Famous For What Its Worth Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous For What Its Worth 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 what its worth poems. These examples illustrate what a famous for what its worth poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Sonnet 39: O how thy worth with manners may I sing

by William Shakespeare
 O, how thy worth with manners may I sing,
When thou art all the better part of me?
What can mine own praise to mine own self bring?
And what is't but mine own when I praise thee?
Even for this let us divided live,
And our dear love lose name of single one,
That by this separation I may give
That due to thee which...Read more of this...

A cup of wine is worth the empire of the universe;

by Omar Khayyam
A cup of wine is worth the empire of the universe;
the brick which covers the jar is worth a thousand lives.
The napkin with which one wipes lips moistened with
wine is indeed worth a thousand turbans....Read more of this...

Clover

by Sidney Lanier
 Inscribed to the Memory of John Keats.



Dear uplands, Chester's favorable fields,
My large unjealous Loves, many yet one --
A grave good-morrow to your Graces, all,
Fair tilth and fruitful seasons!
Lo, how still!
The midmorn empties you of men, save me;
Speak to your lover, meadows! None can hear.
I lie as lies yon placid Brandywine,
Holding the hills and heavens in my heart
For contemplation.
'Tis a...Read more of this...

Future

by Ehsan Sehgal
I will never search your past
Future will no bother me
Because its other name is today
The present, you are mine
Your life, love, respect, honour
Your health, wealth and worth
Make your destiny
Your all actions will be counted
Today, the present, it is your future too.
Ehsan Sehgal...Read more of this...

In Summer

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Oh, summer has clothed the earth
In a cloak from the loom of the sun!
And a mantle, too, of the skies' soft blue,
And a belt where the rivers run.
And now for the kiss of the wind,
And the touch of the air's soft hands,
With the rest from strife and the heat of life,
With the freedom of lakes and lands.
I envy the farmer's...Read more of this...

The Lily In A Crystal

by Robert Herrick
 You have beheld a smiling rose
When virgins' hands have drawn
O'er it a cobweb-lawn:
And here, you see, this lily shows,
Tomb'd in a crystal stone,
More fair in this transparent case
Than when it grew alone,
And had but single grace.

You see how cream but naked is,
Nor dances in the eye
Without a strawberry;
Or some fine tincture, like to this,
Which draws the sight thereto,
More by...Read more of this...

Said The Poet To The Analyst

by Anne Sexton
 My business is words. Words are like labels, 
or coins, or better, like swarming bees. 
I confess I am only broken by the sources of things; 
as if words were counted like dead bees in the attic, 
unbuckled from their yellow eyes and their dry wings. 
I must always forget who one words is able to pick 
out another,...Read more of this...

A cup of wine is worth a hundred hearts, a hundred

by Omar Khayyam
A cup of wine is worth a hundred hearts, a hundred
creeds, a mouthful of this juice divine is worth the Empire
of China. What is there, truly, on the earth preferable
to wine? It is a bitter that is a hundred times
sweeter than life....Read more of this...

When we have ceased to care

by Emily Dickinson
 When we have ceased to care
The Gift is given
For which we gave the Earth
And mortgaged Heaven
But so declined in worth
'Tis ignominy now
To look upon --...Read more of this...

Except Thy absence there is nothing of worth that can

by Omar Khayyam
Except Thy absence there is nothing of worth that can
bruise to the quick; he cannot be acute who is not taken
with Thy subtle charms, and, although there exist in
Thy mind no care for any one, there is none who may
not be preoccupied with Thee.
288...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXXXIII

by William Shakespeare
 I never saw that you did painting need
And therefore to your fair no painting set;
I found, or thought I found, you did exceed
The barren tender of a poet's debt;
And therefore have I slept in your report,
That you yourself being extant well might show
How far a modern quill doth come too short,
Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.
This...Read more of this...

Early Poems

by Victor Hugo
 MOSES ON THE NILE. 
 
 ("Mes soeurs, l'onde est plus fraiche.") 
 
 {TO THE FLORAL GAMES, Toulouse, Feb. 10, 1820.} 


 "Sisters! the wave is freshest in the ray 
 Of the young morning; the reapers are asleep; 
 The river bank is lonely: come away! 
 The early murmurs of old Memphis creep 
 Faint on...Read more of this...

Prelude

by Rudyard Kipling
 I have eaten your bread and salt.
I have drunk your water and wine.
In deaths ye died I have watched beside,
And the lives ye led were mine.

Was there aught that I did not share
In vigil or toil or ease, --
One joy or woe that I did not know,
Dear hearts across the seas?

I have written the tale of our life
For a...Read more of this...

