Famous Laureate Poems by Famous Poets

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

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127. Stanzas on Naething

...
But marriage will soon let him know
 He’s gotten—a buskit up naething.


The Poet may jingle and rhyme,
 In hopes of a laureate wreathing,
And when he has wasted his time,
 He’s kindly rewarded wi’—naething.


The thundering bully may rage,
 And swagger and swear like a heathen;
But collar him fast, I’ll engage,
 You’ll find that his courage is—naething.


Last night wi’ a feminine whig—
 A Poet she couldna put faith in;
But soon we grew lovingly big,
 I taught her, her terr...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert


America America!

...of the Hudson River and the heights above it,
 the lights, the stars, and the bridges
I am also by self-appointment the laureate of the Atlantic
 -of the peoples' hearts, crossing it 
 to new America.

I am burdened with the truck and chimera, hope,
 acquired in the sweating sick-excited passage 
 in steerage, strange and estranged
Hence I must descry and describe the kingdom of emotion.

For I am a poet of the kindergarten (in the city)
 and the cemetery (in the city)
And ra...Read more of this...
by Schwartz, Delmore

Huddersfield - The Second Poetry Capital Of England

...s

And besides they’re not my kind of editor and I’m back in Leeds

With a letter from Seamus Heaney - thank you, Nobel Laureate, for

Liking ‘My Perfect Rose’ and yes, you’re right about my wanting

To get those New Generation Poets into my classroom at Wyther

Park and show them a thing or two and a phone call from

Horovitz who is my kind of editor still, after thirty years,

His mellifluous voice with its blend of an Oxford accent and

American High Camp, so warm and full...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

Lowly Laureate

...priest I pipe my ditty.
Through gutter-grime be in my rhyme,
I bow to altars holy. . . .
Lord, humble me, so I may be
A Laureate of the Lowly....Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Lycidas

...sad embroidery wears;
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffadillies fill their cups with tears, 
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.
For so, to interpose a little ease,
Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise,
Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas
Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled;
Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides,
Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world;
Or whether thou,...Read more of this...
by Milton, John


Model For The Laureate

...On thrones from China to Peru
All sorts of kings have sat
That men and women of all sorts
proclaimed both good and great;
And what's the odds if such as these
For reason of the State
Should keep their lovers waiting,
 Keep their lovers waiting?

Some boast of beggar-kings and kings
Of rascals black and white
That rule because a strong right arm
Puts all me...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler

Nuremberg

...of poesy bloom 35 
In the forge's dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom. 

Here Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, laureate of the gentle craft, 
Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and laughed. 

But his house is now an ale-house, with a nicely sanded floor, 
And a garland in the window, and his face above the door; 40 

Painted by some humble artist, as in Adam Puschman's song, 
As the old man gray and dove-like, with his great beard white and...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

On a Forenoon of Spring

...ir rough path; sit by yon cottage-door 
Plying the diligent thread; take wings and soar-- 
O hark how with the season's laureate 
Joy culminates in song! If such a song were mine!...Read more of this...
by Allingham, William

The Hill We Climb

...rave enough to see it
If only we're brave enough to be it





Amanda Gorman, the nation's first-ever youth poet laureate, read the following poem during the inauguration of President Joe Biden on January 20, 2021....Read more of this...
by Gorman, Amanda

The Spooniad

...[The late Mr. Jonathan Swift Somers, laureate of Spoon River, planned The Spooniad as an epic in twenty-four books, but unfortunately did not live to complete even the first book. The fragment was found among his papers by William Marion Reedy and was for the first time published in Reedy's Mirror of December 18th, 1914.]


Of John Cabanis' wrath and of the strife
Of hostile parties, and his di...Read more of this...
by Masters, Edgar Lee

The Vision of Judgment

...e 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 picture of a supposed 'Satanic School,' the which he doth recommend to the notice of the legislature; thereby adding to his other laurels, the ambition of those of an informer. If there exists anywhere, except in his imagination, such a School, is he not sufficiently armed against it by his own intense vanity? The truth is, that there ar...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

They have a little Odor -- that to me

...ave a little Odor -- that to me
Is metre -- nay -- 'tis melody --
And spiciest at fading -- indicate --
A Habit -- of a Laureate --...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

To A Poet That Died Young

...Minstrel, what have you to do
With this man that, after you,
Sharing not your happy fate,
Sat as England's Laureate?
Vainly, in these iron days,
Strives the poet in your praise,
Minstrel, by whose singing side
Beauty walked, until you died.

Still, though none should hark again,
Drones the blue-fly in the pane,
Thickly crusts the blackest moss,
Blows the rose its musk across,
Floats the boat that is forgot
None the less to Camelot.

Many a bard's untimely death
L...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

Weary Waitress

...o shy to speak,
 Far less to touch her cheek.

He dreams . . . If only I were King
 I'd make of her my Queen.
If I were laureate I'd sing
 Her loveliness serene.
--How wistfully romance can haunt
 A city restaurant!

For as I watch that pensive pair
 There stirs within my heart
From Arcady an April air
 That shames the sordid mart:
A sense of Spring and singing rills,
 --Love mid the daffodils....Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

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