Famous License Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous License poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous license poems. These examples illustrate what a famous license poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Ondaatje, Michael
...Two birds loved
in a flurry of red feathers
like a burst cottonball,
continuing while I drove over them.
I am a good driver, nothing shocks me....Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...red "I see
The sweet secret thou keepest.
And the yearning for ME
That thou wistfully weepest!
And the question is 'License or Banns?',
though undoubtedly Banns are the cheapest."
"Be my Hero," said I,
"And let ME be Leander!"
But I lost her reply -
Something ending with "gander" -
For the omnibus rattled so loud that no
mortal could quite understand her....Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...ther Place -- need I present Him --
Fitter Courtesy
Hospitable intuition
Of His Company --
Presence -- is His furthest license --
Neither He to Me
Nor Myself to Him -- by Accent --
Forfeit Probity --
Weariness of Him, were quainter
Than Monotony
Knew a Particle -- of Space's
Vast Society
Neither if He visit Other --
Do He dwell -- or Nay -- know I --
But Instinct esteem Him
Immortality --...Read more of this...
by
Larkin, Philip
...kets and quadrilles,
Everyone making love and going shares--
Oh, play that thing! Mute glorious Storyvilles
Others may license, grouping around their chairs
Sporting-house girls like circus tigers (priced
Far above rubies) to pretend their fads,
While scholars manqués nod around unnoticed
Wrapped up in personnels like old plaids.
On me your voice falls as they say love should,
Like an enormous yes. My Crescent City
Is where your speech alone is understood,
And gre...Read more of this...
by
Piercy, Marge
...eally
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms
is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you're certified a dentist.
The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved....Read more of this...
by
Bronte, Charlotte
...
' God help me, in my grievous need,
God help me, in my inward pain;
Which cannot ask for pity's meed,
Which has no license to complain;
Which must be borne, yet who can bear,
Hours long, days long, a constant weight
The yoke of absolute despair,
A suffering wholly desolate ?
Who can for ever crush the heart,
Restrain its throbbing, curb its life ?
Dissemble truth with ceaseless art,
With outward calm, mask inward strife ?'
She waitedas for some reply;
The stil...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ge,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods:
I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter'd by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;
Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth;
Nor any want-begotten rest.
I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and ...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...s betimes,
Like fuller's earth, all spots of crimes,
For future knaveries gives commissions,
Like Papists sinning under license.
For heaven ordain'd the origin,
Divines declare, of pain and sin,
Prove such great good they both have done us,
Kind mercy 'twas they came upon us;
For without sin and pain and folly,
Man ne'er was blest, nor wise, nor holy:
And we should thank the Lord 'tis so,
As authors grave wrote long ago.
Now heav'n its issues never brings
Without the ...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...ot what noisy fools
Use you, worse simpletons, for tools?
For Liberty, in your own by-sense,
Is but for crimes a patent license,
To break of law th' Egyptian yoke,
And throw the world in common stock;
Reduce all grievances and ills
To Magna Charta of your wills;
Establish cheats and frauds and nonsense,
Framed to the model of your conscience;
Cry justice down, as out of fashion,
And fix its scale of depreciation;
Defy all creditors to trouble ye,
And keep new years of Jewish ...Read more of this...
by
Austen, Jane
...y, because
Miss Lloyd must in mourning appear
For the death of a Relative dear--
Miss Lloyd must expect to receive
This license to mourn and to grieve,
Complete, ere the end of the week--
It is better to write than to speak...Read more of this...
by
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...nd also a very
strict adherence to the metre of the original. Although translators
usually allow themselves great license in both these points, it
appears to me that by so doing they of necessity destroy the very
soul of the work they profess to translate. In fact, it is not a
translation, but a paraphrase that they give. It may perhaps be
thought that the present translations go almost to the other extreme,
and that a rendering of metre, line for line, and...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...in turn, fill the South and the North
``With the radiance thy deed was the germ of. Carouse in the past!
``But the license of age has its limit; thou diest at last:
``As the lion when age dims his eyeball, the rose at her height
``So with man---so his power and his beauty for ever take flight.
``No! Again a long draught of my soul-wine! Look forth o'er the years!
``Thou hast done now with eyes for the actual; begin with the seer's!
``Is Saul dead? In the depth of the...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ace-course, or enjoying picnics or jigs, or a good game of base-ball;
At he-festivals, with blackguard jibes, ironical license, bull-dances, drinking,
laughter;
At the cider-mill, tasting the sweets of the brown mash, sucking the juice
through a straw;
At apple-peelings, wanting kisses for all the red fruit I find;
At musters, beach-parties, friendly bees, huskings, house-raisings:
Where the mocking-bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles, screams, weeps;
Whe...Read more of this...
by
Lindsay, Vachel
...Song in Chinese Tapestries
"How, how," he said. "Friend Chang," I said,
"San Francisco sleeps as the dead—
Ended license, lust and play:
Why do you iron the night away?
Your big clock speaks with a deadly sound,
With a tick and a wail till dawn comes round.
While the monster shadows glower and creep,
What can be better for man than sleep?"
"I will tell you a secret," Chang replied;
"My breast with vision is satisfied,
And I see green trees and fluttering wings,
An...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...ed
To praise me so—perhaps induced
More than one early step of mine—
Are turning wise; while some opine
"Freedom grows License," some suspect
"Haste breeds Delay," and recollect
They always said, such premature
Beginnings never could endure!
So, with a sullen "All's for best,"
The land seems settling to its rest.
I think, then, I should wish to stand
This evening in that dear, lost land,
Over the sea the thousand miles,
And know if yet that woman smiles
With the calm smi...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ed the thing you say.'
'Again?' she cried, 'are you ambassadresses
From him to me? we give you, being strange,
A license: speak, and let the topic die.'
I stammered that I knew him--could have wished--
'Our king expects--was there no precontract?
There is no truer-hearted--ah, you seem
All he prefigured, and he could not see
The bird of passage flying south but longed
To follow: surely, if your Highness keep
Your purport, you will shock him even to death,
...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...again—there must be a letter for me.”
And sweethearts go to the city hall
And tell their names and say,“We want a license.”
And they go to an installment house and buy a bed on time and a clock
And the children grow up asking each other, “What can we do to kill time?”
They grow up and go to the railroad station and buy tickets for Texas, Pennsylvania, Alaska.
“Kalamazoo is all right,” they say. “But I want to see the world.”
And when they have looked the...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...and you, Saint Peter! Cold
Must be your souls, if you have not abhorr'd
The foe to Catholic participation
In all the license of a Christian nation.
XLIX
'True! he allow'd them to pray God; but as
A consequence of prayer, refused the law
Which would have placed them upon the same base
With those who did not hold the saints in awe.'
But here Saint Peter started from his place,
And cried, 'You may the prisoner withdraw:
Ere heaven shall ope her portals to th...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Robert
...lackmaned, illmade
in a washed blue workshirt and coalblack trousers,
moving from house to house,
still seeking a boy's license
to see the countryside without arrival.
Hell?
Darling,
terror in happiness may not cure the hungry future,
the time when any illness is chronic,
and the years of discretion are spent on complaint—
until the wristwatch is taken from the wrist....Read more of this...
by
Lehman, David
...oy found out
He was born three months earlier than the date
On his birth certificate, which had turned into
A marriage license in his hands. Had he been trapped
In a net, like a moth mistaken for a butterfly?
And why did she--what was in it for her?
It took him all this time to figure it out.
The barroom boast, "I never had to pay for it,"
Is bogus if marriage is a religious institution
On the operating model of a nineteenth-century factory.
On the other hand, wo...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member License poems.