Famous Granted Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Time Ive Lost In Wooing

by Thomas Moore
 The time I've lost in wooing, 
In watching and pursuing 
The light that lies 
In woman's eyes, 
Has been my heart's undoing. 
Tho' Wisdom oft has sought me, 
I scorn'd the lore she brought me, 
My only books 
Were women's looks, 
And folly's all they taught me. 

Her smile when Beauty granted, 
I hung with gaze enchanted, 
Like him...Read more of this...

Freedoms Plow

by Langston Hughes
 When a man starts out with nothing,
 When a man starts out with his hands
 Empty, but clean,
 When a man starts to build a world,
He starts first with himself
And the faith that is in his heart-
The strength there,
The will there to build.

First in the heart is the dream-
Then the mind starts seeking a way.
His eyes look out on...Read more of this...

Three Songs of Zahir-u-Din

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Who does not feel desire unending
     To solace through his daily strife,
   With some mysterious Mental Blending,
     The hungry loneliness of life?

   Until, by sudden passion shaken,
     As terriers shake a rat at play,
   He finds, all blindly, he...Read more of this...

May 24 1980

by Joseph Brodsky
I have braved for want of wild beasts steel cages 
carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters 
lived by the sea flashed aces in an oasis 
dined with the-devil-knows-whom in tails on truffles.
From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world the earthly
width. Twice have drowned thrice let knives rake my nitty-gritty.
Quit the country the bore...Read more of this...

From: A King Of Kings A King Among The Kings

by Delmore Schwartz
 Come, let us rejoice in James Joyce, in the greatness of this poet,
 king, and king of poets
For he is our poor dead king, he is the monarch and Caesar of English,
 he is the veritable King of the King's English

 The English of the life of the city,
 and the English of music;

Let them rejoice because he rejoiced...Read more of this...

London Bridge

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 “Do I hear them? Yes, I hear the children singing—and what of it? 
Have you come with eyes afire to find me now and ask me that? 
If I were not their father and if you were not their mother, 
We might believe they made a noise…. What are you—driving at!” 

“Well, be glad that you can hear them,...Read more of this...

Saturday At The Border

by Hayden Carruth
 "Form follows function follows form . . . , etc."

   --Dr. J. Anthony Wadlington

Here I am writing my first villanelle
At seventy-two, and feeling old and tired--
"Hey, Pops, why dontcha give us the old death knell?"--

And writing it what's more on the rim of hell
In blazing Arizona when all I desired
Was north and solitude and not a villanelle,

Working...Read more of this...

357. A Grace before Dinner

by Robert Burns
 O THOU who kindly dost provide
 For every creature’s want!
We bless Thee, God of Nature wide,
 For all Thy goodness lent:
And if it please Thee, Heavenly Guide,
 May never worse be sent;
But, whether granted, or denied,
 Lord, bless us with content. Amen...Read more of this...

Easter Week

by Joyce Kilmer
 See the land, her Easter keeping, 
Rises as her Maker rose. 
Seeds, so long in darkness sleeping, 
Burst at last from winter snows. 
Earth with heaven above rejoices; 
Fields and gardens hail the spring; 
Shaughs and woodlands ring with voices, 
While the wild birds build and sing. 

You, to whom your Maker granted 
Powers to those sweet birds unknown,...Read more of this...

The Barrier

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
 The Midnight wooed the Morning Star, 
And prayed her: "Love come nearer; 
Your swinging coldly there afar 
To me but makes you dearer."

The Morning Star was pale with dole 
As said she, low replying: 
"Oh, lover mine, soul of my soul, 
For you I too am sighing."

"But One ordained when we were born, 
In spite of love's insistence, 
That...Read more of this...

Lost Shepherd

by Robert William Service
 Ah me! How hard is destiny!
If we could only know. . . .
I bought my son from Sicily
A score of years ago;
I haled him from our sunny vale
To streets of din and squalor,
And left it to professors pale
To make of him a scholar.

Had he remained a peasant lad,
A shepherd on the hill,
like golden faun in goatskin clad
He might be...Read more of this...

The Scapegoat

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 We have all of us read how the Israelites fled 
From Egypt with Pharaoh in eager pursuit of 'em, 
And Pharaoh's fierce troop were all put "in the soup" 
When the waters rolled softly o'er every galoot of 'em. 
The Jews were so glad when old Pharaoh was "had" 
That they sounded their timbrels and capered like mad. 
You...Read more of this...

Untold Want The

by Walt Whitman
 THE untold want, by life and land ne’er granted, 
Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find....Read more of this...

Ode to W. H. Channing

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Though loath to grieve
The evil time's sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My honied thought
For the priest's cant,
Or statesman's rant.

