Famous Inventions Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Sins Round

by George Herbert
 Sorry I am, my God, sorry I am, 
That my offences course it in a ring. 
My thoughts are working like a busy flame, 
Until their cockatrice they hatch and bring: 
And when they once have perfected their draughts, 
My words take fire from my inflamed thoughts. 

My words take fire fro m my inflamed thoughts, 
Which spit it...Read more of this...

For Australia

by Henry Lawson
 Now, with the wars of the world begun, they'll listen to you and me, 
Now while the frightened nations run to the arms of democracy, 
Now, when our blathering fools are scared, and the years have proved us right – 
All unprovided and unprepared, the Outpost of the White! 

"Get the people – no matter how," that is the...Read more of this...

Australian Engineers

by Henry Lawson
 Ah, well! but the case seems hopeless, and the pen might write in vain; 

The people gabble of old things over and over again. 

For the sake of the sleek importer we slave with the pick and the shears, 

While hundreds of boys in Australia long to be engineers. 



A new generation has risen under Australian skies, 

Boys with...Read more of this...

shaw and jung

by Rg Gregory
 shaw had the gift of the crab
how he took the straight idea
and scuttled with it sideways
marking sand and word with sea's
inventions - what shaw perceived
went deeper than the lounger's eye
stripped for entertainment in the sun
shaw's art was nip and prick
sending the red-skinned lounger home
with buzzing brain shocked tongue
and sandstorms stinging in his ears

jung went for niches in the night
believing...Read more of this...

I Love The Naked Ages Long Ago

by Charles Baudelaire
 I love the naked ages long ago 
When statues were gilded by Apollo, 
When men and women of agility 
Could play without lies and anxiety, 
And the sky lovingly caressed their spines, 
As it exercised its noble machine. 
Fertile Cybele, mother of nature, then, 
Would not place on her daughters a burden, 
But, she-wolf sharing her heart with the...Read more of this...

Many Inventions

by Rudyard Kipling
 'Less you want your toes trod of you'd better get back at once,
For the bullocks are walking two by two,
The byles are walking two by two, 
And the elephants bring the guns.
Ho! Yuss!
Great-big-long-black-forty-pounder guns.
Jiggery-jolty to and fro,
Each as big as a launch in tow --
Blind-dumb-broad-breeched--beggars o' battering-guns!
 My Lord the Elephant....Read more of this...

Sonnet I: Loving In Truth

by Sir Philip Sidney
 Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show, 
That she (dear She) might take some pleasure of my pain: 
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, 
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain; 

I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe, 
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain: 
Oft...Read more of this...

Mr. Mistoffelees

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 You ought to know Mr. Mistoffelees!
The Original Conjuring Cat--
(There can be no doubt about that).
Please listen to me and don't scoff. All his
Inventions are off his own bat.
There's no such Cat in the metropolis;
He holds all the patent monopolies
For performing suprising illusions
And creating eccentric confusions.
At prestidigitation
And at legerdemain
He'll defy examination
And deceive you again.
The greatest magicians have something to learn
From...Read more of this...

Master Hugues Of Saxe-Gotha

by Robert Browning
 An imaginary composer.]

I.

Hist, but a word, fair and soft!
Forth and be judged, Master Hugues!
Answer the question I've put you so oft:
What do you mean by your mountainous fugues?
See, we're alone in the loft,---

II.

I, the poor organist here,
Hugues, the composer of note,
Dead though, and done with, this many a year:
Let's have a colloquy, something to quote,
Make the world prick up...Read more of this...

The Mother Mourns

by Thomas Hardy
 When mid-autumn's moan shook the night-time, 
 And sedges were horny, 
And summer's green wonderwork faltered 
 On leaze and in lane, 

I fared Yell'ham-Firs way, where dimly 
 Came wheeling around me 
Those phantoms obscure and insistent 
 That shadows unchain. 

Till airs from the needle-thicks brought me 
 A low lamentation, 
As 'twere of a tree-god disheartened,...Read more of this...

