Famous New Poems by Famous Poets

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

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New Years Eve

by Henry Van Dyke
 I 

The other night I had a dream, most clear 
And comforting, complete
In every line, a crystal sphere,
And full of intimate and secret cheer. 
Therefore I will repeat
That vision, dearest heart, to you,
As of a thing not feigned, but very true,
Yes, true as ever in my life befell;
And you, perhaps, can tell
Whether my dream was really sad or sweet....Read more of this...

Old And New

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Long have the poets vaunted, in their lays, 
Old times, old loves, old friendships, and old wine
Why should the old monopolise all praise? 
Then let the new claim mine.

Give me strong new friends, when the old prove weak, 
Or fail me in my darkest hour of need; 
Why perish with the ship that springs a leak, 
Or lean upon...Read more of this...

new age

by Rg Gregory
 (i)
how new the world is
trying to find
nerve in an old rind

(ii)
the bread is crumbled
for birds to swallow
rolled into droppings
flowers from the hair
of noseless statues
tyrants of parks
where men have cowered
too long and mistaken
unmanned by he dark

(iii)
when we awaken
(how have we fallen)
machines are broken
wires lie strangled
by the messages they nursed
lathes are swinging
from trees in derision
pipes burst and scalded
houses contorted
(what went on...Read more of this...

A New Years Resolution to Leave Dundee

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Welcome! thrice welcome! to the year 1893,
For it is the year I intend to leave Dundee,
Owing to the treatment I receive,
Which does my heart sadly grieve.
Every morning when I go out
The ignorant rabble they do shout
'There goes Mad McGonagall'
In derisive shouts as loud as they can bawl,
And lifts stones and snowballs, throws them at me;
And such actions are shameful...Read more of this...

The New Freethinker

by G K Chesterton
 John Grubby who was short and stout 
And troubled with religious doubt, 
Refused about the age of three 
To sit upon the curate's knee; 
(For so the eternal strife must rage 
Between the spirit of the age 
And Dogma, which, as is well known, 
Does simply hate to be outgrown). 
Grubby, the young idea that shoots, 
Outgrew the ages...Read more of this...

Sonnet 76: Why is my verse so barren of new pride?

by William Shakespeare
 Why is my verse so barren of new pride?
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods, and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
O, know, sweet...Read more of this...

The New Remorse

by Oscar Wilde
 The sin was mine; I did not understand.
So now is music prisoned in her cave,
Save where some ebbing desultory wave
Frets with its restless whirls this meagre strand.
And in the withered hollow of this land
Hath Summer dug herself so deep a grave,
That hardly can the leaden willow crave
One silver blossom from keen Winter's hand.

But who is this who cometh by...Read more of this...

New England Magazine

by Ellis Parker Butler
 Upon Bottle Miche the autre day
While yet the nuit was early,
Je met a homme whose barbe was grey,
Whose cheveaux long and curly.

“Je am a poete, sir,” dit he,
“Je live where tres grande want teems—
I’m faim, sir. Sil vous plait give me
Un franc or cinquatite centimes.”

I donne him vingt big copper sous
But dit, “You moderne rhymers
The sacre poet name abuse—
Les...Read more of this...

The New Dog

by Linda Pastan
 Into the gravity of my life,
the serious ceremonies
of polish and 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...

86. The Auld Farmer's New-Year-Morning Salutation to his Auld Mare Maggie

by Robert Burns
 A GUID New-year I wish thee, Maggie!
Hae, there’s a ripp to thy auld baggie:
Tho’ thou’s howe-backit now, an’ knaggie,
 I’ve seen the day
Thou could hae gaen like ony staggie,
 Out-owre the lay.


Tho’ now thou’s dowie, stiff, an’ crazy,
An’ thy auld hide as white’s a daisie,
I’ve seen thee dappl’t, sleek an’ glaizie,
 A bonie gray:
He should been tight that daur’t...Read more of this...

Portrait Number Five: Against A New York Summer

by Jack Gilbert
 I'd walk her home after work
buying roses and talking of Bechsteins.
She was full of soul.
Her small room was gorged with heat
and there were no windows.
She'd take off everything
but her pants
and take the pins from her hair
throwing them on the floor
with a great noise.
Like Crete.
We wouldn't make love.
She'd get on the bed
with those nipples
and we'd lie
sweating
and talking of my best...Read more of this...

A New World

by George William Russell
 I WHO had sought afar from earth
 The faery land to meet,
Now find content within its girth
 And wonder nigh my feet.


To-day a nearer love I choose
 And seek no distant sphere;
For aureoled by faery dews
 The dear brown breasts appear.


