Famous Mostly Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

from the Ansty Experience

by Rg Gregory
 (a)
they seek to celebrate the word
not to bring their knives out on a poem
dissecting it to find a heart
whose beat lies naked on a table
not to score in triumph on a line
no sensitive would put a nostril to
but simply to receive it as an
offering glimpsing the sacred there

poem probes the poet's once-intention
but each time said budges its truth
afresh (leaving...Read more of this...

Bokardo

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Well, Bokardo, here we are; 
Make yourself at home. 
Look around—you haven’t far 
To look—and why be dumb? 
Not the place that used to be,
Not so many things to see; 
But there’s room for you and me. 
And you—you’ve come. 

Talk a little; or, if not, 
Show me with a sign
Why it was that you forgot 
What was yours...Read more of this...

A Song Of The Sandbags

by Robert William Service
 No, Bill, I'm not a-spooning out no patriotic tosh
 (The cove be'ind the sandbags ain't a death-or-glory cuss).
And though I strafes 'em good and 'ard I doesn't 'ate the Boche,
 I guess they're mostly decent, just the same as most of us.
I guess they loves their 'omes and kids as much as you or me;
 And just the same...Read more of this...

Song of Fairies Robbing an Orchard

by James Henry Leigh Hunt
 We, the Fairies, blithe and antic,
Of dimensions not gigantic,
Though the moonshine mostly keep us,
Oft in orchards frisk and peep us.

Stolen sweets are always sweeter,
Stolen kisses much completer,
Stolen looks are nice in chapels,
Stolen, stolen, be your apples.

When to bed the world are bobbing,
Then's the time for orchard-robbing;
Yet the fruit were scarce worth peeling,
Were it not for stealing, stealing....Read more of this...

Sez You

by Henry Lawson
 When the heavy sand is yielding backward from your blistered feet, 
And across the distant timber you can SEE the flowing heat; 
When your head is hot and aching, and the shadeless plain is wide, 
And it's fifteen miles to water in the scrub the other side -- 
Don't give up, don't be down-hearted, to a man's strong heart...Read more of this...

Dream Song 7: The Prisoner of Shark Island with Paul Muni

by John Berryman
 Henry is old, old; for Henry remembers
Mr Deeds' tuba, & the Cameo,
& the race in Ben Hur,-”The Lost World, with sound,
& The Man from Blankey's, which he did not dig,
nor did he understand one caption of,
bewildered Henry, while the Big Ones laughed.

Now Henry is unmistakably a Big One.
Fúnnee; he don't féel so.
He just stuck around.
The German & the Russian...Read more of this...

The Deer Lay Down Their Bones

by Robinson Jeffers
 I followed the narrow cliffside trail half way up the mountain
Above the deep river-canyon. There was a little cataract crossed the path, 
 flinging itself
Over tree roots and rocks, shaking the jeweled fern-fronds, bright bubbling 
 water
Pure from the mountain, but a bad smell came up. Wondering at it I clam-
 bered down the steep stream
Some forty feet, and...Read more of this...

The New Hieroglyphics

by Les Murray
 In the World language, sometimes called
Airport Road, a thinks balloon with a gondola
under it is a symbol for speculation.

Thumbs down to ear and tongue:
World can be written and read, even painted
but not spoken. People use their own words.

Latin letters are in it for names, for e.g.
OK and H2S O4, for musical notes,
but mostly it's diagrams: skirt-figure, trousered figure

have escaped...Read more of this...

On Turning Ten

by Billy Collins
 The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the...Read more of this...

There Is No God the Wicked Sayeth

by Arthur Hugh Clough
 "There is no God," the wicked saith,
"And truly it's a blessing,
For what He might have done with us
It's better only guessing."

"There is no God," a youngster thinks,
"or really, if there may be,
He surely did not mean a man
Always to be a baby."

"There is no God, or if there is,"
The tradesman thinks, "'twere funny
If He should take it ill in...Read more of this...

On the Wallaby

by Henry Lawson
 Now the tent poles are rotting, the camp fires are dead, 
And the possums may gambol in trees overhead; 
I am humping my bluey far out on the land, 
And the prints of my bluchers sink deep in the sand: 
I am out on the wallaby humping my drum, 
And I came by the tracks where the sundowners come....Read more of this...

331. Epigram at Brownhill Inn

by Robert Burns
 AT 1 Brownhill we always get dainty good cheer,
And plenty of bacon each day in the year;
We’ve a’ thing that’s nice, and mostly in season,
But why always Bacon—come, tell me a reason?


 Note 1. Bacon was the name of a presumably intrusive host. The lines are said to have “afforded much amusement.”—Lang. [back]...Read more of this...

Marginalia

by Barry Tebb
 Here is a silence I had not hoped for

This side of paradise, I am an old believer

In nature’s bounty as God’s grace

To us poor mortals, fretting and fuming

At frustrated lust or the scent of fame 

Coming too late to make a difference

Blue with white vertebrae of cloud forms

Riming the spectrum of green dark of poplars

Lined like soldiers, paler the...Read more of this...

