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Famous Latter Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...he kiln, and darkling, throw into the “pot” a clue of blue yarn; wind it in a new clue off the old one; and, toward the latter end, something will hold the thread: demand, “Wha hauds?” i. e., who holds? and answer will be returned from the kiln-pot, by naming the Christian and surname of your future spouse.—R. B. [back]
Note 10. Take a candle and go alone to a looking-glass; eat an apple before it, and some traditions say you should comb your hair all ...Read more of this...



by Browning, Robert
...of all forms 
For working on the world. Observe, my friend! 
Such as you know me, I am free to say, 
In these hard latter days which hamper one, 
Myself--by no immoderate exercise 
Of intellect and learning, but the tact 
To let external forces work for me, 
--Bid the street's stones be bread and they are bread; 


Bid Peter's creed, or rather, Hildebrand's, 
Exalt me o'er my fellows in the world 
And make my life an ease and joy and pride; 
It does so,--which for me's a...Read more of this...

by Thayer, Ernest Lawrence
...Casey at the bat." 

But Flynn preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake; 
and the former was a hoodoo, while the latter was a cake. 

So upon that stricken multitude, grim melancholy sat; 
for there seemed but little chance of Casey getting to the bat. 

But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all. 
And Blake, the much despised, tore the cover off the ball. 

And when the dust had lifted, 
and men saw what had occurred, 
there was J...Read more of this...

by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...dine!

(Coleridge never finished the poem;
this conclusion is by James Gillman,
who cared for Coleridge during the
latter years. He wrote the following
based on what the poet would outline
for his friends.)

THE CONCLUSION TO PART II

A little child, a limber elf,
Singing, dancing to itself,
A fairy thing with red round cheeks,
That always finds, and never seeks,
Makes such a vision to the sight
As fills a father's eyes with light;
And pleasures flow ...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...close
That lop each other of boughs, but not a few
Quite solitary and having equal boughs
All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to,
Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,
With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.”
I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.
We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,
And came down on the north.
He said, “A thousand.”

“A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?”

He felt some need of softening th...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...sweet first-fruits--they danc'd to weariness,
And then in quiet circles did they press
The hillock turf, and caught the latter end
Of some strange history, potent to send
A young mind from its bodily tenement.
Or they might watch the quoit-pitchers, intent
On either side; pitying the sad death
Of Hyacinthus, when the cruel breath
Of Zephyr slew him,--Zephyr penitent,
Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament,
Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain.
The archers too, ...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...betake
Thee to thy native hopes. O thou hast won
A full accomplishment! The thing is done,
Which undone, these our latter days had risen
On barren souls. Great Muse, thou know'st what prison
Of flesh and bone, curbs, and confines, and frets
Our spirit's wings: despondency besets
Our pillows; and the fresh to-morrow morn
Seems to give forth its light in very scorn
Of our dull, uninspired, snail-paced lives.
Long have I said, how happy he who shrives
To thee! But t...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ms, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence—
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness—not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination—
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach t...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...e the years. They come and go
In alternation with the weeds, the field,
The wood.”

