Famous Means Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Means poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous means poems. These examples illustrate what a famous means poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...is, nor e'er shall be.
In ev'ry Work regard the Writer's End,
Since none can compass more than they Intend;
And if the Means be just, the Conduct true,
Applause, in spite of trivial Faults, is due.
As Men of Breeding, sometimes Men of Wit,
T' avoid great Errors, must the less commit,
Neglect the Rules each Verbal Critick lays,
For not to know some Trifles, is a Praise.
Most Criticks, fond of some subservient Art,
Still make the Whole depend upon a Part,
They talk of Principl...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...saying that—
What coin of God has he to pay the toll
To peace on earth? Good will to men—oh, yes!
That’s easy; and it means no more than sap,
Until we boil the water out of it
Over the fire of sacrifice. I’ll do it;
And in a measurable way I’ve done it—
But not for him. What are you smiling at?
Well, so it went until a day in June.
We were together under an old elm,
Which now, I hope, is gone—though it’s a crime
In me that I should have to wish the death
Of such a tr...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...batants struggled. (ll. 767-77)
Until this moment, Scylding wisemen never believed
that any man could ever have the means, excellent
though bound in bone, to break it apart,
tear it down by talent, unless the embrace of flame
should swallow it in its swaths. (ll. 778-82a)
A voice clambered forth, utterly unheard-of.
A thrilling horror stood within the North-Danes,
every one alone who heard the wailing from the walls,
the opponent of God singing his keening terror...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...wn woes? With waves of care
my sad heart seethed; I sore mistrusted
my loved one’s venture: long I begged thee
by no means to seek that slaughtering monster,
but suffer the South-Danes to settle their feud
themselves with Grendel. Now God be thanked
that safe and sound I can see thee now!”
Beowulf spake, the bairn of Ecgtheow: --
“’Tis known and unhidden, Hygelac Lord,
to many men, that meeting of ours,
struggle grim between Grendel and me,
which we fought on the f...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...pines
When Winter lifts his voice; there is a noise
Among immortals when a God gives sign,
With hushing finger, how he means to load
His tongue with the filll weight of utterless thought,
With thunder, and with music, and with pomp:
Such noise is like the roar of bleak-grown pines;
Which, when it ceases in this mountain'd world,
No other sound succeeds; but ceasing here,
Among these fallen, Saturn's voice therefrom
Grew up like organ, that begins anew
Its strain, when other ...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...
Upon whose icy breast,
Unquestioned, uncaressed,
One time I lay,
And whom always I lack,
Even to this day,
Being by no means from that frigid bosom weaned away,
If only she therewith be given me back?"
I sought her down that dolorous labyrinth,
Wherein no shaft of sunlight ever fell,
And in among the bloodless everywhere
I sought her, but the air,
Breathed many times and spent,
Was fretful with a whispering discontent,
And questioning me, importuning me to tell
Some slightes...Read more of this...
by
St. Vincent Millay, Edna
..., Francesco,
Had begun to grow stale as no answer
Or answers were forthcoming. If it dissolves now
Into dust, that only means its time had come
Some time ago, but look now, and listen:
It may be that another life is stocked there
In recesses no one knew of; that it,
Not we, are the change; that we are in fact it
If we could get back to it, relive some of the way
It looked, turn our faces to the globe as it sets
And still be coming out all right:
Nerves normal, breath normal. ...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic;
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white;
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the
same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you, curling grass;
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men;
It may ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...up;
The door he enter’d again from a long and scandalous absence, diseas’d, broken down,
without
innocence, without means.
11
Her shape arises,
She, less guarded than ever, yet more guarded than ever;
The gross and soil’d she moves among do not make her gross and soil’d;
She knows the thoughts as she passes—nothing is conceal’d from her;
She is none the less considerate or friendly therefor;
She is the best belov’d—it is without exception—she has no reason to fear, ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...f authority.
(23) The wrangling about this epithet, "the broad Hellespont," or the "boundless Hellespont," whether it means one or the other, or what it means at all, has been beyond all possibility of detail. I have even heard it disputed on the spot; and not foreseeing a speedy conclusion to the controversy, amused myself by swimming across it in the meantime, and probably may again, before the point is settled. Indeed, the question as to the truth of "the tale of Troy di...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...oul and set it here.
