Famous Parts Poems by Famous Poets

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

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To the True Romance

by Rudyard Kipling
 Thy face is far from this our war,
 Our call and counter-cry,
I shall not find Thee quick and kind,
 Nor know Thee till I die,
Enough for me in dreams to see
 And touch Thy garments' hem:
Thy feet have trod so near to God
 I may not follow them.

Through wantonness if men profess
 They weary of Thy parts,
E'en let them...Read more of this...

With the Cattle

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The drought is down on field and flock, 
The river-bed is dry; 
And we must shift the starving stock 
Before the cattle die. 
We muster up with weary hearts 
At breaking of the day, 
And turn our heads to foreign parts, 
To take the stock away. 
And it’s hunt ‘em up and dog ‘em, 
And it’s get the whip...Read more of this...

The Faerie Queene Book III Canto VI

by Edmund Spenser
The birth of faire Belphoebe and
Of Amoret is told.
The Gardins of Adonis fraught
With pleasures manifold.
 
And gentle sprite deforme with rude rusticity.
 But to this faire Belphoebe in her berth
The heauens so fauourable were and free,
Looking with myld aspect vpon the earth,
In th'Horoscope of her natiuitee,
That all the gifts of grace and chastitee
On her they poured forth of plenteous horne;
Ioue...Read more of this...

Sonnet XVII

by William Shakespeare
 Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?
Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say 'This poet lies:
Such heavenly...Read more of this...

Sonnet 69: Those parts of thee that the worlds eye doth view

by William Shakespeare
 Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view
Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend;
All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due,
Utt'ring bare truth, even so as foes commend.
Thy outward thus with outward praise is crowned,
But those same tongues that give thee so thine own
In other accents do this praise confound
By seeing farther than...Read more of this...

The Tradesman and the Scholar

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 A Citizen of mighty Pelf, 
But much a Blockhead, in himself 
Disdain'd a Man of shining Parts, 
Master of Sciences and Arts, 
Who left his Book scarce once a day 
For sober Coffee, Smoak, or Tea; 
Nor spent more Money in the Town 
Than bought, when need requir'd, a Gown; 
Which way of Living much offends 
The Alderman, who...Read more of this...

Bird With Two Right Wings

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
 And now our government
a bird with two right wings
flies on from zone to zone
while we go on having our little fun & games
at each election
as if it really mattered who the pilot is
of Air Force One
(They're interchangeable, stupid!)
While this bird with two right wings
flies right on with its corporate flight crew
And this year its the Great Movie Cowboy in...Read more of this...

Poems in Three Parts

by Robert Bly
1

Oh on an early morning I think I shall live forever!
I am wrapped in my joyful flesh 
As the grass is wrapped in its clouds of green.

2

Rising from a bed where I dreamt
Of long rides past castles and hot coals 
The sun lies happily on my knees;
I have suffered and survived the night
Bathed in dark water like any blade of...Read more of this...

In the New Garden in all the Parts

by Walt Whitman
 IN the new garden, in all the parts, 
In cities now, modern, I wander, 
Though the second or third result, or still further, primitive yet, 
Days, places, indifferent—though various, the same, 
Time, Paradise, the Mannahatta, the prairies, finding me unchanged,
Death indifferent—Is it that I lived long since? Was I buried very long ago? 
For all that, I may now...Read more of this...

The Division Of Parts

by Anne Sexton
 1.
Mother, my Mary Gray,
once resident of Gloucester
and Essex County,
a photostat of your will
arrived in the mail today.
This is the division of money.
I am one third
of your daughters counting my bounty
or I am a queen alone
in the parlor still,
eating the bread and honey.
It is Good Friday.
Black birds pick at my window sill.
Your coat in my closet,
your bright stones on my...Read more of this...

Green Fields

by W S Merwin
 By this part of the century few are left who believe
 in the animals for they are not there in the carved parts
of them served on plates and the pleas from the slatted trucks
 are sounds of shadows that possess no future
there is still game for the pleasure of killing
 and there are pets for the children but the...Read more of this...

On The Porch At The Frost Place Franconia N. H

by William Matthews
 So here the great man stood,
fermenting malice and poems
we have to be nearly as fierce
against ourselves as he
not to misread by their disguises.
Blue in dawn haze, the tamarack
across the road is new since Frost
and thirty feet tall already.
No doubt he liked to scorch off
morning fog by simply staring through it
long enough so that what he saw
grew visible. "Watching the...Read more of this...

He parts Himself -- like Leaves --

by Emily Dickinson
 He parts Himself -- like Leaves --
And then -- He closes up --
Then stands upon the Bonnet
Of Any Buttercup --

And then He runs against
And oversets a Rose --
And then does Nothing --
Then away upon a Jib -- He goes --

And dangles like a Mote
Suspended in the Noon --
Uncertain -- to return Below --
Or settle in the Moon --

What come...Read more of this...

