Famous Needed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Letter From Li Po

...se, through these, we climb,
or through the words, the cadence, and the rhyme?
Chang Hsu, calligrapher of great renown,
needed to put but his three cupfuls down
to tip his brush with lightning. On the scroll,
wreaths of cloud rolled left and right, the sky
opened upon Forever. Which is which?
The poem? Or the peachtree in the ditch?
Or is all one? Yes, all is text, the immortal text,
Sheepfold Hill the poem, the poem Sheepfold Hill,
and we, Li Po, the man who sings, sings as ...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad


A poem on divine revelation

...raw light, 
On either side of which that tree doth grow 
Which yields immortal fruit, and in whose shade 
If shade were needed there, the rapt shall sing, 
In varied melody to harp and lyre, 
The sacred song of Moses and the Lamb: 
Eternity's high arches ring; 'Tis heard 
Through both infinitudes of space and time. 


Thus have I sung to this high-favour'd bow'r, 
And sacred shades which taught me first to sing, 
With grateful mind a tributary strain. 
Sweet grove no more I v...Read more of this...
by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry

Beowulf (Modern English)

...s. Nevertheless, God granted,
the Sovereign of Victories, that he would avenge himself,
alone with his blade, when he needed courage.
I could only give him a small prop of life in the fight,
and I began even so to help him, beyond my measure
of strength. I was always the weaker
when I struck that mortal enemy with my sword,
but even then a weaker flame welled from its head.
Too few defenders thronged about their prince,
when his final moments came upon him. (ll. 2860...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Beowulf (Old English)

...alker
he bade make ready. Yon battle-king, said he,
far o’er the swan-road he fain would seek,
the noble monarch who needed men!
The prince’s journey by prudent folk
was little blamed, though they loved him dear;
they whetted the hero, and hailed good omens.
And now the bold one from bands of Geats
comrades chose, the keenest of warriors
e’er he could find; with fourteen men
the sea-wood {3a} he sought, and, sailor proved,
led them on to the land’s confines.
Time ...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Footprints In The Sand

...e only one set of
footprints, so I said, "You promised me, Lord, that you would
walk with me always. Why, when I have needed you most,
have you not been there for me?"

The Lord replied, "The times when you have seen only one set
of footprints, my child, is when I carried you."

...Read more of this...
by Stevenson, Mary


Impossible To Tell

...old Jews feared
As "in with the Arabs." But they started weeping

As the old one-armed fighter told them their country
Needed them to vote for what was right, their vote
Could make a country their children could return to

From London and Chicago. The moved old people
Applauded wildly, and the speaker's friend
Whispered to the journalist, "It's the Belgian Army

Joke come to life." I wish I could tell it
To Elliot. In the Belgian Army, the feud
Between the Flemings and Wallo...Read more of this...
by Pinsky, Robert

Lara

...that gently seem 
To soothe away the horrors of his dream; 
If dream it were, that thus could overthrow 
A breast that needed not ideal woe. 

XV. 

Whate'er his frenzy dream'd or eye beheld, 
If yet remember'd ne'er to be reveal'd, 
Rests at his heart: the custom'd morning came, 
And breathed new vigour in his shaking frame; 
And solace sought he none from priest nor leech, 
And soon the same in movement and in speech 
As heretofore he fill'd the passing hours, 
Nor less he...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Let It Enfold You

...s of 
peace in cheap
rooms
just staring at the 
knobs of some
dresser
or listening to the
rain in the 
dark.
the less i needed
the better i 
felt.

maybe the other life had worn me 
down.
I no longer found
glamour
in topping somebody
in conversation.
or in mounting the
body of some poor
drunken female
whose life had 
slipped away into 
sorrow.

I could never accept
life as it was,
i could never gobble 
down all its
poisons
but there were parts,
tenous magic parts
open for the...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles

New Hampshire

...inst the state.)
She had one Daniel Webster. He was all
The Daniel Webster ever was or shall be.
She had the Dartmouth' needed to produce him.

I call her old. She has one family
Whose claim is good to being settled here
Before the era of colonization,
And before that of exploration even.
John Smith remarked them as be coasted by,
Dangling their legs and fishing off a wharf
At the Isles of Shoals, and satisfied himself
They weren't Red Indians but veritable
Pre-primitives of ...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

Paradise Lost: Book 05

...d, or sung 
Unmeditated; such prompt eloquence 
Flowed from their lips, in prose or numerous verse, 
More tuneable than needed lute or harp 
To add more sweetness; and they thus began. 
These are thy glorious works, Parent of good, 
Almighty! Thine this universal frame, 
Thus wonderous fair; Thyself how wonderous then! 
Unspeakable, who sitst above these heavens 
To us invisible, or dimly seen 
In these thy lowest works; yet these declare 
Thy goodness beyond thought, and pow...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Song of the Open Road

...rse. 

Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the universe, all
 other
 progress is the needed emblem and sustenance. 

Forever alive, forever forward,
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied, 
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men, 
They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go; 
But I know that they go toward the best—toward something great. 

15
Allons! who...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Bride of Abydos

...brother's wrath 
To quench his thirst had such a cup: 
The bowl a bribed attendant bore; 
He drank one draught, and nor needed more! [33] 
If thou my tale, Zuleika, doubt, 
Call Haroun — he can tell it out. 

XV. 

"The deed once done, and Paswan's feud 
In part suppress'd, though ne'er subdued, 
Abdallah's Pachalic was gain'd: — 
Thou know'st not what in our Divan 
Can wealth procure for worse than man — 
Abdallah's honours were obtain'd 
By him a brother's murder stain'd; 
...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Everlasting Mercy

...ht the bloody earth was quaking. 
And others come and spread a tale 
Of cut-throats out of Gloucester jail, 
And how we needed extra cops 
With all them Welsh come picking hops: 
With drunken Welsh in all our sheds 
We might be murdered in our beds.

By all accounts, both men and wives 
Had had the scare up of their lives.

I ate and drank and gathered strength, 
And stretched along the bench full length, 
Or crossed to window seat to pat 
Black Silas Jones's little cat. 
At ...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

The Flight Of The Duchess

...ngs, and tied her beak,
Would it cause you any great surprise
If, when you decided to give her an airing,
You found she needed a little preparing?
---I say, should you be such a curmudgeon,
If she clung to the perch, as to take it in dudgeon?
Yet when the Duke to his lady signified,
Just a day before, as he judged most dignified,
In what a pleasure she was to participate,---
And, instead of leaping wide in flashes,
Her eyes just lifted their long lashes,
As if pressed by fati...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

The Man of Laws Tale

...was the ship, it is no drede,* *doubt
Abundantly for her a full long space:
And other necessaries that should need* *be needed
She had enough, heried* be Godde's grace: *praised 
For wind and weather, Almighty God purchase,* *provide
And bring her home; I can no better say;
But in the sea she drived forth her way.

Alla the king came home soon after this
Unto the castle, of the which I told,
And asked where his wife and his child is;
The Constable gan about his heart feel...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The New Dog

...d paper
and pen, has come

this manic animal
whose innocent disruptions
make nonsense
of my old simplicities--

as if I needed him
to prove again that after
all the careful planning,
anything can happen....Read more of this...
by Pastan, Linda

The Road To Haworth Moor

...ask but then as now I had no answer; but it’s the way I was,

Hating the clutter of the city, man en masse. I thought I needed a mate

For a Platonic cave, a companion for the Martello tower in Dublin Bay,

Whatever it was I never wanted you to go but go you did to stay.

The one became the two again, you shed your ring, we had our son to share.



I read instead of writing, psycho-analysis became a faith of sorts,

A pastime then a passion I kept on with even when my muse re...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

The Three Voices

...ck breath and cheeks all flushed,
At length his speech was somewhat hushed,
She looked at him, and he was crushed. 

It needed not her calm reply:
She fixed him with a stony eye,
And he could neither fight nor fly. 

While she dissected, word by word,
His speech, half guessed at and half heard,
As might a cat a little bird. 

Then, having wholly overthrown
His views, and stripped them to the bone,
Proceeded to unfold her own. 

"Shall Man be Man? And shall he miss
Of other th...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

The White Cliffs

...a small white town on a deep-cut bay 
In the smallest state in the U.S.A. 
I meant to tell him, but changed my mind—
I needed a friend, and he seemed kind; 
So I put my gloved hand into his glove,
And we danced together— and fell in love.

IV
Young and in love-how magical the phrase! 
How magical the fact! Who has not yearned 
Over young lovers when to their amaze 
They fall in love and find their love returned, 
And the lights brighten, and their eyes are clear 
To see God'...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer

The Wife of Baths Tale

...fay, I told of it no store:* *by my faith, I held it
They had me giv'n their land and their treasor, of no account*
Me needed not do longer diligence
To win their love, or do them reverence.
They loved me so well, by God above,
That I *tolde no dainty* of their love. *cared nothing for*
A wise woman will busy her ever-in-one* *constantly
To get their love, where that she hath none.
But, since I had them wholly in my hand,
And that they had me given all their land,
Why should...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

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