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Famous Light(A) Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
  Glowed on the marble, where the glass
  Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
  From which a golden Cupidon peeped out                                  80
  (Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
  Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
  Reflecting light upon the table as
  The gli...Read more of this...



by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...[Book 1]
I am like,
They tell me, my dear father. Broader brows
Howbeit, upon a slenderer undergrowth
Of delicate features, -- paler, near as grave ;
But then my mother's smile breaks up the whole,
And makes it better sometimes than itself.
So, nine full years, our days were hid with God
Among his mountains : I was just thirteen,
Still growing like...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Pellam the King, who held and lost with Lot 
In that first war, and had his realm restored 
But rendered tributary, failed of late 
To send his tribute; wherefore Arthur called 
His treasurer, one of many years, and spake, 
'Go thou with him and him and bring it to us, 
Lest we should set one truer on his throne. 
Man's word is God in man.' 
His Ba...Read more of this...

by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...PART I

'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock
And the owls have awakened the crowing cock;
Tu-whit!- Tu-whoo!
And hark, again! the crowing cock,
How drowsily it crew.
Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,
Hath a toothless mastiff, which
From her kennel beneath the rock
Maketh answer to the clock,
Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour;
...Read more of this...

by Eluard, Paul
...The wind 
Undecided 
Rolls a cigarette of air 

The mute girl talks: 
It is art's imperfection. 
This impenetrable speech. 

The motor car is truly launched: 
Four martyrs' heads 
Roll under the wheels. 

Ah! a thousand flames, a fire, 
The light, a shadow! 
The sun is following me. 

A feather gives to a hat 
A touch of lightness: 
The chi...Read more of this...



by Carroll, Lewis
...I 

There was an ancient City, stricken down
With a strange frenzy, and for many a day
They paced from morn to eve the crowded town,
And danced the night away. 

I asked the cause: the aged man grew sad:
They pointed to a building gray and tall,
And hoarsely answered "Step inside, my lad,
And then you'll see it all." 


Yet what are all such gaieti...Read more of this...

by Ferlinghetti, Lawrence
...It was a face which darkness could kill
     in an instant
a face as easily hurt
   by laughter or light

 'We think differently at night'
     she told me once
lying back languidly

   And she would quote Cocteau

'I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say
    'whom I am constantly shocking'

 Then she would smile and look away 
 light a cigarette for me
...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...ah, christ, what a CREW:
more
poetry, always more
P O E T R Y .

if it doesn't come, coax it out with a 
laxative. get your name in LIGHTS,
get it up there in
8 1/2 x 11 mimeo.

keep it coming like a miracle.

ah christ, writers are the most sickening
of all the louts!
yellow-toothed, slump-shouldered,
gutless, flea-bitten and
obvious ....Read more of this...

by Bronte, Charlotte
...I've quenched my lamp, I struck it in that start
Which every limb convulsed, I heard it fall­
The crash blent with my sleep, I saw depart
Its light, even as I woke, on yonder wall;
Over against my bed, there shone a gleam
Strange, faint, and mingling also with my dream. 

It sunk, and I am wrapt in utter gloom; 
How far is night advanced, and when will...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...A city clerk, but gently born and bred;
His wife, an unknown artist's orphan child--
One babe was theirs, a Margaret, three years old:
They, thinking that her clear germander eye
Droopt in the giant-factoried city-gloom,
Came, with a month's leave given them, to the sea:
For which his gains were dock'd, however small:
Small were his gains, and hard his wor...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...SMOKE of the fields in spring is one,
Smoke of the leaves in autumn another.
Smoke of a steel-mill roof or a battleship funnel,
They all go up in a line with a smokestack,
Or they twist … in the slow twist … of the wind.

If the north wind comes they run to the south.
If the west wind comes they run to the east.
 By this sign
 all smokes
 k...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...So it has come to this
insomnia at 3:15 A.M., 
the clock tolling its engine 

like a frog following 
a sundial yet having an electric 
seizure at the quarter hour. 

The business of words keeps me awake. 
I am drinking cocoa, 
that warm brown mama. 

I would like a simple life 
yet all night I am laying 
poems away in a long box. 

...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...Thy place is biggyd above the sterrys cleer, 
Noon erthely paleys wrouhte in so statly wyse, 
Com on my freend, my brothir moost enteer, 
For the I offryd my blood in sacrifise. 
John Lydgate. 


From '41 to '51 
I was folk's contrary son; 
I bit my father's hand right through 
And broke my mother's heart in two. 
I sometimes go without my dinn...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...1
A yellow band of light upon the street
Pours from an open door, and makes a wide
Pathway of bright gold across a sheet
Of calm and liquid moonshine. From inside
Come shouts and streams of laughter, and a snatch
Of song, soon drowned and lost again in mirth,
The clip of tankards on a table top,
And stir of booted heels. Against the patch
Of candle...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...CANTO FIRST.

The Chase.

     Harp of the North! that mouldering long hast hung
        On the witch-elm that shades Saint Fillan's spring
     And down the fitful breeze thy numbers flung,
        Till envious ivy did around thee cling,
     Muffling with verdant ringlet every string,—
        O Minstrel Harp, still must thine accents sleep?
   ...Read more of this...

by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...PART ONE

IT IS an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May'st hear the merry din.'

He holds him with his skinny hand,
'There was a ship,' quoth he.Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...The Waste Land
by T. S. Eliot

"Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis
vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent:
Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo."

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
 April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...THE PROLOGUE. 1


Experience, though none authority* *authoritative texts
Were in this world, is right enough for me
To speak of woe that is in marriage:
For, lordings, since I twelve year was of age,
(Thanked be God that *is etern on live),* *lives eternally*
Husbands at the church door have I had five,2
For I so often have y-wedded be,
And all were w...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...Know, that I would accounted be
True brother of a company
That sang, to sweeten Ireland's wrong,
Ballad and story, rann and song;
Nor be I any less of them,
Because the red-rose-bordered hem
Of her, whose history began
Before God made the angelic clan,
Trails all about the written page.
When Time began to rant and rage
The measure of her flying feet
Ma...Read more of this...

by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...I should like to rise and go 
Where the golden apples grow;-- 
Where below another sky 
Parrot islands anchored lie, 
And, watched by cockatoos and goats, 
Lonely Crusoes building boats;-- 
Where in sunshine reaching out 
Eastern cities, miles about, 
Are with mosque and minaret 
Among sandy gardens set, 
And the rich goods from near and far 
Hang for sale...Read more of this...

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