Famous Front(A) Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

The Bushfire - an Allegory

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 'Twas on the famous Empire run, 
Whose sun does never set, 
Whose grass and water, so they say, 
Have never failed them yet -- 
They carry many million sheep, 
Through seasons dry and wet. 
They call the homestead Albion House, 
And then, along with that, 
There's Welshman's Gully, Scotchman's Hill, 
And Paddymelon Flat: 
And all these places are renowned...Read more of this...

The Front Tooth

by Robert William Service
 A-sittin' in the Bull and Pump
With double gins to keep us cheery
Says she to me, says Polly Crump"
"What makes ye look so sweet. me dearie?
As if ye'd gotten back yer youth . . . ."
Says I: "It's just me new front tooth."

Says Polly Crump: "A gummy grin
Don't help to make one's business active;
We gels wot gains our bread by...Read more of this...

Alberts Return

by Marriott Edgar
 You've `eard `ow young Albert Ramsbottom 
At the zoo up at Blackpool one year 
With a stick with an `orse's `ead `andle
Gave a lion a poke in the ear? 

The name of the lion was Wallace, 
The poke in the ear made `im wild 
And before you could say "Bob's yer uncle" 
E'd upped and `e'd swallowed the child....Read more of this...

Safe Despair it is that raves --

by Emily Dickinson
 Safe Despair it is that raves --
Agony is frugal.
Puts itself severe away
For its own perusal.

Garrisoned no Soul can be
In the Front of Trouble --
Love is one, not aggregate --
Nor is Dying double --...Read more of this...

The Charge of the Light Brigade

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Half a league, half a league, 
Half a league onward, 
All in the valley of Death 
Rode the six hundred. 
"Forward, the Light Brigade! 
Charge for the guns!" he said: 
Into the valley of Death 
Rode the six hundred. 

"Forward, the Light Brigade!" 
Was there a man dismayed? 
Not though the soldier knew 
Some one had blundered: 
Their's not to...Read more of this...

Then

by Philip Levine
 A solitary apartment house, the last one 
before the boulevard ends and a dusty road 
winds its slow way out of town. On the third floor 
through the dusty windows Karen beholds 
the elegant couples walking arm in arm 
in the public park. It is Saturday afternoon, 
and she is waiting for a particular young man 
whose name I...Read more of this...

United Front Song

by Bertolt Brecht
 And because a man is human
He'll want to eat, and thanks a lot
But talk can't take the place of meat
or fill an empty pot.

So left, two, three!
So left, two, three!
Comrade, there's a place for you.
Take your stand in the workers united front
For you are a worker too.

And because a man is human
he won't care for a kick in the...Read more of this...

Mulligans Mare

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Oh, Mulligan's bar was the deuce of a place 
To drink, and to fight, and to gamble and race; 
The height of choice spirits from near and from far 
Were all concentrated on Mulligan's bar. 

There was "Jerry the Swell", and the jockey-boy Ned, 
"Dog-bite-me" -- so called from the shape of his head -- 
And a man whom...Read more of this...

Above the Battles Front

by Vachel Lindsay
 St. Francis, Buddha, Tolstoi, and St. John —
Friends, if you four, as pilgrims, hand in hand,
Returned, the hate of earth once more to dare,
And walked upon the water and the land,

If you, with words celestial, stopped these kings
For sober conclave, ere their battle great,
Would they for one deep instant then discern
Their crime, their heart-rot, and their fiend's estate?

If you...Read more of this...

The Old Front Gate

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
 W'en daih's chillun in de house, 
Dey keep on a-gittin' tall;
But de folks don' seem to see
Dat dey's growin' up at all,
'Twell dey fin' out some fine day
Dat de gals has 'menced to grow,
W'en dey notice as dey pass
Dat de front gate's saggin' low.

W'en de hinges creak an' cry,
An' de bahs go slantin' down,
You kin reckon dat hit's time
Fu'...Read more of this...

The Send-Off

by Wilfred Owen
 Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
To the siding-shed,
And lined the train with faces grimly gay.

Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
As men's are, dead.

Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp
Stood staring hard,
Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.
Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp
Winked to the guard.

So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up,...Read more of this...

Duino Elegies: The Fourth Elegy

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 O trees of life, oh, what when winter comes?
We are not of one mind. Are not like birds
in unison migrating. And overtaken,
overdue, we thrust ourselves into the wind
and fall to earth into indifferent ponds.
Blossoming and withering we comprehend as one.
And somewhere lions roam, quite unaware,
in their magnificence, of any weaknesss.

But we, while wholly concentrating on one thing,
already feel the...Read more of this...

