Famous My Story Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Story by Lalla-ji, the Priest

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   He loved the Plant with a keen delight,
     A passionate fervour, strange to see,
   Tended it ardently, day and night,
     Yet never a flower lit up the tree.

   The leaves were succulent, thick, and green,
     And, sessile, out of the snakelike...Read more of this...

The Story Of The Ashes And The Flame

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 No matter why, nor whence, nor when she came,
There was her place. No matter what men said,
No matter what she was; living or dead,
Faithful or not,he loved her all the same.
The story was as old as human shame,
But ever since that lonely night she fled,
With books to blind him, he had only read
The story of the ashes and the...Read more of this...

An Old Story

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Strange that I did not know him then. 
That friend of mine! 
I did not even show him then 
One friendly sign;

But cursed him for the ways he had 
To make me see 
My envy of the praise he had 
For praising me.

I would have rid the earth of him 
Once, in my pride... 
I never knew the worth...Read more of this...

Story of Lilavanti

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   They lay the slender body down
     With all its wealth of wetted hair,
   Only a daughter of the town,
     But very young and slight and fair.

   The eyes, whose light one cannot see,
     Are sombre doubtless, like the tresses,
  ...Read more of this...

Story

by Philip Larkin
 Tired of a landscape known too well when young:
The deliberate shallow hills, the boring birds
Flying past rocks; tired of remembering
The village children and their naughty words,
He abandoned his small holding and went South,
Recognised at once his wished-for lie
In the inhabitants' attractive mouth,
The church beside the marsh, the hot blue sky.

Settled. And in this mirage lived his dreams,
The friendly bully,...Read more of this...

Unto like Story -- Trouble has enticed me

by Emily Dickinson
 Unto like Story -- Trouble has enticed me --
How Kinsmen fell --
Brothers and Sister -- who preferred the Glory --
And their young will
Bent to the Scaffold, or in Dungeons -- chanted --
Till God's full time --
When they let go the ignominy -- smiling --
And Shame went still --

Unto guessed Crests, my moaning fancy, leads me,
Worn fair
By Heads rejected --...Read more of this...

The Deacons Masterpiece Or The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay: A Logical Story

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, 
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it -- ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits, --
Have you ever heard of that, I say?

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus...Read more of this...

I'Ll Tell You A Story

by Mother Goose
  I'll tell you a story
  About Jack-a-Nory:
And now my story's begun.
  I'll tell you another
  About his brother:
And now my story is done....Read more of this...

A True Story

by Ann Taylor
 Little Ann and her mother were walking one day
Through London's wide city so fair,
And business obliged them to go by the way
That led them through Cavendish Square. 
And as they pass'd by the great house of a Lord,
A beautiful chariot there came,
To take some most elegant ladies abroad, 
Who straightway got into the same. 

The ladies in feathers and...Read more of this...

The Second Oldest Story

by Dorothy Parker
 Go I must along my ways
Though my heart be ragged,
Dripping bitter through the days,
Festering, and jagged.
Smile I must at every twinge,
Kiss, to time its throbbing;
He that tears a heart to fringe
Hates the noise of sobbing.

Weep, my love, till Heaven hears;
Curse and moan and languish.
While I wash your wound with tears,
Ease aloud your anguish.
Bellow of the pit in Hell
Where you're...Read more of this...

A Story For Rose On The Midnight Flight To Boston

by Anne Sexton
 Until tonight they were separate specialties, 
different stories, the best of their own worst. 
Riding my warm cabin home, I remember Betsy's 
laughter; she laughed as you did, Rose, at the first 
story. Someday, I promised her, I'll be someone 
going somewhere and we plotted it in the humdrum 
school for proper girls. The next April the plane 
bucked...Read more of this...

A Sourdough Story

by Robert William Service
 Hark to the Sourdough story, told at sixty below,
When the pipes are lit and we smoke and spit
Into the campfire glow.
Rugged are we and hoary, and statin' a general rule,
A genooine Sourdough story
Ain't no yarn for the Sunday School.

A Sourdough came to stake his claim in Heav'n one morning early.
Saint Peter cried: "Who waits outside them gates so bright...Read more of this...

Centenarian's Story The

by Walt Whitman
 GIVE me your hand, old Revolutionary; 
The hill-top is nigh—but a few steps, (make room, gentlemen;) 
Up the path you have follow’d me well, spite of your hundred and extra years; 
You can walk, old man, though your eyes are almost done; 
Your faculties serve you, and presently I must have them serve me.

