Famous Melodies Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Possibilities

by Rudyard Kipling
 Ay, lay him 'neath the Simla pine --
 A fortnight fully to be missed,
 Behold, we lose our fourth at whist,
A chair is vacant where we dine.

His place forgets him; other men
 Have bought his ponies, guns, and traps.
 His fortune is the Great Perhaps
And that cool rest-house down the glen,

Whence he shall hear, as spirits may,
 Our mundance...Read more of this...

Chopin

by Emma Lazarus
 I

A dream of interlinking hands, of feet 
Tireless to spin the unseen, fairy woof 
Of the entangling waltz. Bright eyebeams meet, 
Gay laughter echoes from the vaulted roof. 
Warm perfumes rise; the soft unflickering glow 
Of branching lights sets off the changeful charms 
Of glancing gems, rich stuffs, the dazzling snow 
Of necks unkerchieft, and bare, clinging arms. 
Hark...Read more of this...

Lapis Lazuli

by William Butler Yeats
 (For Harry Clifton)

I HAVE heard that hysterical women say
They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow.
Of poets that are always gay,
For everybody knows or else should know
That if nothing drastic is done
Aeroplane and Zeppelin will come out.
Pitch like King Billy bomb-balls in
Until the town lie beaten flat.

All perform their tragic play,
There struts Hamlet, there is Lear,
That's Ophelia, that Cordelia;
Yet...Read more of this...

To A Poet Breaking Silence

by Francis Thompson
 Too wearily had we and song
Been left to look and left to long,
Yea, song and we to long and look,
Since thine acquainted feet forsook
The mountain where the Muses hymn
For Sinai and the Seraphim.
Now in both the mountains' shine
Dress thy countenance, twice divine!
From Moses and the Muses draw
The Tables of thy double Law!
His rod-born fount and Castaly
Let the one rock...Read more of this...

The Cuckoo

by John Clare
 The cuckoo, like a hawk in flight,
With narrow pointed wings
Whews o'er our heads—soon out of sight
And as she flies she sings:
And darting down the hedgerow side
She scares the little bird
Who leaves the nest it cannot hide
While plaintive notes are heard.

I've watched it on an old oak tree
Sing half an hour away
Until its quick eye noticed me
And then it whewed...Read more of this...

My Cancer Cure

by Robert William Service
 "A year to live," the Doctor said;
"There is no cure," and shook his head.
Ah me! I felt as good as dead.
Yet quite resigned to fate was I,
Thinking: "Well, since I have to die
'Twill be beneath the open sky." 

And so I sought a wildsome wood
Wherein a lonely cabin stood,
And doomed myself to solitude,
And there was no one I would...Read more of this...

For the Moore Centennial Celebration

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 I 

ENCHANTER of Erin, whose magic has bound us,
Thy wand for one moment we fondly would claim,
Entranced while it summons the phantoms around us 
That blush into life at the sound of thy name.

The tell-tales of memory wake from their slumbers,--
I hear the old song with its tender refrain,
What passion lies hid in those honey-voiced numbers!
What perfume of youth...Read more of this...

Ryton Firs

by Lascelles Abercrombie
The Dream
All round the knoll, on days of quietest air,
Secrets are being told; and if the trees
Speak out — let them make uproar loud as drums — 
'Tis secrets still, shouted instead of whisper'd.

There must have been a warning given once:
No tree, on pain of withering and sawfly,
To reach the slimmest of his snaky toes
Into this mounded sward and rumple...Read more of this...

Ode on a Grecian Urn

by John Keats
THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness  
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time  
Sylvan historian who canst thus express 
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: 
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape 5 
Of deities or mortals or of both  
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? 
What men or gods are these? What maidens...Read more of this...

The Poets Love-Song

by Sarojini Naidu
 In noon-tide hours, O Love, secure and strong, 
I need thee not; mad dreams are mine to bind
The world to my desire, and hold the wind
A voiceless captive to my conquering song.
I need thee not, I am content with these:
Keep silence in thy soul, beyond the seas!

But in the desolate hour of midnight, when
An ectasy of starry silence sleeps...Read more of this...

Second Ode to the Nightingale

by Mary Darby Robinson
 BLEST be thy song, sweet NIGHTINGALE, 
Lorn minstrel of the lonely vale ! 
Where oft I've heard thy dulcet strain 
In mournful melody complain; 
When in the POPLAR'S trembling shade, 
At Evening's purple hour I've stray'd, 
While many a silken folded flow'r 
Wept on its couch of Gossamer, 
And many a time in pensive mood 
Upon the upland mead...Read more of this...

The Three Songs

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 The poet sang of a battle-field
Where doughty deeds were done,
Where stout blows rang on helm and shield
And a kingdom's fate was spun
With the scarlet thread of victory,
And honor from death's grim revelry
Like a flame-red flower was won!
So bravely he sang that all who heard
With the sting of the fight and the triumph were stirred,
And they cried, "Let us blazon...Read more of this...