As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days

by Walt Whitman
 AS I walk these broad, majestic days of peace, 
(For the war, the struggle of blood finish’d, wherein, O terrific Ideal! 
Against vast odds, having gloriously won, 
Now thou stridest on—yet perhaps in time toward denser wars, 
Perhaps to engage in time in still more dreadful contests, dangers,
Longer campaigns and crises, labors beyond all others; 
—As I walk solitary,...Read more of this...

In Memory of M. B

by Anna Akhmatova
 Here is my gift, not roses on your grave,
not sticks of burning incense.
You lived aloof, maintaining to the end
your magnificent disdain.
You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes,
and suffocated inside stifling walls.
Alone you let the terrible stranger in,
and stayed with her alone.

Now you're gone, and nobody says a word
about your troubled and exalted life.
Only my voice, like a flute,...Read more of this...

Longfellow

by Henry Van Dyke
 In a great land, a new land, a land full of labour 
and riches and confusion,
Where there were many running to and fro, and
shouting, and striving together,
In the midst of the hurry and the troubled noise, 
I heard the voice of one singing. 

"What are you doing there, O man, singing
quietly amid all this tumult?
This is the time for...Read more of this...

Song of the Redwood-Tree

by Walt Whitman
 1
A CALIFORNIA song! 
A prophecy and indirection—a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air; 
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing—or hamadryads departing; 
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky, 
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense.

Farewell, my brethren, 
Farewell, O earth and sky—farewell, ye neighboring waters; 
My time has ended, my term...Read more of this...

A Carol of Harvest for 1867

by Walt Whitman
 1
A SONG of the good green grass! 
A song no more of the city streets; 
A song of farms—a song of the soil of fields. 

A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork; 
A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk’d maize.

2
For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for...Read more of this...

Loving In Truth And Fain In Verse My Love To Show

by Sir Philip Sidney
 Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That She, dear She, might take some pleasure of my pain,
—Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain— 
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others' leaves, to see...Read more of this...

The Crystal

by Sidney Lanier
 At midnight, death's and truth's unlocking time,
When far within the spirit's hearing rolls
The great soft rumble of the course of things --
A bulk of silence in a mask of sound, --
When darkness clears our vision that by day
Is sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owl
For truth and flitteth here and there about
Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft
Is minded...Read more of this...

Astrophel and Stella: I

by Sir Philip Sidney
 ASTROPHEL AND STELLA: I
Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,--
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,--
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe;
Studying inventions fine her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others' leaves,...Read more of this...

The Task: Book II The Time-Piece (excerpts)

by William Cowper
 England, with all thy faults, I love thee still--
My country! and, while yet a nook is left
Where English minds and manners may be found,
Shall be constrain'd to love thee. Though thy clime
Be fickle, and thy year most part deform'd
With dripping rains, or wither'd by a frost,
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies,
And fields without a flow'r, for warmer...Read more of this...

Unde Malum

by Czeslaw Milosz
 Where does evil come from?
It comes
from man
always from man
only from man
- Tadeusz Rozewicz
Alas, dear Tadeusz,
good nature and wicked man
are romantic inventions
you show us this way
the depth of your optimism
so let man exterminate
his own species
the innocent sunrise will illuminate
a liberated flora and fauna
where oak forests reclaim
the postindustrial wasteland
and the blood of a deer
torn asunder by a pack of wolves
is not...Read more of this...

Psalm 55

by Isaac Watts
 v.1-8,16-18,22 
C. M.
Support for the afflicted and tempted soul.

O God, my refuge, hear my cries,
"Behold my flowing tears;
For earth and hell my hurt devise,
And triumph in my fears.

Their rage is leveled at my life,
My soul with guilt they load,
And fill my thoughts with inward strife,
To shake my hope in God.

With inward pain my heart-strings sound,
I groan with ev'ry breath;
Horror...Read more of this...

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