Famous Magnanimous Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Not with a Club the Heart is broken

by Emily Dickinson
 Not with a Club, the Heart is broken
Nor with a Stone --
A Whip so small you could not see it
I've known

To lash the Magic Creature
Till it fell,
Yet that Whip's Name
Too noble then to tell.

Magnanimous as Bird
By Boy descried --
Singing unto the Stone
Of which it died --

Shame need not crouch
In such an Earth as Ours --
Shame -- stand erect --
The...Read more of this...

Dumb Swede

by Robert William Service
 With barbwire hooch they filled him full,
Till he was drunker than all hell,
And then they peddled him the bull
About a claim they had to sell.
A thousand bucks they made him pay,
Knowing that he had nothing more,
And when he begged it back next day,
And wept! - they kicked him from the door.

They reckoned they were mighty slick,
Them two tinhorns from...Read more of this...

The Enthusiast

by Herman Melville
 "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him"

Shall hearts that beat no base retreat
In youth's magnanimous years - 
Ignoble hold it, if discreet
When interest tames to fears;
Shall spirits that worship light
Perfidious deem its sacred glow,
Recant, and trudge where worldlings go,
Conform and own them right?

Shall Time with creeping influence cold
Unnerve and cow? The heart
Pine for the heartless ones...Read more of this...

The Definition Of Love

by Andrew Marvell
 My love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and high:
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility. 

Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing. 

And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt....Read more of this...

The Upstairs Room

by Weldon Kees
 It must have been in March the rug wore through.
Now the day passes and I stare
At warped pine boards my father's father nailed,
At the twisted grain. Exposed, where emptiness allows,
Are the wormholes of eighty years; four generations' shoes
Stumble and scrape and fall
To the floor my father stained,
The new blood streaming from his head. The drift
Of autumn fires and a...Read more of this...

Falstaffs Lament Over Prince Hal Become Henry V

by Herman Melville
 One that I cherished,
Yea, loved as a son - 
Up early, up late with,
My promising one:
No use in good nurture,
None, lads, none!

Here on this settle
He wore the true crown,
King of good fellows,
And Fat Jack was one - 
Now, Beadle of England
In formal array - 
Best fellow alive
On a throne flung away!

Companions and cronies
Keep fast and lament; - 
Come, drawer,...Read more of this...

Monologue At 3 AM

by Sylvia Plath
 Better that every fiber crack 
and fury make head, 
blood drenching vivid 
couch, carpet, floor 
and the snake-figured almanac 
vouching you are 
a million green counties from here, 

than to sit mute, twitching so 
under prickling stars, 
with stare, with curse 
blackening the time 
goodbyes were said, trains let go, 
and I, great magnanimous fool, thus wrenched from 
my...Read more of this...

To do a magnanimous thing

by Emily Dickinson
 To do a magnanimous thing
And take oneself by surprise
If oneself is not in the habit of him
Is precisely the finest of Joys --

Not to do a magnanimous thing
Notwithstanding it never be known
Notwithstanding it cost us existence once
Is Rapture herself spurn --...Read more of this...

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