Famous Fore Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Ballad of John Silver

..., 
And we flew the pretty colours of the crossbones and the skull; 
We'd a big black Jolly Roger flapping grimly at the fore, 
And we sailed the Spanish Water in the happy days of yore. 

We'd a long brass gun amidships, like a well-conducted ship, 
We had each a brace of pistols and a cutlass at the hip; 
It's a point which tells against us, and a fact to be deplored, 
But we chased the goodly merchant-men and laid their ships aboard. 

Then the dead men fouled the scuppers ...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John


A Dialogue between Old England and New

...ou art glad. 

New England. 

23 And thus, alas, your state you much deplore
24 In general terms, but will not say wherefore.
25 What Medicine shall I seek to cure this woe,
26 If th' wound's so dangerous, I may not know?
27 But you, perhaps, would have me guess it out.
28 What, hath some Hengist like that Saxon stout
29 By fraud and force usurp'd thy flow'ring crown,
30 Or by tempestuous Wars thy fields trod down?
31 Or hath Canutus, that brave valiant Dane,
32 The regal pea...Read more of this...
by Bradstreet, Anne

A Lovers Complaint

...fly,
O, that sad breath his spongy lungs bestow'd,
O, all that borrow'd motion seeming owed,
Would yet again betray the fore-betray'd,
And new pervert a reconciled maid!'...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William

American Feuillage

...less branches; 
Always the free range and diversity! always the continent of Democracy! 
Always the prairies, pastures, forests, vast cities, travelers, Kanada, the snows;
Always these compact lands—lands tied at the hips with the belt stringing the huge
 oval
 lakes; 
Always the West, with strong native persons—the increasing density there—the
 habitans,
 friendly, threatening, ironical, scorning invaders; 
All sights, South, North, East—all deeds, promiscuously done at all ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Astrophel and Stella

...n highest way of heau'n the Sun did ride,
Progressing then from fair Twinnes golden place,
Hauing no mask of clouds before his face,
But streaming forth of heate in his chiefe pride;
When some fair ladies, by hard promise tied,
On horsebacke met him in his furious race;
Yet each prepar'd with fannes wel-shading grace
From that foes wounds their tender skinnes to hide.
Stella alone with face vnarmed marcht,
Either to do like him which open shone,
Or carelesse of the ...Read more of this...
by Sidney, Sir Philip


Beowulf (Modern English)

...
young in the yards, whom God had sent
as a comfort to the people—he understood the dire distress
they had suffered before, bereft of a king
for a long while. Therefore the Lord of Life,
the Sovereign of Glory, gave to them worldly honor.
Beow was famous—prosperity sprang widely—
as Scyld’s son, throughout all the northern lands. (ll. 12-19)

So ought a young man to make good his disposition,
gracious payments from the start, even in the lap of his father,
so that l...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Beowulf (Old English)

.... Since erst he lay
friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him:
for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve,
till before him the folk, both far and near,
who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate,
gave him gifts: a good king he!
To him an heir was afterward born,
a son in his halls, whom heaven sent
to favor the folk, feeling their woe
that erst they had lacked an earl for leader
so long a while; the Lord endowed him,
the Wielder of Wonder, with world’s renow...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Endymion: Book I

...ness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young,...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Endymion: Book III

...mighty deeps,
The monstrous sea is thine--the myriad sea!
O Moon! far-spooming Ocean bows to thee,
And Tellus feels his forehead's cumbrous load.

 Cynthia! where art thou now? What far abode
Of green or silvery bower doth enshrine
Such utmost beauty? Alas, thou dost pine
For one as sorrowful: thy cheek is pale
For one whose cheek is pale: thou dost bewail
His tears, who weeps for thee. Where dost thou sigh?
Ah! surely that light peeps from Vesper's eye,
Or what a thing is lo...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Endymion: Book IV

...aven on the spiritual air begot:
Long didst thou sit alone in northern grot,
While yet our England was a wolfish den;
Before our forests heard the talk of men;
Before the first of Druids was a child;--
Long didst thou sit amid our regions wild
Rapt in a deep prophetic solitude.
There came an eastern voice of solemn mood:--
Yet wast thou patient. Then sang forth the Nine,
Apollo's garland:--yet didst thou divine
Such home-bred glory, that they cry'd in vain,
"Come hither, Sist...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

I Sing the Body Electric

..., teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges, 
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition, 
Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue, 
Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the ample side-round of the
 chest. 