With rainbow radiance come and go
 The airy breaths of day;
And eve is all a pearly glow
 With moonlit...Read more of this...

259. A New Psalm for the Chapel of Kilmarnock

by Robert Burns
 O SING a new song to the Lord,
 Make, all and every one,
A joyful noise, even for the King
 His restoration.


The sons of Belial in the land
 Did set their heads together;
Come, let us sweep them off, said they,
 Like an o’erflowing river.


They set their heads together, I say,
 They set their heads together;
On right, on left, on every...Read more of this...

A New Years Gift

by William Strode
 We are prevented; you whose Presence is
A Publick New-yeares gift, a Common bliss
To all that Love or Feare, give no man leave
To vie a Gift but first he shall receave;
Like as the Persian Sun with golden Eies
First shines upon the Priest and Sacrifice.


Ile on howere; May this yeare happier prove
Than all the Golden Age when Vertue strove
With nothing but...Read more of this...

On the New Hot-House

by Ben Jonson
VII. ? ON THE NEW HOT-HOUSE.      Where lately harbor'd many a famous whore, A purging bill, now fix'd upon the door, Tells you it is a hot-house ; so it may, And still be a whore-house : they're synonyma. ...Read more of this...

A New Years Giftsent To Sir Simeon Steward

by Robert Herrick
 No news of navies burnt at seas;
No noise of late spawn'd tittyries;
No closet plot or open vent,
That frights men with a Parliament:
No new device or late-found trick,
To read by th' stars the kingdom's sick;
No gin to catch the State, or wring
The free-born nostril of the King,
We send to you; but here a jolly
Verse crown'd with ivy and with holly;
That...Read more of this...

To The University Of Cambridge In New-England

by Phillis Wheatley
 WHILE an intrinsic ardor prompts to write,
The muses promise to assist my pen;
'Twas not long since I left my native shore
The land of errors, and Egyptain gloom:
Father of mercy, 'twas thy gracious hand
Brought me in safety from those dark abodes.
Students, to you 'tis giv'n to scan the heights
Above, to traverse the ethereal space,
And mark the systems of revolving worlds.
Still...Read more of this...

New Feet

by Carl Sandburg
 EMPTY battlefields keep their phantoms.
Grass crawls over old gun wheels
And a nodding Canada thistle flings a purple
Into the summer’s southwest wind,
Wrapping a root in the rust of a bayonet,
Reaching a blossom in rust of shrapnel....Read more of this...

Mr. Dana of the New York Sun

by Eugene Field
 Thar showed up out'n Denver in the spring uv '81
A man who'd worked with Dana on the Noo York Sun.
His name wuz Cantell Whoppers, 'nd he wuz a sight ter view
Ez he walked inter the orfice 'nd inquired fer work ter do.
Thar warn't no places vacant then,--fer be it understood,
That wuz the time when talent flourished at that altitood;
But...Read more of this...

A New Friend

by Dejan Stojanovic
Tell me something less significant, 
Something about our biology, for instance, 
About what you hear while sitting under the tree, 
About lonely lions in the prairies; 
Forget decorated generals; 
Tell me about Private Ryan, 
Tell me something only you know
And make a new friend. ...Read more of this...

Are You the New person drawn toward Me?

by Walt Whitman
 ARE you the new person drawn toward me? 
To begin with, take warning—I am surely far different from what you suppose; 
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal? 
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover? 
Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty...Read more of this...

The New Jerusalem

by William Blake
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my charriot of fire!

I...Read more of this...

Prayer For a New Mother

by Dorothy Parker
 The things she knew, let her forget again-
The voices in the sky, the fear, the cold,
The gaping shepherds, and the ***** old men
Piling their clumsy gifts of foreign gold.

Let her have laughter with her little one;
Teach her the endless, tuneless songs to sing,
Grant her her right to whisper to her son
The foolish names one dare not call a king.

Keep...Read more of this...

To-morrow to Fresh Woods and Pastures New

by Amy Lowell
 As for a moment he stands, in hardy masculine beauty,
Poised on the fircrested rock, over the pool which below him
Gleams in the wavering sunlight, waiting the shock of his plunging.
So for a moment I stand, my feet planted firm in the present,
Eagerly scanning the future which is so soon to possess me....Read more of this...

New Years Morning

by Helen Hunt Jackson
 Only a night from old to new! 
Only a night, and so much wrought! 
The Old Year's heart all weary grew, 
But said: The New Year rest has brought." 
The Old Year's hopes its heart laid down, 
As in a grave; but trusting, said: 
"The blossoms of the New Year's crown 
Bloom from the ashes of the dead." 
The...Read more of this...

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