Famous Learned Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Learned poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous learned poems. These examples illustrate what a famous learned poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Robert Graves
What could be dafter
Than John Skelton’s laughter?
What sound more tenderly
Than his pretty poetry?
So where to rank old Skelton?
He was no monstrous Milton,
Nor wrote no “Paradise Lost,”
So wondered at by most,
Phrased so disdainfully,
Composed so painfully.
He struck what Milton missed,
Milling an English grist
With homely turn and twist.
He was...Read more of this...
by
Lewis Carroll
The Beaver's Lesson
They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.
Then the Butcher contrived an ingenious plan
For making a separate sally;
And fixed on a spot unfrequented by man,
A dismal and desolate valley....Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
We sail out of season into on oyster-gray wind,
over a terrible hardness.
Where Dickens crossed with mal de mer
in twenty weeks or twenty days
I cross toward him in five.
Wraped in robes--
not like Caesar but like liver with bacon--
I rest on the stern
burning my mouth with a wind-hot ash,
watching my ship
bypass the swells
as easily as an old woman reads a palm.
I...Read more of this...
by
Roddy Lumsden
She lies in her well-kept apartment
above the spick and span cathedral
in the heart of the walled city
above Manila Bay and she dreams
of the great, ruined cities of Europe:
Vienna crumbling into the ocean,
Warsaw in a plague of frogs and flies
and London, where all the black men
have learned to talk like white men,
where all the white men have begun
to talk...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
He gives me such a bold and curious look,
That young American across the way,
As if he'd like to put me in a book
(Fancies himself a poet, so they say.)
Ah well! He'll make no "document" of me.
I lock my door. Ha! ha! Now none shall see. . . .
Pictures, just pictures piled from roof to floor,
Each one a bit of...Read more of this...
by
Michael Drayton
To the Soul
That learned Father, who so firmly proves
The Soul of man immortal and divine,
And doth the several offices define:
Anima - Gives her that name, as she the Body moves;
Amor - Then is she Love, embracing charity;
Animus - Moving a Will in us, it is the Mind
Mens - Retaining knowledge, still the same...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
There's a four-pronged buck a-swinging in the shadow of my cabin,
And it roamed the velvet valley till to-day;
But I tracked it by the river, and I trailed it in the cover,
And I killed it on the mountain miles away.
Now I've had my lazy supper, and the level sun is gleaming
On the water where the silver salmon...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Jack would laugh an' joke all day;
Never saw a lad so gay;
Singin' like a medder lark,
Loaded to the Plimsoll mark
With God's sunshine was that boy;
Had a strangle-holt on Joy.
Held his head 'way up in air,
Left no callin' cards on Care;
Breezy, buoyant, brave and true;
Sent his sunshine out to you;
Cheerfulest when clouds was black --
Happy Jack! Oh, Happy Jack!
Sittin'...Read more of this...
by
David Berman
I know it's a bad title
but I'm giving it to myself as a gift
on a day nearly canceled by sunlight
when the entire hill is approaching
the ideal of Virginia
brochured with goldenrod and loblolly
and I think "at least I have not woken up
with a bloody knife in my hand"
by then having absently wandered
one hundred yards from the house
while still seated in...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
I held my heart so far from harm,
I let it wander far and free
In mead and mart, without alarm,
Assured it must come back to me.
And all went well till on a day,
Learned Dr. Cupid wandered by
A search along our sylvan way
For some peculiar butterfly.
A flash of wings, a hurried dive,
A flutter and a short-lived flit;
This Scientist, as I am alive
Had...Read more of this...
by
Czeslaw Milosz
Let us not talk philosophy, drop it, Jeanne.
So many words, so much paper, who can stand it.
I told you the truth about my distancing myself.
I've stopped worrying about my misshapen life.
It was no better and no worse than the usual human tragedies.
For over thirty years we have been waging our dispute
As we do now, on the island under the...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
I
You buy my freedom with your love.
With every book you catalogue or stamp
My imagination hacks a strand from the hawser
That for three years has held it
In the grubbing estuary of mud and time.
Your early waking with tired eyes
And late return at evening, all
Contribute to the store of images
I love you for: the irony being
Your job is worse than mine
Your...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Crane
A learned man came to me once.
