Famous Note Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Lovers Complaint

...es
Their distract parcels in combined sums.

''Lo, this device was sent me from a nun,
Or sister sanctified, of holiest note;
Which late her noble suit in court did shun,
Whose rarest havings made the blossoms dote;
For she was sought by spirits of richest coat,
But kept cold distance, and did thence remove,
To spend her living in eternal love.

''But, O my sweet, what labour is't to leave
The thing we have not, mastering what not strives,
Playing the place which did no form ...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William


Beowulf (Modern English)

...p
spoken about you, about such terrible battles,
the terror of blades. Neither Brecca nor you
ever performed much of note in the dance of battle,
with the splattered sword—not to boast much of it—
though you might have been a killer of your brothers,
your own close kin, and for that you ought to suffer
retribution in the hall, even though your wit might avail you. (ll. 574-89)

“I say something else that’s true, son of Ecglaf,
that Grendel never would have shown so ...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Beowulf (Old English)

...ings of earth,
of men he was mildest and most beloved,
to his kin the kindest, keenest for praise.







Footnotes:
{0a} Not, of course, Beowulf the Great, hero of the epic.

{0b} Kenning for king or chieftain of a comitatus: he breaks off gold from the spiral rings -- often worn on the arm -- and so rewards his followers.

{1a} That is, “The Hart,” or “Stag,” so called from decorations in the gables that resembled the antlers of a deer. This hall has been car...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Fear

...Fear of having to live with my mother in her old age, and mine.
Fear of confusion.
Fear this day will end on an unhappy note.
Fear of waking up to find you gone.
Fear of not loving and fear of not loving enough.
Fear that what I love will prove lethal to those I love.
Fear of death.
Fear of living too long.
Fear of death.

I've said that....Read more of this...
by Carver, Raymond

Humanitad

...on flies.

O for one grand unselfish simple life
To teach us what is Wisdom! speak ye hills
Of lone Helvellyn, for this note of strife
Shunned your untroubled crags and crystal rills,
Where is that Spirit which living blamelessly
Yet dared to kiss the smitten mouth of his own century!

Speak ye Rydalian laurels! where is he
Whose gentle head ye sheltered, that pure soul
Whose gracious days of uncrowned majesty
Through lowliest conduct touched the lofty goal
Where love and dut...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar


On the Way

...NOTE.—The following imaginary dialogue between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, which is not based upon any specific incident in American history, may be supposed to have occurred a few months previous to Hamilton’s retirement from Washington’s Cabinet in 1795 and a few years before the political ingenuities of Burr—who has been characterized, without much...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Passage to India

...steam-whistle, 
I hear the echoes reverberate through the grandest scenery in the world; 
I cross the Laramie plains—I note the rocks in grotesque shapes—the buttes; 
I see the plentiful larkspur and wild onions—the barren, colorless, sage-deserts;
I see in glimpses afar, or towering immediately above me, the great mountains—I see
 the
 Wind River and the Wahsatch mountains; 
I see the Monument mountain and the Eagle’s Nest—I pass the Promontory—I
 ascend
 the Nevadas; 
I sc...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Ravenna

...ke, thy myriad galleys ride!
For where the brass-beaked ships were wont to float,
The weary shepherd pipes his mournful note;
And the white sheep are free to come and go
Where Adria's purple waters used to flow.

O fair! O sad! O Queen uncomforted!
In ruined loveliness thou liest dead,
Alone of all thy sisters; for at last
Italia's royal warrior hath passed
Rome's lordliest entrance, and hath worn his crown
In the high temples of the Eternal Town!
The Palatine hath welcomed b...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Sea Dreams

...t same coast. 

--But round the North, a light,
A belt, it seem'd, of luminous vapor, lay,
And ever in it a low musical note
Swell'd up and died; and, as it swell'd, a ridge
Of breaker issued from the belt, and still
Grew with the growing note, and when the note
Had reach'd a thunderous fullness, on those cliffs
Broke, mixt with awful light (the same as that
Living within the belt) whereby she saw
That all those lines of cliffs were cliffs no more,
But huge cathedral fronts o...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Song of Myself

...om the top. 

The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bed-room; 
I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair—I note where the pistol has
 fallen.

The blab of the pave, the tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of the
 promenaders; 
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the clank of the
 shod horses on the granite floor; 
The snow-sleighs, the clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snowballs; 
The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury o...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Bride of Abydos

...ssage from the Bulbul bears; [17] 
It says to-night he will prolong 
For Selim's ear his sweetest song; 
And though his note is somewhat sad, 
He'll try for once a strain more glad, 
With some faint hope his alter'd lay 
May sing these gloomy thoughts away. 

