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Famous Memorable Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Tebb, Barry
...poetry so easy to enjoy and difficult to forget.

Like Yeats. ‘The Dawning of the Day’ so sad

And eloquent and memorable: I read it aloud

And felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle

An unflinching bitter rhetoric straight out

Hence the neglect. Your poem about Harrison.



“He has to feel the Odeons sell

Tickets to damned souls, that Dante’s Hell

Is in that red-plush darkness.”



Echoed in Roy Fisher's letter, “Once Harrison and I

Were best m...Read more of this...



by Marvell, Andrew
...d might adorn: 
While round the armed bands 
Did clap their bloody hands. 
He nothing common did or mean 
Upon that memorable scene, 
But with his keener eye 
The axe's edge did try; 
Nor called the Gods with vulgar spite 
To vindicate his helpless right; 
But bowed his comely head 
Down as upon a bed. 
This was that memorable hour 
Which first assured the forced pow'r. 
So when they did design 
The Capitol's first line, 
A Bleeding Head, where they begun, 
Did fr...Read more of this...

by Jeffers, Robinson
...y accomplish marvels. 
 It is possible Time will make them before it 
 annuls them, but at present
There is not one memorable person, there is not one 
 mind to stand with the trees, one life with 
 the mountains....Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...d might adorn: 
While round the arm?d bands 
Did clap their bloody hands. 
He nothing common did or mean 
Upon that memorable scene: 
But with his keener eye 
The axe's edge did try: 
Nor called the gods with vulgar spite 
To vindicate his helpless right, 
But bowed his comely head, 
Down, as upon a bed. 
This was that memorable hour 
Which first assured the forc?d power. 
So when they did design 
The Capitol's first line, 
A bleeding head where they begun, 
Did f...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...ool:
That harmless mother thought no wife a whore,--
Hear this! and spare his family, James Moore!
Unspotted names! and memorable long,
If there be force in virtue, or in song.

Of gentle blood (part shed in honour's cause,
While yet in Britain honour had applause)
Each parent sprung--"What fortune, pray?"--Their own,
And better got, than Bestia's from the throne.
Born to no pride, inheriting no strife,
Nor marrying discord in a noble wife,
Stranger to civil and relig...Read more of this...



by Levine, Philip
...ing. The clerks, the police, 
the booted ones, seemed content 
 to inflict pain, 
to make, they said, each instant 
memorable and exquisite, 
 reform the brain 
through the senses. "Kiss my boot 
and learn the taste of French ****." 

Reader, does the heart demand 
that you bend to the live wound 
 as you would bend 
to the familiar body 
of your beloved, to kiss 
 the green flower 
which blooms always from the ground 
human and ripe with terror, 

to face with lo...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...Across the brook of Time man leaping goes
On stepping-stones of epochs, that uprise
Fixed, memorable, midst broad shallow flows
Of neutrals, kill-times, sleeps, indifferencies.
So twixt each morn and night rise salient heaps:
Some cross with but a zigzag, jaded pace
From meal to meal: some with convulsive leaps
Shake the green tussocks of malign disgrace:
And some advance by system and deep art
O'er vantages of wealth, place, learning, tact.Read more of this...

by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...earn.
I had not dreamed that I could turn away
From all that men with brush and pen had wrought;
But ever since that memorable day
When to my heart the truth of love was brought,
I have been wholly yielded to its sway,
And had no room for any other thought.
...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...en,
Had passed to the triumphant Czar,
And Moscow’s walls were safe again -
Until a day more dark and drear,
And a more memorable year,
Should give to slaughter and to shame
A mightier host and haughtier name;
A greater wreck, a deeper fall,
A shock to one - a thunderbolt to all.

II

Such was the hazard Of the die;
The wounded Charles was taught to fly
By day and night through field and flood,
Stained with his own and subjects' blood;
For thousands fell that flight to ai...Read more of this...

by Kinnell, Galway
...in his opinion, however, it is perfectly OK to eat 
 it with an imaginary companion, and that he himself had 
 enjoyed memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John 
 Milton.
Even if eating oatmeal with an imaginary companion is not as 
 wholesome as Keats claims, still, you can learn something 
 from it.
Yesterday morning, for instance, Keats told me about writing the 
 "Ode to a Nightingale."
He had a heck of a time finishing it those were his words "Oi 'ad ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...orne,
Made famous in a land and times obscure;
Who names not now with honour patient Job?
Poor Socrates, (who next more memorable?)
By what he taught and suffered for so doing,
For truth's sake suffering death unjust, lives now
Equal in fame to proudest conquerors.
Yet, if for fame and glory aught be done, 
Aught suffered—if young African for fame
His wasted country freed from Punic rage—
The deed becomes unpraised, the man at least,
And loses, though but verbal, his rewa...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...>
At distance I forgive thee, go with that;
Bewail thy falshood, and the pious works
It hath brought forth to make thee memorable
Among illustrious women, faithful wives:
Cherish thy hast'n'd widowhood with the gold
Of Matrimonial treason: so farewel.

Dal: I see thou art implacable, more deaf 
To prayers, then winds and seas, yet winds to seas
Are reconcil'd at length, and Sea to Shore:
Thy anger, unappeasable, still rages,
Eternal tempest never to be calm'd.
Why do ...Read more of this...

by Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...l 
Proclaim'd the Freshness of the suffer'd Ill; 
Distain'd with Blood the Pavement, and the Wall, 
Appear'd as in that memorable Fall– 


[Abner]
Oh! just avenging Heaven!– [aside. 

[Mathan]
Sure, Dreams like these are for Prevention given....Read more of this...

by Doty, Mark
...out stories. All I wanted 
was something larger than our ordinary sadness -- 
greater not in scale but in context, 
memorable, true to a proportioned, 
subtle form. Last year I knew a student, 
a half mad boy who finally opened his arms 

with a razor, not because he wanted to die 
but because he wanted to design something grand 
on his own body. Once he said, When a child 
realizes his parents aren't enough,
he turns to architecture. 
I think I know what he m...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...o grip you by the hand.
Yea, sportsman of the bull-dog breed, from trails of far away,
To Yukoners this is indeed a memorable day.
Our jubilation to express, vocabularies fail...
Boys, hail the Great Cheechako!" And the boys responded: "Hail!"

"And now," continued Deacon White to blushing Major Brown,
"Behold assembled the eelight and cream of Dawson Town,
And one ambition fills their hearts and makes their bosoms glow -
They want to make you, honoured si...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...in April the 16th day,
Consisting of the Athole Brigade, who made a grand display
On the field of Culloden on that ever-memorable day. 

Likewise the Camerons, Stewarts, and Macintoshes, Maclachlans and Macleans,
And John Roy Stewart's regiment, united into one, these are their names;
Besides the Macleods, Chisholms, Macdonalds of Clanranald and Glengarry,
Also the noble chieftain Keppoch, all eager the English to harry. 

The second line of the Highland army formed i...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...he year 1815, and on the 18th day of June,
That British cannon, against the French army, loudly did boom,
Upon the ever memorable bloody field of Waterloo;
Which Napoleon remembered while in St. Helena, and bitterly did rue. 
The morning of the 18th was gloomy and cheerless to behold,
But the British soon recovered from the severe cold
That they had endured the previous rainy night;
And each man prepared to burnish his arms for the coming fight. 

Then the morning...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he
was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it


A Memorable Fancy.

As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the 
enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and
insanity. I collected some of their Proverbs: thinking that as
the sayings used in a nation, mark its character, so the Proverbs
of Hell, shew the nature of Infernal wisdom better than any
description of building...Read more of this...

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