The Plea of the Simla Dancers

by Rudyard Kipling
  Too late, alas! the song
 To remedy the wrong; --
The rooms are taken from us, swept and
 garnished for their fate.
 But these tear-besprinkled pages
 Shall attest to future ages
That we cried against the crime of it --
 too late, alas! too late!


"What have we ever done to bear this grudge?"
 Was there no room save only in...Read more of this...

The Heroes

by George William Russell
 BY many a dream of God and man my thoughts in shining flocks were led:
But as I went through Patrick Street the hopes and prophecies were dead.
The hopes and prophecies were dead: they could not blossom where the feet
Walked amid rottenness, or where the brawling shouters stamped the street.
Where was the beauty that the Lord gave men when first...Read more of this...

The Old Australian Ways

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The London lights are far abeam 
Behind a bank of cloud, 
Along the shore the gaslights gleam, 
The gale is piping loud; 
And down the Channel, groping blind, 
We drive her through the haze 
Towards the land we left behind -- 
The good old land of `never mind', 
And old Australian ways. 

The narrow ways of English folk 
Are...Read more of this...

Poor Cock Robin

by Robert William Service
 My garden robin in the Spring
Was rapturous with glee,
And followed me with wistful wing
From pear to apple tree;
His melodies the summer long
He carolled with delight,
As if he could with jewelled song
Find favour in my sight.

And now that Autumn's in the air
He's singing singing still,
And yet somehow I cannot bear
The frenzy of his bill;
The keen wind ruffs his ruddy breast
As...Read more of this...

Angelina

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
When de fiddle gits to singin' out a ol' Vahginny reel,
An' you 'mence to feel a ticklin' in yo' toe an' in yo' heel;
Ef you t'ink you got 'uligion an' you wants to keep it, too,
You jes' bettah tek a hint an' git yo'self clean out o' view.
Case de time is mighty temptin' when de chune is in de swing,
Fu'...Read more of this...

Delhi – A Re-visitation

by John Matthew
 It’s akin to visiting my foster mother, today, 
That I am returning to you, mother city, after twenty years,
I look at your broad, bereft blood-stained streets, mater,
Through which emperors, prime ministers cavalcaded,
In victory and defeat, through gates and triumphal arches,
That murmur of the pains of your rape and impregnation.

The sudden shock of your poverty upsets me,
It is evident in...Read more of this...

The Day is Done

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
THE DAY is done and the darkness 
Falls from the wings of Night  
As a feather is wafted downward 
From an eagle in his flight. 

I see the lights of the village 5 
Gleam through the rain and the mist  
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me 
That my soul cannot resist: 

A feeling of sadness and...Read more of this...

Closed Path

by Rabindranath Tagore
 I thought that my voyage had come to its end 
at the last limit of my power,---that the path before me was closed, 
that provisions were exhausted 
and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity. 

But I find that thy will knows no end in me. 
And when old words die out on the tongue, 
new...Read more of this...

The Three Tommies

by Robert William Service
 That Barret, the painter of pictures, what feeling for color he had!
And Fanning, the maker of music, such melodies mirthful and mad!
And Harley, the writer of stories, so whimsical, tender and glad!

To hark to their talk in the trenches, high heart unfolding to heart,
Of the day when the war would be over, and each would be true to his...Read more of this...

I am bound to this Land by blood

by Olu Oguibe
I am bound to this land by blood
That's why my vision is blurred
I am rooted in its soil
And its streams flood my veins
I smell the sweat of its men
And the million feet that plod
The dust of its streets
Leave their prints on my soul
I have walked the footpaths of this land
Climbed the snake-routes of its hills
I have known the heat of...Read more of this...

The Blackbirds Are Rough Today

by Charles Bukowski
 lonely as a dry and used orchard
spread over the earth
for use and surrender.

shot down like an ex-pug selling
dailies on the corner.

taken by tears like 
an aging chorus girl
who has gotten her last check.

a hanky is in order your lord your
worship.

the blackbirds are rough today
like
ingrown toenails
in an overnight
jail---
wine wine whine,
the blackbirds run around and
fly around
harping about
Spanish melodies and bones.

and everywhere...Read more of this...

Tree and Sky

by Siegfried Sassoon
 Let my soul, a shining tree, 
Silver branches lift towards thee, 
Where on a hallowed winter’s night 
The clear-eyed angels may alight. 

And if there should be tempests in
My spirit, let them surge like din 
Of noble melodies at war; 
With fervour of such blades of triumph as are 
Flashed in white orisons of saints who go 
On shafts...Read more of this...

The Turkish Captive

by Victor Hugo
 ("Si je n'était captive.") 
 
 {IX., July, 1828.} 


 Oh! were I not a captive, 
 I should love this fair countree; 
 Those fields with maize abounding, 
 This ever-plaintive sea: 
 I'd love those stars unnumbered, 
 If, passing in the shade, 
 Beneath our walls I saw not 
 The spahi's sparkling blade. 
 
...Read more of this...

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