XI. 

"What! not receive my foolish flower? 
Nay then I am indeed unblest: 
On me can thus thy forehead lower? 
And know'st thou not who loves thee best? 
Oh, Selim dear! oh, more than dearest! 
Say is it me thou hat'st ...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Everlasting Mercy

...ck struck three, and sweetly, slowly, 
The bells chimed Holy, Holy, Holy; 
And in a second's pause there fell 
The cold note of the chapel bell. 
And then a cock crew, flapping wings, 
And summat made me think of things. 
How long those ticking clocks had gone 
From church to chapel, on and on, 
Ticking the time out, ticking slow 
To men and girls who'd come and go, 
And how they ticked in belfry dark 
When half the town was bishop's park, 
And how they'd run a chime full til...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

The Growth of Love

...ate,
Whose baneful clause is never out of date,
Nor can avenging time restore my right:
Whom first to lose sounded that note of spite,
Whereto my doleful days were tuned by fate:
That art the well-loved cause of all my hate,
The sun whose wandering makes my hopeless night: 
Thou being in all my lacking all I lack,
It is thy goodness turns my grace to crime,
Thy fleetness from my goal which holds me back;
Wherefore my feet go out of step with time,
My very grasp of life is old...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour

The Hunting Of The Snark

...to procure
 A second-hand dagger-proof coat--
So the Baker advised it-- and next, to insure
 Its life in some Office of note:

This the Banker suggested, and offered for hire
 (On moderate terms), or for sale,
Two excellent Policies, one Against Fire,
 And one Against Damage From Hail.

Yet still, ever after that sorrowful day,
 Whenever the Butcher was by,
The Beaver kept looking the opposite way,
 And appeared unaccountably shy.


II.--THE BELLMAN'S SPEECH.

Fit the Second....Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

The Knights Tale

...ne, and ditched all without.
*Round was the shape, in manner of compass,
Full of degrees, the height of sixty pas* *see note *
That when a man was set on one degree
He letted* not his fellow for to see. *hindered
Eastward there stood a gate of marble white,
Westward right such another opposite.
And, shortly to conclude, such a place
Was never on earth made in so little space,
For in the land there was no craftes-man,
That geometry or arsmetrike* can**, *arithmetic **knew
...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Lady of the Lake

...y,
        And all unworthy of thy nobler strain,
     Yet if one heart throb higher at its sway,
        The wizard note has not been touched in vain.
     Then silent be no more! Enchantress, wake again!
     I.

     The stag at eve had drunk his fill,
     Where danced the moon on Monan's rill,
     And deep his midnight lair had made
     In lone Glenartney's hazel shade;
     But when the sun his beacon red
     Had kindled on Benvoirlich's head,
     The d...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

...he became Jehovah.
But in Milton; the Father is Destiny, the Son, a Ratio of the
five senses. & the Holy-ghost, Vacuum!
Note. The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of
Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he
was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it


A Memorable Fancy.

As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the 
enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and
insanity. I collected some of the...Read more of this...
by Blake, William

The Triumph of Life

...he began it
In that star's smile, whose light is like the scent
Of a jonquil when evening breezes fan it,
"Or the soft note in which his dear lament
The Brescian shepherd breathes, or the caress
That turned his weary slumber to content.--
"So knew I in that light's severe excess
The presence of that shape which on the stream
Moved, as I moved along the wilderness,
"More dimly than a day appearing dream,
The ghost of a forgotten form of sleep
A light from Heaven whose half ex...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The Vision of Judgment

...nce which 
By no means oft was his case below, 
Began to cough, and hawk, and hem, and pitch 
His voice into that awful note of woe 
To all unhappy hearers within reach 
Of poets when the tide of rhyme's in flow; 
But stuck fast with his first hexameter, 
Not one of all whose gouty feet would stir. 

XCI 

But ere the spavin'd dactyls could be spurr'd 
Into recitative, in great dismay 
Both cherubim and seraphim were heard 
To murmur loudly through their long array: 
And Mich...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The White Cliffs

...s financial.' 'Oh, quite, 
All that they care for is gold.' 
'All that they care for is gold.' 
'Seem to like writing a note.' 
'Yes, as a penman, he's bold.'
'No. It's the Irish vote.'

'Oh, it's the Irish vote.'
'What if the Germans some night
Sink an American boat?'
'Darling, they're too proud to fight.'

XXXIV 
What could I do, but ache and long 
That my country, peaceful, rich, and strong, 
Should come and do battle for England's sake. 
What could I do, but long and ache...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer

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