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Famous Jean Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...em a’, man;
To proper young men, he’ll clink in the hand
 Gowd guineas a hunder or twa, man.


There’s ane they ca’ Jean, I’ll warrant ye’ve seen
 As bonie a lass or as braw, man;
But for sense and guid taste she’ll vie wi’ the best,
 And a conduct that beautifies a’, man.


The charms o’ the min’, the langer they shine,
 The mair admiration they draw, man;
While peaches and cherries, and roses and lilies,
 They fade and they wither awa, man,


If ye be for Miss Jean,...Read more of this...



by Burns, Robert
...the torrid plains,
 Where rich ananas blow!
Farewell, a mother’s blessing dear!
A borther’s sigh! a sister’s tear!
 My Jean’s heart-rending throe!
Farewell, my Bess! tho’ thou’rt bereft
 Of my paternal care.
A faithful brother I have left,
 My part in him thou’lt share!
 Adieu, too, to you too,
 My Smith, my bosom frien’;
 When kindly you mind me,
 O then befriend my Jean!


What bursting anguish tears my heart;
From thee, my Jeany, must I part!
 Thou, weeping, answ’rest...Read more of this...

by Burns, Robert
...s ca’d a shoe on
The Smith and thee gat roarin’ fou on;
That at the L—d’s house, ev’n on Sunday,
Thou drank wi’ Kirkton Jean till Monday,
She prophesied that late or soon,
Thou wad be found, deep drown’d in Doon,
Or catch’d wi’ warlocks in the mirk,
By Alloway’s auld, haunted kirk.


 Ah, gentle dames! it gars me greet,
To think how mony counsels sweet,
How mony lengthen’d, sage advices,
The husband frae the wife despises!


 But to our tale:—Ae market night,
Tam had got ...Read more of this...

by Burns, Robert
...
 And burn thegither trimly;
Some start awa wi’ saucy pride,
 An’ jump out owre the chimlie
 Fu’ high that night.


Jean slips in twa, wi’ tentie e’e;
 Wha ’twas, she wadna tell;
But this is Jock, an’ this is me,
 She says in to hersel’:
He bleez’d owre her, an’ she owre him,
 As they wad never mair part:
Till fuff! he started up the lum,
 An’ Jean had e’en a sair heart
 To see’t that night.


Poor Willie, wi’ his bow-kail runt,
 Was brunt wi’ primsie Mallie;
An’ Mary...Read more of this...

by Burns, Robert
...en with honour.


Down flow’d her robe, a tartan sheen,
Till half a leg was scrimply seen;
An’ such a leg! my bonie Jean
 Could only peer it;
Sae straught, sae taper, tight an’ clean—
 Nane else came near it.


Her mantle large, of greenish hue,
My gazing wonder chiefly drew:
Deep lights and shades, bold-mingling, threw
 A lustre grand;
And seem’d, to my astonish’d view,
 A well-known land.


Here, rivers in the sea were lost;
There, mountains to the skies were to...Read more of this...



by Toomer, Jean
...A certain man wishes to be a prince
Of this earth; he also wants to be
A saint and master of the being-world.
Conscience cannot exist in the first:
The second cannot exist without conscience.
Therefore he, who has enough conscience
To be disturbed but not enough to be
Compelled, can neither reject the one
Nor follow the other......Read more of this...

by Bosselaar, Laure-Anne
..., to hit 

 nothing — what a waste. 
What if I hadn’t been here, lost too,
four in the morning, driving around
in a jean-shirt over my night-gown,
reciting Baudelaire aloud — 

 like an idiot ¬— unable to sleep, 
scared to death by my longing for it,
death, so early in the morning, driving 
until the longing runs on empty?
The windshield wipers can’t 

 keep up with this deluge,
and I almost run over it, a flapping
white thing in the middle of the street.
I step out, ...Read more of this...

by Toomer, Jean
...I am a reaper whose muscles set at sundown. All my oats are cradled. 
But I am too chilled, and too fatigued to bind them. 
And I hunger. 

I crack a grain between my teeth. I do not taste it. 
I have been in the fields all day. My throat is dry. 
I hunger. 

My eyes are caked with dust of oatfields at harvest-time. ...Read more of this...

by Ingelow, Jean
...A Scholar is musing on his want of success.)

To strive—and fail. Yes, I did strive and fail;
  I set mine eyes upon a certain night
To find a certain star—and could not hail
      With them its deep-set light.
Fool that I was! I will rehearse my fault:
  I, wingless, thought myself on high to lift
Among the winged—I set these feet that halt
      ...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...For Brenda Williams



La lune diminue; divin septembre.