“What kind of years?”
“Why, latter years—
Different from early years.”
“I see them, too.
You didn’t count them?”
“No, the further off
So ran together that I didn’t try to.
It can scarce be that they would be in number
We’d care to know, for we are not young now.
And bang goes something else away off there.
It sounds as if it were the men went down,
And every crash m...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ting Fate shall yield 
To fickle Chance, and Chaos judge the strife. 
The former, vain to hope, argues as vain 
The latter; for what place can be for us 
Within Heaven's bound, unless Heaven's Lord supreme 
We overpower? Suppose he should relent 
And publish grace to all, on promise made 
Of new subjection; with what eyes could we 
Stand in his presence humble, and receive 
Strict laws imposed, to celebrate his throne 
With warbled hyms, and to his Godhead sing 
Forced ha...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ow ponders all events, 
Battles and realms: In these he put two weights, 
The sequel each of parting and of fight: 
The latter quick up flew, and kicked the beam, 
Which Gabriel spying, thus bespake the Fiend. 
Satan, I know thy strength, and thou knowest mine; 
Neither our own, but given: What folly then 
To boast what arms can do? since thine no more 
Than Heaven permits, nor mine, though doubled now 
To trample thee as mire: For proof look up, 
And read thy lot in yon ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...; whence the soul 
Reason receives, and reason is her being, 
Discursive, or intuitive; discourse 
Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours, 
Differing but in degree, of kind the same. 
Wonder not then, what God for you saw good 
If I refuse not, but convert, as you 
To proper substance. Time may come, when Men 
With Angels may participate, and find 
No inconvenient diet, nor too light fare; 
And from these corporal nutriments perhaps 
Your bodies may at last turn all...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ast, of these I thought denied 
To beasts; whom God, on their creation-day, 
Created mute to all articulate sound: 
The latter I demur; for in their looks 
Much reason, and in their actions, oft appears. 
Thee, Serpent, subtlest beast of all the field 
I knew, but not with human voice endued; 
Redouble then this miracle, and say, 
How camest thou speakable of mute, and how 
To me so friendly grown above the rest 
Of brutal kind, that daily are in sight? 
Say, for such won...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...he pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with me; 
The first I graft and increase upon myself—the latter I translate into a
 new tongue. 

I am the poet of the woman the same as the man; 
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man;
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men. 

I chant the chant of dilation or pride; 
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough; 
I show that size is only development. 

...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...the same notion of distance that a coquette has of time, and when he talks of the boundless, means half a mile; as the latter, by a like figure, when she says eternal attachment, simply specifies three weeks. 

(24) Before his Persian invasion, and crowned the altar with laurel, &c. He was afterwards imitated by Caracalla in his race. It is believed that the last also poisoned a friend, named Festus, for the sake of new Patroclan games. I have seen the sheep ...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...while loud harp-strings hailed
Their thin, bright colours down in such a scatter
They lost themselves amid the general clatter.
Frau Altgelt in the gallery, alone,
Felt lifted up into another world.
Before her eyes a thousand candles shone
In the great chandeliers. A maze of curled
And powdered periwigs past her eyes swirled.
She smelt the smoke of candles guttering,
And caught the glint of jewelled fans fluttering
All round her in the boxes. Red and 
gold...Read more of this...

by Goldsmith, Oliver
...erous deep;
No surly porter stands in guilty state
To spurn imploring famine from the gate;
But on he moves to meet his latter end,
Angels round befriending Virtue's friend;
Bends to the grave with unperceived decay,
While Resignation gently slopes the way;
All, all his prospects brightening to the last,
His Heaven commences ere the world be past!

Sweet was the sound when oft at evening's close
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose;
There, as I passed with careless steps an...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...han was th' assembly of this blissful host
But O this scorpion, this wicked ghost,* *spirit
The Soudaness, for all her flattering
Cast* under this full mortally to sting. *contrived

The Soudan came himself soon after this,
So royally, that wonder is to tell,
And welcomed her with all joy and bliss.
And thus in mirth and joy I let them dwell.
The fruit of his matter is that I tell;
When the time came, men thought it for the best
That revel stint,* and men go to th...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...e as good as his own, seeing that it cannot, by any species of stupidity, natural or acquired, be worse. The gross flattery, the dull impudence, the renegado intolerance, and impious cant, of the poem by the author if 'Wat Tyler,' are something so stupendous as to form the sublime of himself — containing the quintessence of his own attributes. 

So much for his poem — a word on his preface. In this preface it has pleased the magnanimous Laureate to draw the pictur...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, 
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.
 The river sweats
 Oil and tar
 The barges drift
 With the turning tide
 Red sails 
 Wide
 To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
 The barges wash
 Drifting logs
 Down Greenwich reach
 Past the Isle of Do...Read more of this...

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