Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Official Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Kipling, Rudyard
...ate line. Hi! Threes about there! Trot!"

All honour unto Bangs, for ne'er did Jones thereafter know
By word or act official who read off that helio.
But the tale is on the Frontier, and from Michni to Mooltan
They know the worthy General as "that most immoral man."...Read more of this...



by Kipling, Rudyard
...the artless songs I sing
Do not deal with anything
 New or never said before.
As it was in the beginning
Is to-day official sinning,
 And shall be for evermore!...Read more of this...

by Ayres, Pam
...pe she hears our voices as we thank her now as one,
Sixty years a Queen. A job immaculately done.

© Pam Ayres 2012
Official Website
http://pamayres.com/...Read more of this...

by Arnold, Matthew
...fetch, to take the accustomed toll
Of the poor sinner bound for death,
His brother doctor of the soul,
To canvass with official breath

The future and its viewless things—
That undiscovered mystery
Which one who feels death's winnowing wings
Must need read clearer, sure, than he!

Bring none of these; but let me be,
While all around in silence lies,
Moved to the window near, and see
Once more before my dying eyes

Bathed in the sacred dew of morn
The wide aerial landscape sp...Read more of this...

by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...
Your heart will sicken at the marriage feasts 
Knowing they watch you from the darkened gardens 
Being polite to your official guests....Read more of this...



by Kramberger, Taja
...t be undermined,
every few years
soiled and substituted
with another one.

A decade ago,
a high-ranking party official warned me:
Stay a poet, as long as there’s still time.
Still time?                     Time for what?

I have also become a social scientist
and an editor and an organiser
and a translator and an activist
and a university teacher.
Unbearable - all these things -
all trespasses of the old parcel borders
that were drawn by the dirty
...Read more of this...

by Wei, Wang
...looming and the willowcotton flies. 
You have heard in your office the court-bell of twilight; 
Birds find perches, officials head for home. 
Your morning-jade will tinkle as you thread the golden palace; 
You will bring the word of Heaven from the closing gates at night. 
And I should serve there with you; but being full of years, 
I have taken off official robes and am resting from my troubles....Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...the final 
 warehouse. 

 II

Yet Spade reminded me of Angel, unloading a bus, 
dressed in blue overalls black face official Angel's work- 
 man cap, 
pushing with his belly a huge tin horse piled high with 
 black baggage, 
looking up as he passed the yellow light bulb of the loft 
and holding high on his arm an iron shepherd's crook. 

 III

It was the racks, I realized, sitting myself on top of 
 them now as is my wont at lunchtime to rest 
 my tired foot, 
it was ...Read more of this...

by Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...k without mercy
every red-taped paper.
 But this ...
Down the long front
 of coupés and cabins
File the officials
 politely.
They gather up passports
 and I give in
My own vermilion booklet.
For one kind of passport -
smiling lips part
For others -
 an attitude scornful.
They take
 with respect, for instance,
 the passport
From a sleeping-car
English Lionel.
The good fellows eyes
 almost slip like pips
when,
 bowing as low as men can,
they take...Read more of this...

by Ayres, Pam
...’
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.

Taken from the The Works: The Classic Collection 2008.

© Pam Ayres 2012
Official Website
http://pamayres.com/...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...nose the doubtful case
Of Demos—and what for? Have you a sword 
For some new Damocles? If it’s for me, 
I have lost all official appetite, 
And shall have faded, after January, 
Into the law. I’m going to New York.

BURR

No matter where you are, one of these days 
I shall come back to you and tell you something. 
This Demos, I have heard, has in his wrist 
A pulse that no two doctors have as yet 
Counted and found the same, and in his mouth
A tongue that has the ...Read more of this...

by Fu, Du
...ask Battle person dare state bitterness Even like this year winter Not stop pass west soldier District official urgent demand tax Tax tax way how pay True know produce males bad Contrast be produce females good Produce female still get married neighbour Produce male bury follow hundred grass Gentleman not see Qinghai edge Past come white skeleton no person gather New ghost vexed injustice old ghosts weep Heaven dark rain we...Read more of this...

by Rich, Adrienne
...ake us meet anew, entire.

You asked me once, and I could give no answer,
How far dare we throw off the daily ruse,
Official treacheries of face and name,
Have out our true identity? I could hazard
An answer now, if you are asking still.
We are a small and lonely human race
Showing no sign of mastering solitude
Out on this stony planet that we farm.
The most that we can do for one another
Is let our blunders and our blind mischances
Argue a certain brusque abrupt ...Read more of this...

by Auden, Wystan Hugh (W H)
...He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to beOne against whom there was no official complaint,And all the reports on his conduct agreeThat, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was asaint,For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.Except for the War till the day he retiredHe worked in a factory and never got fired,But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.Yet he wasn't a...Read more of this...

by Levis, Larry
...s
Before Mr. Hirata died, months later,
From complications following pneumonia.
His death, a letter from a camp official said,
Was purely accidental. I didn't believe it.
Diseases were wise. Diseases, like the polio
My sister had endured, floating paralyzed
And strapped into her wheelchair all through
That war, seemed too precise. Like photographs . . .
Except disease left nothing. Disease was like
And equation that drank up light & nev...Read more of this...

by Ayres, Pam
...paedias, on them we never have to call
Why clutter up the bookshelf when my husband knows it all!

© Pam Ayres 2012
Official Website
http://pamayres.com/...Read more of this...

by Davidson, John
...in the dark,
A-travelling along the underground
From my Pillar'd Halls and broad Suburbean Park,
To come the daily dull official round;
And home again at night with my pipe all alight,
A-scheming how to count ten bob a pound.

And it's often very cold and very wet,
And my missus stitches towels for a hunks;
And the Pillar'd Halls is half of it to let--
Three rooms about the size of travelling trunks.
And we cough, my wife and I, to dislocate a sigh,
When the noisy lit...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...assics they took away her chair

So she sat on the floor reading Virgil and the Chairman of the

Department sent her an official Christmas card

'For six weeks on the university lawn, learning the

Hebrew alphabet'.





And that was just the beginning: in Oxford Magdalen College

School turned our son away for the Leeds protest so she

Started again, in Magdalen Quad, sitting through Oxford's

Worst ever winter and finally they arrested her on the

Eve of the May Ball so...Read more of this...

by Ayres, Pam
...ents so that when their work is done
I’ll be tall and standing strongly in the beauty of the sun.

© Pam Ayres 2012
Official Website
http://pamayres.com/...Read more of this...

by Ayres, Pam
...great advantages,
But none of them for you,
And so before you see the light,
I DO, I DO, I DO!!

© Pam Ayres 2012
Official Website
http://pamayres.com/...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Official poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things