --
Judas -- the Great Defaulter --
David -- the Troubador --
Sin -- a distinguished Precipice
Others must resist --
Boys that "believe" are very lonesome --
Other Boys are "lost" --
Had but the Tale a warbling...Read more of this...

Animals Are Passing From Our Lives

by Philip Levine
 It's wonderful how I jog
on four honed-down ivory toes
my massive buttocks slipping
like oiled parts with each light step.

I'm to market. I can smell
the sour, grooved block, I can smell
the blade that opens the hole
and the pudgy white fingers

that shake out the intestines
like a hankie. In my dreams 
the snouts drool on the marble,
suffering children, suffering flies,

suffering the consumers
who won't...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 02: 08: The Box With Silver Handles

by Conrad Aiken
 Well,—it was two days after my husband died—
Two days! And the earth still raw above him.
And I was sweeping the carpet in their hall.
In number four—the room with the red wall-paper—
Some chorus girls and men were singing that song
'They'll soon be lighting candles
Round a box with silver handles'—and hearing them sing it
I started to cry. Just then he came...Read more of this...

It Is March

by W S Merwin
 It is March and black dust falls out of the books
Soon I will be gone
The tall spirit who lodged here has
Left already
On the avenues the colorless thread lies under
Old prices

When you look back there is always the past
Even when it has vanished
But when you look forward
With your dirty knuckles and the wingless
Bird on your shoulder
What can you write

The bitterness...Read more of this...

Dark Prophecy: I Sing Of Shine

by Etheridge Knight
 And, yeah brothers
while white America sings about the unsinkable molly brown
(who was hustling the titanic
when it went down)
I sing to thee of Shine
the stoker who was hip enough to flee the fucking ship
and let the white folks drown
with screams on their lips
(jumped his black ass into the dark sea, Shine did,
broke free from the straining steel).
Yeah, I sing to...Read more of this...

About Du Fu

by Li Bai
I met Du Fu on a mountaintop

in August when the sun was hot.

Under the shade of his big straw hat

his face was sad--

in the years since we last parted,

he'd grown wane, exhausted.

Poor old Du Fu, I thought then,

he must be agonizing over poetry again....Read more of this...

A Memory At Sixty

by Barry Tebb
 They have vanished, the pop men with their varnished crates

Of Tizer and dandy, American ice-cream soda and one percent shandy.

The clunk of frothy quarts dumped on donkey-stoned doorsteps

Is heard no more, nor the neighs of restless mares between the shafts.

The shining brass of harness hangs in bar-rooms or droops

From imitation beams.



Gelded stallions no longer chomp and champ

In stalls beneath...Read more of this...

High Windows

by Philip Larkin
 When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's fucking her and she's
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives--
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That'll...Read more of this...

confession

by Louise Gluck
 for all my country poses
my cells belong to a town
grass is symbol-deep in me
but brick dips deeper down

mountains knock me sideways
a moor chills my bones
a field of wheat exults me
i'm awed by ancient stones

but lines of dowdy shop-fronts
mean unpolished streets
sever the green man in me
coddle my heart's retreats

my marrow's grey as asphalt
my brain's a shirley tram
the royal pier dreams...Read more of this...

Longings for Home

by Walt Whitman
 O MAGNET-SOUTH! O glistening, perfumed South! My South! 
O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse, and love! Good and evil! O all dear to me! 
O dear to me my birth-things—All moving things, and the trees where I was
 born—the
 grains,
 plants, rivers; 
Dear to me my own slow sluggish rivers where they flow, distant, over flats of silvery
 sands,
...Read more of this...

My Country in Darkness

by Eavan Boland
 After the wolves and before the elms
the bardic order ended in Ireland.

Only a few remained to continue
a dead art in a dying land:

This is a man
on the road from Youghal to Cahirmoyle.
He has no comfort, no food and no future.
He has no fire to recite his friendless measures by.
His riddles and flatteries will have no reward.
His patrons sheath their...Read more of this...

World Below the Brine The

by Walt Whitman
 THE world below the brine; 
Forests at the bottom of the sea—the branches and leaves, 
Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds—the thick tangle, the openings,
 and
 the pink turf, 
Different colors, pale gray and green, purple, white, and gold—the play of light
 through
 the water, 
Dumb swimmers there among the rocks—coral, gluten, grass, rushes—and the aliment
 of
 the...Read more of this...

Desires

by Constantine P Cavafy
 Like beautiful bodies of the dead who had not grown old
and they shut them, with tears, in a magnificent mausoleum,
with roses at the head and jasmine at the feet --
this is what desires resemble that have passed
without fulfillment; with none of them having achieved
a night of sensual delight, or a bright morning....Read more of this...

New Year's Night

by Lam Quang My
The lightening tears the night – thunder rolls 
Bans all coldness from the room
The smell of incense calls to childhood
Pulsating fire recalls the word “Mammy!”...Read more of this...

Every day, at dawn, I go to the tavern. There I give

by Omar Khayyam
Every day, at dawn, I go to the tavern. There I give
myself to the company of kalendar hypocrites. O Thou,
who art the master of secrets most concealed, give me
faith, if Thou wishest me to apply myself to prayer.
357...Read more of this...

A something in a summers Day

by Emily Dickinson
 A something in a summer's Day
As slow her flambeaux burn away
Which solemnizes me.

A something in a summer's noon --
A depth -- an Azure -- a perfume --
Transcending ecstasy.

And still within a summer's night
A something so transporting bright
I clap my hands to see --

Then veil my too inspecting face
Lets such a subtle -- shimmering grace
Flutter too far for me --

The...Read more of this...

Spain 1873–'74

by Walt Whitman
 OUT of the murk of heaviest clouds, 
Out of the feudal wrecks, and heap’d-up skeletons of kings, 
Out of that old entire European debris—the shatter’d mummeries, 
Ruin’d cathedrals, crumble of palaces, tombs of priests, 
Lo! Freedom’s features, fresh, undimm’d, look forth—the same immortal face
 looks
 forth;
(A glimpse as of thy mother’s face, Columbia, 
A flash significant as of a...Read more of this...

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