Famous Oldest Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Oldest poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous oldest poems. These examples illustrate what a famous oldest poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Rg Gregory
professor piebald
(the oldest man in the home) was meek
at the same time ribald
he clothed his matter (so to speak)
in latin and (was it) greek
it caused no great offence
to nobody did it make sense
to make a rude joke
in languages nobody spoke
once he'd changed the word agenda
at a home's committee meeting to pudenda
this sort of thing was tolerated by the other
inmates...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
Where's the lamp that Hero lit
Once to call Leander home?
Equal Time hath shovelled it
'Neath the wrack of Greece and Rome.
Neither wait we any more
That worn sail which Argo bore.
Dust and dust of ashes close
All the Vestal Virgin's care;
And the oldest altar shows
But an older darkness there.
Age-encamped Oblivion
Tenteth every light that shone.
Yet shall we, for Suns...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
A doll in the doll-maker's house
Looks at the cradle and bawls:
'That is an insult to us.'
But the oldest of all the dolls,
Who had seen, being kept for show,
Generations of his sort,
Out-screams the whole shelf: 'Although
There's not a man can report
Evil of this place,
The man and the woman bring
Hither, to our disgrace,
A noisy and filthy thing.'
Hearing him groan and stretch
The...Read more of this...
by
Hilaire Belloc
When I am living in the Midlands
That are sodden and unkind,
I light my lamp in the evening:
My work is left behind;
And the great hills of the South Country
Come back into my mind.
The great hills of the South Country
They stand along the sea;
And it's there walking in the high woods
That I could wish to be,
And...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
Go I must along my ways
Though my heart be ragged,
Dripping bitter through the days,
Festering, and jagged.
Smile I must at every twinge,
Kiss, to time its throbbing;
He that tears a heart to fringe
Hates the noise of sobbing.
Weep, my love, till Heaven hears;
Curse and moan and languish.
While I wash your wound with tears,
Ease aloud your anguish.
Bellow of the pit in Hell
Where you're...Read more of this...
by
Charles Simic
The night still frightens you.
You know it is interminable
And of vast, unimaginable dimensions.
"That's because His insomnia is permanent,"
You've read some mystic say.
Is it the point of His schoolboy's compass
That pricks your heart?
Somewhere perhaps the lovers lie
Under the dark cypress trees,
Trembling with happiness,
But here there's only your beard of many days
And a night moth shivering
Under your hand pressed against your...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
'The man who brought the railway through -- our friend the engineer.'
They cheer his pluck and enterprise and engineering skill!
'Twas my old husband found the pass behind that big red hill.
Before the engineer was born we'd settled with our stock
Behind that great big mountain chain, a line of range and rock --
A line that...Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
This plot of ground
facing the waters of this inlet
is dedicated to the living presence of
Emily Dickinson Wellcome
who was born in England; married;
lost her husband and with
her five year old son
sailed for New York in a two-master;
was driven to the Azores;
ran adrift on Fire Island shoal,
met her second husband
in...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
"These were never your true love's eyes.
Why do you feign that you love them?
You that broke from their constancies,
And the wide calm brows above them!
This was never your true love's speech.
Why do you thrill when you hear it?
You that have ridden out of its reach
The width of the world or near it!
This was never your...Read more of this...
by
William Wordsworth
The cock is crowing,
The stream is flowing,
The small birds twitter,
The lake doth glitter
The green field sleeps in the sun;
The oldest and youngest
Are at work with the strongest;
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one!
Like an army defeated
The snow hath retreated,
And now doth fare ill
On the top of the bare hill;
The plowboy is...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Pray why are you so bare, so bare,
Oh, bough of the old oak-tree;
And why, when I go through the shade you throw,
Runs a shudder over me?
My leaves were green as the best, I trow,
And sap ran free in my veins,
But I say in the moonlight dim and weird
A guiltless victim's pains.
They'd charged him with the old, old crime,
And...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Opinion is a flitting thing,
But Truth, outlasts the Sun --
If then we cannot own them both --
Possess the oldest one --...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
'Twas in a certain regiment of French Grenadiers,
A touching and beautiful custom was observed many years;
Which was meant to commemorate the heroism of a departed comrade,
And when the companies assembled for parade,
There was one name at roll call to which no answer was made
It was that of the noble La Tour d'Auvergne,
The first Grenadier of France, heroic and...Read more of this...
by
William Blake
In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
The cut worm forgives the plow.
Dip him in the river who loves water.
A fool...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
All roads that lead to God are good.
What matters it, your faith, or mine?
Both centre at the goal divine
Of love’s eternal Brotherhood.
The kindly life in house or street –
The life of prayer and mystic rite –
The student’s search for truth and light –
These paths at one great Junction meet.
Before the oldest book was writ,
Full many a prehistoric soul
Arrived at...Read more of this...
by
William Wordsworth
I
There was a roaring in the wind all night;
The rain came heavily and fell in floods;
But now the sun is rising calm and bright;
The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods;
The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters;
And all the air is filled with pleasant...Read more of this...
by
Alden Nowlan
Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain,
lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar,
stumbling through tamarack swamps,
came the bull moose
to be stopped at last by a pole-fenced pasture.
Too tired to turn or, perhaps, aware
there was no place left to go, he stood with the cattle.
They, scenting the musk of death, seeing his great head...Read more of this...
by
James Wright
I will grieve alone,
As I strolled alone, years ago, down along
The Ohio shore.
I hid in the hobo jungle weeds
Upstream from the sewer main,
Pondering, gazing.
I saw, down river,
At Twenty-third and Water Streets
By the vinegar works,
The doors open in early evening.
Swinging their purses, the women
Poured down the long street to the river
And into the river.
I do not know how it was
They...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
We mix from many lands,
We march for very far;
In hearts and lips and hands
Our staffs and weapons are;
The light we walk in darkens sun and moon and star.
It doth not flame and wane
With years and spheres that roll,
Storm cannot shake nor stain
The strength that makes it whole,
The fire that moulds and moves it of the sovereign soul.
We are they...Read more of this...
by
John Hay
Wall, no! I can’t tell whar he lives,
Becase he don’t live, you see;
Leastways, he’s got out of the habit
Of livin’ like you and me.
Whar have you been for the last three year
That you haven’t heard folks tell
How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks
The night of the Prairie Belle?
He war’n’t no saint,—them engineers
Is all pretty much alike,—
One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill
And another...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
LAWS for Creations,
For strong artists and leaders—for fresh broods of teachers, and perfect
literats for America,
For noble savans, and coming musicians.
All must have reference to the ensemble of the world, and the compact truth of
the world;
There shall be no subject too pronounced—All works shall illustrate the
divine law of indirections.
What do you suppose Creation...Read more of this...
by
Guillaume Apollinaire
ZONE
In the end you are tired of this ancient world
Shepherd oh Eiffel Tower the herd of bridges is bleating this morning
You've had enough of living in Greek and Roman antiquity
Here even the cars look antique
Only religion has stayed new religion
Has stayed simple like the hangars at Port-Aviation
You alone in Europe are not ancient...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
We have all of us read how the Israelites fled
From Egypt with Pharaoh in eager pursuit of 'em,
And Pharaoh's fierce troop were all put "in the soup"
When the waters rolled softly o'er every galoot of 'em.
The Jews were so glad when old Pharaoh was "had"
That they sounded their timbrels and capered like mad.
You...Read more of this...
by
John McCrae
"It fell on a day, that he went out to his father to the reapers.
And he said unto his father, My head, my head. And he said to a lad,
Carry him to his mother. And . . . he sat on her knees till noon,
and then died. And she went up, and laid him on the bed. . ....Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
You always read about it:
the plumber with the twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.
Or the nursemaid,
some luscious sweet from Denmark
who captures the oldest son's heart.
from diapers to Dior.
That story.
Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,
eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,
the white truck like an ambulance
who goes into real estate
and makes a pile.
From homogenized to martinis at...Read more of this...
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