If I refuse
My study for their politique,
Which at the best is trick,
The angry Muse
Puts confusion in my brain.

But who is he that prates
Of the culture of mankind,
Of better arts and life?
Go, blindworm, go,
Behold the famous States
Harrying Mexico
With rifle and with knife!

Or who, with accent...Read more of this...

My Goddess

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 SAY, which Immortal
Merits the highest reward?
With none contend I,
But I will give it
To the aye-changing,
Ever-moving
Wondrous daughter of Jove.
His best-beloved offspring.
Sweet Phantasy.

For unto her
Hath he granted
All the fancies which erst
To none allow'd he
Saving himself;
Now he takes his pleasure
In the mad one.

She may, crowned with roses,
With staff twined round with lilies,
Roam thro' flow'ry valleys,
Rule the butterfly-people,
And soft-nourishing dew
With bee-like lips
Drink from...Read more of this...

Ii

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
'T was in the radiant summer weather,
When God looked, smiling, from the sky;
And we went wand'ring much together
By wood and lane, Ione and I,
Attracted by the subtle tie
Of common thoughts and common tastes,
Of eyes whose vision saw the same,
And freely granted beauty's claim
Where others found but worthless wastes.
We paused to hear the far bells ringing
Across the distance, sweet and clear.
We...Read more of this...

The Epic Stars

by Robinson Jeffers
 The heroic stars spending themselves,
Coining their very flesh into bullets for the lost battle,
They must burn out at length like used candles;
And Mother Night will weep in her triumph, taking home her heroes.
There is the stuff for an epic poem--
This magnificent raid at the heart of darkness, this lost battle--
We don't know enough, we'll never know.
Oh happy Homer, taking...Read more of this...

Orion

by Adrienne Rich
 Far back when I went zig-zagging
through tamarack pastures
you were my genius, you
my cast-iron Viking, my helmed
lion-heart king in prison.
Years later now you're young

my fierce half-brother, staring
down from that simplified west
your breast open, your belt dragged down
by an oldfashioned thing, a sword
the last bravado you won't give over
though it weighs you down as you stride

and the stars in it are...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 03: 10: Letter

by Conrad Aiken
 From time to time, lifting his eyes, he sees
The soft blue starlight through the one small window,
The moon above black trees, and clouds, and Venus,—
And turns to write . . . The clock, behind ticks softly.

It is so long, indeed, since I have written,—
Two years, almost, your last is turning yellow,—
That these first words I write seem cold and...Read more of this...

A Prayer For My Daughter

by William Butler Yeats
 Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind.
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for...Read more of this...

Burning Drift-Wood

by John Greenleaf Whittier
Before my drift-wood fire I sit, 
And see, with every waif I burn, 
Old dreams and fancies coloring it, 
And folly's unlaid ghosts return. 

O ships of mine, whose swift keels cleft 
The enchanted sea on which they sailed, 
Are these poor fragments only left 
Of vain desires and hopes that failed? 

Did I not watch from them the light...Read more of this...

The Fox And Crane

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 ONCE two persons uninvited

Came to join my dinner table;
For the nonce they lived united,

Fox and crane yclept in fable.

Civil greetings pass'd between us

Then I pluck'd some pigeons tender
For the fox of jackal-genius,

Adding grapes in full-grown splendour.

Long-neck'd flasks I put as dishes

For the crane, without delaying,
Fill'd with gold and silver fishes,

In the limpid water playing.

Had ye witness'd Reynard planted

At his...Read more of this...

Genesis

by Vachel Lindsay
 I was but a half-grown boy, 
You were a girl-child slight. 
Ah, how weary you were! 
You had led in the bullock-fight... 
We slew the bullock at length 
With knives and maces of stone. 
And so your feet were torn, 
Your lean arms bruised to the bone. 

Perhaps 'twas the slain beast's blood 
We drank, or a root we...Read more of this...

Song Of An Old General

by Wang Wei
When he was a youth of fifteen or twenty, 
He chased a wild horse, he caught him and rode him, 
He shot the white-browed mountain tiger, 
He defied the yellow-bristled Horseman of Ye. 
Fighting single- handed for a thousand miles, 
With his naked dagger he could hold a multitude. 
...Granted that the troops of China were as swift as heaven's...Read more of this...

The Guardian-Angel

by Robert Browning
 A PICTURE AT FANO.

I.

Dear and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave
That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!
Let me sit all the day here, that when eve
Shall find performed thy special ministry,
And time come for departure, thou, suspending
Thy flight, mayst see another child for tending,
Another still, to quiet and retrieve.

II.

Then I shall feel thee step one step,...Read more of this...

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