Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Novels Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Lehman, David
...gift for codes and ciphers, he joined the counter-
 terrorism unit of army intelligence.
Contrary to what the spook novels say, he found it possible to
 avoid betraying either his country or his lover.
This was the life: strange bedrooms, the perfume of other men's
 wives.
As a spy he has a unique mission: to get his name on the front 
 page of the nation's newspaper of record. Only by doing that 
 would he get the message through to his immediate superior.Read more of this...



by Lehman, David
...re colons and dashes fewer commas
less love based on narrow self-interest
more lust based on a feast of kisses
too many novels too few poems
too many poets not enough poetry...Read more of this...

by Henley, William Ernest
...of art, and, if her eyes
Be tired and ignorant, she has a waist;
Cheaply the Mode she shadows; and she tries
From penny novels to amend her taste;
And, having mopped the zinc for certain years,
And faced the gas, she fades and disappears....Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...e calls convenient: so they are! 
An India screen is pretty furniture, 
A piano-forte is a fine resource, 
All Balzac's novels occupy one shelf, 
The new edition fifty volumes long; 
And little Greek books, with the funny type 
They get up well at Leipsic, fill the next: 
Go on! slabbed marble, what a bath it makes! 
And Parma's pride, the Jerome, let us add! 
'T were pleasant could Correggio's fleeting glow 
Hang full in face of one where'er one roams, 
Since he more than th...Read more of this...

by Estep, Maggie
...rom Love Is A Dog From Hell)

Emotional Idiocy is obviously
a theme close to my heart since I seem to use the phrase in novels and
CDs alike. My friend and mentor of sorts, Andrew Vachss, upon hearing me
read a rendition of this poem, stated that it ought to be the theme song
for borderline personality disorder. He's right.


I'm an Emotional Idiot
so get away from me.
I mean, 
COME HERE. 

Wait, no,
that's too close, 
give me some space
it's a big country...Read more of this...



by Kinnell, Galway
...f us 
toward places where actual known people 
live and may wait, 
we diminish down in our seats, 
disappeared into novels of lives clearer than ours, 
and yet we do not forget for a moment 
the life down there, the doorway each will soon enter: 
where I will meet her again 
and know her again, 
dark radiance with, and then mostly without, the stars. 

Very likely she has always understood 
what I have slowly learned, 
and which only now, after being away, al...Read more of this...

by Belieu, Erin
...ve been unmotivated

squirting perfume onto little cards,
while stocking salad bars, when stripping
covers from romance novels, their heroines
slaving on the chain gang of obsessive love—

and always the same hard candy
of shame dissolving in my throat;

handing in my apron, returning the cash-
register key. And yet, how fine it feels,
the perversity of freedom which never signs
a rent check or explains anything to one's family......Read more of this...

by Chudleigh, Lady Mary
...Blush, or cause a Fear:
Their Memories with solid Notions fill,
And let their Reason dictate to their Will,
Instead of Novels, Histories peruse,
And for their Guides the wiser Ancients chuse,
Thro' all the Labyrinths of Learning go,
And grow more humble, as they more do know.
By doing this, they will Respect procure,
Silence the Men, and lasting Fame secure;
And to themselves the best Companions prove,
And neither fear their Malice, nor desire their Love....Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...ckings,
And women's breasts that glisten like eyes.
The salary man, after a while,
After the week's tedium, and the novels read in bed at night,
Has decisively fucked his neighbor,
And now takes her to the miserable movies,
Where the heroes are horses or passionate princes,
And he caresses her legs covered with sweet down
With his ardent and sweaty palms that smell like cigarettes.
The night of the hunter and the night of the husband
Come together like bed sheets and ...Read more of this...

by Butler, Ellis Parker
...(with apologies to Frederic Taber Cooper)

I well recall (and who does not)
The circus bill-board hippopotamus,
whose wide distended jaws
For fear and terror were good cause.

That month, that vasty carmine cave,
Could munch with ease a Nubian slave;
In fact, the bill-board hippopot-
amus could bolt a house and lot!

