Famous Known Poems by Famous Poets

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

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I Cannot be Known

by Paul Eluard
 I cannot be known
Better than you know me 

Your eyes in which we sleep
We together
Have made for my man's gleam
A better fate than for the common nights 

Your eyes in which I travel
Have given to signs along the roads
A meaning alien to the earth 

In your eyes who reveal to us
Our endless solitude 

Are no longer what they thought...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...

In Youth I have Known One

by Edgar Allan Poe
 How often we forget all time, when lone 
Admiring Nature's universal throne; 
Her woods - her winds - her mountains - the intense 
Reply of Hers to Our intelligence! 

I. 

In youth I have known one with whom the Earth 
In secret communing held - as he with it, 
In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth: 
Whose fervid,...Read more of this...

The largest Fire ever known

by Emily Dickinson
 The largest Fire ever known
Occurs each Afternoon --
Discovered is without surprise
Proceeds without concern --
Consumes and no report to men
An Occidental Town,
Rebuilt another morning
To be burned down again....Read more of this...

Wine's power is known to wine-bibbers alone,

by Omar Khayyam
Wine's power is known to wine-bibbers alone,
To narrow heads and hearts 'tis never shown;
I blame not them who never felt its force,
For, till they feel it, how can it be known....Read more of this...

Had we known the Ton she bore

by Emily Dickinson
 Had we known the Ton she bore
We had helped the terror
But she straighter walked for Freight
So be hers the error --...Read more of this...

All thy secrets are known to the wisdom of Heaven

by Omar Khayyam
All thy secrets are known to the wisdom of Heaven
[God]· He knows them hair by hair and vein by vein.
I admit that by power of hypocrisy you may be able
to deceive men, but what will you do before Him who
knows your misdeeds one by one in every detail?...Read more of this...

Envoi

by Ezra Pound
 Go, dumb-born book,
Tell her that sang me once that song of Lawes:
Hadst thou but song
As thou hast subjects known,
Then were there cause in thee that should condone
Even my faults that heavy upon me lie
And build her glories their longevity.
Tell her that sheds
Such treasure in the air,
Recking naught else but that her graces give
Life to the moment,
I would bid them...Read more of this...

At the Window

by Paul Eluard
 I have not always had this certainty, this pessimism which reassures the best among us. There was 
a time when my friends laughed at me. I was not the master of my words. A certain indifference, I
have not always known well what I wanted to say, but most often it was because I had nothing to
say. The necessity of...Read more of this...

The Sweets of Pillage can be known

by Emily Dickinson
 The Sweets of Pillage, can be known
To no one but the Thief --
Compassion for Integrity
Is his divinest Grief --...Read more of this...

The Himmaleh was known to stoop

by Emily Dickinson
 The Himmaleh was known to stoop
Unto the Daisy low --
Transported with Compassion
That such a Doll should grow
Where Tent by Tent -- Her Universe
Hung out its Flags of Snow --...Read more of this...

Ive known a Heaven like a Tent

by Emily Dickinson
 I've known a Heaven, like a Tent --
To wrap its shining Yards --
Pluck up its stakes, and disappear --
Without the sound of Boards
Or Rip of Nail -- Or Carpenter --
But just the miles of Stare --
That signalize a Show's Retreat --
In North America --

No Trace -- no Figment of the Thing
That dazzled, Yesterday,
No Ring -- no Marvel --
Men, and...Read more of this...

No Passenger was known to flee --

by Emily Dickinson
 No Passenger was known to flee --
That lodged a night in memory --
That wily -- subterranean Inn
Contrives that none go out again --...Read more of this...

The Princes Progress (excerpt)

by Christina Rossetti
 "Too late for love, too late for joy,
Too late, too late!
You loitered on the road too long,
You trifled at the gate:
The enchanted dove upon her branch
Died without a mate.
The enchanted princess in her tower
Slept, died, behind the grate;
Her heart was starving all this while
You made it wait.

"Ten years ago, five years ago,
One year ago,
Even then you had arrived in...Read more of this...