He said, "I know the way, -- come."
And I was overjoyed at this.
Together we hastened.
Soon, too soon, were we
Where my eyes were useless,
And I knew not the ways of my feet.
I clung to the hand of my friend;
But at last he cried, "I am lost."...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I learned -- at least -- what Home could be --
How ignorant I had been
Of pretty ways of Covenant --
How awkward at the Hymn
Round our new Fireside -- but for this --
This pattern -- of the Way --
Whose Memory drowns me, like the Dip
Of a Celestial Sea --
What Mornings in our Garden -- guessed --
What Bees -- for us...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
These people string their beads of learned lumber,
And tell of Allah stories without number;
Yet never solve the riddle of the skies,
But wag the chin, and get them back to slumber....Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
XVII. ? TO THE LEARNED CRITIC. May others fear, fly, and traduce thy name, As guilty men do magistrates ; glad I, That wish my poems a legitimate fame, Charge them, for crown, to thy sole censure hie. And but a sprig of bays, given by thee, Shall outlive garlands, stol'n from the chaste tree....Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
My most Distinguished Guest and Learned Friend,
The pallid hare that runs before the day
Having brought your earnest counsels to an end
Now have I somewhat of my own to say:
That it is folly to be sunk in love,
And madness plain to make the matter known,
There are no mysteries you are verger of;
Everyman's wisdoms these are, and my own.
If I have...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
We learned the Whole of Love --
The Alphabet -- the Words --
A Chapter -- then the mighty Book --
Then -- Revelation closed --
But in Each Other's eyes
An Ignorance beheld --
Diviner than the Childhood's --
And each to each, a Child --
Attempted to expound
What Neither -- understood --
Alas, that Wisdom is so large --
And Truth -- so manifold!...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
The Four Archangels, so the legends tell,
Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, Azrael,
Being first of those to whom the Power was shown
Stood first of all the Host before The Throne,
And, when the Charges were allotted, burst
Tumultuous-winged from out the assembly first.
Zeal was their spur that bade them strictly heed
Their own high judgment on their lightest deed.
Zeal was their spur that, when relief...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Within a pub that's off the Strand and handy to the bar,
With pipe in mouth and mug in hand sat Jobson of the Star.
"Come, sit ye down, ye wond'ring wight, and have a yarn," says he.
"I can't," says I, "because to-night I'm off to Tripoli;
To Tripoli and Trebizond and Timbuctoo mayhap,
Or any magic name beyond I find upon the...Read more of this...
by
Katherine Mansfield
The further the little girl leaped and ran,
The further she longed to be;
The white, white fields of jonquil flowers
Danced up as high as her knee
And flashed and sparkled before her eyes
Until she could hardly see.
So into the wood went she.
It was quiet in the wood,
It was solemn and grave;
A sound like a wave
Sighed in the tree-tops
And then sighed no...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Ne'er does he taste the fruit of the tree that he raised with such trouble;
Nothing but taste e'er enjoys that which by learning is reared....Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
Sir William Wallace of Ellerslie,
I'm told he went to the High School in Dundee,
For to learn to read and write,
And after that he learned to fight,
While at the High School in Dundee,
The Provost's son with him disagree,
Because Wallace did wear a dirk,
He despised him like an ignorant stirk,
Which with indignation he keenly felt,
And told him it would become him...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
WHILE briers an’ woodbines budding green,
An’ paitricks scraichin loud at e’en,
An’ morning poussie whiddin seen,
Inspire my muse,
This freedom, in an unknown frien’,
I pray excuse.
On Fasten-e’en we had a rockin,
To ca’ the crack and weave our stockin;
And there was muckle fun and jokin,
Ye need na doubt;
At length we had a hearty yokin
At sang about.
There was ae...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
These are the days of elfs and fays:
Who says that with the dreams of myth,
These imps and elves disport themselves?
Ah no, along the paths of song
Do all the tiny folk belong.
Round all our homes,
Kobolds and gnomes do daily cling,
Then nightly fling their lanterns out.
And shout on shout, they join the rout,
And sing, and sing, within the sweet enchanted ring.
Where gleamed...Read more of this...
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