Famous Left Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Left poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous left poems. These examples illustrate what a famous left poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...by
Washington
at the head of the army?
Have you possess’d yourself of the Federal Constitution?
Do you see who have left all feudal processes and poems behind them, and assumed the poems
and
processes of Democracy?
Are you faithful to things? do you teach as the land and sea, the bodies of men,
womanhood,
amativeness, angers, teach?
Have you sped through fleeting customs, popularities?
Can you hold your hand against all seductions, follies, whirls, fierce contention...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...finished,
the greatest of halls—he created for it the name Heorot,
he who had the widest authority of his words.
He left no promises unfulfilled and dealt out rings,
riches at his feastings. The hall towered there,
high and horn-wide, awaiting the whelming flames,
the hateful tongues. It was not so long yet
until the blade-hatred must awaken sworn in-laws
after their slaughtering malice. (ll. 74-85)
Then wretchedly a mighty monster
suffered for a space, he who dw...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...h this way --
Of River or of Ridge beyond
Was no discovery.
How far is it to Hell?
As far as Death this way --
How far left hand the Sepulchre
Defies Topography....Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,
who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury,
who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy,
and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy ps...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...
Of Beauty tread no more the stones of each unlovely street.
What even Cromwell spared is desecrated
By weed and worm, left to the stormy play
Of wind and beating snow, or renovated
By more destructful hands: Time's worst decay
Will wreathe its ruins with some loveliness,
But these new Vandals can but make a rain-proof barrenness.
Where is that Art which bade the Angels sing
Through Lincoln's lofty choir, till the air
Seems from such marble harmonies to ring
With sweeter so...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...ting,
And all those acts which Deity supreme
Doth ease its heart of love in.---I am gone
Away from my own bosom: I have left
My strong identity, my real self,
Somewhere between the throne, and where I sit
Here on this spot of earth. Search, Thea, search!
Open thine eyes eterne, and sphere them round
Upon all space: space starr'd, and lorn of light;
Space region'd with life-air; and barren void;
Spaces of fire, and all the yawn of hell.---
Search, Thea, search! and tell me, if...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...ver my heart's tossed lake became
More quiet.
Then from that pass released, which yet
With living feet had no man left, I set
My forward steps aslant the steep, that so,
My right foot still the lower, I climbed.
Below
No more I gazed. Around, a slope of sand
Was sterile of all growth on either hand,
Or moving life, a spotted pard except,
That yawning rose, and stretched, and purred and leapt
So closely round my feet, that scarce I kept
The course I wo...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...od,
And burbled as it came!
One two! One two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe. ...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...u shall possess the origin of all poems;
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun—(there are millions of suns
left;)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the
eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books;
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me:
You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from yourself.
3
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ssive surfaces, and the
spirits
thereof would be evident and amicable with me.
4
The earth expanding right hand and left hand,
The picture alive, every part in its best light,
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted,
The cheerful voice of the public road—the gay fresh sentiment of the road.
O highway I travel! O public road! do you say to me, Do not leave me?
Do you say, Venture not? If you leave me, you are lost?
Do you say, I a...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...
For the end of the world was long ago,
And all we dwell to-day
As children of some second birth,
Like a strange people left on earth
After a judgment day.
For the end of the world was long ago,
When the ends of the world waxed free,
When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves,
And the sun drowned in the sea.
When Caesar's sun fell out of the sky
And whoso hearkened right
Could only hear the plunging
Of the nations in the night.
When the ends of the earth came marching in
To t...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...s much,
For brotherless she was, save in the name
Her infant friendship had bestowed on him;
Herself the solitary scion left
Of a time-honoured race.—It was a name
Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not—and why?
Time taught him a deep answer—when she loved
Another; even now she loved another,
And on the summit of that hill she stood
Looking afar if yet her lover's steed
Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew.
III
A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
There was an ...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...mine tho' far removed,
And I for one offence no more beloved.
13
Now since to me altho' by thee refused
The world is left, I shall find pleasure still;
The art that most I have loved but little used
Will yield a world of fancies at my will:
And tho' where'er thou goest it is from me,
I where I go thee in my heart must bear;
And what thou wert that wilt thou ever be,
My choice, my best, my loved, and only fair.
Farewell, yet think not such farewell a change
From tenderness...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...ght, Both what to follow, what to shun, What do, and what to leave undone, How turn to left, and how to right. And Betty's most especial charge, Was, "Johnny! Johnny! mind that you Come home again, nor stop at all, Come home again, whate'er befal, My Johnny do, I pray you do." To this did Johnny answer make, Both with his head, and with his hand, ...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...
And a river, and a spring
On every cliff and tomb;
And on the bleached bones
Red clay brought forth.
Till the villain left the paths of ease,
To walk in perilous paths, and drive
The just man into barren climes.
Now the sneaking serpent walks
In mild humility.
And the just man rages in the wilds
Where lions roam.
Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.
____________________________________________
PLATE 3
As a new heaven is be...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...The vision passed: the ghosts were fled:
He saw once more that woman dread:
He heard once more the words she said.
He left her, and he turned aside:
He sat and watched the coming tide
Across the shores so newly dried.
He wondered at the waters clear,
The breeze that whispered in his ear,
The billows heaving far and near,
And why he had so long preferred
To hang upon her every word:
"In truth," he said, "it was absurd."
The Third Voice
NOT long this transport held ...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...eet some conqueror's advance
Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea
From senatehouse & prison & theatre
When Freedom left those who upon the free
Had bound a yoke which soon they stooped to bear.
Nor wanted here the true similitude
Of a triumphal pageant, for where'er
The chariot rolled a captive multitude
Was driven; althose who had grown old in power
Or misery,--all who have their age subdued,
By action or by suffering, and whose hour
Was drained to its last sand in weal...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...freedom's second dawn
Died George the Third; although no tyrant, one
Who shielded tyrants, till each sense withdrawn
Left him nor mental nor external sun:
A better farmer ne'er brush'd dew from lawn,
A worse king never left a realm undone!
He died — but left his subjects still behind,
One half as mad — and t'other no less blind.
IX
He died! his death made no great stir on earth:
His burial made some pomp; there was profusion
Of velvet, gilding, brass, and no great...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...ny of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was f...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ries of cranes, and the black fields around..
How sweet it would be with you underground!
x x x
The muse has left along narrow
And winding street,
And with large drops of dew
Were sprinkled her feet.
For long did I ask of her
To wait for winter with me,
But she said, "The grave is here,
How can you breathe, you see?"
I wanted to give her a dove
That is whiter than all the rest
But the bird herself flew above
After my graceful guest.
Looking at her...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
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