Famous Handsome Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Zone

by Guillaume Apollinaire
ZONE 


In the end you are tired of this ancient world 
Shepherd oh Eiffel Tower the herd of bridges is bleating this morning 

You've had enough of living in Greek and Roman antiquity 

Here even the cars look antique 
Only religion has stayed new religion 
Has stayed simple like the hangars at Port-Aviation 

You alone in Europe are not ancient...Read more of this...

The Ancient Town of Leith

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Ancient town of Leith, most wonderful to be seen,
With your many handsome buildings, and lovely links so green,
And the first buildings I may mention are the Courthouse and Town Hall,
Also Trinity House, and the Sailors' Home of Call. 

Then as for Leith Fort, it was erected in 1779, which is really grand,
And which is now the artillery headquarters in...Read more of this...

Lines on Hearing it Declared that No Women Were So Handsome as the English

by Mary Darby Robinson
 BEAUTY, the attribute of Heaven! 
In various forms to mortals given, 
With magic skill enslaves mankind, 
As sportive fancy sways the mind. 
Search the wide world, go where you will, 
VARIETY pursues you still; 
Capricious Nature knows no bound, 
Her unexhausted gifts are found 
In ev'ry clime, in ev'ry face, 
Each has its own peculiar grace. 

To GALLIA's frolic...Read more of this...

Boaz Asleep

by Victor Hugo
 Boaz, overcome with weariness, by torchlight 
made his pallet on the threshing floor 
where all day he had worked, and now he slept 
among the bushels of threshed wheat.

The old man owned wheatfields and barley, 
and though he was rich, he was still fair-minded. 
No filth soured the sweetness of his well. 
No hot iron of torture whitened in...Read more of this...

Aladdin and the Jinn

by Vachel Lindsay
 "Bring me soft song," said Aladdin.
"This tailor-shop sings not at all.
Chant me a word of the twilight,
Of roses that mourn in the fall.
Bring me a song like hashish
That will comfort the stale and the sad,
For I would be mending my spirit,
Forgetting these days that are bad,
Forgetting companions too shallow,
Their quarrels and arguments thin,
Forgetting the shouting Muezzin:"-- 
"I AM YOUR...Read more of this...

327. On Glenriddell's Fox breaking his chain: A Fragment

by Robert Burns
 THOU, Liberty, thou art my theme;
Not such as idle poets dream,
Who trick thee up a heathen goddess
That a fantastic cap and rod has;
Such stale conceits are poor and silly;
I paint thee out, a Highland filly,
A sturdy, stubborn, handsome dapple,
As sleek’s a mouse, as round’s an apple,
That when thou pleasest canst do wonders;
But when thy luckless rider blunders,
Or if thy...Read more of this...

To The Handsome Mistress Grace Potter

by Robert Herrick
 As is your name, so is your comely face
Touch'd every where with such diffused grace,
As that in all that admirable round,
There is not one least solecism found;
And as that part, so every portion else
Keeps line for line with beauty's parallels....Read more of this...

The Lord of Burleigh

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 IN her ear he whispers gaily, 
'If my heart by signs can tell, 
Maiden, I have watch'd thee daily, 
And I think thou lov'st me well.' 
She replies, in accents fainter, 
'There is none I love like thee.' 
He is but a landscape-painter, 
And a village maiden she. 
He to lips, that fondly falter, 
Presses his without reproof: 
Leads...Read more of this...

The Moon

by David Berman
 A web of sewer, pipe, and wire connects each house to the others.

In 206 a dog sleeps by the stove where a small gas leak causes him
to have visions; visions that are rooted in nothing but gas.

Next door, a man who has decided to buy a car part by part
excitedly unpacks a wheel and an ashtray.

He arranges them every...Read more of this...

Death By Water

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
  Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
  Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
  And the profit and loss.
                                   ...Read more of this...

He Came To Read

by Constantine P Cavafy
 He came to read. Two or three books
are open; historians and poets.
But he only read for ten minutes,
and gave them up. He is dozing
on the sofa. He is fully devoted to books --
but he is twenty-three years old, and he's very handsome;
and this afternoon love passed
through his ideal flesh, his lips.
Through his flesh which is full of beauty
the heat...Read more of this...

May Miracle

by Robert William Service
 On this festive first of May,
Wending wistfully my way
Three sad sights I saw today.

The first was such a lovely lad
He lit with grace the sordid street;
Yet in a monk's robe he was clad,
With tonsured head and sandalled feet.
Though handsome as a movie star
His eyes had holiness in them,
As if he saw afaint, afar
A stable-stall in Bethlehem.

The second was a...Read more of this...

The Frog Prince

by Anne Sexton
 Frau Doktor,
Mama Brundig,
take out your contacts,
remove your wig.
I write for you.
I entertain.
But frogs come out
of the sky like rain.

Frogs arrive
With an ugly fury.
You are my judge.
You are my jury.

My guilts are what
we catalogue.
I'll take a knife
and chop up frog.

