Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Mete Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...us lore, but little understood,
(Veneering oft outshines the solid wood),
His solid sense, by inches you must tell,
But mete his cunning by the Scottish ell!
A man of fashion too, he made his tour,
Learn’d “vive la bagatelle et vive l’amour;”
So travell’d monkeys their grimace improve,
Polish their grin-nay, sigh for ladies’ love!
His meddling vanity, a busy fiend,
Still making work his selfish craft must mend.
 · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · Crochallan came,
The old cock’d ha...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert



...r touch of ours
And mock with motion faint and fleet

The minutes of the new strange hours
That earth, not heaven, must mete;
Buds fragrant still from heaven's own bowers,
Soft, small, and sweet.

A velvet vice with springs of steel
That fasten in a trice
And clench the fingers fast that feel
A velvet viceÑ

What man would risk the danger twice,
Nor quake from head to heel?
Whom would not one such test suffice?

Well may we tremble as we kneel
In sight of Paradise,
If both a ...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...d trodden where abysmal fires and snowcones are.

I learn to prophesy the hid eclipse,
The coming of eccentric orbs;
To mete the dust the sky absorbs,
To weigh the sun, and fix the hour each planet dips.

I witness fellow earth-men surge and strive;
Assemblies meet, and throb, and part;
Death's soothing finger, sorrow's smart;
--All the vast various moils that mean a world alive.

But that I fain would wot of shuns my sense--
Those sights of which old prophets tell,
Those sig...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas
...ed in gripe of anguish,
in baleful bonds, where bide he must,
evil outlaw, such awful doom
as the Mighty Maker shall mete him out.”

More silent seemed the son of Ecglaf {14a}
in boastful speech of his battle-deeds,
since athelings all, through the earl’s great prowess,
beheld that hand, on the high roof gazing,
foeman’s fingers, -- the forepart of each
of the sturdy nails to steel was likest, --
heathen’s “hand-spear,” hostile warrior’s
claw uncanny. ’Twas clear,...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,
...he vanquished foe, and in the highest,
Among the Danaan gods, I am the last
Council of mercy in their hearts where they
Mete justice from a thousand starry thrones....Read more of this...
by Russell, George William



...with ghosts, that press and peer
Into my face so charnel white,
Lit by the devilish, dancing light.
Tick, little clock! mete out my fate:
Tortured and tense I wait, I wait. . . ."

VIII

Oh, I have sworn! the hour is nigh:
When it strikes eight, I die, I die.
Raise up the gun -- it stings my brow --
When it strikes eight . . . all ready . . . now --

* * * * *

Down from my hand the weapon dropped;
Wildly I stared. . . .
 THE CLOCK HAD STOPPED.

IX

Phantoms and fears and gho...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...kniyghtes,
Sythen kayred to the court caroles to make.
For ther the fest watz ilyche ful fiften dayes,
With alle the mete and the mirthe that men couthe avyse;
Such glaum ande gle glorious to here,
Dere dyn vpon day, daunsyng on nyyghtes,
Al watz hap vpon heyghe in hallez and chambrez
With lordez and ladies, as leuest him thoyght.
With all the wele of the worlde thay woned ther samen,
The most kyd knyyghtez vnder Krystes seluen,
And the louelokkest ladies that euer ...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...o human aid was near.
An accent strange did thus repeat
Heaven's stern but just decree:
' The measure thou to her didst mete,
To thee shall measured be !' 

Gilbert sprang from his bended knees,
By the pale spectre pushed,
And, wild as one whom demons seize,
Up the hall-staircase rushed;
Entered his chamber­near the bed
Sheathed steel and fire-arms hung­
Impelled by maniac purpose dread,
He chose those stores among. 

Across his throat, a keen-edged knife
With vigorous hand h...Read more of this...
by Bronte, Charlotte
...low!

CHORUS.
Sense of wrongs forget to treasure--
Brethren, live in perfect love!
In the starry realms above,
God will mete as we may measure.

Joy within the goblet flushes,
For the golden nectar, wine,
Every fierce emotion hushes,--
Fills the breast with fire divine.
Brethren, thus in rapture meeting,
Send ye round the brimming cup,--
Yonder kindly spirit greeting,
While the foam to heaven mounts up!

CHORUS.
He whom seraphs worship ever;
Whom the stars praise as they roll...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von
...ace.
To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn,
Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn,
For a mete and a mark
To the forest-dark: --
So:
Affable live-oak, leaning low, --
Thus -- with your favor -- soft, with a reverent hand,
(Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!)
Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand
On the firm-packed sand,
Free
By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea.

Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shi...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney
...ne? 

Knows your soul a sphere, O journeying boy, 
Our rude realms far above, 
Whence with spacious vision you mark and mete 
This region of sin that you find you in, 
But are not of?...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas
...fed with storm
Pouching a bottle in one arm;
A whiskey bottle full of worms;
And bedroom slacks: are these fit terms
To mete the worm whose molten rage
Boils in the belly of old age?

Once fishing was a rabbit's foot--
O wind blow cold, O wind blow hot,
Let suns stay in or suns step out:
Life danced a jig on the sperm-whale's spout--
The fisher's fluent and obscene
Catches kept his conscience clean.
Children, the raging memory drools
Over the glory of past pools.

Now the hot...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Robert
...not
The poor device of man.

I walk with bare, hushed feet the ground
Ye tread with boldness shod;
I dare not fix with mete and bound
The love and power of God.

Ye praise His justice; even such
His pitying love I deem:
Ye seek a king; I fain would touch
The robe that hath no seam.

Ye see the curse which overbroods
A world of pain and loss;
I hear our Lord's beatitudes
And prayer upon the cross.

More than your schoolmen teach, within
Myself, alas! I know:
Too dark ye canno...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...giant Harlequin of Dreams, dost leap
Upon my spirit's stage. Then Sight and Sound,
Then Space and Time, then Language, Mete and Bound,
And all familiar Forms that firmly keep
Man's reason in the road, change faces, peep
Betwixt the legs and mock the daily round.
Yet thou canst more than mock: sometimes my tears
At midnight break through bounden lids -- a sign
Thou hast a heart: and oft thy little leaven
Of dream-taught wisdom works me bettered years.
In one night witch, sain...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney
...he spedde,
That alle the Grekes as the deeth him dredde.

And fro this forth tho refte him love his sleep,
And made his mete his foo; and eek his sorwe 
Gan multiplye, that, who-so toke keep,
It shewed in his hewe, bothe eve and morwe;
Therfor a title he gan him for to borwe
Of other syknesse, lest of him men wende
That the hote fyr of love him brende, 

And seyde, he hadde a fever and ferde amis;
But how it was, certayn, can I not seye,
If that his lady understood not this,
...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...arus;
And took his leve, and never gan to fyne, 
But to his neces hous, as streyt as lyne,
He com; and fond hir fro the mete aryse;
And sette him doun, and spak right in this wyse.

He seyde, 'O veray god, so have I ronne!
Lo, nece myn, see ye nought how I swete? 
I noot whether ye the more thank me conne.
Be ye nought war how that fals Poliphete
Is now aboute eft-sones for to plete,
And bringe on yow advocacyes newe?'
'I? No,' quod she, and chaunged al hir hewe. 

'What is h...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...n quiete,
Thise ilke two, Criseyde and Troilus,
As I have told, and in this tyme swete,
Save only often mighte they not mete,
Ne layser have hir speches to fulfelle, 
That it befel right as I shal yow telle.

That Pandarus, that ever dide his might
Right for the fyn that I shal speke of here,
As for to bringe to his hous som night
His faire nece, and Troilus y-fere, 
Wher-as at leyser al this heigh matere,
Touching hir love, were at the fulle up-bounde,
Hadde out of doute a t...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...non handle, for the crueltee,
That ilke day that I from yow departe,
If sorwe of that nil not my bane be,
Than shal no mete or drinke come in me 
Til I my soule out of my breste unshethe;
And thus my-selven wol I do to dethe.

'And, Troilus, my clothes everichoon
Shul blake been, in tokeninge, herte swete,
That I am as out of this world agoon, 
That wont was yow to setten in quiete;
And of myn ordre, ay til deeth me mete,
The observaunce ever, in your absence,
Shal sorwe bee...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...y tyme he kiste his doughter swete,
And seyde, 'O dere doughter myn, wel-come!'
She seyde eek, she was fayn with him to mete,
And stood forth mewet, milde, and mansuete.
But here I leve hir with hir fader dwelle, 
And forth I wol of Troilus yow telle.

To Troye is come this woful Troilus,
In sorwe aboven alle sorwes smerte,
With felon look, and face dispitous.
Tho sodeinly doun from his hors he sterte, 
And thorugh his paleys, with a swollen herte,
To chambre he wente; of no-...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vest the dim sea: I am become a name;
For alw...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Mete poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things