Famous Living Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Living poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous living poems. These examples illustrate what a famous living poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...ossoms dote;
For she was sought by spirits of richest coat,
But kept cold distance, and did thence remove,
To spend her living in eternal love.
''But, O my sweet, what labour is't to leave
The thing we have not, mastering what not strives,
Playing the place which did no form receive,
Playing patient sports in unconstrained gyves?
She that her fame so to herself contrives,
The scars of battle 'scapeth by the flight,
And makes her absence valiant, not her might.
''O, pardon m...Read more of this...
by
Shakespeare, William
...a total stranger one black day
knocked living the hell out of me--
who found forgiveness hard because
my(as it happened)self he was
-but now that fiend and i are such
a total stranger one black day...Read more of this...
by
Cummings, Edward Estlin (E E)
...en together by paper and seal, or by compulsion, is no account;
That only holds men together which aggregates all in a living principle, as the hold of
the
limbs of the body, or the fibres of plants.
Of all races and eras, These States, with veins full of poetical stuff, most need poets,
and
are to have the greatest, and use them the greatest;
Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall.
(Soul of love, and tongue of fire!
Eye to p...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...n, so surrounded by waters.
He established both sun and moon, victorious and triumphant,
the lamps of light for those living on land,
and ornamented all the corners of the earth
with limbs and leaves—he also shaped life itself
in all kinds of creatures which quickly scurry about. (ll. 86-98)
So these noble warriors lodged in their delights
blissfully — until their lonely opponent
made evil upon them, the fiend from hell.
That ferocious spirit was named Grendel,
th...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...cist national Golgotha
I’m with you in Rockland
where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your living human Jesus from the superhuman tomb
I’m with you in Rockland
where there are twentyfive thousand mad comrades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale
I’m with you in Rockland
where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won’t let us sleep
I’m with you in Rockla...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...
Of lone Helvellyn, for this note of strife
Shunned your untroubled crags and crystal rills,
Where is that Spirit which living blamelessly
Yet dared to kiss the smitten mouth of his own century!
Speak ye Rydalian laurels! where is he
Whose gentle head ye sheltered, that pure soul
Whose gracious days of uncrowned majesty
Through lowliest conduct touched the lofty goal
Where love and duty mingle! Him at least
The most high Laws were glad of, he had sat at Wisdom's feast;
But ...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...shaped lightnings from the nadir deep
Up to the zenith,---hieroglyphics old,
Which sages and keen-eyed astrologers
Then living on the earth, with laboring thought
Won from the gaze of many centuries:
Now lost, save what we find on remnants huge
Of stone, or rnarble swart; their import gone,
Their wisdom long since fled.---Two wings this orb
Possess'd for glory, two fair argent wings,
Ever exalted at the God's approach:
And now, from forth the gloom their plumes immense
Rose, ...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...d frame
Rested, and ever 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...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...ll sun-struck, or in fits;
What exclamations of women taken suddenly, who hurry home and give birth to
babes;
What living and buried speech is always vibrating here—what howls
restrain’d by decorum;
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances, rejections
with convex lips;
I mind them or the show or resonance of them—I come, and I depart.
9
The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready;
The dried grass of the harvest-time loa...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...has been near you, I believe you have imparted to yourselves, and now would
impart the
same secretly to me;
From the living and the dead I think you have peopled your impassive 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 ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...e.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got go...Read more of this...
by
Angelou, Maya
...mercy and mystery?
"For God is a great servant,
And rose before the day,
From some primordial slumber torn;
But all we living later born
Sleep on, and rise after the morn,
And the Lord has gone away.
"On things half sprung from sleeping,
All sleepy suns have shone,
They stretch stiff arms, the yawning trees,
The beasts blink upon hands and knees,
Man is awake and does and sees--
But Heaven has done and gone.
For who shall guess the good riddle
Or speak of the Holiest,
Save...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...declivity, the last
As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such,
Save that there was no sea to lave its base,
But a most living landscape, and the wave
Of woods and corn-fields, and the abodes of men
Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke
Arising from such rustic roofs: the hill
Was crowned with a peculiar diadem
Of trees, in circular array, so fixed,
Not by the sport of nature, but of man:
These two, a maiden and a youth, were there
Gazing—the one on all that was beneath...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...g'd son.
Is all this glory, I said, another's praise?
Are these heroic triumphs things of old,
And do I dead upon the living gaze?
Or rather doth the mind, that can behold
The wondrous beauty of the works and days,
Create the image that her thoughts enfold?
19
Rejoice, ye dead, where'er your spirits dwell,
Rejoice that yet on earth your fame is bright;
And that your names, remember'd day and night,
Live on the lips of those that love you well.
'Tis ye that conquer'd have ...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...palaces in the immense
cliffs.
In the fourth chamber were Lions of flaming fire raging around
& melting the metals into living fluids.
In the fifth chamber were Unnam'd forms, which cast the metals
into the expanse.
There they were reciev'd by Men who occupied the sixth
chamber, and took the forms of books & were arranged in
libraries.
____________________________________________________
PLATE 16
The Giants who formed this world into its sensual existence
and now seem to l...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...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 if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing farther then he utter...Read more of this...
by
Poe, Edgar Allan
...n despair,
With hands, through denser-matted hair,
More tightly clenched than then they were.
When, bathed in Dawn of living red,
Majestic frowned the mountain head,
"Tell me my fault," was all he said.
When, at high Noon, the blazing sky
Scorched in his head each haggard eye,
Then keenest rose his weary cry.
And when at Eve the unpitying sun
Smiled grimly on the solemn fun,
"Alack," he sighed, "what HAVE I done?"
But saddest, darkest was the sight,
When the cold gras...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...c dance
Raging around; such seemed the jubilee
As when to greet 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 su...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed' und leer das Meer.
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here ...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ce has conversation
With girl before the evening, and the bees
Hear only the tenderest of conversation.
And we are living pompously and hard
And follow bitter rituals like sun
When, flight past us, the unreasoned wind
Interrupts speech that's barely begun.
But not for anything will we change the pompous
Granite city of glory, pain and lies,
The glistening wide rivers' ice
Sunless and murky gardens, and the voice,
Though barely audible, of the Muse.
x x ...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
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