Frog has not nerves.
Frog is as old as a cockroach.
Frog is my father's genitals.
Frog is a malformed doorknob.
Frog is a soft...Read more of this...

I never felt at Home -- Below

by Emily Dickinson
 I never felt at Home -- Below --
And in the Handsome Skies
I shall not feel at Home -- I know --
I don't like Paradise --

Because it's Sunday -- all the time --
And Recess -- never comes --
And Eden'll be so lonesome
Bright Wednesday Afternoons --

If God could make a visit --
Or ever took a Nap --
So not to see us...Read more of this...

Balmoral Castle

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Beautiful Balmoral Castle,
Most handsome to be seen,
Highland home of the Empress of India,
Great Britain's Queen. 

Your woods and waters and
Mountains high are most
Beautiful to see,
Near by Balmoral Castle
And the dark river Dee. 

Then there's the hill of Cairngorm
To be seen from afar,
And the beautiful heathery hills
Of dark Lochnagar,
And the handsome little village-
The Castleton o' Braemar-
Which is most beautiful to...Read more of this...

The Faceless Man

by Robert William Service
 I'm dead.
Officially I'm dead. Their hope is past.
How long I stood as missing! Now, at last
 I'm dead.

Look in my face -- no likeness can you see,
No tiny trace of him they knew as "me".
How terrible the change!
Even my eyes are strange.
So keyed are they to pain,
That if I chanced to meet
My mother in the street
She'd look at me...Read more of this...

How Beastly The Bourgeois Is

by D. H. Lawrence
 How beastly the bourgeois is
especially the male of the species--

Presentable, eminently presentable--
shall I make you a present of him?

Isn't he handsome? Isn't he healthy? Isn't he a fine specimen?
Doesn't he look the fresh clean Englishman, outside?
Isn't it God's own image? tramping his thirty miles a day
after partridges, or a little rubber ball?
wouldn't you like to be like that, well...Read more of this...

An Address to the New Tay Bridge

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Beautiful new railway bridge of the Silvery Tay,
With your strong brick piers and buttresses in so grand array,
And your thirteen central girders, which seem to my eye
Strong enough all windy storms to defy.
And as I gaze upon thee my heart feels gay,
Because thou are the greatest railway bridge of the present day,
And can be seen for miles away
From North,...Read more of this...

Cock-A-Doodle-Do

by Mother Goose
Oh, my pretty cock, oh, my handsome cock,
  I pray you, do not crow before day,
And your comb shall be made of the very beaten gold,
  And your wings of the silver so gray....Read more of this...

The Spirit Of The Unborn Babe

by Robert William Service
 The Spirit of the Unborn Babe peered through the window-pane,
Peered through the window-pane that glowed like beacon in the night;
For, oh, the sky was desolate and wild with wind and rain;
And how the little room was crammed with coziness and light!
Except the flirting of the fire there was no sound at all;
The Woman sat beside the hearth, her knitting...Read more of this...

Drugs Made Pauline Vague

by Stevie Smith
 Drugs made Pauline vague.
 She sat one day at the breakfast table
 Fingering in a baffled way
 The fronds of the maidenhair plant.

Was it the salt you were looking for dear?
said Dulcie, exchanging a glance with the Brigadier.

 Chuff chuff Pauline what's the matter?
 Said the Brigadier to his wife
 Who did not even notice
 What a handsome couple...Read more of this...

The Inauguration of the University College

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Good people of Dundee, your voices raise,
And to Miss Baxter give great praise;
Rejoice and sing and dance with glee,
Because she has founded a College in Bonnie Dundee. 

Therefore loudly in her praise sing,
And make Dundee with your voices ring,
And give honour to whom honour is due,
Because ladies like her are very few. 

'Twas on the 5th day of October,...Read more of this...

To His Muse

by Robert Herrick
 Whither, mad maiden, wilt thou roam?
Far safer 'twere to stay at home;
Where thou mayst sit, and piping, please
The poor and private cottages.
Since cotes and hamlets best agree
With this thy meaner minstrelsy.
There with the reed thou mayst express
The shepherd's fleecy happiness;
And with thy Eclogues intermix:
Some smooth and harmless Bucolics.
There, on a hillock, thou mayst sing
Unto a handsome shepherdling;
Or to a...Read more of this...

The Handsome Heart

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 at a Gracious Answer


'But tell me, child, your choice; what shall I buy
You?'—'Father, what you buy me I like best.'
With the sweetest air that said, still plied and pressed,
He swung to his first poised purport of reply. 

What the heart is! which, like carriers let fly—
Doff darkness, homing nature knows the rest—
To its own fine function, wild and self-instressed,
Falls...Read more of this...

1. Song—Handsome Nell

by Robert Burns
 O ONCE I lov’d a bonie lass,
 Ay, and I love her still;
And whilst that virtue warms my breast,
 I’ll love my handsome Nell.


As bonie lasses I hae seen,
 And mony full as braw;
But, for a modest gracefu’ mein,
 The like I never saw.


A bonie lass, I will confess,
 Is pleasant to the e’e;
But, without some better qualities,
 She’s...Read more of this...

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