Rest, while I tell what the...Read more of this...

A Well-Worn Story

by Dorothy Parker
 In April, in April,
My one love came along,
And I ran the slope of my high hill
To follow a thread of song.

His eyes were hard as porphyry
With looking on cruel lands;
His voice went slipping over me
Like terrible silver hands.

Together we trod the secret lane
And walked the muttering town.
I wore my heart like a wet, red stain
On the breast of a...Read more of this...

Her Story

by Andrei Voznesensky
 I started up the engine and I lingered. 
 Where should I go? The night was fine, I figured. 
 The bonnet trembled like a nervous hound. 
 I shivered. Night lit up the houses around. 
 The Balzac age, I felt its burning pain, 
 Chilled to the bone, I couldn't hold my own. 
 The age of...Read more of this...

A Story

by Li-Young Lee
 Sad is the man who is asked for a story
and can't come up with one.

His five-year-old son waits in his lap.
Not the same story, Baba. A new one.
The man rubs his chin, scratches his ear.

In a room full of books in a world
of stories, he can recall
not one, and soon, he thinks, the boy
will give up on his father.

Already...Read more of this...

A Christmas Ghost Story

by Thomas Hardy
 South of the Line, inland from far Durban,
A mouldering soldier lies--your countryman.
Awry and doubled up are his gray bones,
And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans
Nightly to clear Canopus: "I would know
By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law
Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified,
Was ruled to be inept, and set aside?

And what of logic or of truth appears
In...Read more of this...

An Old Story

by Robert William Service
 (Retold in Rhyme)

They threw him in a prison cell;
He moaned upon his bed.
And when he crept from coils of hell:
"Last night you killed," they said.

"last night in drunken rage you slew
A being brave with breath;
A radiant soul, because of you
Lies dark in death."

"last night I killed," he moaned distraught,
"When I was wild with wine;
I slew, and I remember naught...Read more of this...

The Story Of Our Lives

by Mark Strand
 1
We are reading the story of our lives
which takes place in a room.
The room looks out on a street.
There is no one there,
no sound of anything.
The tress are heavy with leaves,
the parked cars never move.
We keep turning the pages, hoping for something,
something like mercy or change,
a black line that would bind us
or keep us apart.
The way it is, it...Read more of this...

The Land of Story-Books

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 At evening when the lamp is lit, 
Around the fire my parents sit; 
They sit at home and talk and sing, 
And do not play at anything. 

Now, with my little gun, I crawl 
All in the dark along the wall, 
And follow round the forest track 
Away behind the sofa back. 

There, in the night, where none can...Read more of this...

Tell Me a Story

by Robert Penn Warren
 Long ago, in Kentucky, I, a boy, stood
By a dirt road, in first dark, and heard
The great geese hoot northward.

I could not see them, there being no moon
And the stars sparse.I heard them.

I did not know what was happening in my heart.

It was the season before the elderberry blooms,
Therefore they were going north.

The sound was passing northward....Read more of this...

Bedtime Story

by Lisel Mueller
 The moon lies on the river
like a drop of oil.
The children come to the banks to be healed
of their wounds and bruises.
The fathers who gave them their wounds and bruises
come to be healed of their rage.
The mothers grow lovely; their faces soften,
the birds in their throats awake.
They all stand hand in hand
and the trees around them,
forever on the verge
of...Read more of this...

The Deacons Masterpiece Or The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay: A Logical Story

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, 
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it -- ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits, --
Have you ever heard of that, I say?

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus...Read more of this...

Story

by Dorothy Parker
 "And if he's gone away," said she,
"Good riddance, if you're asking me.
I'm not a one to lie awake
And weep for anybody's sake.
There's better lads than him about!
I'll wear my buckled slippers out
A-dancing till the break of day.
I'm better off with him away!
And if he never come," said she,
"Now what on earth is that to me?
I wouldn't have him back!"
I...Read more of this...

The Story of Ung

by Rudyard Kipling
 Once, on a glittering ice-field, ages and ages ago,
Ung, a maker of pictures, fashioned an image of snow.
Fashioned the form of a tribesman -- gaily he whistled and sung,
Working the snow with his fingers. Read ye the Story of Ung!

Pleased was his tribe with that image -- came in their hundreds to scan --
Handled it, smelt it, and grunted:...Read more of this...

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