The Red Son

by Carl Sandburg
 I LOVE your faces I saw the many years
I drank your milk and filled my mouth
With your home talk, slept in your house
And was one of you.
But a fire burns in my heart.
Under the ribs where pulses thud
And flitting between bones of skull
Is the push, the endless mysterious command,
Saying:
"I leave you behind--
You for the little hills and the years...Read more of this...

Against death's arrows what are buckles worth?

by Omar Khayyam
Against death's arrows what are buckles worth?
What all the pomps and riches of the earth?
When I survey the world, I see no good
But goodness, all beside is nothing worth....Read more of this...

I Hate This City

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   I hate this City, seated on the Plain,
     The clang and clamour of the hot Bazar,
   Knowing, amid the pauses of my pain,
     This month the Almonds bloom in Kandahar.

   The Almond-trees, that sheltered my Delight,
     Screening my happiness as evening...Read more of this...

499. Song—A Man's a Man for a' that

by Robert Burns
 IS there for honest Poverty
 That hings his head, an’ a’ that;
The coward slave-we pass him by,
 We dare be poor for a’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that.
 Our toils obscure an’ a’ that,
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
 The Man’s the gowd for a’ that.


What though on hamely fare we dine,
 Wear hoddin grey, an’ a...Read more of this...

312. Elegy on the late Miss Burnet of Monboddo

by Robert Burns
 LIFE ne’er exulted in so rich a prize,
As Burnet, lovely from her native skies;
Nor envious death so triumph’d in a blow,
As that which laid th’ accomplish’d Burnet low.


Thy form and mind, sweet maid, can I forget?
 In richest ore the brightest jewel set!
In thee, high Heaven above was truest shown,
 As by His noblest work the Godhead best is...Read more of this...

The Task: Book I The Sofa (excerpts)

by William Cowper
 Thou know'st my praise of nature most sincere,
And that my raptures are not conjur'd up
To serve occasions of poetic pomp,
But genuine, and art partner of them all.
How oft upon yon eminence our pace
Has slacken'd to a pause, and we have borne
The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,
While admiration, feeding at the eye,
And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene.
Thence...Read more of this...

To Himself

by Giacomo Leopardi
 Now will you rest forever,
My tired heart. Dead is the last
deception,
That I thought eternal. Dead. Well I
feel
In us the sweet illusions,
Nothing but ash, desire burned out.
Rest forever. You have
Trembled enough. Nothing is worth
Thy beats, nor does the earth
deserve
Thy sighs. Bitter and dull
Is life, there is nought else. The
world is clay.
Rest now. Despair
For the last time. To our kind, Fate
Gives...Read more of this...

A mouthful of old wine is of more worth than a new

by Omar Khayyam
A mouthful of old wine is of more worth than a new
empire. The wise man will reject all that is not wine.
A cup of this nectar is a hundred times preferable to
the kingdom of Feridoun. The lid which covers the wine-jar
is more precious than the diadem of Kai-Khosrou....Read more of this...

Archimedes

by Friedrich von Schiller
 To Archimedes once a scholar came,
"Teach me," he said, "the art that won thy fame;--
The godlike art which gives such boons to toil,
And showers such fruit upon thy native soil;--
The godlike art that girt the town when all
Rome's vengeance burst in thunder on the wall!"
"Thou call'st art godlike--it is so, in truth,
And was," replied the master to the youth,
"Ere...Read more of this...

The time we pass in this world has no worth without

by Omar Khayyam
The time we pass in this world has no worth without
the wine-cup and the wine. It also needs the swelling
sound of Irak's flute. Incessant watching of things here
below has told me that in pleasure and in joy alone are
worth: the rest is naught.
300...Read more of this...

Arhan

by Aleister Crowley
 When the chill of earth black-breasted is uplifted at the
glance
Of the red sun million-crested, and the forest blossoms
dance
With the light that stirs and lustres of the dawn, and with
the bloom
Of the wind’s cheek as it clusters from the hidden valley’s
gloom :
Then I walk in woodland spaces, musing on the solemn
ways
Of the immemorial places shut behind the starry rays
Of the...Read more of this...

The Crooked Stick

by Elinor Wylie
 First Traveller: What's that lying in the dust? 
Second Traveller: A crooked stick. 
First Traveller: What's it worth, if you can trust to arithmetic? 
Second Traveller: Isn't this a riddle? 
First Traveller: No, a trick. 
Second Traveller:It's worthless, leave it where it lies. 
First Traveller: Wait; count ten; 
Rub a little dust upon your eyes; 
Now, look again. 
Second...Read more of this...

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