Famous Mans Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Mans Dying-place Uncertain

by Robert Herrick
 Man knows where first he ships himself; but he
Never can tell where shall his landing be....Read more of this...

Mans Injustice Towards Providence

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 A Thriving Merchant, who no Loss sustained, 
In little time a mighty Fortune gain'd. 
No Pyrate seiz'd his still returning Freight; 
Nor foundring Vessel sunk with its own Weight: 
No Ruin enter'd through dissever'd Planks; 
No Wreck at Sea, nor in the Publick Banks. 
Aloft he sails, above the Reach of Chance, 
And do's in Pride, as fast as...Read more of this...

An Old Man's Thought of School

by Walt Whitman
 AN old man’s thought of School; 
An old man, gathering youthful memories and blooms, that youth itself cannot. 

Now only do I know you! 
O fair auroral skies! O morning dew upon the grass! 

And these I see—these sparkling eyes,
These stores of mystic meaning—these young lives, 
Building, equipping, like a fleet of ships—immortal ships! 
Soon to sail out over...Read more of this...

Facts will not change to humour man's caprice,

by Omar Khayyam
Facts will not change to humour man's caprice,
So vaunt not human powers, but hold your peace;
Here must we stay, weighed down with grief for this,
That we were born so late, so soon decease....Read more of this...

A Mans Requirements

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 I 

Love me Sweet, with all thou art, 
Feeling, thinking, seeing; 
Love me in the lightest part, 
Love me in full being. 

II 

Love me with thine open youth 
In its frank surrender; 
With the vowing of thy mouth, 
With its silence tender. 

III 

Love me with thine azure eyes, 
Made for earnest grantings; 
Taking colour from the skies,...Read more of this...

The Old Mans Grave

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Make it where the winds may sweep 
Through the pine boughs soft and deep, 
And the murmur of the sea 
Come across the orient lea, 
And the falling raindrops sing 
Gently to his slumbering. 

Make it where the meadows wide 
Greenly lie on every side, 
Harvest fields he reaped and trod, 
Westering slopes of clover sod, 
Orchard lands where...Read more of this...

The White Mans Burden

by Rudyard Kipling
 Take up the White man's burden --
 Send forth the best ye breed --
Go bind your sons to exile
 To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness
 On fluttered folk and wild --
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
 Half devil and half child.

Take up the White Man's burden --
 In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
 And check...Read more of this...

Young Mans Song

by William Butler Yeats
 'She will change,' I cried.
'Into a withered crone.'
The heart in my side,
That so still had lain,
In noble rage replied
And beat upon the bone:

'Uplift those eyes and throw
Those glances unafraid:
She would as bravely show
Did all the fabric fade;
No withered crone I saw
Before the world was made.'

Abashed by that report,
For the heart cannot lie,
I knelt in the dirt.
And all shall bend...Read more of this...

The White Mans Foot

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 In his lodge beside a river,
Close beside a frozen river,
Sat an old man, sad and lonely.
White his hair was as a snow-drift;
Dull and low his fire was burning,
And the old man shook and trembled,
Folded in his Waubewyon,
In his tattered white-skin-wrapper,
Hearing nothing but the tempest
As it roared along the forest,
Seeing nothing but the snow-storm,
As it whirled and hissed and drifted.
All...Read more of this...

The Old Man's Love

by Victor Hugo
 ("Dérision! que cet amour boiteux.") 
 
 {HERNANI, Act III.} 


 O mockery! that this halting love 
 That fills the heart so full of flame and transport, 
 Forgets the body while it fires the soul! 
 If but a youthful shepherd cross my path, 
 He singing on the way—I sadly musing, 
 He in his fields,...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...

The Poor Man's Pig

by Edmund Blunden
Already fallen plum-bloom stars the green
And apple-boughs as knarred as old toads' backs
Wear their small roses ere a rose is seen;
The building thrush watches old Job who stacks
The bright-peeled osiers on the sunny fence,
The pent sow grunts to hear him stumping by,
And tries to push the bolt and scamper thence,
But her ringed snout still keeps her to the sty.

Then out...Read more of this...

Dead Mans Dump

by Isaac Rosenberg
 The plunging limbers over the shattered track
Racketed with their rusty freight,
Stuck out like many crowns of thorns,
And the rusty stakes like sceptres old
To stay the flood of brutish men
Upon our brothers dear.

The wheels lurched over sprawled dead
But pained them not, though their bones crunched;
Their shut mouths made no moan,
They lie there huddled, friend and foeman,
Man born of man, and...Read more of this...

