Famous Important Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Important poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous important poems. These examples illustrate what a famous important poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Marilyn Hacker
For Sára Karig
"You are so wise," the reindeer said, "you can bind the winds of the world in a single strand."—H. C. Andersen, "The Snow Queen"
She could bind the world's winds in a single strand.
She could find the world's words in a singing wind.
She could lend a weird will to a mottled hand.
She could wind a willed word from...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
WITHIN a town where parity
According to old form we see,--
That is to say, where Catholic
And Protestant no quarrels pick,
And where, as in his father's day,
Each worships God in his own way,
We Luth'ran children used to dwell,
By songs and sermons taught as well.
The Catholic clingclang in truth
Sounded more pleasing to our youth,
For all that we encounter'd there,
To us seem'd varied,...Read more of this...
by
Alexander Pope
Not with more glories, in th' etherial plain,
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main,
Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams
Launch'd on the bosom of the silver Thames.
Fair nymphs, and well-dress'd youths around her shone,
But ev'ry eye was fix'd on her alone.
On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.
Her lively...Read more of this...
by
W S Merwin
Gray whale
Now that we are sinding you to The End
That great god
Tell him
That we who follow you invented forgiveness
And forgive nothing
I write as though you could understand
And I could say it
One must always pretend something
Among the dying
When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks
Empty of you
Tell him that we were made
On another day
The bewilderment will diminish like...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
JOY … weaving two violet petals for a coat lapel … painting on a slab of night sky a Christ face … slipping new brass keys into rusty iron locks and shouldering till at last the door gives and we are in a new room … forever and ever violet petals, slabs, the Christ face, brass keys and new...Read more of this...
by
Jackie Kay
How they strut about, people in love,
How tall they grow, pleased with themselves,
Their hair, glossy, their skin shining.
They don't remember who they have been.
How filmic they are just for this time.
How important they've become - secret, above
The order of things, the dreary mundane.
Every church bell ringing, a fresh sign.
How dull the lot that are not in love.
Their clothes shabby,...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The most important population
Unnoticed dwell,
They have a heaven each instant
Not any hell.
Their names, unless you know them,
'Twere useless tell.
Of bumble-bees and other nations
The grass is full....Read more of this...
by
Anne Kingsmill Finch
To view his stately Walks and Groves,
A Man of Pow'r and Place
Was hast'ning on; but as he roves,
His Foe the slighted Bramble proves,
And stops his eager Pace.
That Shrub was qualify'd to Bite;
And now there went a Tale,
That this injurious partial Wight
Had bid his Gard'ner rid it quite,
And throw it o'er the Pail.
Often the...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
ME imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature,
Master of all, or mistress of all—aplomb in the midst of irrational things,
Imbued as they—passive, receptive, silent as they,
Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less important than I thought;
Me private, or public, or menial, or solitary—all these subordinate, (I am eternally
equal
with
the best—I am not subordinate;)
Me toward...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
The cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For, wander and wail as he would,
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred...Read more of this...
by
Wallace Stevens
Ariel was glad he had written his poems.
They were of a remembered time
Or of something seen that he liked.
Other makings of the sun
Were waste and welter
And the ripe shrub writhed.
His self and the sun were one
And his poems, although makings of his self,
Were no less makings of the sun.
It was not important that they survive.
What mattered was that they...Read more of this...
by
Billy Collins
All afternoon I have been struggling
to communicate in Italian
with Roberto and Giuseppe, who have begun
to resemble the two male characters
in my Italian for Beginners,
the ones who are always shopping
or inquiring about the times of trains,
and now I can hardly speak or write English.
I have made important pronouncements
in this remote limestone valley
with its trickle of a river,
stating that it seems...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
FINTRY, my stay in wordly strife,
Friend o’ my muse, friend o’ my life,
Are ye as idle’s I am?
Come then, wi’ uncouth kintra fleg,
O’er Pegasus I’ll fling my leg,
And ye shall see me try him.
But where shall I go rin a ride,
That I may splatter nane beside?