Wide opened, that tremendous mouth
...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...out of it."
Samoa, Russia, Ireland I complain of,
No less than England, France, and Italy. 
Because I wrote my novels in New Hampshire
Is no proof that I aimed them at New Hampshire.
When I left Massachusetts years ago
Between two days, the reason why I sought
New Hampshire, not Connecticut,
Rhode Island, New York, or Vermont was this:
Where I was living then, New Hampshire offered
The nearest boundary to escape across.
I hadn't an illusion in my handbag
Abou...Read more of this...

by Rimbaud, Arthur
...kiss
On your lips, quivering like a living thing. . .

III.

The wild heart Crusoes through a thousand novels
--And when a young girl walks alluringly
Through a streetlamp's pale light, beneath the ominous shadow
Of her father's starched collar. . .

Because as she passes by, boot heels tapping,
She turns on a dime, eyes wide, 
Finding you too sweet to resist. . .
--And cavatinas die on your lips.

IV.

You're in love. Off ...Read more of this...

by Lehman, David
...counting backwards. The interviewer asked one loaded
Question after another, such as why I often read the middle
Of novels, ignoring their beginnings and their ends. when
Had I decided to volunteer for intelligence work? "In bed
With a broad," I answered, with locker-room bravado. The truth was, jobs

Were scarce, and working on Operation Memory was better than no job
At all. Unamused, the judge looked at his watch. It was 1970
By the time he spoke. Re...Read more of this...

by Lehman, David
...are they, anyway? I'd answer that
with speculations based on newspaper accounts if I were
Donald E. Westlake, whose novels I'm hooked on, but
this first cigarette after twenty-four hours
of abstinence tastes so good it makes me want
to include it in my catalogue of pleasures
designed to hide the ugliness or sweep it away
the way the violent overflow of rain over cliffs
cleans the sewers and drains of Ithaca
whose waterfalls head my list, followed by
crudites of carrots an...Read more of this...

by Duhamel, Denise
...tudent, a daydreamer who might have been a scholar
if she'd only applied herself. She liked sappy music
and romance novels. She liked pies and cake
instead of fruit.
 The Queen remained the fairest in the land.
It was hard on Snow, having such a glamorous mom.
She rebelled by wearing torn shawls and baggy gowns.
Her mother would sometimes say, "Snow darling,
why don't you pull back your hair? Show those pretty eyes?"
or "Come on, I'll take you shopping...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...! 
Thy pennants, Labor, loosen’d to the breeze! 
Thy bugles sounding loud and clear!

Away with old romance! 
Away with novels, plots, and plays of foreign courts! 
Away with love-verses, sugar’d in rhyme—the intrigues, amours of idlers, 
Fitted for only banquets of the night, where dancers to late music slide; 
The unhealthy pleasures, extravagant dissipations of the few,
With perfumes, heat and wine, beneath the dazzling chandeliers. 

9
To you, ye Reverent, sane Sister...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...you sung;
That cozy that you worked in colored wool,
The Spanish lace you made when you were young,
And lots of modern novels, cheap reprints,
And little dainty knick-knacks everywhere;
And silken bows and curtains of gay chintz . . .
And oh, her tiny crib, her folding chair!

Sweet woman dear, and did your heart not break,
To leave this precious home you made in vain?
Poor shabby things! so prized for old times' sake,
With all their memories of love and pain.Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along
the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a
screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...plete in busbee, marching to embark.
I had read freely, even as a child,
Not only Meredith and Oscar Wilde
But many novels of an earlier day—
Ravenshoe, Can You Forgive Her?, Vivien Grey,
Ouida, The Duchess, Broughton's Red As a Rose,
Guy Livingstone, Whyte-Melville— Heaven knows
What others. Now, I thought, I was to see
Their habitat, though like the Miller of Dee,
I cared for none and no one cared for me.


III 
A light blue carpet on the stair 
And tall young f...Read more of this...

by Butler, Ellis Parker
...e missed.”

To Congress said George Washington:
 “Since I must meet them all
(And if I don’t you know how flat
 The novels all will fall),
I cannot take much time to fight,
 I must be on the run,
Or some historic novelist
 Will surely be undone.”

Said Congress to George Washington:
 “You are a noble man.
Your thoughtfulness is notable,
 And we approve your plan;
A battle won pads very well
 A novel that is thin,
But it is better to retreat
 Than miss one man and ...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Novels poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things