Famous Looks Poems by Famous Poets

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

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477. Epigram on Dr. Babington's looks

by Robert Burns
 THAT there is a falsehood in his looks,
 I must and will deny:
They tell their Master is a knave,
 And sure they do not lie....Read more of this...

The toad! It looks like

by Kobayashi Issa
 The toad! It looks like
it could belch
a cloud....Read more of this...

A Welcome

by William Browne
 WELCOME, welcome! do I sing,
Far more welcome than the spring;
He that parteth from you never
Shall enjoy a spring for ever.

He that to the voice is near
Breaking from your iv'ry pale,
Need not walk abroad to hear
The delightful nightingale.
Welcome, welcome, then...

He that looks still on your eyes,
Though the winter have begun
To benumb our arteries,
Shall not want the summer's sun.
Welcome, welcome, then...

He...Read more of this...

The Four Brothers

by Carl Sandburg
 MAKE war songs out of these;
Make chants that repeat and weave.
Make rhythms up to the ragtime chatter of the machine guns;
Make slow-booming psalms up to the boom of the big guns.
Make a marching song of swinging arms and swinging legs,
 Going along,
 Going along,
On the roads from San Antonio to Athens, from Seattle to Bagdad—
The boys and men in...Read more of this...

The Lovers of the Poor

by Gwendolyn Brooks
 arrive. The Ladies from the Ladies' Betterment
League
Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
Here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall. 
Cutting with knives served by their softest care,
Served by their...Read more of this...

A Lost Angel

by Ellis Parker Butler
 When first we met she seemed so white
 I feared her;
As one might near a spirit bright
 I neared her;
An angel pure from heaven above
 I dreamed her,
And far too good for human love
 I deemed her.
A spirit free from mortal taint
 I thought her,
And incense as unto a saint
 I brought her.

Well, incense burning did not seem
 To...Read more of this...

Yesterday and Today XII

by Kahlil Gibran
 The gold-hoarder walked in his palace park and with him walked his troubles. And over his head hovered worries as a vulture hovers over a carcass, until he reached a beautiful lake surrounded by magnificent marble statuary. 

He sat there pondering the water which poured from the mouths of the statues like thoughts flowing freely from a lover's imagination,...Read more of this...

Hymn 31 part 1

by Isaac Watts
 Condescending grace.

Psa. 138:6. 

When the Eternal bows the skies
To visit earthly things,
With scorn divine he turns his eyes
From towers of haughty kings.

He bids his aweful chariot roll
Far downward from the skies,
To visit every humble soul
With pleasure in his eyes.

Why should the Lord that reigns above
Disdain so lofty kings?
Say, Lord, and why such looks of love
Upon such worthless things?

Mortals, be...Read more of this...

499. Song—A Man's a Man for a' that

by Robert Burns
 IS there for honest Poverty
 That hings his head, an’ a’ that;
The coward slave-we pass him by,
 We dare be poor for a’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that.
 Our toils obscure an’ a’ that,
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
 The Man’s the gowd for a’ that.


What though on hamely fare we dine,
 Wear hoddin grey, an’ a...Read more of this...

Fate

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 That you are fair or wise is vain,
Or strong, or rich, or generous;
You must have also the untaught strain
That sheds beauty on the rose.
There is a melody born of melody,
Which melts the world into a sea.
Toil could never compass it,
Art its height could never hit,
It came never out of wit,
But a music music-born
Well may Jove and Juno scorn.
Thy beauty,...Read more of this...

We May Roam Through This World

by Thomas Moore
 We may roam through this world, like a child at a feast, 
Who but sips of a sweet, and then flies to the rest; 
And, when pleasure begins to grow dull in the east, 
We may order our wings and be off to the west: 
But if hearts that feel, and eyes that smile, 
Are the dearest gifts that...Read more of this...

Bill and Joe

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 COME, dear old comrade, you and I
Will steal an hour from days gone by,
The shining days when life was new,
And all was bright with morning dew,
The lusty days of long ago,
When you were Bill and I was Joe.

Your name may flaunt a titled trail
Proud as a cockerel's rainbow tail,
And mine as brief appendix wear
As Tam O'Shanter's luckless mare;
To-day, old...Read more of this...

Hymn 133

by Isaac Watts
 Love and charity.

1 Cor. 13:2-7, 13. 

Let Pharisees of high esteem
Their faith and zeal declare,
All their religion is a dream,
If love be wanting there.

Love suffers long with patient eye,
Nor is provoked in haste;
She lets the present injury die,
And long forgets the past.

