Famous Often Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Lovers Complaint

...on it had conceited characters,
Laundering the silken figures in the brine
That season'd woe had pelleted in tears,
And often reading what contents it bears;
As often shrieking undistinguish'd woe,
In clamours of all size, both high and low.

Sometimes her levell'd eyes their carriage ride,
As they did battery to the spheres intend;
Sometime diverted their poor balls are tied
To the orbed earth; sometimes they do extend
Their view right on; anon their gazes lend
To every plac...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William


Beowulf (Modern English)

...lory in days of yore
of the Spear-Danes, kings among men:
how these warriors performed deeds of courage. (ll. 1-3)

Often Scyld Scefing seized the mead-seats
from hordes of harmers, from how many people,
terrifying noble men, after he was found
so needy at the start. He wrangled his remedy after,
growing hale under the heavens, thriving honorably,
until all of them had to obey him,
those scattered about, across the whale-road,
must pay him tribute. That was a good ...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Dickinson Poems by Number

...f getting to Heaven, at last—
I'm going, all along.

326

I cannot dance upon my Toes—
No Man instructed me—
But oftentimes, among my mind,
A Glee possesseth me,

That had I Ballet knowledge—
Would put itself abroad
In Pirouette to blanch a Troupe—
Or lay a Prima, mad,

And though I had no Gown of Gauze—
No Ringlet, to my Hair,
Nor hopped to Audiences—like Birds,
One Claw upon the Air,

Nor tossed my shape in Eider Balls,
Nor rolled on wheels of snow
Til...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

...d the notary public,--
"Man is unjust, but God is just; and finally justice
Triumphs; and well I remember a story, that often consoled me,
When as a captive I lay in the old French fort at Port Royal."
This was the old man's favorite tale, and he loved to repeat it
When his neighbors complained that any injustice was done them.
"Once in an ancient city, whose name I no longer remember,
Raised aloft on a column, a brazen statue of Justice
Stood in the public square, upholding ...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Humanitad

...tle witchery
She drew the moon from heaven: the Muse Time
Unrolls her gorgeous-coloured tapestry
To no less eager eyes; often indeed
In the great epic of Polymnia's scroll I love to read

How Asia sent her myriad hosts to war
Against a little town, and panoplied
In gilded mail with jewelled scimitar,
White-shielded, purple-crested, rode the Mede
Between the waving poplars and the sea
Which men call Artemisium, till he saw Thermopylae

Its steep ravine spanned by a narrow wall...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar


Shall I compare thee to a summers day? (Sonnet 18 XVIII)

...he darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William

Song of the Open Road

...
My call is the call of battle—I nourish active rebellion; 
He going with me must go well arm’d; 
He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies, desertions. 

17
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well. 

Allons! be not detain’d! 
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d! 
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d! 
Let the school stand! mind ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Ballad of the White Horse

...ir wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.

He kept the Roman order,
He made the Christian sign;
But his eyes grew often blind and bright,
And the sea that rose in the rocks at night
Rose to his head like wine.

He made the sign of the cross of God,
He knew the Roman prayer,
But he had unreason in his heart
Because of the gods that were.

Even they that walked on the high cliffs,
High as the clouds were then,
Gods of unbearable beauty,
That broke the hearts of men.

And ...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K

The Dungeon

...e.   He all the country could outrun,  Could leave both man and horse behind;  And often, ere the race was done,  He reeled and was stone-blind.  And still there's something in the world  At which his heart rejoices;  For when the chiming bounds are out,  He dearly loves their voices!   Old Ruth works out of doors with him.  And does what Simon cannot do; &nb...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

The Four Ages of Man

...d;
4.99 The knotty Gout doth sadly torture me,
4.100 And the restraining lame Sciatica;
4.101 The Quinsy and the Fevers often distaste me,
4.102 And the Consumption to the bones doth waste me,
4.103 Subject to all Diseases, that's the truth,
4.104 Though some more incident to age, or youth;
4.105 And to conclude, I may not tedious be,
4.106 Man at his best estate is vanity.

Old Age. 

5.1 What you have been, ev'n such have I before,
5.2 And all you say, say I, and something ...Read more of this...
by Bradstreet, Anne

The Holy Grail

...hom she told her sins, or what 
Her all but utter whiteness held for sin, 
A man wellnigh a hundred winters old, 
Spake often with her of the Holy Grail, 
A legend handed down through five or six, 
And each of these a hundred winters old, 
From our Lord's time. And when King Arthur made 
His Table Round, and all men's hearts became 
Clean for a season, surely he had thought 
That now the Holy Grail would come again; 
But sin broke out. Ah, Christ, that it would come, 
And hea...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Hunting Of The Snark

...to some extent connected with the lay of the Jabberwock, let me take this opportunity of answering a question that has often been asked me, how to pronounce "slithy toves." The "i" in "slithy" is long, as in "writhe"; and "toves" is pronounced so as to rhyme with "groves." Again, the first "o" in "borogoves" is pronounced like the "o" in "borrow." I have heard people try to give it the sound of the"o" in "worry." Such is Human Perversity. This also seems a fitting occasion t...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

The Idiot Boy

...bsp; "Oh Sir! you know I'm Betty Foy,  And I have lost my poor dear boy,  You know him—him you often see;"   "He's not so wise as some folks be,"  "The devil take his wisdom!" said  The Doctor, looking somewhat grim,  "What, woman! should I know of him?"  And, grumbling, he went back to bed.   "O woe is me! O woe is me!  Here will I die; here will I die;  I t...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

The Knights Tale

...in despair*
Farewell my life, my lust*, and my gladness. *pleasure
Alas, *why plainen men so in commune *why do men so often complain
Of purveyance of God*, or of Fortune, of God's providence?*
That giveth them full oft in many a guise
Well better than they can themselves devise?
Some man desireth for to have richess,
That cause is of his murder or great sickness.
And some man would out of his prison fain,
That in his house is of his meinie* slain. *servants 
Infinite ha...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Lady of the Lake

...cho seemed an answering blast;
     And on the Hunter tried his way,
     To join some comrades of the day,
     Yet often paused, so strange the road,
     So wondrous were the scenes it showed.
     XI.

     The western waves of ebbing day
     Rolled o'er the glen their level way;
     Each purple peak, each flinty spire,
     Was bathed in floods of living fire.
     But not a setting beam could glow
     Within the dark ravines below,
     Where twined the ...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

...f fire & he was consumed and arose
as Elijah.

Note. This Angel, who is now become a Devil, is my
particular friend: we often read the Bible together in its
infernal or diabolical sense which the world shall have if they
behave well 
I have also: The Bible of Hell: which the world shall have
whether they will or no.

One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression


PLATE 25
A Song of Liberty

The Eternal Female groand! it was heard over all the Earth:
Albions coast is sick silent; t...Read more of this...
by Blake, William

The Vision of Judgment

...ck steam 
Hid him from sight — like fogs on London days: 
Now Burke, now Tooke he grew to people's fancies, 
And certes often like Sir Philip Francis. 

LXXX 

I've an hypothesis — 'tis quite my own; 
I never let it out till now, for fear 
Of doing people harm about the throne, 
And injuring some minister or peer, 
On whom the stigma might perhaps be blown; 
It is — my gentle public, lend thine ear! 
'Tis, that what Junius we are wont to call 
Was really, truly, nobody at all...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Waste Land

...r ascoltare,
 "non avea pianto, ma' che di sospiri,
 "che l'aura eterna facevan tremare."
68. A phenomenon which I have often noticed.
74. Cf. the Dirge in Webster's White Devil .
76. V. Baudelaire, Preface to Fleurs du Mal.
II. A GAME OF CHESS
77. Cf. Antony and Cleopatra, II. ii., l. 190.
92. Laquearia. V. Aeneid, I. 726:
 dependent lychni laquearibus aureis incensi, et
noctem flammis
 funalia
vincunt.
98. Sylvan scene. V. Milton, Paradise Lost, iv. 140.
99. V. Ovid, Metamo...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

The White Cliffs

...in a rusty dim decay— 
Like ladies going the primrose way— 
At anchor, until when the moon was black, 
They sailed, and often never came back. 

Even my father's Puritan drawl
Told me shyly he'd sold his yawl
For a fabulous price to the constable's son—
My childhood's playmate, thought to be one
Of a criminal gang, rum-runners all,
Such clever fellows with so much money—
Even the constable found it funny,
Until one morning his son was found,
Floating dead in Long Island Sound...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer

White Flock

...ory cross my mind,
I still wander in rooms dark and bleary
And his crib still attempt to find."



x x x

How often did I curse
This sky, this earth as well,
The slowly waving arms
Of this ancient windmill.
In a wing there lies a dead man,
Straight and grayhaired, on a bench,
As he did three years ago.
Thus the mice whet with their teeth
Books, thus the stearine candle
Leans its flame to the left.
And the odious tambourine
From the Nizhny Novgorod
Sings ...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

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