Famous Nine Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Sonnet IX: As Other Men

by Michael Drayton
 As other men, so I myself do muse 
Why in this sort I wrest invention so, 
And why these giddy metaphors I use, 
Leaving the path the greater part do go. 
I will resolve you: I am lunatic, 
And ever this in madmen you shall find, 
What they last thought of when the brain grew sick 
In most distraction...Read more of this...

Thirty-nine

by Eugene Field
 O hapless day! O wretched day!
I hoped you'd pass me by--
Alas, the years have sneaked away
And all is changed but I!
Had I the power, I would remand
You to a gloom condign,
But here you've crept upon me and
I--I am thirty-nine!

Now, were I thirty-five, I could
Assume a flippant guise;
Or, were I forty years, I should
Undoubtedly look wise;
For forty years are said...Read more of this...

Christos

by Paul Muldoon
 Two Workmen were carrying a sheet of asbestos
down the main street of Dingle;
it must have been nailed, at a slight angle,
to the same-sized gap between Brandon

and whichever's the next mountain.
Nine o'clock. We watched the village dogs
take turns to spritz the hotel's refuse-sacks.
I remembered Tralee's unbiodegradable flags

from the time of the hunger-strikes.
We drove all day past mounds of sugar-beet,
hay-stacks, silage-pits,...Read more of this...

O heedless man! this veil of flesh is naught; this nine-fold

by Omar Khayyam
O heedless man! this veil of flesh is naught; this nine-fold
vault of brilliant heaven is naught. Then give thyself
to joy in this disordered place [the world], for life is
but an instant wed to it, and that is equally naught.
298...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXXIV: Venus! To Thee

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Venus! to thee, the Lesbian Muse shall sing,
The song, which Myttellenian youths admir'd, 
when Echo, am'rous of the strain inspir'd,
Bade the wild rocks with madd'ning plaudits ring!
Attend my pray'r! O! Queen of rapture! bring
To these fond arms, he, whom my soul has fir'd;
From these fond arms remov'd; yet, still desir'd,
Though love, exulting, spreads his varying wing!
Oh! source of ev'ry...Read more of this...

Authors Prologue

by Dylan Thomas
 This day winding down now
At God speeded summer's end
In the torrent salmon sun,
In my seashaken house
On a breakneck of rocks
Tangled with chirrup and fruit,
Froth, flute, fin, and quill
At a wood's dancing hoof,
By scummed, starfish sands
With their fishwife cross
Gulls, pipers, cockles, and snails,
Out there, crow black, men
Tackled with clouds, who kneel
To the sunset nets,
Geese nearly in heaven, boys
Stabbing, and herons,...Read more of this...

Possessions Are Nine Points Of Conversation

by Ogden Nash
 Some people, and it doesn't matter whether they are paupers or millionaires, Think that anything they have is the best in the world just because it is theirs. If they happen to own a 1921 jalopy, They look at their neighbor's new de luxe convertible like the wearer of a 57th Street gown at a 14th Street copy. If...Read more of this...

Ten Powers, and nine spheres, eight heavens made He,

by Omar Khayyam
Ten Powers, and nine spheres, eight heavens made He,
And planets seven, of six sides, as we see,
Five senses, and four elements, three souls,
Two worlds, but only one, O man, like thee....Read more of this...

Sussex

by Rudyard Kipling
 God gave all men all earth to love,
 But, since our hearts are small
Ordained for each one spot should prove
 Beloved over all;
That, as He watched Creation's birth,
 So we, in godlike mood,
May of our love create our earth
 And see that it is good.

So one shall Baltic pines content,
 As one some Surrey glade,
Or one the palm-grove's droned...Read more of this...

All Things Will Die

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Clearly the blue river chimes in its flowing

 Under my eye;
Warmly and broadly the south winds are blowing

 Over the sky.
One after another the white clouds are fleeting;
Every heart this May morning in joyance is beating

 Full merrily;
 Yet all things must die.
The stream will cease to flow;
The wind will cease to blow;
The clouds will cease to fleet;
The heart...Read more of this...

To The Pious Memory Of The Accomplished Young Lady Mrs. Anne Killigrew

by John Dryden
 Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies,
 Made in the last promotion of the Blest;
Whose palms, new pluck'd from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green above the rest:
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us, in thy wand'ring race,
 Or, in procession fix'd and regular,
 Mov'd with the Heavens' majestic pace:
 Or, call'd to more superior...Read more of this...

The Song Of The Mouth-Organ

by Robert William Service
 (With apologies to the singer of the "Song of the Banjo".)


I'm a homely little bit of tin and bone;
 I'm beloved by the Legion of the Lost;
I haven't got a "vox humana" tone,
 And a dime or two will satisfy my cost.
I don't attempt your high-falutin' flights;
 I am more or less uncertain on the key;
But I tell you,...Read more of this...