The Black Cottage

by Robert Frost
 We chanced in passing by that afternoon 
To catch it in a sort of special picture 
Among tar-banded ancient cherry trees, 
Set well back from the road in rank lodged grass, 
The little cottage we were speaking of, 
A front with just a door between two windows, 
Fresh painted by the shower a velvet black. 
We paused, the minister...Read more of this...

Hughes' Voice In My Head

by Barry Tebb
 As soon as we crossed into Yorkshire

Hughes’ voice assailed me, unmistakable

Gravel and honey, a raw celebration of rain

Like a tattered lacework window;

Black glisten on roof slates,

Tarmac turned to shining ice,

Blusters of naked wind whipping

The wavelets of shifting water

To imaginary floating islets

On the turbulent river

Glumly he asked, "Where are the mills?"

Knowing their goneness in his lonely heart.

"Where are the mines...Read more of this...

Investigating Flora

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 'Twas in scientific circles 
That the great Professor Brown 
Had a world-wide reputation 
As a writer of renown. 
He had striven finer feelings 
In our natures to implant 
By his Treatise on the Morals 
Of the Red-eyed Bulldog Ant. 
He had hoisted an opponent 
Who had trodden unawares 
On his "Reasons for Bare Patches 
On the Female Native Bears"....Read more of this...

Blue

by May Swenson
 Blue, but you are Rose, too,
and buttermilk, but with blood
dots showing through.
A little salty your white
nape boy-wide. Glinting hairs
shoot back of your ears' Rose
that tongues like to feel
the maze of, slip into the funnel,
tell a thunder-whisper to.
When I kiss, your eyes' straight
lashes down crisp go like doll's
blond straws. Glazed iris Roses,
your lids unclose to Blue-ringed
targets, their dark sheen-spokes
almost green....Read more of this...

A Dogs Mistake

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 He had drifted in among us as a straw drifts with the tide, 
He was just a wand'ring mongrel from the weary world outside; 
He was not aristocratic, being mostly ribs and hair, 
With a hint of spaniel parents and a touch of native bear. 
He was very poor and humble and content with what he got, 
So we...Read more of this...

Letters

by Spike Milligan
 I was thinking of letters,
We all have a lot in our life
A few good - a few sad
But mostly run of the mill-
I suppose that's my fault
For writing to run of the mill people.
I've never had a letter
I really wanted
It might come one day
But then, it will be just too late,
And that's when I don't want it....Read more of this...

Sphincter

by Allen Ginsberg
 I hope my good old ******* holds out
60 years it's been mostly OK
Tho in Bolivia a fissure operation
 survived the altiplano hospital-- 
a little blood, no polyps, occasionally
a small hemorrhoid
active, eager, receptive to phallus
 coke bottle, candle, carrot
 banana & fingers -
Now AIDS makes it shy, but still
 eager to serve -
out with the dumps, in with the condom'd
...Read more of this...

Who occupies this House?

by Emily Dickinson
 Who occupies this House?
A Stranger I must judge
Since No one know His Circumstance --
'Tis well the name and age

Are writ upon the Door
Or I should fear to pause
Where not so much as Honest Dog
Approach encourages.

It seems a curious Town --
Some Houses very old,
Some -- newly raised this Afternoon,
Were I compelled to build

It should not be among
Inhabitants so still
But where...Read more of this...

The great journalist in spain

by Eugene Field
 Good editor Dana--God bless him, we say--
Will soon be afloat on the main,
Will be steaming away
Through the mist and the spray
To the sensuous climate of Spain.

Strange sights shall he see in that beautiful land
Which is famed for its soap and its Moor,
For, as we understand,
The scenery is grand
Though the system of railways is poor.

For moonlight of silver and sunlight...Read more of this...

Head of a White Woman Winking

by Edward Taylor
 She has one good bumblebee
which she leads about town
on a leash of clover.
It's as big as a Saint Bernard
but also extremely fragile.
People want to pet its long, shaggy coat.
These would be mostly whirling dervishes
out shopping for accessories.
When Lily winks they understand everything,
right down to the particle
of a butterfly's wing lodged
in her last good eye,
so the situation is avoided,
the potential...Read more of this...

WARS and RUMORS OF WARS

by Emanuel Xavier
 “Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars;
see that ye not be troubles;
all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet”
-Matthew 24:6

1.
I escape the horrors of war 
with a towel and a room
Offering myself 
to Palestinian and Jewish boys
as a ‘piece’ to the Middle East
when I should be concerned with the untimely deaths
of dark-skinned...Read more of this...

Sweeney

by Henry Lawson
 It was somewhere in September, and the sun was going down, 
When I came, in search of `copy', to a Darling-River town; 
`Come-and-have-a-drink' we'll call it -- 'tis a fitting name, I think -- 
And 'twas raining, for a wonder, up at Come-and-have-a-drink. 

'Neath the public-house verandah I was resting on a bunk 
When a stranger rose before me,...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Mostly poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace