Famous Little Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Little poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous little poems. These examples illustrate what a famous little poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...ir forms,
Takes the lesson with calmness, perceives the corpse slowly borne from the house,
Perceives that it waits a little while in the door—that it was fittest for its days,
That its life has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who approaches,
And that he shall be fittest for his days.
Any period, one nation must lead,
One land must be the promise and reliance of the future.
These States are the amplest poem,
Here is not merely a nation, but a teeming n...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...eek
the war-king across the swan-road,
the famous prince who stood in need of men.
Wise retainers reproached him but little
about that mission, though he was loved by them,
whetting his mighty spirit and peering at the portents. (ll. 194-204)
This outstanding hero had chosen champions
from the Geatish tribe, from those he found
keenest for battle—one of some fifteen men
seeking the surge-wood, the warrior leading the way,
a sea-crafty man to the limit of the shore...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...l furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination—
ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time—
and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipsis catalogue a variable measure and the vibrating plane,
who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space th...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...s his wings, and stretches back his neck,
And hoots to see the moon; across the meads
Limps the poor frightened hare, a little speck;
And a stray seamew with its fretful cry
Flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull grey sky.
Full winter: and the lusty goodman brings
His load of faggots from the chilly byre,
And stamps his feet upon the hearth, and flings
The sappy billets on the waning fire,
And laughs to see the sudden lightening scare
His children at their play, ...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...to shake and ooze with sweat,
His eyes to fever out, his voice to cease.
He stood, and heard not Thea's sobbing deep;
A little time, and then again he snatch'd
Utterance thus.---"But cannot I create?
Cannot I form? Cannot I fashion forth
Another world, another universe,
To overbear and crumble this to nought?
Where is another Chaos? Where?"---That word
Found way unto Olympus, and made quake
The rebel three.---Thea was startled up,
And in her bearing was a sort of hope,
As thu...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...e,
And life was not so ample I
Could finish enmity.
Nor had I time to love, but since
Some industry must be,
The little toil of love, I thought,
Was large enough for me....Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...nbsp; But then there came a sight of joy; It came at once to do me good; I waked, and saw my little boy, My little boy of flesh and blood; Oh joy for me that sight to see! For he was here, and only he. Suck, little babe, oh suck again! It cools my blood; it cools my brain; Thy lips I feel them, baby! they Draw from my heart the pain away. Oh! press me wit...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...a kelson of the creation is love;
And limitless are leaves, stiff or drooping in the fields;
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them;
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, and heap’d stones, elder, mullen and
poke-weed.
6
A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is, any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I g...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ers, we must not anchor here;
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us, we are permitted to receive it but a
little
while.
10
Allons! the inducements shall be greater;
We will sail pathless and wild seas;
We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper speeds by under full sail.
Allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements!
Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;
Allons! from all formules!
From your formules, O bat-eyed and...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...e.
Ride through the silent earthquake lands,
Wide as a waste is wide,
Across these days like deserts, when
Pride and a little scratching pen
Have dried and split the hearts of men,
Heart of the heroes, ride.
Up through an empty house of stars,
Being what heart you are,
Up the inhuman steeps of space
As on a staircase go in grace,
Carrying the firelight on your face
Beyond the loneliest star.
Take these; in memory of the hour
We strayed a space from home
And saw the smoke-...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...w 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, tho' once to meet or part
But on short absence so could sense derang...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...eadful night. And Betty, half an hour ago, On Johnny vile reflections cast: "A little idle sauntering thing!" With other names, an endless string. But now that time is gone and past. And Betty's drooping at the heart. That happy time all past and gone, "How can it be he is so late? The Doctor he has made him wait, Susan! they'll both be here anon."...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...erpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs
on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
To create a little flower is the labour of ages.
Damn. braces: Bless relaxes.
The best wine is the oldest. the best water the newest.
Prayers plow not! Praises reap not!
Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not!
PLATE 10
The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the
hands & feet Proportion.
As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the
co...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...uoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as “Nevermore.”
But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as ...Read more of this...
by
Poe, Edgar Allan
...either fight nor fly.
While she dissected, word by word,
His speech, half guessed at and half heard,
As might a cat a little bird.
Then, having wholly overthrown
His views, and stripped them to the bone,
Proceeded to unfold her own.
"Shall Man be Man? And shall he miss
Of other thoughts no thought but this,
Harmonious dews of sober bliss?
"What boots it? Shall his fevered eye
Through towering nothingness descry
The grisly phantom hurry by?
"And hear dumb shrieks tha...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...r's soft stream
The music of their ever moving wings.
All the four faces of that charioteer
Had their eyes banded . . . little profit brings
Speed in the van & blindness in the rear,
Nor then avail the beams that quench the Sun
Or that his banded eyes could pierce the sphere
Of all that is, has been, or will be done.--
So ill was the car guided, but it past
With solemn speed majestically on . . .
The crowd gave way, & I arose aghast,
Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the tranc...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...for itself; but I wish to touch upon the motive, which is neither more nor less than that Mr. S. has been laughed at a little in some recent publications, as he was of yore in the 'Anti-jacobin,' by his present patrons. Hence all this 'skimble-scamble stuff' about 'Satanic,' and so forth. However, it is worthy of him — 'qualis ab incepto.'
If there is anything obnoxious to the political opinions of a portion of the public in the following poem, they may thank Mr. Southey. ...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...mory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...m soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. ...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...sh away to the final crumb.
x x x
The blue lacquer dims of heaven,
And the song is better heard.
It's the little trumpet made of dirt,
There's no reason for her to complain.
Why does she forgive me,
And whoever told her of my sins?
Or is that this voice that now repeats
The last poems that you wrote for me?
x x x
Instead of wisdom -- experience, bare,
That does not slake thirst, is not wet.
Youth's gone -- like a Sunday prayer..
Is it mine to...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
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