Famous Men Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Men Loved Wholly Beyond Wisdom

by Louise Bogan
 Men loved wholly beyond wisdom
Have the staff without the banner.
Like a fire in a dry thicket
Rising within women's eyes
Is the love men must return.
Heart, so subtle now, and trembling,
What a marvel to be wise.,
To love never in this manner!
To be quiet in the fern
Like a thing gone dead and still,
Listening to the prisoned cricket
Shake its terrible dissembling
Music in the...Read more of this...

A Song of Brave Men

by Henry Lawson
 Man, is the Sea your master? Sea, and is man your slave? – 
This is the song of brave men who never know they are brave: 
Ceaselessly watching to save you, stranger from foreign lands, 
Soundly asleep in your state room, full sail for the Goodwin Sands! 
Life is a dream, they tell us, but life seems very real,...Read more of this...

The Chorus of Old Men in Aegus

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Ye gods that have a home beyond the world, 
Ye that have eyes for all man’s agony, 
Ye that have seen this woe that we have seen,— 
Look with a just regard, 
And with an even grace,
Here on the shattered corpse of a shattered king, 
Here on a suffering world where men grow old 
And wander like sad shadows...Read more of this...

Why Should I Care for the Men of Thames

by William Blake
 Why should I care for the men of thames 
Or the cheating waves of charter'd streams 
Or shrink at the little blasts of fear 
That the hireling blows into my ear 

Tho born on the cheating banks of Thames
Tho his waters bathed my infant limbs 
The Ohio shall wash his stains from me
I was born a slave but I...Read more of this...

A Toast to the Men

by Edgar Albert Guest
 Here's to the men! Since Adam's time 
They've always been the same;
Whenever anything goes wrong,
The woman is to blame.
From early morn to late at night,
The men fault-finders are;
They blame us if they oversleep,
Or if they miss a car.
They blame us if, beneath the bed,
Their collar buttons roll;
They blame us if the fire is out
Or if there is no coal.
They...Read more of this...

How noteless Men and Pleiads stand

by Emily Dickinson
 How noteless Men, and Pleiads, stand,
Until a sudden sky
Reveals the fact that One is rapt
Forever from the Eye --

Members of the Invisible,
Existing, while we stare,
In Leagueless Opportunity,
O'ertakenless, as the Air --

Why didn't we detain Them?
The Heavens with a smile,
Sweep by our disappointed Heads
Without a syllable --...Read more of this...

Old Men

by Ogden Nash
 People expect old men to die, 
They do not really mourn old men. 
Old men are different. People look 
At them with eyes that wonder when… 
People watch with unshocked eyes; 
But the old men know when an old man dies....Read more of this...

Lord when the wise men came from farr

by Sidney Godolphin
 LORD when the wise men came from farr 
Ledd to thy Cradle by A Starr, 
Then did the shepheards too rejoyce, 
Instructed by thy Angells voyce, 
Blest were the wisemen in their skill, 5 
And shepheards in their harmelesse will. 

Wisemen in tracing natures lawes 
Ascend unto the highest cause, 
Shepheards with humble fearefulnesse 
Walke safely, though their light...Read more of this...

Taken from men -- this morning

by Emily Dickinson
 Taken from men -- this morning --
Carried by men today --
Met by the Gods with banners --
Who marshalled her away --

One little maid -- from playmates --
One little mind from school --
There must be guests in Eden --
All the rooms are full --

Far -- as the East from Even --
Dim -- as the border star --
Courtiers quaint, in Kingdoms
Our...Read more of this...

The Old Men Admiring Themselves In The Water

by William Butler Yeats
 I heard the old, old men say,
'Everything alters,
And one by one we drop away.'
They had hands like claws, and their knees
Were twisted like the old thorn-trees
By the waters.
I heard the old, old men say,
'All that's beautiful drifts away
Like the waters.'...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of The Hanged Men

by Francois Villon
 Men my brothers who after us live,
have your hearts against us not hardened.
For—if of poor us you take pity,
God of you sooner will show mercy.
You see us here, attached.
As for the flesh we too well have fed,
long since it's been devoured or has rotted.
And we the bones are becoming ash and dust.

Of our pain let nobody laugh,
but pray God
...Read more of this...

Two Men (J. L. And R. B.)

by Robert William Service
 In the Northland there were three
Pukka Pliers of the pen;
Two of them had Fame in fee
And were loud and lusty men;
By them like a shrimp was I -
Yet alas! they had to die.

