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Famous Intelligence Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Lehman, David
...lt he had to share that burden.
With his gift for codes and ciphers, he joined the counter-
 terrorism unit of army intelligence.
Contrary to what the spook novels say, he found it possible to
 avoid betraying either his country or his lover.
This was the life: strange bedrooms, the perfume of other men's
 wives.
As a spy he has a unique mission: to get his name on the front 
 page of the nation's newspaper of record. Only by doing that 
 would he get the ...Read more of this...



by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...d a little furrow of my own
Once on a time, and everybody laughed— 
As I laughed afterwards; and I doubt not 
The First Intelligence, which we have drawn 
In our competitive humility 
As if it went forever on two legs,
Had some diversion of it: I believe 
God’s humor is the music of the spheres— 
But even as we draft omnipotence 
Itself to our own image, we pervert 
The courage of an infinite ideal
To finite resignation. You have made 
The cement of your churches out of t...Read more of this...

by Walker, Alice
...br>
We have grave doubts about their brains.


In short, we who write, paint, sculpt, dance
Or sing
Share the intelligence and thus the fate
Of all our people
In this land.
We are not different from them,
Neither above nor below,
Outside nor inside.
We are the same.
And we do not worship them.


We do not worship them.
We do not worship their movies.
We do not worship their songs.


We do not think their newscasts
Cast the...Read more of this...

by Cummings, Edward Estlin (E E)
...country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you're hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you're flush pride keeps 

you from the pawn shops and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you 
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down

on it
and because you are 
fore...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...u them crossed, 
Excise had got the day, and all been lost. 
For the other side all in loose quarters lay, 
Without intelligence, command, or pay: 
A scattered body, which the foe ne'er tried, 
But oftener did among themselves divide. 
And some ran o'er each night, while others sleep, 
And undescried returned ere morning peep. 
But Strangeways, that all night still walked the round 
(For vigilance and courage both renowned) 
First spied he enemy and gave the 'larm...Read more of this...



by Bronte, Charlotte
...ay. 

You ask if she had beauty's grace ? 
I know not­but a nobler face 
My eyes have seldom seen; 
A keen and fine intelligence, 
And, better still, the truest sense 
Were in her speaking mien. 
But bloom or lustre was there none, 
Only at moments, fitful shone 
An ardour in her eye, 
That kindled on her cheek a flush, 
Warm as a red sky's passing blush 
And quick with energy. 
Her speech, too, was not common speech, 
No wish to shine, or aim to teach, 
Was in he...Read more of this...

by Raine, Kathleen
...their delight in being
not joy but chemistry,
stimulus, reflex,
valueless, meaningless,
while to our machines
we impute intelligence,
in computers and robots
we store information
and call it knowledge,
we seek guidance
by dialling numbers,
pressing buttons, 
throwing switches,
in place of family
our companions are shadows,
cast on a screen,
bodiless voices, fleshless faces,
where was the Garden
a Disney-land
of virtual reality,
in place of angels
the human imagination
is peop...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...ate can build
A literature that shall at once be sound
And sad on a foundation of well-being.

To show the level of intelligence
Among us: it was just a Warren farmer
Whose horse had pulled him short up in the road
By me, a stranger. This is what he said,
From nothing but embarrassment and want
Of anything more sociable to say:
"You hear those bound dogs sing on Moosilauke?
Well, they remind me of the hue and cry
We've heard against the Mid - Victorians 
And never rig...Read more of this...

by Lewis, C S
...Angelic minds, they say, by simple intelligence 
Behold the Forms of nature. They discern 
Unerringly the Archtypes, all the verities 
Which mortals lack or indirectly learn. 
Transparent in primordial truth, unvarying, 
Pure Earthness and right Stonehood from their clear, 
High eminence are seen; unveiled, the seminal 
Huge Principles appear.

The Tree-ness of the tree they know-...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...but of highest Heaven. 
To whom thus Adam, cleared of doubt, replied. 
How fully hast thou satisfied me, pure 
Intelligence of Heaven, Angel serene! 
And, freed from intricacies, taught to live 
The easiest way; nor with perplexing thoughts 
To interrupt the sweet of life, from which 
God hath bid dwell far off all anxious cares, 
And not molest us; unless we ourselves 
Seek them with wandering thoughts, and notions vain. 
But apt the mind or fancy is to rove 
Un...Read more of this...

by Berman, David
...ars
even as folks on Earth
are still ripping open potato chip
bags with their teeth.

