Famous Marked Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Browning Decides To Be A Poet

by Jorge Luis Borges
 in these red labyrinths of London
I find that I have chosen
the strangest of all callings,
save that, in its way, any calling is strange.
Like the alchemist
who sought the philosopher's stone
in quicksilver,
I shall make everyday words--
the gambler's marked cards, the common coin--
give off the magic that was their
when Thor was both the god and the din,
the thunderclap and the prayer.
In today's...Read more of this...

The Swiss Mercenaries

by Victor Hugo
 ("Lorsque le regiment des hallebardiers.") 
 
 {Bk. XXXI.} 


 When the regiment of Halberdiers 
 Is proudly marching by, 
 The eagle of the mountain screams 
 From out his stormy sky; 
 Who speaketh to the precipice, 
 And to the chasm sheer; 
 Who hovers o'er the thrones of kings, 
 And bids the caitiffs fear....Read more of this...

Huge Vapours Brood Above the Clifted Shore

by Charlotte Turner Smith
 Huge vapours brood above the clifted shore,
Night o'er the ocean settles, dark and mute,
Save where is heard the repercussive roar
Of drowsy billows, on the rugged foot
Of rocks remote; or still more distant tone
Of seamen, in the anchored bark, that tell
The watch relieved; or one deep voice alone,
Singing the hour, and bidding "strike the bell."
All is black shadow, but the...Read more of this...

Liberty

by James Whitcomb Riley
 New Castle, July 4, 1878

or a hundred years the pulse of time
Has throbbed for Liberty;
For a hundred years the grand old clime
Columbia has been free;
For a hundred years our country's love,
The Stars and Stripes, has waved above.

Away far out on the gulf of years--
Misty and faint and white
Through the fogs of wrong--a sail appears,
And the Mayflower heaves in sight,
And...Read more of this...

Sea Poppies

by Hilda Doolittle
 Amber husk 
fluted with gold, 
fruit on the sand 
marked with a rich grain, 

treasure 
spilled near the shrub-pines 
to bleach on the boulders: 

your stalk has caught root 
among wet pebbles 
and drift flung by the sea 
and grated shells 
and split conch-shells. 

Beautiful, wide-spread, 
fire upon leaf, 
what meadow yields 
so fragrant a leaf 
as your bright...Read more of this...

Sonnet On Approaching Italy

by Oscar Wilde
 I reached the Alps: the soul within me burned,
Italia, my Italia, at thy name:
And when from out the mountain's heart I came
And saw the land for which my life had yearned,
I laughed as one who some great prize had earned:
And musing on the marvel of thy fame
I watched the day, till marked with wounds of flame
The turquoise sky to...Read more of this...

Lion And Lioness

by Edwin Markham
 ONE night we were together, you and I, 
And had unsown Assyria for a lair, 
Before the walls of Babylon rose in air. 
How languid hills were heaped along the sky, 
And white bones marked the wells of alkali, 
When suddenly down the lion-path a sound . . . 
The wild man-odor . . . then a crouch, a...Read more of this...

Mask

by Carl Sandburg
 TO have your face left overnight
Flung on a board by a crazy sculptor;
To have your face drop off a board
And fall to pieces on a floor
Lost among lumps all finger-marked
 —How now?

To be calm and level, placed high,
Looking among perfect women bathing
And among bareheaded long-armed men,
Corner dreams of a crazy sculptor,
And then to fall, drop clean off the board,
Four...Read more of this...

The Whitsun Weddings

by Philip Larkin
 That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
 Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday 
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran 
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence 
The river's level drifting breadth began, 
Where sky and Lincolnshire and...Read more of this...

Australia Today 1916

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 They came from the lower levels 
Deep down in the Brilliant mine; 
From the wastes where the whirlwind revels, 
Whirling the leaves of pine. 
On the western plains, where the Darling flows, 
And the dust storms wheel and shift, 
The teamster loosened his yokes and bows, 
And turned his team adrift. 

On the western stations, far and wide, 
There's...Read more of this...

A Ballad of John Nicholson

by Sir Henry Newbolt
 It fell in the year of Mutiny, 
At darkest of the night, 
John Nicholson by Jal?ndhar came, 
On his way to Delhi fight. 

And as he by Jal?ndhar came, 
He thought what he must do, 
And he sent to the Rajah fair greeting, 
To try if he were true. 

"God grant your Highness length of days, 
And friends when...Read more of this...

Hiawathas Friends

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Two good friends had Hiawatha, 
Singled out from all the others, 
Bound to him in closest union, 
And to whom he gave the right hand 
Of his heart, in joy and sorrow; 
Chibiabos, the musician,
And the very strong man, Kwasind.
Straight between them ran the pathway, 
Never grew the grass upon it; 
Singing birds, that utter falsehoods, 
Story-tellers, mischief-makers, 
Found...Read more of this...

