Get Your Premium Membership

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).

See also:

by Shakespeare, William
...All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing li...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...re, we are—nativity is answer enough to objections; 
We wield ourselves as a weapon is wielded, 
We are powerful and tremendous in ourselves,
We are executive in ourselves—We are sufficient in the variety of ourselves, 
We are the most beautiful to ourselves, and in ourselves; 
We stand self-pois’d in the middle, branching thence over the world; 
From Missouri, Nebraska, or Kansas, laughing attacks to scorn. 

Nothing is sinful to us outside of ourselves,
Whatever appears...Read more of this...

by Sandburg, Carl
...the meaning of life to tell
me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
their women and children 
and a keg of beer and an
accordion....Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...
 contemplating jazz, 
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and 
 saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene- 
 ment roofs illuminated, 
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes 
 hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy 
 among the scholars of war, 
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & 
 publishing obscene odes on the windows of the 
 skull, 
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn- 
 ing their money in wastebaskets and listen...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...co
And live without desire, fear and pain,
Or nurture that wise calm which long ago
The grave Athenian master taught to men,
Self-poised, self-centred, and self-comforted,
To watch the world's vain phantasies go by with unbowed head.

Alas! that serene brow, those eloquent lips,
Those eyes that mirrored all eternity,
Rest in their own Colonos, an eclipse
Hath come on Wisdom, and Mnemosyne
Is childless; in the night which she had made
For lofty secure flight Athena's owl i...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...n house;
And thy sharp lightning in unpractised hands
Scorches and burns our once serene domain.
O aching time! O moments big as years!
All as ye pass swell out the monstrous truth,
And press it so upon our weary griefs
That unbelief has not a space to breathe.
Saturn, sleep on:---O thoughtless, why did I
Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude?
Why should I ope thy melancholy eyes?
Saturn, sleep on! while at thy feet I weep."

 As when, upon a tranced summer-night,
T...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...u can keep your head when all about you 
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; 
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, 
But make allowance for their doubting too: 
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, 
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, 
Or being hated don't give way to hating, 
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; 

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; 
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim, 
If yo...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...great height toward which my footsteps fell, 
 And though it kindled from the nether hell, 
 Or from the Star that all men leads, alike 
 It showed me where the great dawn-glories strike 
 The wide east, and the utmost peaks of snow. 

 How first I entered on that path astray, 
 Beset with sleep, I know not. This I know. 
 When gained my feet the upward, lighted way, 
 I backward gazed, as one the drowning sea, 
 The deep strong tides, has baffled, and panting li...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...merge with these, the carols of Death. 
O full of music! full of manhood, womanhood, infancy! 
Full of common employments! full of grain and trees. 

O for the voices of animals! O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!
O for the dropping of rain-drops in a poem! 
O for the sunshine, and motion of waves in a poem. 

O the joy of my spirit! it is uncaged! it darts like lightning! 
It is not enough to have this globe, or a certain time—I will have thousands of
 gl...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues, 
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love, 
The sickness of one of my folks, or of myself, or ill-doing, or loss or lack of
 money, or depressions or exaltations; 
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news, the fitful
 events; 
These come to me days and nights, and go from me again,
But they a...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...e; 
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens; 
I carry them, men and women—I carry them with me wherever I go; 
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them; 
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.) 

2
You road I enter upon and look around! I believe you are not all that is here;
I believe that much unseen is also here. 

Here the profound lesson of reception, neither preference or denia...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...aste is wide,
Across these days like deserts, when
Pride and a little scratching pen
Have dried and split the hearts of men,
Heart of the heroes, ride.

Up through an empty house of stars,
Being what heart you are,
Up the inhuman steeps of space
As on a staircase go in grace,
Carrying the firelight on your face
Beyond the loneliest star.

Take these; in memory of the hour 
We strayed a space from home
And saw the smoke-hued hamlets, quaint
With Westland king and Westl...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...gs misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past—they speak
Like sibyls of the future; they have power— 
The ...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...
--And every perfect action hath the grace
Of indolence or thoughtless 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...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...ter, brought to arrange their disputes--
 And a Broker, to value their goods.

A Billiard-marker, whose skill was immense,
 Might perhaps have won more than his share--
But a Banker, engaged at enormous expense,
 Had the whole of their cash in his care.

There was also a Beaver, that paced on the deck,
 Or would sit making lace in the bow:
And had often (the Bellman said) saved them from wreck,
 Though none of the sailors knew how.

There was one who was famed for...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...The Argument.


Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep

Once meek, and in a perilous path,
The just man kept his course along 
The vale of death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow.
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.

Then the perilous path was planted:
And a river, and a spring
On every cliff a...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...was a meaning in her grin
That made him feel on fire within. 

"Term it not 'radiance,'" said he:
"'Tis solid nutriment to me.
Dinner is Dinner: Tea is Tea." 

And she "Yea so? Yet wherefore cease?
Let thy scant knowledge find increase.
Say 'Men are Men, and Geese are Geese.'" 

He moaned: he knew not what to say.
The thought "That I could get away!"
Strove with the thought "But I must stay. 

"To dine!" she shrieked in dragon-wrath.
"To swall...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...l flowers in field or forest which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray
Burned slow & inconsumably, & sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air,
And in succession due, did Continent,
Isle, Ocean, & all things that in them wear
The form & character of mortal mould
Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear
Their portion of the toil which he of old
Took as his own & then imposed on...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...BY 
QUEVEDO REDIVIVUS 


SUGGESTED BY THE COMPOSITION SO ENTITLED BY THE AUTHOR OF 'WAT TYLER' 

'A Daniel come to judgment! yes a Daniel!
I thank thee, Jew for teaching me that word.' 

PREFACE 

It hath been wisely said, that 'One fool makes many;' and it hath been poetically observed —

'That fools rush in where angels fear to tread.' - Pope 

If Mr. Southey had not rushed in where he had no business, and where he never was before, and never will be again, the...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...rout? Will it bloom this year?
"Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
"Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
"Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
"You! hypocrite lecteur! - mon semblable, - mon frere!"
II. A GAME OF CHESS
 The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out 
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames o...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Men poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs