Famous Minded Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Crystal

by Sidney Lanier
 At midnight, death's and truth's unlocking time,
When far within the spirit's hearing rolls
The great soft rumble of the course of things --
A bulk of silence in a mask of sound, --
When darkness clears our vision that by day
Is sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owl
For truth and flitteth here and there about
Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft
Is minded...Read more of this...

A Disqualified Jockeys Story

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 You see, the thing was this way -- there was me, 
That rode Panopply, the Splendor mare, 
And Ikey Chambers on the Iron Dook, 
And Smith, the half-caste rider on Regret, 
And that long bloke from Wagga -- him that rode 
Veronikew, the Snowy River horse. 
Well, none of them had chances -- not a chance 
Among the lot,...Read more of this...

Jinny the Just

by Matthew Prior
 Releas'd from the noise of the butcher and baker 
Who, my old friends be thanked, did seldom forsake her, 
And from the soft duns of my landlord the Quaker, 

From chiding the footmen and watching the lasses, 
From Nell that burn'd milk, and Tom that broke glasses 
(Sad mischiefs thro' which a good housekeeper passes!) 

From some real care...Read more of this...

Not What Was Meant

by Bertolt Brecht
 When the Academy of Arts demanded freedom
Of artistic expression from narrow-minded bureaucrats
There was a howl and a clamour in its immediate vicinity
But roaring above everything
Came a deafening thunder of applause
From beyond the Sector boundary.
Freedom! it roared. Freedom for the artists!
Freedom all round! Freedom for all!
Freedom for the exploiters! Freedom for the warmongers!
Freedom for the Ruhr cartels! Freedom for Hitler's...Read more of this...

The Lotos-eaters

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 "Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land, 
"This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon."
In the afternoon they came unto a land 
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
And like a downward smoke, the slender stream 
Along the...Read more of this...

I had not minded -- Walls

by Emily Dickinson
 I had not minded -- Walls --
Were Universe -- one Rock --
And far I heard his silver Call
The other side the Block --

I'd tunnel -- till my Groove
Pushed sudden thro' to his --
Then my face take her Recompense --
The looking in his Eyes --

But 'tis a single Hair --
A filament -- a law --
A Cobweb -- wove in Adamant...Read more of this...

Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte

by George (Lord) Byron
 I 
'Tis done -- but yesterday a King! 
And arm'd with Kings to strive -- 
And now thou art a nameless thing: 
So abject -- yet alive! 
Is this the man of thousand thrones, 
Who strew'd our earth with hostile bones, 
And can he thus survive? 
Since he, miscall'd the Morning Star, 
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so...Read more of this...

On The Disadvantages Of Central Heating

by Amy Clampitt
 cold nights on the farm, a sock-shod
stove-warmed flatiron slid under
the covers, mornings a damascene-
sealed bizarrerie of fernwork
 decades ago now

waking in northwest London, tea
brought up steaming, a Peak Frean
biscuit alongside to be nibbled
as blue gas leaps up singing
 decades ago now

damp sheets in Dorset, fog-hung
habitat of bronchitis, of long
hot soaks in the bathtub, of nothing
quite drying out till next...Read more of this...

In Plaster

by Sylvia Plath
 I shall never get out of this! There are two of me now:
This new absolutely white person and the old yellow one,
And the white person is certainly the superior one.
She doesn't need food, she is one of the real saints.
At the beginning I hated her, she had no personality --
She lay in bed with me like a dead body
And...Read more of this...

The Dead King

by Rudyard Kipling
 (EDWARD VII.)

1910


Who in the Realm to-day lays down dear life for the sake of a land more dear?
And, unconcerned for his own estate, toils till the last grudged sands have run?
Let him approach. It is proven here
Our King asks nothing of any man more than Our King himself, has done.

For to him above all was Life good, above all...Read more of this...

Mesopotamia

by Rudyard Kipling
  1917

They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,
 The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave:
But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung,
 Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?

They shall not return to us; the strong men coldly slain
 In sight of help denied from day to day:
But...Read more of this...

The Chimney-Sweepers Song

by William Strode
 Hath Christmas furr'd your Chimneys,
Or have the maides neglected,
Doe Fire-balls droppe from your Chimney's toppe,
The Pidgin is respected,
Looke up with feare and horror,
O how my mistresse wonders!
The streete doth crie, the newes doth flie,
The boyes they thinke it thunders.


Then up I rush with my pole and brush,
I scowre the chimney's Jacket,
I make it shine as bright as mine,
When I...Read more of this...

A Mans Requirements

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 I 

Love me Sweet, with all thou art, 
Feeling, thinking, seeing; 
Love me in the lightest part, 
Love me in full being. 

II 

Love me with thine open youth 
In its frank surrender; 
With the vowing of thy mouth, 
With its silence tender. 

III 

Love me with thine azure eyes, 
Made for earnest grantings; 
Taking colour from the skies,...Read more of this...

Commandeering

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Our hero was a Tommy with a conscience free from care, 
And such an open countenance that when he breathed the air 
He mopped up all the atmosphere -- so little went to spare 
You could hardly say he breathed, he "commandeered" it. 
For nowadays you'll notice when a man is "on the make", 
And other people's property is...Read more of this...

The Widower

by Robert William Service
 Oh I have worn my mourning out,
And on her grave the green grass grows;
So I will hang each sorry clout
High in the corn to scare the crows.
And I will buy a peacock tie,
And coat of cloth of Donegal;
Then to the Farmer's Fair I'll hie
And peek in at the Barley Ball.

But though the fiddlers saw a jig
I used to foot...Read more of this...

Minstrelsy

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 For ever, since my childish looks
Could rest on Nature's pictured books;
For ever, since my childish tongue
Could name the themes our bards have sung;
So long, the sweetness of their singing
Hath been to me a rapture bringing!
Yet ask me not the reason why
I have delight in minstrelsy.

I know that much whereof I sing,
Is shapen but for vanishing;
I know that summer's flower...Read more of this...

Reunion

by Carolyn Kizer
 For more than thirty years we hadn't met.
I remembered the bright query of your face,
That single-minded look,intense and stern,
Yet most important -how could I forget?-
Was what your taught me inadvertantly
(tutored by books and parents, even more
By my own awe at what was yet to learn):
The finest intellect can be a bore.

At this, perhaps our final interview,
Still luminous with your...Read more of this...

Evil minded

by Ehsan Sehgal
"To lie, cheat, pretend, flirt, deceive, fool, misguide, double-cross and all that kinds of actions are the method of the evil minded people."
Ehsan Sehgal...Read more of this...

110. Epistle to a Young Friend

by Robert Burns
 May—, 1786.I LANG hae thought, my youthfu’ friend,
 A something to have sent you,
Tho’ it should serve nae ither end
 Than just a kind memento:
But how the subject-theme may gang,
 Let time and chance determine;
Perhaps it may turn out a sang:
 Perhaps turn out a sermon.


Ye’ll try the world soon, my lad;
 And, Andrew dear, believe me,
Ye’ll find mankind...Read more of this...

The City Bushman

by Henry Lawson
 It was pleasant up the country, City Bushman, where you went, 
For you sought the greener patches and you travelled like a gent; 
And you curse the trams and buses and the turmoil and the push, 
Though you know the squalid city needn't keep you from the bush; 
But we lately heard you singing of the `plains where shade...Read more of this...

No You Be A Lone Eagle

by Ogden Nash
 I find it very hard to be fair-minded
About people who go around being air-minded.
I just can't see any fun
In soaring up up up into the sun
When the chances are still a fresh cool orchid to a paper geranium
That you'll unsoar down down down onto your (to you) invaluable
cranium.
I know the constant refrain
About how safer up in God's trafficless heaven...Read more of this...

Learning by Doing

by Howard Nemerov
 They're taking down a tree at the front door,
The power saw is snarling at some nerves,
Whining at others. Now and then it grunts,
And sawdust falls like snow or a drift of seeds.
Rotten, they tell us, at the fork, and one
Big wind would bring it down. So what they do
They do, as usual, to do us good.
Whatever cannot carry its...Read more of this...

Monster Minded

by Brooks Haxton
 The wine of astonishment
is house wine at my house.
The whiskey of it is a sauce
we savor. The cocaine
of thy judgment also
is rock crystal, blow
to blow the mitral valve.
Truly is the heroin
of thine excellency said
to be deep brown, ****
pure enough to stop the heart....Read more of this...

Song of the Lotos-Eaters

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
THERE is sweet music here that softer falls 
Than petals from blown roses on the grass, 
Or night-dews on still waters between walls 
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass; 
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, 5 
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes; 
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. 
Here are cool mosses deep, 
And...Read more of this...

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 131. O living will that shalt endure

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 O living will that shalt endure
When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Rise in the spiritual rock,
Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure,
That we may lift from out of dust
A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquer'd years
To one that with us works, and trust,
With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can be proved
Until...Read more of this...

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