Famous Numbered Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Numbered poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous numbered poems. These examples illustrate what a famous numbered poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...odges smoke upon the plain,
And all the vale is strewn with bodies of the slain.
XXV.
And those who are not numbered with the dead
Before all-conquering Custer now are led.
To soothe their woes, and calm their fears he seeks;
An Osage guide interprets while he speaks.
The vanquished captives, humbled, cowed and spent
Read in the victor's eye his kind intent.
The modern victor is as kind as brave;
His captive is his guest, not his insulted slave.
...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...nfluence they fear.
O would they rather by his pattern won
Kiss the approaching, not yet angry Son;
And in their numbered footsteps humbly tread
The path where holy oracles do lead;
How might they under such a captain raise
The great designs kept for the latter days!
But mad with reason (so miscalled) of state
They know them not, and what they know not, hate.
Hence still they sing hosanna to the whore,
And her, whom they should massacre, adore:
But Indians,...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...WHEN the hours of Day are numbered
And the voices of the Night
Wake the better soul that slumbered
To a holy calm delight;
Ere the evening lamps are lighted 5
And like phantoms grim and tall
Shadows from the fitful firelight
Dance upon the parlor wall;
Then the forms of the departed
Enter at the open door; 10
The beloved the true-hearted
Come to visit me...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ighty; Sophocles
Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers,
When each had numbered more than fourscore years,
And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten,
Had but begun his "Characters of Men."
Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales,
At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales;
Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,
Completed Faust when eighty years were past.
These are indeed exceptions; but they show
How far the gulf-str...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...
Had not the Eternal King Omnipotent,
From his strong hold of Heaven, high over-ruled
And limited their might; though numbered such
As each divided legion might have seemed
A numerous host; in strength each armed hand
A legion; led in fight, yet leader seemed
Each warriour single as in chief, expert
When to advance, or stand, or turn the sway
Of battle, open when, and when to close
The ridges of grim war: No thought of flight,
None of retreat, no unbecoming deed
Th...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...sisting; and compute
Their magnitudes; this Earth, a spot, a grain,
An atom, with the firmament compared
And all her numbered stars, that seem to roll
Spaces incomprehensible, (for such
Their distance argues, and their swift return
Diurnal,) merely to officiate light
Round this opacous Earth, this punctual spot,
One day and night; in all her vast survey
Useless besides; reasoning I oft admire,
How Nature wise and frugal could commit
Such disproportions, with superf...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...
Till their lost shape, permitted, they resumed;
Yearly enjoined, some say, to undergo,
This annual humbling certain numbered days,
To dash their pride, and joy, for Man seduced.
However, some tradition they dispersed
Among the Heathen, of their purchase got,
And fabled how the Serpent, whom they called
Ophion, with Eurynome, the wide--
Encroaching Eve perhaps, had first the rule
Of high Olympus; thence by Saturn driven
And Ops, ere yet Dictaean Jove was born.<...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...in me, from these receive
The smell of peace toward mankind: let him live
Before thee reconciled, at least his days
Numbered, though sad; till death, his doom, (which I
To mitigate thus plead, not to reverse,)
To better life shall yield him: where with me
All my redeemed may dwell in joy and bliss;
Made one with me, as I with thee am one.
To whom the Father, without cloud, serene.
All thy request for Man, accepted Son,
Obtain; all thy request was my decree:...Read more of this...
by
Tzara, Tristan
...t ready for the action of the geyser of our blood
-submarine formation of transchromatic aero-
planes, cellular metals numbered in
the flight of images
above the rules of the
and its control
BEAUTIFUL
It is not for the sawed-off imps
who still worship their navel...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...br>
When she grew calm, she thus did keep
The tenor of her tale:--
He died;
I know not how; he was not old,
If age be numbered by its years;
But he was bowed and bent with fears,
Pale with the quenchless thirst of gold,
Which, like fierce fever, left him weak;
And his strait lip and bloated cheek
Were warped in spasms by hollow sneers;
And selfish cares with barren plough,
Not age, had lined his narrow brow,
And foul and cruel thoughts, which feed
Upon the withering life w...Read more of this...
by
Twain, Mark
...s prophet say'th,
When every soul about him seeth
A wonder crown his faith!
And count ye all, both great and small,
As numbered with the dead:
For mariner for forty year,
On Erie, boy and man,
I never yet saw such a storm,
Or one't with it began!"
So overboard a keg of nails
And anvils three we threw,
Likewise four bales of gunny-sacks,
Two hundred pounds of glue,
Two sacks of corn, four ditto wheat,
A box of books, a cow,
A violin, Lord Byron's works,
A rip-saw and a sow.<...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...nd Doom:
The hangman, with his little bag,
Went shuffling through the gloom:
And each man trembled as he crept
Into his numbered tomb.
That night the empty corridors
Were full of forms of Fear,
And up and down the iron town
Stole feet we could not hear,
And through the bars that hide the stars
White faces seemed to peer.
He lay as one who lies and dreams
In a pleasant meadow-land,
The watchers watched him as he slept,
And could not understand
How one could sleep so...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...I sliced off like a melanoma.
It is six P.M. as I water these tiny weeds
and their little half-life,
their numbered days
that raged like a secret radio,
recalling love that I picked up innocently,
yet guiltily,
as my five-year-old daughter
picked gum off the sidewalk
and it became suddenly an elastic miracle.
For me it was love found
like a diamond
where carrots grow--
the glint of diamond on a plane wing,
meaning: DANGER! THICK ICE!
but the good crunch of t...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...
And there the fire was flaming bright,
For miles and miles it spread,
And many a sheep and horse and cow
Were numbered with the dead --
The super came to meet Old Bill,
And this is what he said:
"No use, to try to beat it out,
'Twill dry you up like toast,
I've done as much as man can do,
Although I never boast;
I think you'd better chuck it up,
And let the jumbucks roast."
Then Bill said just two words: "You're sacked,"
And pitches off his coat,
An...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...ht see, And then I married, and was rich As I could wish to be; Of sheep I numbered a full score, And every year increas'd my store. Year after year my stock it grew, And from this one, this single ewe, Full fifty comely sheep I raised, As sweet a flock as ever grazed! Upon the mountain did they feed; They throve, and we...Read more of this...
by
Arnold, Matthew
...u hast not lived, why shouldst thou perish, so?
Thou hadst one aim, one business, one desire;
Else wert thou long since numbered with the dead!
Else hadst thou spent, like other men, thy fire!
The generations of thy peers are fled,
And we ourselves shall go;
But thou possessest an immortal lot,
And we imagine thee exempt from age
And living as thou liv'st on Glanvil's page,
Because thou hadst—what we, alas! have not.
For early didst thou leave the world, with powers
Fres...Read more of this...
by
Walcott, Derek
...Its coarse pages were black with the usual
symbols of prophecy, in excited Spanish:
an open palm upright, sectioned and numbered
like a butcher chart, delivered the future.
One night, in a fever, radiantly ill,
she say, "Bring me the book, the end has come."
She said, "I dreamt of whales and a storm,"
but for that dream, the book had no answer.
A next night I dreamed of three old women
featureless as silkworms, stitching my fate,
and I scream at them to come out o...Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...iver's winding shores
Stand the Occidental plane-trees,
Stand the ancient sycamores.
One long century hath been numbered,
And another half-way told
Since the rustic Irish gleeman
Broke for them the virgin mould.
Deftly set to Celtic music
At his violin's sound they grew,
Through the moonlit eves of summer,
Making Amphion's fable true.
Rise again, thou poor Hugh Tallant!
Pass in erkin green along
With thy eyes brim full of laughter,
And thy mouth a...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...ands of fleshpiercing needles
and here listed money millions gained by each combine for
manufacture
and here are gains numbered, index'd swelling a decade, set
in order,
here named the Fathers in office in these industries, tele-
phones directing finance,
names of directors, makers of fates, and the names of the
stockholders of these destined Aggregates,
and here are the names of their ambassadors to the Capital,
representatives to legislature, those who sit drinking
i...Read more of this...
by
Amichai, Yehuda
...ng meter.
I can stand here for nothing, free.
I'm not a car, I'm a person,
A man-god, a god-man
Whose days are numbered. Hallelujah....Read more of this...
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