Stamp Collector

by Robert William Service
 My worldly wealth I hoard in albums three,
My life collection of rare postage stamps;
My room is cold and bare as you can see,
My coat is old and shabby as a tramp's;
Yet more to me than balances in banks,
My albums three are worth a million francs.

I keep them in that box beside my bed,
For who would dream such treasures it...Read more of this...

Nine from Eight

by Sidney Lanier
I was drivin' my two-mule waggin,
With a lot o' truck for sale,
Towards Macon, to git some baggin'
(Which my cotton was ready to bale),
And I come to a place on the side o' the pike
Whar a peert little winter branch jest had throw'd
The sand in a kind of a sand-bar like,
And I seed, a leetle ways up the road,
A man squattin'...Read more of this...

Oscar Hummel

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I staggered on through darkness,
There was a hazy sky, a few stars
Which I followed as best I could.
It was nine o'clock, I was trying to get home.
But somehow I was lost,
Though really keeping the road.
Then I reeled through a gate and into a yard,
And called at the top of my voice:
"Oh, Fiddler! Oh, Mr. Jones!"
(I thought it was his...Read more of this...

Face Lift

by Sylvia Plath
 You bring me good news from the clinic,
Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight white
Mummy-cloths, smiling: I'm all right.
When I was nine, a lime-green anesthetist
Fed me banana-gas through a frog mask. The nauseous vault
Boomed with bad dreams and the Jovian voices of surgeons.
Then mother swam up, holding a tin basin.
O I was sick.

They've changed all that. Traveling
Nude as...Read more of this...

When A Woman Loves A Man

by David Lehman
 When she says Margarita she means Daiquiri.
When she says quixotic she means mercurial.
And when she says, "I'll never speak to you again,"
she means, "Put your arms around me from behind
as I stand disconsolate at the window."

He's supposed to know that.

When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia
or he is in Boston,...Read more of this...

A Theory Of Prosody

by Philip Levine
 When Nellie, my old pussy
cat, was still in her prime,
she would sit behind me
as I wrote, and when the line
got too long she'd reach
one sudden black foreleg down
and paw at the moving hand,
the offensive one. The first
time she drew blood I learned
it was poetic to end
a line anywhere to keep her
quiet. After all, many morn-
ings she'd gotten to the...Read more of this...

419. Bonie Jean: A Ballad

by Robert Burns
 THERE was a lass, and she was fair,
 At kirk or market to be seen;
When a’ our fairest maids were met,
 The fairest maid was bonie Jean.


And aye she wrought her mammie’s wark,
 And aye she sang sae merrilie;
The blythest bird upon the bush
 Had ne’er a lighter heart than she.


But hawks will rob the tender joys
 That bless...Read more of this...

Nine Things

by Richard Brautigan
 It's night
and a numbered beauty
lapses at the wind,
chortles with the 
branches of a tree,

 giggles,

plays shadow dance
with a dead kite,
cajoles affection
from falling leaves,
and knows four 
other things.
One is the color
of your hair....Read more of this...

Awake ye muses nine

by Emily Dickinson
 Awake ye muses nine, sing me a strain divine,
Unwind the solemn twine, and tie my Valentine!

Oh the Earth was made for lovers, for damsel, and hopeless swain,
For sighing, and gentle whispering, and unity made of twain.
All things do go a courting, in earth, or sea, or air,
God hath made nothing single but thee in His world so fair!
The bride,...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 04: 04: Counterpoint: Two Rooms

by Conrad Aiken
 He, in the room above, grown old and tired,
She, in the room below—his floor her ceiling—
Pursue their separate dreams. He turns his light,
And throws himself on the bed, face down, in laughter. . . .
She, by the window, smiles at a starlight night,

His watch—the same he has heard these cycles of ages—
Wearily chimes at seconds beneath his pillow.
The clock,...Read more of this...

Since Nine OClock

by Constantine P Cavafy
 Half past twelve. Time has gone by quickly
since nine o'clock when I lit the lamp
and sat down here. I've been sitting without reading,
without speaking. Completely alone in the house,
whom could I talk to?

Since nine o'clock when I lit the lamp
the shade of my young body
has come to haunt me, to remind me
of shut scented rooms,
of past sensual pleasure -...Read more of this...

Nine Little Goblins

by James Whitcomb Riley
 THEY all climbed up on a high board-fence---
 Nine little Goblins, with green-glass eyes---
Nine little Goblins that had no sense,
 And couldn't tell coppers from cold mince pies;
 And they all climbed up on the fence, and sat---
 And I asked them what they were staring at.

And the first one said, as he scratched his head
 With a *****...Read more of this...

The Harbour

by Eavan Boland
 This harbour was made by art and force.
And called Kingstown and afterwards Dun Laoghaire.
And holds the sea behind its barrier
less than five miles from my house.

Lord be with us say the makers of a nation.
Lord look down say the builders of a harbour.
They came and cut a shape out of ocean
and left stone to close around their labour.

Officers and...Read more of this...

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