I wad na be uncivil:
In manhood’s various paths and ways
There’s aye...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
As milled silver I was welcome
In every gutter, tinkling over cobbles
I rang the truth loudly on solid-oak counters
And tills tolled for me clear as bells.
Boldly I gave myself to many,
Slipped from moist palm to pocket,
Pirouetting without points, jingling
With dull coppers and important keys.
First I was lost in a hundred
Children’s essays, found myself
With pearls in secret pockets,
Counterfeit and shiny.
Then I...Read more of this...
by
Randall Jarrell
About suffering, about adoration, the old masters
Disagree. When someone suffers, no one else eats
Or walks or opens the window--no one breathes
As the sufferers watch the sufferer.
In St. Sebastian Mourned by St. Irene
The flame of one torch is the only light.
All the eyes except the maidservant's (she weeps
And covers them with a cloth) are...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful‚
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart....Read more of this...
by
Ogden Nash
It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts,
That all sin is divided into two parts.
One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important,
And it is what you are doing when you are doing something you ortant,
And the other kind of sin is just the opposite and is called...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
When I was cub reporter I
Would interview the Great,
And sometimes they would make reply,
And sometimes hesitate;
But often they would sharply say,
With bushy eyebrows bent:
"Young man, your answer for to-day
Is - No Comment."
Nigh sixty years have called the tune,
And silver is my pate;
No longer do I importune
Important men of state;
But time has made me wise, and so
When button-holed I...Read more of this...
by
T Wignesan
for Eric Mottram
"Nur wenn das Herz erschlossen,
Dann ist die Erde schön."
Goethe.
I
An important thing in living
Is to know when to go;
He who does not know this
Has not far to go,
Though death may come and go
When you do not know.
Come, give me your hand,
Together shoulder and cheek to shoulder
We'll go, sour kana in cheeks
And in the mornings cherry sticks
To gum: the infectious...Read more of this...
by
Conrad Aiken
We sit together and talk, or smoke in silence.
You say (but use no words) 'this night is passing
As other nights when we are dead will pass . . .'
Perhaps I misconstrue you: you mean only,
'How deathly pale my face looks in that glass . . .'
You say: 'We sit and talk, of things important . . .
How many others...Read more of this...
by
Nizar Qabbani
Light is more important than the lantern,
The poem more important than the notebook,
And the kiss more important than the lips.
My letters to you
Are greater and more important than both of us.
The are the only documents
Where people will discover
Your beauty
And my madness....Read more of this...
by
Carolyn Kizer
For more than thirty years we hadn't met.
I remembered the bright query of your face,
That single-minded look,intense and stern,
Yet most important -how could I forget?-
Was what your taught me inadvertantly
(tutored by books and parents, even more
By my own awe at what was yet to learn):
The finest intellect can be a bore.
At this, perhaps our final interview,
Still luminous with your...Read more of this...
by
Constantine P Cavafy
The poet Phernazis is composing
the important part of his epic poem.
How Darius, son of Hystaspes,
assumed the kingdom of the Persians. (From him
is descended our glorious king
Mithridates, Dionysus and Eupator). But here
philosophy is needed; he must analyze
the sentiments that Darius must have had:
maybe arrogance and drunkenness; but no -- rather
like an understanding of the vanity of grandeurs.
The poet contemplates the...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
I
Within the town of Buffalo
Are prosy men with leaden eyes.
Like ants they worry to and fro,
(Important men, in Buffalo.)
But only twenty miles away
A deathless glory is at play:
Niagara, Niagara.
The women buy their lace and cry: —
"O such a delicate design,"
And over ostrich feathers sigh,
By counters there, in Buffalo.
The children haunt the trinket shops,
They buy false-faces, bells, and tops,
Forgetting great...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I have taken advantage of the publication of a Second Edition
of my translation of the Poems of Goethe (originally published in
1853), to add to the Collection a version of the much admired classical
Poem of Hermann and Dorothea, which was previously omitted by me
in consequence of its length. Its universal popularity, however,
and the fact that...Read more of this...
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