Have I not loved you well and true? See! between us the shadows drift;
This bit of blood and tears means You -- oh, let me have it, a parting gift.
Sacred I'll hold it, a trust divine; sacred your honour, her dark despair;
Never shall it see printed line: here, by the living God I swear."
Brown on a Bible laid his hand; Smith, great writer of stories, sighed:
"Comrade, I trust you, and understand. Keep my secret!" And so he died.
Smith was buried -- up s...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...houghtless hardihood--
These are the best: yet be there workmen good
Who lose in earnestness control of face,
Or reckon means, and rapt in effort base
Reach to their end by steps well understood.
Me whom thou sawest of late strive with the pains
Of one who spends his strength to rule his nerve,
--Even as a painter breathlessly who stains
His scarcely moving hand lest it should swerve--
Behold me, now that I have cast my chains,
Master of the art which for thy sake I serve.
...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...
"He remarked to me then," said that mildest of men,
" 'If your Snark be a Snark, that is right:
Fetch it home by all means--you may serve it with greens,
And it's handy for striking a light.
" 'You may seek it with thimbles--and seek it with care;
You may hunt it with forks and hope;
You may threaten its life with a railway-share;
You may charm it with smiles and soap--' "
("That's exactly the method," the Bellman bold
In a hasty parenthesis cried,
"That's exactly th...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...y shout, Halloo! halloo! a long halloo! —Why bustle thus about your door, What means this bustle, Betty Foy? Why are you in this mighty fret? And why on horseback have you set Him whom you love, your idiot boy? Beneath the moon that shines so bright, Till she is tired, let Betty Foy With girt and stirrup fiddle-faddle; But wherefore set upon a saddle&n...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...And woe betide the fairy dream!
I only waked to sob and scream.
XXIII.
'Who is this maid? what means her lay?
She hovers o'er the hollow way,
And flutters wide her mantle gray,
As the lone heron spreads his wing,
By twilight, o'er a haunted spring.'
''Tis Blanche of Devan,' Murdoch said,
'A crazed and captive Lowland maid,
Ta'en on the morn she was a bride,
When Roderick forayed Devan-side.
The gay...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...holy Church
The Constable wax'd abashed* of that sight, *astonished
And saide; *"What amounteth all this fare?"* *what means all
Constance answered; "Sir, it is Christ's might, this ado?*
That helpeth folk out of the fiendes snare:"
And *so farforth* she gan our law declare, *with such effect*
That she the Constable, ere that it were eve,
Converted, and on Christ made him believe.
This Constable was not lord of the place
Of which I speak, there as he Constance fand,* *found...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...like one three-quarters dead
The whisper left him - like a breeze
Lost in the depths of leafy trees -
Left him by no means at his ease.
Once more he weltered in despair,
With hands, through denser-matted hair,
More tightly clenched than then they were.
When, bathed in Dawn of living red,
Majestic frowned the mountain head,
"Tell me my fault," was all he said.
When, at high Noon, the blazing sky
Scorched in his head each haggard eye,
Then keenest rose his weary cry.
...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...much I grieved to think how power & will
In opposition rule our mortal day--
And why God made irreconcilable
Good & the means of good; and for despair
I half disdained mine eye's desire to fill
With the spent vision of the times that were
And scarce have ceased to be . . . "Dost thou behold,"
Said then my guide, "those spoilers spoiled, Voltaire,
"Frederic, & Kant, Catherine, & Leopold,
Chained hoary anarch, demagogue & sage
Whose name the fresh world thinks already old--
"Fo...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ate:
His keys were rusty, and the lock was dull,
So little trouble had been given of late;
Not that the place by any means was full,
But since the Gallic era 'eight-eight'
The devils had ta'en a longer, stronger pull,
And 'a pull altogether,' as they say
At sea — which drew most souls another way.
II
The angels all were singing out of tune,
And hoarse with having little else to do,
Excepting to wind up the sun and moon,
Or curb a runaway young star or two,
Or w...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...am myself again. There are no loose ends.
I am bled white as wax, I have no attachments.
I am flat and virginal, which means nothing has happened,
Nothing that cannot be erased, ripped up and scrapped, begun again.
There little black twigs do not think to bud,
Nor do these dry, dry gutters dream of rain.
This woman who meets me in windows--she is neat.
So neat she is transparent, like a spirit.
how shyly she superimposes her neat self
On the inferno of African oranges, the ...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
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