Jack was genius through and through.
Who his future could foretell?
What we sweated blood to do
He would deem a bagatelle.
Yet in youth he had to die,
And an ancient...Read more of this...

The Two Men

by Thomas Hardy
 THERE were two youths of equal age,
Wit, station, strength, and parentage;
They studied at the self-same schools,
And shaped their thoughts by common rules.

One pondered on the life of man,
His hopes, his endings, and began
To rate the Market's sordid war
As something scarce worth living for.

"I'll brace to higher aims," said he,
"I'll further Truth and Purity;
Thereby to mend and mortal lot
And sweeten...Read more of this...

One host of men is pondering upon belief, or on the

by Omar Khayyam
One host of men is pondering upon belief, or on the
faith; others are hovering between doubt and certainty.
But suddenly behind the veil there's one will cry: O
ignorant ones! the way that you seek is neither here
nor there!...Read more of this...

Wise Men In Their Bad Hours

by Robinson Jeffers
 Wise men in their bad hours have envied 
The little people making merry like grasshoppers 
In spots of sunlight, hardly thinking 
Backward but never forward, and if they somehow 
Take hold upon the future they do it 
Half asleep, with the tools of generation 
Foolishly reduplicating 
Folly in thirty-year periods; the eat and laugh too, 
Groan against labors, wars...Read more of this...

Three Wise Men Of Gotham

by Mother Goose
Three wise men of Gotham
Went to sea in a bowl;
If the bowl had been stronger
My song had been longer....Read more of this...

The Seven Old Men

by Charles Baudelaire
 O SWARMING city, city full of dreams, 
Where in a full day the spectre walks and speaks; 
Mighty colossus, in your narrow veins 
My story flows as flows the rising sap. 

One morn, disputing with my tired soul, 
And like a hero stiffening all my nerves, 
I trod a suburb shaken by the jar 
Of rolling wheels, where the...Read more of this...

There is a morn by men unseen

by Emily Dickinson
 There is a morn by men unseen --
Whose maids upon remoter green
Keep their Seraphic May --
And all day long, with dance and game,
And gambol I may never name --
Employ their holiday.

Here to light measure, move the feet
Which walk no more the village street --
Nor by the wood are found --
Here are the birds that sought the sun
When last year's...Read more of this...

Men Improve With The Years

by William Butler Yeats
 I am worn out with dreams;
A weather-worn, marble triton
Among the streams;
And all day long I look
Upon this lady's beauty
As though I had found in a book
A pictured beauty,
pleased to have filled the eyes
Or the discerning ears,
Delighted to be but wise,
For men improve with the years;
And yet, and yet,
Is this my dream, or the truth?
O would that we had met
When...Read more of this...

The Parable Of The Old Men And The Young

by Wilfred Owen
 So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife...Read more of this...

Sixteen Dead Men

by William Butler Yeats
 O but we talked at large before
The sixteen men were shot,
But who can talk of give and take,
What should be and what not
While those dead men are loitering there
To stir the boiling pot?

You say that we should still the land
Till Germany's overcome;
But who is there to argue that
Now Pearse is deaf and dumb?
And is their logic to outweigh
MacDonagh's bony...Read more of this...

God Give to Men

by Arna Bontemps
 God give the yellow man
an easy breeze at blossom time.
Grant his eager, slanting eyes to cover
every land and dream
of afterwhile. 

Give blue-eyed men their swivel chairs
to whirl in tall buildings.
Allow them many ships at sea,
and on land, soldiers
and policemen.

For black man, God,
no need to bother more
but only fill afresh his meed
of laughter,
his cup of tears.

God suffer little men
the taste...Read more of this...

Drunkards are doomed to hell, so men declare,

by Omar Khayyam
Drunkards are doomed to hell, so men declare,
Believe it not, 'tis but a foolish scare;
Heaven will be empty as this hand of mine,
If none who love good drink find entrance there....Read more of this...

To The Men Of England

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?

Wherefore feed and clothe and save,
From the cradle to the grave,
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat -- nay, drink your blood?

Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of...Read more of this...

Men At Forty

by Donald Justice
 Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.

At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it
Moving beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.

And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practices tying
His father's tie there in secret

And the face of that father,
Still warm with...Read more of this...

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