Sonnet XCIV

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XCIV. Se 'l sasso ond' è più chiusa questa valle. COULD HE BUT SEE THE HOUSE OF LAURA, HIS SIGHS MIGHT REACH HER MORE QUICKLY.  If, which our valley bars, this wall of stone,From which its present name we closely trace,Were by disdainful nature rased, and thrownIts back to Babel and...Read more of this...

Threshold

by Rabindranath Tagore
 I was not aware of the moment 
when I first crossed the threshold of this life. 

What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery 
like a bud in the forest at midnight! 

When in the morning I looked upon the light 
I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world,...Read more of this...

Merry Autumn

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
It's all a farce,—these tales they tell
About the breezes sighing,
And moans astir o'er field and dell,
Because the year is dying.
Such principles are most absurd,—
I care not who first taught 'em;
There's nothing known to beast or bird
To make a solemn autumn.
In solemn times, when grief holds sway
With countenance distressing,
You'll note the more of black and gray
Will then be used in dressing.
Now...Read more of this...

They call you wicked, if to fame you're known,

by Omar Khayyam
They call you wicked, if to fame you're known,
And an intriguer, if you live alone,
Trust me, though you were Khizr or Elias,
'Tis best to know none, and of none be known....Read more of this...

To The Dead

by Frank Bidart
 What I hope (when I hope) is that we'll
see each other again,--

. . . and again reach the VEIN

in which we loved each other . .
It existed. It existed.

There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,--

. . . for, like the detectives (the Ritz Brothers)
in The Gorilla,

once we'd been battered by the gorilla

we searched the walls, the intricately carved
impenetrable paneling

for...Read more of this...

If Mary Had Known

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 If Mary had known
When she held her Babe's hands in her own­
Little hands that were tender and white as a rose,
All dented with dimples from finger to wrist,
Such as mothers have kissed­
That one day they must feel the fierce blows
Of a hatred insane,
Must redden with holiest stain,
And grasp as their guerdon the boon of the bitterest pain,
Oh, I think...Read more of this...

Had I known that the first was the last

by Emily Dickinson
 Had I known that the first was the last
I should have kept it longer.
Had I known that the last was the first
I should have drunk it stronger.
Cup, it was your fault,
Lip was not the liar.
No, lip, it was yours,
Bliss was most to blame....Read more of this...

Sonnet XXXIII: I Wake

by Mary Darby Robinson
 I wake! delusive phantoms hence, away!
Tempt not the weakness of a lover's breast;
The softest breeze can shake the halcyon's nest,
And lightest clouds o'ercast the dawning ray!
'Twas but a vision! Now, the star of day
Peers, like a gem on Aetna's burning crest!
Wellcome, ye Hills, with golden vintage drest;
Sicilian forests brown, and vallies gay!
A mournful stranger, from the Lesbian Isle,
Not strange,...Read more of this...

Moon over Mountain Pass

by Li Po
 A bright moon rising above Tian Shan Mountain,
Lost in a vast ocean of clouds.
The long wind, across thousands upon thousands of miles,
Blows past the Jade-gate Pass.
The army of Han has gone down the Baiteng Road,
As the barbarian hordes probe at Qinghai Bay.
It is known that from the battlefield
Few ever live to return.
Men at Garrison look on the border scene,
Home...Read more of this...

Falling Asleep

by Siegfried Sassoon
 Voices moving about in the quiet house: 
Thud of feet and a muffled shutting of doors: 
Everyone yawning. Only the clocks are alert. 

Out in the night there’s autumn-smelling gloom 
Crowded with whispering trees; across the park
A hollow cry of hounds like lonely bells: 
And I know that the clouds are moving across the moon; 
The low, red, rising...Read more of this...

Under The Waterfall

by Thomas Hardy
 'Whenever I plunge my arm, like this, 
In a basin of water, I never miss 
The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day 
Fetched back from its thickening shroud of gray. 
Hence the only prime 
And real love-rhyme 
That I know by heart, 
And that leaves no smart, 
Is the purl of a little valley fall 
About three spans...Read more of this...

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