Blind Mans Buff

by William Blake
 When silver snow decks Susan's clothes,
And jewel hangs at th' shepherd's nose,
The blushing bank is all my care,
With hearth so red, and walls so fair;
`Heap the sea-coal, come, heap it higher,
The oaken log lay on the fire.'
The well-wash'd stools, a circling row,
With lad and lass, how fair the show!
The merry can of nut-brown ale,
The laughing jest, the love-sick tale,
Till,...Read more of this...

A Drunken Mans Praise Of Sobriety

by William Butler Yeats
 Come swish around, my pretty punk,
And keep me dancing still
That I may stay a sober man
Although I drink my fill.
Sobriety is a jewel
That I do much adore;
And therefore keep me dancing
Though drunkards lie and snore.
O mind your feet, O mind your feet,
Keep dancing like a wave,
And under every dancer
A dead man in his grave.
No ups and downs, my pretty,
A...Read more of this...

Blind Man's Buff

by Anonymous
When the win-ter winds are blow-ing,
  And we ga-ther glad and gay,
Where the fire its light is throw-ing,
  For a mer-ry game at play,
There is none that to my know-ing,—
  And I've play-ed at games enough,—
Makes us laugh, and sets us glow-ing
  Like a game at Blind-man's Buff....Read more of this...

The Tree: An Old Mans Story

by Thomas Hardy
 I 

Its roots are bristling in the air 
Like some mad Earth-god's spiny hair; 
The loud south-wester's swell and yell 
Smote it at midnight, and it fell. 
 Thus ends the tree 
 Where Some One sat with me. 

II 

Its boughs, which none but darers trod, 
A child may step on from the sod, 
And twigs that earliest...Read more of this...

For The One Who Would Take Mans Life In His Hands

by Delmore Schwartz
 Tiger Christ unsheathed his sword,
Threw it down, became a lamb.
Swift spat upon the species, but
Took two women to his heart.
Samson who was strong as death
Paid his strength to kiss a ****.
Othello that stiff warrior
Was broken by a woman's heart.
Troy burned for a sea-tax, also for
Possession of a charming whore.
What do all examples show?
What must the finished murderer know?

You cannot...Read more of this...

The Old Mans Comforts and how he gained them

by Robert Southey
 You are old, Father William, the young man cried,
The few locks which are left you are grey;
You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man,
Now tell me the reason I pray.

In the days of my youth, Father William replied,
I remember'd that youth would fly fast,
And abused not my health and my vigour at first
That I never might need them...Read more of this...

The Road to Old Mans Town

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The fields of youth are filled with flowers, 
The wine of youth is strong: 
What need have we to count the hours? 
The summer days are long. 
But soon we find to our dismay 
That we are drifting down 
The barren slopes that fall away 
Towards the foothills grim and grey 
That lead to Old Man's Town. 

And marching...Read more of this...

Man's Sinfulness And Need Of Repentance And Forgiveness

by The Bible
“Do not enter into judgment with your servant;
For before you no one alive can be righteous.”—Ps. 143:2.

“O Jehovah, do not in your indignation reprove me,
Nor in your rage correct me.
For your own arrows have sunk themselves deep into me,
And upon me your hand is come down.
There is no sound spot in my flesh because of your denunciation.
There is no peace...Read more of this...

The Poor Mans Lamb

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 NOW spent the alter'd King, in am'rous Cares, 
The Hours of sacred Hymns and solemn Pray'rs: 
In vain the Alter waits his slow returns, 
Where unattended Incense faintly burns: 
In vain the whisp'ring Priests their Fears express, 
And of the Change a thousand Causes guess. 
Heedless of all their Censures He retires, 
And in his Palace feeds his secret...Read more of this...

Mans Medley

by George Herbert
 Hark, how the birds do sing,
And woods do ring!
All creatures have their joy, and man hath his.
Yet if we rightly measure,
Man's joy and pleasure
Rather hereafter than in present is.

To this life things of sense
Make their pretence;
In th' other angels have a right by birth.
Man ties them both alone,
And makes them one,
With th' one hand touching heaven, with th' other...Read more of this...

Since all man's business in this world of woe

by Omar Khayyam
Since all man's business in this world of woe
Is sorrow's pangs to feel, and grief to know,
Happy are they that never come at all,
And they that, having come, the soonest go!...Read more of this...

The White Mans Burden

by Pablo Neruda
 Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig
and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:
maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,
a cracked bell, or a torn heart.

Something from far off it seemed
deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,
a shout muffled by huge autumns,
by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves.

Wakening from the dreaming...Read more of this...

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