Famous Lists Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Lists poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous lists poems. These examples illustrate what a famous lists poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET VI. Sì traviato è 'l folle mio desio. OF HIS FOOLISH PASSION FOR LAURA. So wayward now my will, and so unwise,To follow her who turns from me in flight,And, from love's fetters free herself and light,Before my slow and shackled motion flies,[Pg 6]That less it lists,...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
In robes of Tyrian blue the King was drest,
A jewelled collar shone upon his breast,
A giant ruby glittered in his crown -----
Lord of rich lands and many a splendid town.
In him the glories of an ancient line
Of sober kings, who ruled by right divine,
Were centred; and to him with loyal awe
The people looked for leadership and law.
Ten thousand knights,...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
We rest our hopes on Thy free grace alone,
Nor seek by merits for our sins to atone;
Mercy drops where it lists, and estimates
Ill done as undone, good undone as done....Read more of this...
by
John Keats
Cat! who hast pass’d thy grand climacteric,
How many mice and rats hast in thy days
Destroy’d? How many tit bits stolen? Gaze
With those bright languid segments green, and prick
Those velvet ears - but pr’ythee do not stick
Thy latent talons in me - and upraise
Thy gentle mew - and tell me all thy frays,
Of fish and mice, and rats and tender...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown
Of thee from the hill-top looking down;
The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The wexton, tolling his bell at noon,
Deems not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Of all the Souls that stand create --
I have elected -- One --
When Sense from Spirit -- files away --
And Subterfuge -- is done --
When that which is -- and that which was --
Apart -- intrinsic -- stand --
And this brief Drama in the flesh --
Is shifted -- like a Sand --
When Figures show their royal Front --
And Mists...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Had I presumed to hope --
The loss had been to Me
A Value -- for the Greatness' Sake --
As Giants -- gone away --
Had I presumed to gain
A Favor so remote --
The failure but confirm the Grace
In further Infinite --
'Tis failure -- not of Hope --
But Confident Despair --
Advancing on Celestial Lists --
With faint -- Terrestial power --
'Tis Honor --...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
A hush is over all the teeming lists,
And there is pause, a breath-space in the strife;
A spirit brave has passed beyond the mists
And vapors that obscure the sun of life.
And Ethiopia, with bosom torn,
Laments the passing of her noblest born.
She weeps for him a mother's burning tears--
She loved him with a mother's deepest love
He was her champion thro' direful...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[First published in Schiller's Horen, in connection
with a
friendly contest in the art of ballad-writing between the two
great poets, to which many of their finest works are owing.]
ONCE a stranger youth to Corinth came,
Who in Athens lived, but hoped that he
From a certain townsman there might claim,
As his father's friend, kind courtesy.
Son and daughter, they
Had been wont to say
Should...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
Long I fought the driving lists,
Plume a-stream and armor clanging;
Link on link, between my wrists,
Now my heavy freedom's hanging....Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
By Mystic's banks I held my dream.
(I held my fishing rod as well,)
The vision was of dace and bream,
A fruitless vision, sooth to tell.
But round about the sylvan dell
Were other sweet Arcadian shrines,
Gone now, is all the rural spell,
Arcadia has trolley lines.
Oh, once loved, sluggish, darkling stream,
For me no more, thy waters swell,
Thy music now the engines' scream,
Thy fragrance now...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Forever fair, forever calm and bright,
Life flies on plumage, zephyr-light,
For those who on the Olympian hill rejoice--
Moons wane, and races wither to the tomb,
And 'mid the universal ruin, bloom
The rosy days of Gods--With man, the choice,
Timid and anxious, hesitates between
The sense's pleasure and the soul's content;
While on celestial brows, aloft and sheen,
The beams of both are blent.
Seekest thou on...Read more of this...
by
Marilyn Hacker
You happened to me. I was happened to
like an abandoned building by a bull-
dozer, like the van that missed my skull
happened a two-inch gash across my chin.
You were as deep down as I've ever been.
You were inside me like my pulse. A new-
born flailing toward maternal heartbeat through
the shock of cold and glare: when you were gone,
swaddled in strange...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
Oh the airman's game is a showman's game, for we all of us watch him go
With his roaring soaring aeroplane and his bombs for the blokes below,
Over the railways and over the dumps, over the Hun and the Turk,
You'll hear him mutter, "What ho, she bumps," when the Archies get to work.
But not of him...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Sara, belle d'indolence.")
{XIX., August, 1828.}
In a swinging hammock lying,
Lightly flying,
Zara, lovely indolent,
O'er a fountain's crystal wave
There to lave
Her young beauty—see her bent.
As she leans, so sweet and soft,
Flitting oft,
O'er the mirror to and fro,
Seems that...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown,
Of thee, from the hill-top looking down;
And the heifer, that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton tolling the bell at noon,
Dreams not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's...Read more of this...
by
Philip Larkin
Marrying left yor maiden name disused.
Its five light sounds no longer mean your face,
Your voice, and all your variants of grace;
For since you were so thankfully confused
By law with someone else, you cannot be
Semantically the same as that young beauty:
It was of her that these two words were used.
Now it's a phrase...Read more of this...
by
Alan Seeger
You have the grit and the guts, I know;
You are ready to answer blow for blow
You are virile, combative, stubborn, hard,
But your honor ends with your own back-yard;
Each man intent on his private goal,
You have no feeling for the whole;
What singly none would tolerate
You let unpunished hit the state,
Unmindful that each...Read more of this...
by
William Morris
It is the longest night in all the year,
Near on the day when the Lord Christ was born;
Six hours ago I came and sat down here,
And ponder'd sadly, wearied and forlorn.
The winter wind that pass'd the chapel door,
Sang out a moody tune, that went right well
With mine own thoughts: I look'd down on the floor,
Between my feet, until I...Read more of this...
by
Sir Walter Scott
O, Brignall banks are wild and fair,
And Greta woods are green,
And you may gather garlands there,
Would grace a summer queen:
And as I rode by Dalton Hall,
Beneath the turrets high,
A Maiden on the castle wall
Was singing merrily:—
'O, Brignall banks are fresh and fair,
And Greta woods are green!
I'd rather rove with...Read more of this...
by
Sir Walter Scott
O, Brignall banks are wild and fair,
And Greta woods are green,
And you may gather garlands there,
Would grace a summer queen:
And as I rode by Dalton Hall,
Beneath the turrets high,
A Maiden on the castle wall
Was singing merrily:—
'O, Brignall banks are fresh and fair,
And Greta woods are green!
I'd rather rove with...Read more of this...
by
Jane Austen
Happy the lab'rer in his Sunday clothes!
In light-drab coat, smart waistcoat, well-darn'd hose,
Andhat upon his head, to church he goes;
As oft, with conscious pride, he downward throws
A glance upon the ample cabbage rose
That, stuck in button-hole, regales his nose,
He envies not the gayest London beaux.
In church he takes his seat among the rows,
Pays to the place the reverence he...Read more of this...
by
Sidney Lanier
Joust First.
I.
Bright shone the lists, blue bent the skies,
And the knights still hurried amain
To the tournament under the ladies' eyes,
Where the jousters were Heart and Brain.
II.
Flourished the trumpets: entered Heart,
A youth in crimson and gold.
Flourished again: Brain stood apart,
Steel-armored, dark and cold.
III.
Heart's palfrey caracoled gayly round,
Heart tra-li-ra'd merrily;
But Brain sat still, with never a sound,
So cynical-calm was he.
IV.
Heart's helmet-crest...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
WHO would think this quiet breather
From the world had taken flight?
Yet within the form we see there
Wakes the Golden King to-night.
Out upon the face of faces
He looked forth before his sleep:
Now he knows the starry races
Haunters of the ancient deep.
On the Bird of Diamond Glory
Floats in mystic floods of song:
As he lists Time’s triple story
Seems but as a day...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
At Aix-la-Chapelle, in imperial array,
In its halls renowned in old story,
At the coronation banquet so gay
King Rudolf was sitting in glory.
The meats were served up by the Palsgrave of Rhine,
The Bohemian poured out the bright sparkling wine,
And all the Electors, the seven,
Stood waiting around the world-governing one,
As the chorus of stars encircle the sun,
That honor might duly be given.
And...Read more of this...
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