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Famous Man Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Shakespeare, William
...All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldie...Read more of this...



by Ginsberg, Allen
...ho thought they were only mad when Baltimore 
 gleamed in supernatural ecstasy, 
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Okla- 
 homa on the impulse of winter midnight street 
 light smalltown rain, 
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston 
 seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the 
 brilliant Spaniard to converse about America 
 and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship 
 to Africa, 
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving 
 behind nothi...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...w 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, and yet, - the spring is in the air;

Already the slim crocus stirs the snow,
And soon yon blanched fields will bloom again
With nodding cowslips f...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...sullen rear
Was with its stored thunder labouring up.
One hand she press'd upon that aching spot
Where beats the human heart, as if just there,
Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain:
The other upon Saturn's bended neck
She laid, and to the level of his ear
Leaning with parted lips, some words she spake
In solemn tenor and deep organ tone:
Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue
Would come in these like accents; O how frail
To that large utterance of the early G...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...y seconds' worth of distance run, 
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, 
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son! ...Read more of this...



by Alighieri, Dante
...ver 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 kept 
 The...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...my Hope, my Joy,    My own dear Genevieve!   She lean'd against the Armed Man,  The Statue of the Armed Knight:  She stood and listen'd to my Harp    Amid the ling'ring Light.   Few Sorrows hath she of her own,  My Hope, my Joy, my Genevieve!  She loves me best, whene'er I sing    The Songs, that make her gr...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...y discuss I am
 silent, and go bathe and admire myself. 

Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean; 
Not an inch, nor a particle of an inch, is vile, and none shall be less familiar
 than the rest.

I am satisfied—I see, dance, laugh, sing: 
As the hugging and loving Bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night, and
 withdraws at the peep of the day, with stealthy tread, 
Leaving me baskets cover’d with white towels, swel...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ghing party of mechanics, 
The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple,
The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back
 from
 the
 town, 
They pass—I also pass—anything passes—none can be interdicted; 
None but are accepted—none but are dear to me. 

3
You air that serves me with breath to speak! 
You objects that call from diffusion my meanings, and give them shape!
You light that wraps me and all t...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...ake up the dust of thanes like thunder
To smoke and choke the sun?

In cloud of clay so cast to heaven
What shape shall man discern?
These lords may light the mystery
Of mastery or victory,
And these ride high in history,
But these shall not return.

Gored on the Norman gonfalon
The Golden Dragon died:
We shall not wake with ballad strings 
The good time of the smaller things,
We shall not see the holy kings
Ride down by Severn side.

Stiff, strange, and quaintly colo...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...: 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
Fair as herself—but the boy gazed on her;
And both were young, and one was beautiful:
And both were young—yet not alike in youth.
As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge,
The maid was on the eve of womanhood;
The boy had fewer summers, but his heart
Had far outgrown ...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...n to her new use. 

4
The very names of things belov'd are dear,
And sounds will gather beauty from their sense,
As many a face thro' love's long residence
Groweth to fair instead of plain and sere:
But when I say thy name it hath no peer,
And I suppose fortune determined thence
Her dower, that such beauty's excellence
Should have a perfect title for the ear. 
Thus may I think the adopting Muses chose
Their sons by name, knowing none would be heard
Or writ so oft in a...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...  And Betty's husband's at the wood,  Where by the week he doth abide,  A woodman in the distant vale;  There's none to help poor Susan Gale,  What must be done? what will betide?   And Betty from the lane has fetched  Her pony, that is mild and good,  Whether he be in joy or pain,  Feeding at will along the lane,  Or bringing fagg...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...oars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep

Once meek, and in a perilous path,
The just man kept his course along 
The vale of death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow.
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.

Then the perilous path was planted:
And a river, and a spring
On every cliff and tomb;
And on the bleached bones
Red clay brought forth.

Till the villain left the paths of ease,
To walk in perilous paths, and drive...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...br>
"To swallow wines all foam and froth!
To simper at a table-cloth! 

"Say, can thy noble spirit stoop
To join the gormandising troup
Who find a solace in the soup? 

"Canst thou desire or pie or puff?
Thy well-bred manners were enough,
Without such gross material stuff." 

"Yet well-bred men," he faintly said,
"Are not willing to be fed:
Nor are they well without the bread." 

Her visage scorched him ere she spoke:
"There are," she said, "a kind of folk
Who have no...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
..., yet so
Was borne amid the crowd as through the sky
One of the million leaves of summer's bier.--
Old age & youth, manhood & infancy,
Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear,
Some flying from the thing they feared & some
Seeking the object of another's fear,
And others as with steps towards the tomb
Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,
And others mournfully within the gloom
Of their own shadow walked, and called it death ...
And some fled from it a...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...a Daniel!
I thank thee, Jew for teaching me that word.' 

PREFACE 

It hath been wisely said, that 'One fool makes many;' and it hath been poetically observed —

'That fools rush in where angels fear to tread.' - Pope 

If Mr. Southey had not rushed in where he had no business, and where he never was before, and never will be again, the following poem would not have been written. It is not impossible that it may be as good as his own, seeing that it cannot, b...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
..., and go south in the winter.
 What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, 
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning st...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...down this book, 
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look 
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; 

How many loved your moments of glad grace, 
And loved your beauty with love false or true; 
But one man loved the pilgrim 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 Akhmatova, Anna
...r white house -
Let life be empty and with light complete.
I'll sing the glory to you in my verse
Like not one woman has sung glory yet.
And that dear girlfriend you remember
In heaven you created for her sight,
I'm trading product that is very rare -
I sell your tenderness and loving light.



Song about Song

So many stones have been thrown at me
That I don't fear them any longer
Like elegant tower the westerner stands free
Among tall towers, t...Read more of this...

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