242. The Poet's Progress

by Robert Burns
 THOU, Nature, partial Nature, I arraign;
Of thy caprice maternal I complain.
 The peopled fold thy kindly care have found,
The hornèd bull, tremendous, spurns the ground;
The lordly lion has enough and more,
The forest trembles at his very roar;
Thou giv’st the ass his hide, the snail his shell,
The puny wasp, victorious, guards his cell.
Thy minions, kings defend, controul devour,
In all th’...Read more of this...

Telephus you praise him still (CUM TU, LYDIA)

by Horace
Telephus—you praise him still,
         His waxen arms, his rosy-tinted neck;
       Ah! and all the while I thrill
     With jealous pangs I cannot, cannot check.
         See, my colour comes and goes,
    ...Read more of this...

To help our Bleaker Parts

by Emily Dickinson
 To help our Bleaker Parts
Salubrious Hours are given
Which if they do not fir for Earth
Drill silently for Heaven --...Read more of this...

Parables And Riddles

by Friedrich von Schiller
 I.

A bridge of pearls its form uprears
High o'er a gray and misty sea;
E'en in a moment it appears,
And rises upwards giddily.

Beneath its arch can find a road
The loftiest vessel's mast most high,
Itself hath never borne a load,
And seems, when thou draw'st near, to fly.

It comes first with the stream, and goes
Soon as the watery flood is dried.
Where may be...Read more of this...

Sonnets iv

by William Shakespeare
 THY bosom is endeared with all hearts 
Which I, by lacking, have supposed dead: 
And there reigns Love, and all Love's loving parts, 
And all those friends which I thought buried. 
How many a holy and obsequious tear 
Hath dear religious love stol'n from mine eye, 
As interest of the dead!--which now appear 
But things removed that hidden in...Read more of this...

The Road to Hogans Gap

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Now look, you see, it’s this way like, 
You cross the broken bridge 
And run the crick down till you strike 
The second right-hand ridge. 
The track is hard to see in parts, 
But still it’s pretty clear; 
There’s been two Injin hawkers’ carts 
Along that road this year. 

Well, run that right-hand ridge along— 
It ain’t, to say,...Read more of this...

The Battle Of Agincourt

by Michael Drayton
 Fair stood the wind for France
When we our sails advance,
Nor now to prove our chance
Longer will tarry;
But putting to the main,
At Caux, the mouth of Seine,
With all his martial train,
Landed King Harry.

And taking many a fort,
Furnished in warlike sort,
Marcheth towards Agincourt
In happy hour;
Skirmishing day by day
With those that stopped his way,
Where the French gen'ral lay
With all his power;

Which, in...Read more of this...

The Battle of Sheriffmuir

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year 1715, and on the 10th of November,
Which the people of Scotland have cause to remember;
On that day the Earl of Mar left Perth bound for Sheriffmuir,
At the same time leaving behind a garrison under Colonel Balfour. 

Besides leaving a force of about three thousand men quartered in different parts of Fife,
To protect the people's property,...Read more of this...

Gus: The Theatre Cat

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door.
His name, as I ought to have told you before,
Is really Asparagus. That's such a fuss
To pronounce, that we usually call him just Gus.
His coat's very shabby, he's thin as a rake,
And he suffers from palsy that makes his paw shake.
Yet he was, in his youth, quite the smartest of Cats--
But no...Read more of this...

Elegy II: The Anagram

by John Donne
 Marry, and love thy Flavia, for she
Hath all things whereby others beautious be,
For, though her eyes be small, her mouth is great,
Though they be ivory, yet her teeth be jet,
Though they be dim, yet she is light enough,
And though her harsh hair fall, her skin is rough;
What though her cheeks be yellow, her hair's red;
Give her thine, and she...Read more of this...

The Phoenix and the Turtle

by William Shakespeare
 Let the bird of loudest lay,
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.

But thou, shrieking harbinger,
Foul pre-currer of the fiend,
Augur of the fever's end,
To this troop come thou not near.

From this session interdict
Every fowl of tyrant wing,
Save the eagle, feather'd king:
Keep the obsequy so strict.

Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,
Be...Read more of this...

A Description of a City Shower

by Jonathan Swift
 Careful Observers may fortel the Hour 
(By sure Prognosticks) when to dread a Show'r: 
While Rain depends, the pensive Cat gives o'er 
Her Frolicks, and pursues her Tail no more. 
Returning Home at Night, you'll find the Sink 
Strike your offended Sense with double Stink. 
If you be wise, then go not far to Dine, 
You spend in Coach-hire...Read more of this...

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