Upper-arm, arm-pit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,
Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, fore-finger, finger-balls,
 finger-joints, finger-nails, 
Broad breast-front, curling h...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Monadnoc

...d dams and mills,
And fit the bleak and howling place
For gardens of a finer race,
The world-soul knows his own affair,
Fore-looking when his hands prepare
For the next ages men of mould,
Well embodied, well ensouled,
He cools the present's fiery glow,
Sets the life pulse strong, but slow.
Bitter winds and fasts austere.
His quarantines and grottos, where
He slowly cures decrepit flesh,
And brings it infantile and fresh.
These exercises are the toys
And games with which he br...Read more of this...
by Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Paradise Regained: The Fourth Book

...won so much on Eve,
So little here, nay lost. But Eve was Eve;
This far his over-match, who, self-deceived
And rash, beforehand had no better weighed
The strength he was to cope with, or his own.
But—as a man who had been matchless held 
In cunning, over-reached where least he thought,
To salve his credit, and for very spite,
Still will be tempting him who foils him still,
And never cease, though to his shame the more;
Or as a swarm of flies in vintage-time,
About the wine-p...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Samson Agonistes

..., as it was antiently compos'd, hath been ever held the
gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other Poems:
therefore said by Aristotle to be of power by raising pity and fear,
or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions, that is
to temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight,
stirr'd up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is
Nature wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion: for
so in Physic things of me...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

The Everlasting Mercy

...o get more breath, 
And breath I got, though Billy bats 
Some stinging short-arms in my slats. 
And when we broke, as I foresaw, 
He swung his right in for the jaw. 
I stopped it on my shoulder bone, 
And at the shock I heard Bill groan 
A little groan or moan or grunt 
As though I'd hit his wind a bunt. 
At that, I clinched, and while we clinched, 
His old time right arm dig was flinched, 
And when we broke he hit me light 
As though he didn't trust his right, 
He flapped me...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

The Flight Of The Duchess

...ched through and through with many a vein
Whence iron's dug, and copper's dealt;
Look right, look left, look straight before,---
Beneath they mine, above they smelt,
Copper-ore and iron-ore,
And forge and furnace mould and melt,
And so on, more and ever more,
Till at the last, for a bounding belt,
Comes the salt sand hoar of the great sea-shore,
---And the whole is our Duke's country.

III.

I was born the day this present Duke was---
(And O, says the song, ere I was old!)
In...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

The Hammers

...ys,
All through the copper of Autumn hazes.
Tap to the red rising sun,
Tap to the purple setting sun.
Four years pass before the job is done.
Two thousand oak trees grown and felled,
Two thousand oaks from the hedgerows of the Weald,
Sussex had yielded two thousand oaks
With huge boles
Round which the tape rolls
Thirty mortal feet, say the village folks.
Two hundred loads of elm and Scottish fir;
Planking from Dantzig.
My! What timber goes into a ship!
Tap! Tap!
Two years the...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Rape of the Lock

...Structure of Majestick Frame,
Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its Name.
Here Britain's Statesmen oft the Fall foredoom
Of Foreign Tyrants, and of Nymphs at home;
Here Thou, great Anna! whom three Realms obey,
Dost sometimes Counsel take--and sometimes Tea.
Hither the Heroes and the Nymphs resort,
To taste awhile the Pleasures of a Court; 
In various Talk th' instructive hours they past,
Who gave the Ball, or paid the Visit last:
One speaks the Glory of the British Q...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander

The Rhyme of the Three Captains

...f dammer and spice I won beyond the seas,
He has taken my grinning heathen gods -- and what should he want o' these?
My foremast would not mend his boom, my deckhouse patch his boats;
He has whittled the two, this Yank Yahoo, to peddle for shoe-peg oats.
I could not fight for the failing light and a rough beam-sea beside,
But I hulled him once for a clumsy crimp and twice because he lied.
Had I had guns (as I had goods) to work my Christian harm,
I had run him up from his qua...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Wanderer

...hail; 
Far down the stream men pointed where she rode, 

Rode the great trackway to the sea, dim, dim, 
Already gone before the stars were gone. 
I saw her at the sea-line's smoky rim 
Grow swiftly vaguer as they towed her on. 

Soon even her masts were hidden in the haze 
Beyond the city; she was on her course 
To trample billows for a hundred days; 
That afternoon the northerner gathered force, 

Blowing a small snow from a point of east. 
"Oh, fair for her," we said, "to ...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

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