Divine September the moon wanes.

 Pierre Jean Jouve



Themes for poems and the detritus of dreams coalesce:

This is one September I shall not forget.



The grammar-school caretaker always had the boards re-blacked

And the floors waxed, but I never shone.

The stripes of the red and black blazer

Were prison-grey. You could never see things that way:

Your home had broken windows to ...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...sacred flame;
Could stand upright, and scorn and smite, as only heroes may:
Oh, harken! Let me try to tell the tale of Jean Desprez.

With fire and sword the Teuton horde was ravaging the land,
And there was darkness and despair, grim death on every hand;
Red fields of slaughter sloping down to ruin's black abyss;
The wolves of war ran evil-fanged, and little did they miss.
And on they came with fear and flame, to burn and loot and slay,
Until they reached the red-ro...Read more of this...

by Toomer, Jean
...Boll-weevil's coming, and the winter's cold,
Made cotton-stalks look rusty, seasons old,
And cotton, scarce as any southern snow,
Was vanishing; the branch, so pinched and slow,
Failed in its function as the autumn rake;
Drouth fighting soil had caused the soil to take
All water from the streams; dead birds were found
In wells a hundred feet below the grou...Read more of this...

by Toomer, Jean
...To those fixed on white,
White is white,
To those fixed on black,
It is the same,
And red is red,
Yellow, yellow-
Surely there are such sights
In the many colored world,
Or in the mind.
The strange thing is that
These people never see themselves
Or you, or me.

Are they not in their minds?
Are we not in the world?
This is a curious blindness
For th...Read more of this...

by Cocteau, Jean
......Preamble

A rough draft 
for an ars poetica

. . . . . . . 

Let's get our dreams unstuck

The grain of rye
free from the prattle of grass
et loin de arbres orateurs

I 

plant

it

It will sprout


But forget about 
the rustic festivities

For the explosive word 
falls harmlessly
eternal through
the compact gener...Read more of this...

by Toomer, Jean
...Pour O pour that parting soul in song
O pour it in the sawdust glow of night
Into the velvet pine-smoke air tonight,
And let the valley carry it along.
And let the valley carry it along.
O land and soil, red soil and sweet-gum tree,
So scant of grass, so proligate of pines,
Now hust before an epoch's sun declines
Thy son, in time, I have returned t...Read more of this...

by Burns, Robert
...ca'd a shoe on,
The smith and thee gat roarin fou on;
That at the Lord's house, ev'n on Sunday,
Thou drank wi' Kirkton Jean till Monday.
She prophesied that, late or soon,
Thou would be found deep drowned in Doon;
Or catched wi' warlocks in the mirk,
By Alloway's auld haunted kirk.

Ah, gentle dames! it gars me greet,
To think how mony counsels sweet,
How mony lengthened sage advices,
The husband frae the wife despises!

But to our tale: Ae market-night,
Tam had got ...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...Jean, death comes close to us all,
flapping its awful wings at us
and the gluey wings crawl up our nose.
Our children tremble in their teen-age cribs,
whirling off on a thumb or a motorcycle,
mine pushed into gnawing a stilbestrol cancer
I passed on like hemophilia,
or yours in the seventh grade, with her spleen
smacked in by the balance beam.
And we...Read more of this...

by Delville, Jean
...In the land of Huros, Rameses and Sesostris,
But in the time of the Latins and when ruddy Rome
Upraised in bronze and gold her wasted emperors,
This is the hour when the infinite penetrates the heart of man.

Like the elected orb of the great sacred haloes
With which the head of future saints should be encircled,
The moon in blossom smiles her ethere...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...and pears, 
Casements that had looked for the Armada, 
And a ghost on the stairs. 

XV 
Johnnie's mother, the Lady Jean, 
Child of a penniless Scottish peer, 
Was handsome, worn high-coloured, lean, 
With eyes like Johnnie's—more blue and clear— 
Like bubbles of glass in her fine tanned face. 
Quiet, she was, and so at ease, 
So perfectly sure of her rightful place 
In the world that she felt no need to please. 
I did not like her—she made me feel 
Talkative, res...Read more of this...

by Toomer, Jean
...There is a natty kind of mind
That slicks its thoughts,
Culls its oughts,
Trims its views,
Prunes its trues,
And never suspects it is a rind....Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things