Famous Millions Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Millions poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous millions poems. These examples illustrate what a famous millions poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Robert Desnos
In the night there are of course the seven wonders
of the world and the greatness tragedy and enchantment.
Forests collide with legendary creatures hiding in thickets.
There is you.
In the night there are the walker's footsteps the murderer's
the town policeman's light from the street lamp and the ragman's lantern
There is you.
In the night trains go past and boats
and the fantasy of...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
Since everyone hath, everyone, one shade,
And you, but one, can every shadow lend.
Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
Is poorly imitated after you;
On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new.
Speak of the spring and foison of the year,
The one doth...Read more of this...
by
Sidney Lanier
A Story of Christmas Eve.
Strange that the termagant winds should scold
The Christmas Eve so bitterly!
But Wife, and Harry the four-year-old,
Big Charley, Nimblewits, and I,
Blithe as the wind was bitter, drew
More frontward of the mighty fire,
Where wise Newfoundland Fan foreknew
The heaven that Christian dogs desire --
Stretched o'er the rug, serene and grave,
Huge nose on heavy paws reclined,
With never a drowning...Read more of this...
by
Phillis Wheatley
Grim monarch! see, depriv'd of vital breath,
A young physician in the dust of death:
Dost thou go on incessant to destroy,
Our griefs to double, and lay waste our joy?
"Enough" thou never yet wast known to say,
Though millions die, the vassals of thy sway:
Nor youth, nor science, nor the ties of love,
Nor aught on earth thy flinty heart can move.
The friend, the...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
Musings of a Police Reporter in the Identification Bureau
YOU have loved forty women, but you have only one thumb.
You have led a hundred secret lives, but you mark only
one thumb.
You go round the world and fight in a thousand wars and
win all the world's honors, but when you come back
home the print of the one thumb your mother gave
you...Read more of this...
by
Eliza Cook
THE worm, the rich worm, has a noble domain
In the field that is stored with its millions of slain ;
The charnel-grounds widen, to me they belong,
With the vaults of the sepulchre, sculptured and strong.
The tower of ages in fragments is laid,
Moss grows on the stones, and I lurk in its shade ;
And the hand of the giant and heart...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
Since everyone hath, every one, one shade,
And you, but one, can every shadow lend.
Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
Is poorly imitated after you;
On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new.
Speak of the spring, and foison of the year;
The one...Read more of this...
by
Charles Sorley
When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy...Read more of this...
by
Joyce Kilmer
Why is that wanton gossip Fame
So dumb about this man's affairs?
Why do we titter at his name
Who come to buy his curious wares?
Here is a shop of wonderment.
From every land has come a prize;
Rich spices from the Orient,
And fruit that knew Italian skies,
And figs that ripened by the sea
In Smyrna, nuts from hot Brazil,
Strange pungent meats from Germany,
And currants...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Millions busily toil, that the human race may continue;
But by only a few is propagated our kind.
Thousands of seeds by the autumn are scattered, yet fruit is engendered
Only by few, for the most back to the element go.
But if one only can blossom, that one is able to scatter
Even a bright living world, filled with creations eterne....Read more of this...
by
Laura Riding Jackson
The little quids, the million quids,
The everywhere, everything, always quids,
The atoms of the Monoton—
Each turned three essences where it stood
And ground a gisty dust from its neighbors' edges
Until a powdery thoughtfall stormed in and out,
The cerebration of a slippery quid enterprise.
Each quid stirred.
The united quids
Waved through a sinuous decision.
The quids, that had never done anything before
But be, be, be,...Read more of this...
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Extract from Poetical Essay by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Millions to fight compell'd, to fight or die
In mangled heaps on War's red altar lie . . .
When the legal murders swell the lists of pride;
When glory's views the titled idiot guide
Lost Shelley poem found after 200 years
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2267433,00.html...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
The roaring alongside he takes for granted,
and that every so often the world is bound to shake.
He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,
in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.
The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet
of interrupting water comes and goes
and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.