[Malice and rage, those fires of hell,
She quenches with her tongue;
Hopes and believes, and thinks no ill,
Though she...Read more of this...

They Buy With an Eye to Looks

by Carl Sandburg
 THE FINE cloth of your love might be a fabric of Egypt,
Something Sinbad, the sailor, took away from robbers,
Something a traveler with plenty of money might pick up
And bring home and stick on the walls and say:
“There’s a little thing made a hit with me
When I was in Cairo—I think I must see Cairo again some day.”
So there are...Read more of this...

The Holidays

by Jane Taylor
 "Ah! don't you remember, 'tis almost December,
And soon will the holidays come;
Oh, 'twill be so funny, I've plenty of money,
I'll buy me a sword and a drum. " 

Thus said little Harry, unwilling to tarry,
Impatient from school to depart; 
But we shall discover, this holiday lover
Knew little what was in his heart. 

For when on returning, he gave up...Read more of this...

Dream Song 55: Peters not friendly. He gives me sideways looks

by John Berryman
 Peter's not friendly. He gives me sideways looks.
The architecture is far from reassuring.
I feel uneasy.
A pity,-”the interview began so well:
I mentioned fiendish things, he waved them away
and sloshed out a martini

strangely needed. We spoke of indifferent matters-”
God's health, the vague hell of the Congo,
John's energy,
anti-matter matter. I felt fine.
Then a change came backward. A chill fell.
Talk slackened,

died, and began...Read more of this...

To The Driving Cloud

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Gloomy and dark art thou, O chief of the mighty Omahas;
Gloomy and dark as the driving cloud, whose name thou hast taken!
Wrapt in thy scarlet blanket, I see thee stalk through the city's
Narrow and populous streets, as once by the margin of rivers
Stalked those birds unknown, that have left us only their
footprints.
What, in a few short years, will remain...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXVI

by William Shakespeare
 Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and...Read more of this...

The Queens Complaint

by Sylvia Plath
 In ruck and quibble of courtfolk
This giant hulked, I tell you, on her scene
With hands like derricks,
Looks fierce and black as rooks;
Why, all the windows broke when he stalked in.

Her dainty acres he ramped through
And used her gentle doves with manners rude;
I do not know
What fury urged him slay
Her antelope who meant him naught but good.

She spoke most chiding...Read more of this...

Autumn

by Thomas Hood
 I Saw old Autumn in the misty morn 
Stand shadowless like Silence, listening 
To silence, for no lonely bird would sing 
Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, 
Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;— 
Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright 
With tangled gossamer that fell by night, 
Pearling his coronet of golden corn. 

Where are the songs of...Read more of this...

H. Baptism

by George Herbert
 As he that sees a dark and shady grove, 
Stays not, but looks beyond it on the sky; 
So when I view my sins, mine eyes remove
More backward still, and to that water fly, 
Which is above the heav'ns, whose spring and rest 
Is in my dear Redeemer's pierced side.
O blessed streams! either ye do prevent
And stop our sins...Read more of this...

Crazy Jane Grown Old Looks At The Dancers

by William Butler Yeats
 I found that ivory image there
Dancing with her chosen youth,
But when he wound her coal-black hair
As though to strangle her, no scream
Or bodily movement did I dare,
Eyes under eyelids did so gleam;
Love is like the lion's tooth.

When She, and though some said she played
I said that she had danced heart's truth,
Drew a knife to strike him dead,
I could but...Read more of this...

Diary of a Church Mouse

by John Betjeman
 Here among long-discarded cassocks,
Damp stools, and half-split open hassocks,
Here where the vicar never looks
I nibble through old service books.
Lean and alone I spend my days
Behind this Church of England baize.
I share my dark forgotten room
With two oil-lamps and half a broom.
The cleaner never bothers me,
So here I eat my frugal tea.
My bread is sawdust mixed with straw;
My jam is...Read more of this...

The Cardinal Looks Back

by Barry Tebb
 I was a good father to my people,

Their houses among the terraced hills

Adored God every day, grape-clusters on the vines

Made Christ’s blood richer in the goblet

My father gave me: the chased silver had vines

Round the stem and Cellini made it,

‘Let him take it to Rome’, he had said,

‘The Pope will adore it.’ The backs of my people

Bent as I...Read more of this...

And now that the lofty leaves have fallen

by Emile Verhaeren
And now that the lofty leaves have fallen, that kept our garden sheltered beneath their shade, through the bare branches can be seen beyond them the roofs of the old villages climbing towards the horizon.
So long as summer poured out its gladness, none of us saw them grouped so near our door; but now that the flowers and the leaves...Read more of this...

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