The Ocean's Song

by Victor Hugo
 ("Nous nous promenions à Rozel-Tower.") 
 
 {Bk. VI. iv., October, 1852.} 


 We walked amongst the ruins famed in story 
 Of Rozel-Tower, 
 And saw the boundless waters stretch in glory 
 And heave in power. 
 
 O ocean vast! we heard thy song with wonder, 
 Whilst waves marked time. 
 "Appeal, O Truth!" thou...Read more of this...

The Hypnotist

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 A man once read with mind surprised 
Of the way that people were "hypnotised"; 
By waving hands you produced, forsooth, 
A kind of trance where men told the truth! 
His mind was filled with wond'ring doubt; 
He grabbed his hat and he started out, 
He walked the street and he made a "set" 
At the first half-dozen folk he...Read more of this...

Forard

by Henry Lawson
 It is stuffy in the steerage where the second-classers sleep, 
For there's near a hundred for'ard, and they're stowed away like sheep, -- 
They are trav'lers for the most part in a straight 'n' honest path; 
But their linen's rather scanty, an' there isn't any bath -- 
Stowed away like ewes and wethers that is shore 'n' marked 'n'...Read more of this...

An Ancient To Ancients

by Thomas Hardy
 Where once we danced, where once we sang, 
Gentlemen, 
The floors are sunken, cobwebs hang, 
And cracks creep; worms have fed upon 
The doors. Yea, sprightlier times were then 
Than now, with harps and tabrets gone, 
Gentlemen! 

Where once we rowed, where once we sailed, 
Gentlemen, 
And damsels took the tiller, veiled 
Against too strong a stare (God wot...Read more of this...

Love Songs In Age

by Philip Larkin
 She kept her songs, they kept so little space, 
 The covers pleased her: 
One bleached from lying in a sunny place, 
One marked in circles by a vase of water, 
One mended, when a tidy fit had seized her, 
 And coloured, by her daughter - 
So they had waited, till, in widowhood 
She found them, looking for...Read more of this...

There was an old person of Shoreham

by Edward Lear
There was an old person of Shoreham,Whose habits were marked by decorum;He bought an Umbrella, and sate in the cellar,Which pleased all the people of Shoreham. ...Read more of this...

Marked with D

by Tony Harrison
 When the chilled dough of his flesh went in an oven
not unlike those he fuelled all his life,
I thought of his cataracts ablaze with Heaven
and radiant with the sight of his dead wife,
light streaming from his mouth to shape her name,
'not Florence and not Flo but always Florrie.'
I thought how his cold tongue burst into flame
but only literally, which...Read more of this...

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, 
And sorry I could not travel both 
And be one traveler, long I stood 
And looked down one as far as I could 
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 

Then took the other, as just as fair, 
And having perhaps the better claim 
Because it was grassy and wanted wear; 
Though as...Read more of this...

Her Death And After

by Thomas Hardy
 'TWAS a death-bed summons, and forth I went
By the way of the Western Wall, so drear
On that winter night, and sought a gate--
The home, by Fate,
Of one I had long held dear.

And there, as I paused by her tenement,
And the trees shed on me their rime and hoar,
I thought of the man who had left her lone--
Him who made...Read more of this...

Removed from Accident of Loss

by Emily Dickinson
 Removed from Accident of Loss
By Accident of Gain
Befalling not my simple Days --
Myself had just to earn --

Of Riches -- as unconscious
As is the Brown Malay
Of Pearls in Eastern Waters,
Marked His -- What Holiday
Would stir his slow conception --
Had he the power to dream
That put the Dower's fraction --
Awaited even -- Him --...Read more of this...

On Boot Hill

by Badger Clark
  Up from the prairie and through the pines,
  Over your straggling headboard lines
    Winds of the West go by.
  You must love them, you booted dead,
  More than the dreamers who died in bed--
  You old-timers who took your lead
    Under the open sky!

  Leathery knights of...Read more of this...

Before A Crucifix

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Here, down between the dusty trees,
At this lank edge of haggard wood,
Women with labour-loosened knees,
With gaunt backs bowed by servitude,
Stop, shift their loads, and pray, and fare
Forth with souls easier for the prayer.

The suns have branded black, the rains
Striped grey this piteous God of theirs;
The face is full of prayers and pains,
To which they bring their pains and prayers;
Lean...Read more of this...

Amabel

by Thomas Hardy
 I MARKED her ruined hues,
Her custom-straitened views,
And asked, "Can there indwell
My Amabel?"

I looked upon her gown,
Once rose, now earthen brown;
The change was like the knell
Of Amabel.

Her step's mechanic ways
Had lost the life of May's;
Her laugh, once sweet in swell,
Spoilt Amabel.

I mused: "Who sings the strain
I sang ere warmth did wane?
Who thinks its numbers spell
His Amabel?"--

Knowing that, though Love cease,
Love's...Read more of this...

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