He runs, he runs straight...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
I
What's become of Waring
Since he gave us all the slip,
Chose land-travel or seafaring,
Boots and chest, or staff and scrip,
Rather than pace up and down
Any longer London-town?
Who'd have guessed it from his lip,
Or his brow's accustomed bearing,
On the night he thus took ship,
Or started landward?—little caring
For us, it seems, who supped together,
(Friends of his too, I remember)
And walked home through...Read more of this...
by
Charles Sorley
Saints have adored the lofty soul of you.
Poets have whitened at your high renown.
We stand among the many millions who
Do hourly wait to pass your pathway down.
You, so familiar, once were strange: we tried
To live as of your presence unaware.
But now in every road on every side
We see your straight and steadfast signpost there.
I think it like that signpost...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Said Lenin's ghost to Stalin's ghost:
"Mate with me in the Tomb;
Then day by day the rancid host
May gaze upon our doom.
A crystal casket we will share;
Come, crusty Comrade come,
And we will bear the public stare,
Ad nauseum."
Said Stalin's spook to Lenin's spook:
"Long have you held your place.
The masses must be bored to look
Upon your...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
So here's your Empire. No more wine, then?
Good.
We'll clear the Aides and khitmatgars away.
(You'll know that fat old fellow with the knife --
He keeps the Name Book, talks in English too,
And almost thinks himself the Government.)
O Youth, Youth, Youth! Forgive me, you're so young.
Forty from sixty -- twenty years of work
And power to back the working. Ay def mi!
You...Read more of this...
by
A R Ammons
The reason to be autonomous is to stand there,
a cleared instrument, ready to act, to search
the moral realm and actual conditions for what
needs to be done and to do it: fine, the
best, if it works out, but if, like a gun, it
comes in handy to the wrong choice, why then
you see the danger in the effective: better
then an autonomy...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
A little mousey man he was
With board, and chalk in hand;
And millions were awestruck because
They couldn't understand.
Said he: 'E equals Mc2:
I'll prove it true.'
No doubt you can, your marvel man,
But will it serve our good?
Will it prolong our living span
And multiply our food?
Will it bring peace between the nations
To make equations?
Our thanks are...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
'Ave you 'eard o' the Widow at Windsor
With a hairy gold crown on 'er 'ead?
She 'as ships on the foam -- she 'as millions at 'ome,
An' she pays us poor beggars in red.
(Ow, poor beggars in red!)
There's 'er nick on the cavalry 'orses,
There's 'er mark on the medical stores --
An' 'er troopers you'll find with...Read more of this...
by
George (Lord) Byron
My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine;
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:
Go where I will, to me thou art the same—
A loved regret which I would not resign.
There yet are two things in my destiny,—
A world to roam through, and a...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Could he have made Priscilla share
The paradise that he had planned,
Llewellyn would have loved his wife
As well as any in the land.
Could he have made Priscilla cease
To goad him for what God left out,
Llewellyn would have been as mild
As any we have read about.
Could all have been as all was not,
Llewellyn...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
The glory of God in creation and providence.
My soul, thy great Creator praise:
When clothed in his celestial rays,
He in full majesty appears,
And, like a robe, his glory wears.
The heav'ns are for his curtains spread,
The unfathomed deep he makes his bed.
Clouds are his chariot when he flies
On winged storms across the skies.
Angels, whom his own breath inspires,
His ministers, are flaming...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
GALOOTS, you hairy, hankering,
Snousle on the bones you eat, chew at the gristle and lick the last of it.
Grab off the bones in the paws of other galoots—hook your claws in their sleazy mouths—snap and run.
If long-necks sit on their rumps and sing wild cries to the winter moon, chasing their tails to the flickers of foolish stars …...Read more of this...
by
Charles Bukowski
I say to my woman, "Jeffers was
a great poet. think of a title
like Be Angry At The Sun. don't you
realize how great that is?
"you like that negative stuff." she
says
"positively," I agree, finishing my
drink and pouring another.
"in one of Jeffers' poems, not the sun poem,
this woman fucks a stallion because her
husband is such a gross spirit....Read more of this...
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