Why? I don't have the time or intelligence
to make all the connections
like my friend Gordon
(this is a true story)
who grew up in Braintree Massachusetts
and had never pictured a brain snagged in a tree
until I brought it up.
He'd never broken the name down to its parts.
By then it was too late.
He had moved to Coral Gables.

V five

The hill out my window is still looki...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
..., wise-handed skill; 
A school-house plant on every hill, 
Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence 
The quick wires of intelligence; 
Till North and South together brought 
Shall own the same electric thought, 
In peace a common flag salute, 
And, side by side in labor's free 
And unresentful revalry, 
Harvest the fields wherein they fought. 

Another guest that winter night 
Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light. 
Unmarked by time, and yet not young, 
The honeye...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...the ceiling. Norcross knew them well, 
And he knew others like them. Fasten to that 
With all the claws of your intelligence; 
And hold the man before you in his house 
As if he were a white rat in a box,
And one that knew himself to be no other. 
I tell you twice that he knew all about it, 
That you may not forget the worst of all 
Our tragedies begin with what we know. 
Could Norcross only not have known, I wonder
How many would have blessed and envied him! ...Read more of this...

by Stevens, Wallace
...I 

The World without Imagination 

1 Nota: man is the intelligence of his soil, 
2 The sovereign ghost. As such, the Socrates 
3 Of snails, musician of pears, principium 
4 And lex. Sed quaeritur: is this same wig 
5 Of things, this nincompated pedagogue, 
6 Preceptor to the sea? Crispin at sea 
7 Created, in his day, a touch of doubt. 
8 An eye most apt in gelatines and jupes, 
9 Berries of...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...ll the crone's submissive attitude
I could see round her mouth the loose plaits tightening,
And her brow with assenting intelligence brightening,
As though she engaged with hearty good-will
Whatever he now might enjoin to fulfil,
And promised the lady a thorough frightening.
And so, just giving her a glimpse
Of a purse, with the air of a man who imps
The wing of the hawk that shall fetch the hernshaw,
He bade me take the Gipsy mother
And set her telling some story or othe...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...ing like a shapen prow
Borne by the mastery of its urgent wings:
Or if she deign her wisdom, she doth show
She hath the intelligence of heavenly things,
Unsullied by man's mortal overthrow. 

32
Thus to be humbled: 'tis that ranging pride
No refuge hath; that in his castle strong
Brave reason sits beleaguer'd, who so long
Kept field, but now must starve where he doth hide;
That industry, who once the foe defied,
Lies slaughter'd in the trenches; that the throng
Of idle fa...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ertainly our appetites here,
Be it of war, or peace, or hate, or love,
All is this ruled by the sight* above. *eye, intelligence, power
This mean I now by mighty Theseus,
That for to hunten is so desirous --
And namely* the greate hart in May -- *especially
That in his bed there dawneth him no day
That he n'is clad, and ready for to ride
With hunt and horn, and houndes him beside.
For in his hunting hath he such delight,
That it is all his joy and appetite
To be himse...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...us why one man in five 
Should have a care to stay alive
While in his heart he feels no violence 
Laid on his humor and intelligence 
When infant Science makes a pleasant face 
And waves again that hollow toy, the Race; 
No planetary trap where souls are wrought
For nothing but the sake of being caught 
And sent again to nothing will attune 
Itself to any key of any reason 
Why man should hunger through another season 
To find out why ’twere better late than soon 
To go away ...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...'s rich repast." 

"'Twere hard," it answered, "themes immense
To coop within the narrow fence
That rings THY scant intelligence." 

"Not so," he urged, "nor once alone:
But there was something in her tone
That chilled me to the very bone. 

"Her style was anything but clear,
And most unpleasantly severe;
Her epithets were very *****. 

"And yet, so grand were her replies,
I could not choose but deem her wise;
I did not dare to criticise; 

"Nor did I leave he...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...shipwreck not,
She sate, and heard all that had happened new
Between the earth and moon since they had brought
The last intelligence: and now she grew
Pale as that moon lost in the watery night,
And now she wept, and now she laughed outright.

These were tame pleasures.--She would often climb
The steepest ladder of the crudded rack
Up to some beaked cape of cloud sublime,
And like Arion on the dolphin's back
Ride singing through the shoreless air. Oft-time,
Follow...Read more of this...

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