My Soviet Passport

by Vladimir Mayakovsky
 I'd tear
 like a wolf
 at bureaucracy.
For mandates
 my respect's but the slightest.
To the devil himself
 I'd chuck without mercy
every red-taped paper.
 But this ...
Down the long front
 of coupés and cabins
File the officials
 politely.
They gather up passports
 and I give in
My own vermilion booklet.
For one kind of passport -
smiling lips part
For others -
 an attitude scornful.
They take
 with...Read more of this...

Right in Front of the Army

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 "Where 'ave you been this week or more, 
'Aven't seen you about the war'? 
Thought perhaps you was at the rear 
Guarding the waggons." "What, us? No fear! 
Where have we been? Why, bless my heart, 
Where have we been since the bloomin' start? 
Right in the front of the army, 
Battling day and night! 
Right in the front...Read more of this...

The Untrustworthy Speaker

by Louise Gluck
 Don't listen to me; my heart's been broken.
I don't see anything objectively.

I know myself; I've learned to hear like a psychiatrist.
When I speak passionately,
That's when I'm least to be trusted.

It's very sad, really: all my life I've been praised
For my intelligence, my powers of language, of insight-
In the end they're wasted-

I never see myself.
Standing on the front steps. Holding...Read more of this...

What Best I See In Thee

by Walt Whitman
 WHAT best I see in thee, 
Is not that where thou mov’st down history’s great highways, 
Ever undimm’d by time shoots warlike victory’s dazzle, 
Or that thou sat’st where Washington sat, ruling the land in peace, 
Or thou the man whom feudal Europe feted, venerable Asia, swarm’d upon,
Who walk’d with kings with even pace the round world’s promenade; 
But...Read more of this...

In Back Of The Real

by Allen Ginsberg
 railroad yard in San Jose 
 I wandered desolate 
in front of a tank factory 
 and sat on a bench 
near the switchman's shack. 

A flower lay on the hay on 
 the asphalt highway 
--the dread hay flower 
 I thought--It had a 
brittle black stem and 
 corolla of yellowish dirty 
spikes like Jesus' inchlong 
...Read more of this...

Come up from the Fields Father

by Walt Whitman
 1
COME up from the fields, father, here’s a letter from our Pete; 
And come to the front door, mother—here’s a letter from thy dear son. 

2
Lo, ’tis autumn; 
Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder, 
Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages, with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind;
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang, and grapes on the...Read more of this...

A Letter From the Front

by Sir Henry Newbolt
 I was out early to-day, spying about 
From the top of a haystack -- such a lovely morning -- 
And when I mounted again to canter back 
I saw across a field in the broad sunlight 
A young Gunner Subaltern, stalking along 
With a rook-rifle held at the read, and -- would you believe it? -- 
A domestic cat,...Read more of this...

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry
 Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more 
of everything ready-made. Be afraid 
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head. 
Not even your future will be a mystery 
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card 
and shut away in a little drawer. 

When they want...Read more of this...

Johnny Boer

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Men fight all shapes and sizes as the racing horses run, 
And no man knows his courage till he stands before a gun. 
At mixed-up fighting, hand to hand, and clawing men about 
They reckon Fuzzy-Wuzzy is the hottest fighter out. 
But Fuzzy gives himself away -- his style is out of date, 
He charges like a driven grouse...Read more of this...

Inside powers

by Ehsan Sehgal
"The most dangerous two enemies of yourself and for others reside inside you, one is "hate " and other is "anger", that are always in front line, keeping you in fight. The majority of the globe is ruled by that inside powers, but Almighty God has also gifted you two defense weapons, that are "love" and "tolerant with forgiveness".
Ehsan Sehgal...Read more of this...

Sonnet CII

by William Shakespeare
 My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming;
I love not less, though less the show appear:
That love is merchandized whose rich esteeming
The owner's tongue doth publish every where.
Our love was new and then but in the spring
When I was wont to greet it with my lays,
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing
And stops her pipe in growth of...Read more of this...

Fugue

by Howard Nemerov
 You see them vanish in their speeding cars, 
The many people hastening through the world,
And wonder what they would have done before
This time of time speed distance, random streams
Of molecules hastened by what rising heat?
Was there never a world where people just sat still?

Yet they might be all of them contemplatives
Of a timeless now, drivers and passengers
In the moving...Read more of this...

Remembrance has a Rear and Front --

by Emily Dickinson
 Remembrance has a Rear and Front --
'Tis something like a House --
It has a Garret also
For Refuse and the Mouse.

Besides the deepest Cellar
That ever Mason laid --
Look to it by its Fathoms
Ourselves be not pursued --...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Front(A) poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace