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Famous One Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...a total stranger one black day
knocked living the hell out of me-- 

who found forgiveness hard because
my(as it happened)self he was 

-but now that fiend and i are such
a total stranger one black day...Read more of this...
by Cummings, Edward Estlin (E E)



...razy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock an...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...reaks to tears,
And the brown thrushes mate, and with bright eyes the rabbit peers

From the dark warren where the fir-cones lie,
And treads one snowdrop under foot, and runs
Over the mossy knoll, and blackbirds fly
Across our path at evening, and the suns
Stay longer with us; ah! how good to see
Grass-girdled spring in all her joy of laughing greenery

Dance through the hedges till the early rose,
(That sweet repentance of the thorny briar!)
Burst from its sheathed emerald a...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...I

 Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung above his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day
Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened m...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...CANTO I


 ONE night, when half my life behind me lay, 
 I wandered from the straight lost path afar. 
 Through the great dark was no releasing way; 
 Above that dark was no relieving star. 
 If yet that terrored night I think or say, 
 As death's cold hands its fears resuming are. 

 Gladly the dreads I felt, too dire to tell, 
 The hopeless, pathless, lightless hours...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante



...he stood, 
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, 
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, 
And burbled as it came! 

One two! One two! And through and through 
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! 
He left it dead, and with its head 
He went galumphing back. 
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? 
Come to my arms, my beamish boy! 
Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" 
He chortled in his joy. 

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: 
A...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis
...Lady of the Land.   I told her, how he pin'd: and, ah!  The low, the deep, the pleading tone,  With which I sang another's Love,    Interpreted my own.   She listen'd with a flitting Blush,  With downcast Eyes and modest Grace;  And she forgave me, that I gaz'd    Too fondly on her Face!   But when I told the cruel scorn  Which craz'...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William
...braces, a reaching around of arms; 
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag; 
The delight alone, or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and
 hill-sides;
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and
 meeting the sun. 

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth
 much? 
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read? 
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? 
...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...ng wherever I choose. 

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune—I myself am good fortune; 
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Strong and content, I travel the open road. 

The earth—that is sufficient; 
I do not want the constellations any nearer; 
I know they are very well where they are; 
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens; 
I carry them, men and women—I carry them with me wherever I go; 
I sw...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William
...DEDICATION 

Of great limbs gone to chaos,
A great face turned to night--
Why bend above a shapeless shroud
Seeking in such archaic cloud
Sight of strong lords and light?

Where seven sunken Englands
Lie buried one by one,
Why should one idle spade, I wonder,
Shake up the dust of thanes like thunder
To smoke and choke the sun?

In cloud of clay so cast to heaven
What shape shall man dis...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K
...The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not—what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by,
The dread of vanished shadows—Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow?—What are they?
Creations of the mind?—The mind can make
Substances, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
I would recall a vision which I dreamed
Perchance in sleep—for in itself a thought,
A slum...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...1
They that in play can do the thing they would,
Having an instinct throned in reason's place,
--And every perfect action hath the grace
Of indolence or thoughtless hardihood--
These are the best: yet be there workmen good
Who lose in earnestness control of face,
Or reckon means, and rapt in effort base
Reach to their end by steps well understood. 
Me whom thou sawest of late strive with the pains
Of one who spends his strength...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...st man kept his course along 
The vale of death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow.
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.

Then the perilous path was planted:
And a river, and a spring
On every cliff and tomb;
And on the bleached bones
Red clay brought forth.

Till the villain left the paths of ease,
To walk in perilous paths, and drive
The just man into barren climes.

Now the sneaking serpent walks
In mild humility.
And the just man rages in the wilds
Where lions r...Read more of this...
by Blake, William
...t and curious volume of forgotten lore—
    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
            Only this and nothing more.”

    Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
    Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
    From my bo...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan
...assed athwart the glooming flat -
It fanned his forehead as he sat -
It lightly bore away his hat, 

All to the feet of one who stood
Like maid enchanted in a wood,
Frowning as darkly as she could. 

With huge umbrella, lank and brown,
Unerringly she pinned it down,
Right through the centre of the crown. 

Then, with an aspect cold and grim,
Regardless of its battered rim,
She took it up and gave it him. 

A while like one in dreams he stood,
Then faltered forth his gratitude...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis
...wn & then imposed on them;
But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold
Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
The cone of night, now they were laid asleep,
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem
Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep
Of a green Apennine: before me fled
The night; behind me rose the day; the Deep
Was at my feet, & Heaven above my head
When a strange trance over my fancy grew
Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread
Was so transparent...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...me to judgment! yes a Daniel!
I thank thee, Jew for teaching me that word.' 

PREFACE 

It hath been wisely said, that 'One fool makes many;' and it hath been poetically observed —

'That fools rush in where angels fear to tread.' - Pope 

If Mr. Southey had not rushed in where he had no business, and where he never was before, and never will be again, the following poem would not have been written. It is not impossible that it may be as good as his own, seeing that it cannot...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust. 
 Frisch weht der Wind
 Der Heimat zu
 Mein Irisch Kind,
 Wo weile...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ova.html

 * I * 

We thought we were beggars, we thought we had nothing at all
But then when we started to lose one thing after another,
Each day became
A memorial day --
And then we made songs
Of great divine generosity
And of our former riches.


Unification

I'll leave your quiet yard and your white house -
Let life be empty and with light complete.
I'll sing the glory to you in my verse
Like not one woman has sung glory yet.
And that dear girlfrien...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things