Famous Pentameter Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Pentameter poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous pentameter poems. These examples illustrate what a famous pentameter poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
George Meredith
I am not of those miserable males
Who sniff at vice and, daring not to snap,
Do therefore hope for heaven. I take the hap
Of all my deeds. The wind that fills my sails
Propels; but I am helmsman. Am I wrecked,
I know the devil has sufficient weight
To bear: I lay it not on him, or fate.
Besides, he's damned. That man I...Read more of this...
by
Delmore Schwartz
I looked toward the movie, the common dream,
The he and she in close-ups, nearer than life,
And I accepted such things as they seem,
The easy poise, the absence of the knife,
The near summer happily ever after,
The understood question, the immediate strife,
Not dangerous, nor mortal, but the fadeout
Enormously kissing amid warm laughter,
As if such things were...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
The heart, like tapers, takes at beauty's eyes
A flame, and lives by that whereby it dies;
And beauty is a flame where hearts, like moths,
Offer themselves a burning sacrifice....Read more of this...
by
Mark Van Doren
How far is it to peace, the piper sighed,
The solitary, sweating as he paused.
Asphalt the noon; the ravens, terrified,
Fled carrion thunder that percussion caused.
The envelope of earth was powder loud;
The taut wings shivered, driven at the sun.
The piper put his pipe away and bowed.
Not here, he said. I hunt the love-cool one,
The dancer with the clipped hair. Where is...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
With outward seeming we can cheat mankind,
But to God's will we can but be resigned,
The deepest wiles my cunning e'er devised,
To balk resistless fate no way could find....Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
It hurts my pride that I should be
The issue of a night of lust;
Yet even Bishops, you'll agree,
Obey the biologic 'must';
Though no doubt with more dignity
Than we of layman dust.
I think the Lord made a mistake
When he designed the human race,
That man and angel in the make
Should have brutality for base.
Jehovah might have planned...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
AS one who having wandered all night long
In a perplexed forest, comes at length
In the first hours, about the matin song,
And when the sun uprises in his strength,
To the fringed margin of the wood, and sees,
Gazing afar before him, many a mile
Of falling country, many fields and trees,
And cities and bright streams and far-off Ocean's smile:
I, O Melampus, halting,...Read more of this...
by
Gerard Manley Hopkins
. . . . . . . .
Hope holds to Christ the mind’s own mirror out
To take His lovely likeness more and more.
It will not well, so she would bring about
An ever brighter burnish than before
And turns to wash it from her welling eyes
And breathes the blots off all with sighs on sighs.
Her glass...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
ONCE fondly lov’d, and still remember’d dear,
Sweet early object of my youthful vows,
Accept this mark of friendship, warm, sincere,
Friendship! ’tis all cold duty now allows.
And when you read the simple artless rhymes,
One friendly sigh for him—he asks no more,
Who, distant, burns in flaming torrid climes,
Or haply lies beneath th’ Atlantic roar....Read more of this...
by
Arthur Symons
They weave a slow andante as in sleep,
Scaled yellow, swampy black, plague-spotted white;
With blue and lidless eyes at watch they keep
A treachery of silence; infinite
Ancestral angers brood in these dull eyes
Where the long-lineaged venom of the snake
Meditates evil; woven intricacies
Of Oriental arabesque awake,
Unfold, expand, contract, and raise and sway
Swoln heart-shaped...Read more of this...
by
Rupert Brooke
Because God put His adamantine fate
Between my sullen heart and its desire,
I swore that I would burst the Iron Gate,
Rise up, and curse Him on His throne of fire.
Earth shuddered at my crown of blasphemy,
But Love was as a flame about my feet;
Proud up the Golden Stair I strode; and beat
Thrice on the Gate, and entered with a cry...Read more of this...
by
William Cowper
Oh happy shades--to me unblest!
Friendly to peace, but not to me!
How ill the scene that offers rest,
And heart that cannot rest, agree!
This glassy stream, that spreading pine,
Those alders quiv'ring to the breeze,
Might sooth a soul less hurt than mine,
And please, if any thing could please.
But fix'd unalterable care
Foregoes not what she feels within,
Shows the same sadness ev'rywhere,
And slights the...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
He, who the world's foundations erst did lay,
Doth bruise full many a bosom day by day,
And many a ruby lip and musky tress
Doth coffin in the earth, and shroud with clay....Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
They call you wicked, if to fame you're known,
And an intriguer, if you live alone,
Trust me, though you were Khizr or Elias,
'Tis best to know none, and of none be known....Read more of this...
by
Sarojini Naidu
The new hath come and now the old retires:
And so the past becomes a mountain-cell,
Where lone, apart, old hermit-memories dwell
In consecrated calm, forgotten yet
Of the keen heart that hastens to forget
Old longings in fulfilling new desires.
And now the Soul stands in a vague, intense
Expectancy and anguish of suspense,
On the dim chamber-threshold...Read more of this...
by
Henry David Thoreau
I am a parcel of vain strivings tied
By a chance bond together,
Dangling this way and that, their links
Were made so loose and wide,
Methinks,
For milder weather.
A bunch of violets without their roots,
And sorrel intermixed,
Encircled by a wisp of straw
Once coiled about their shoots,
The law
By which I'm fixed.
A nosegay...Read more of this...
by
George Meredith
Am I failing ? For no longer can I cast
A glory round about this head of gold.
Glory she wears, but springing from the mould;
Not like the consecration of the Past!
Is my soul beggared? Something more than earth
I cry for still: I cannot be at peace
In having Love upon a' mortal lease.
I cannot...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
A winter garden in an alder swamp,
Where conies now come out to sun and romp,
As near a paradise as it can be
And not melt snow or start a dormant tree.
It lifts existence on a plane of snow
One level higher than the earth below,
One level nearer heaven overhead,
And last year's berries shining scarlet red.
It lifts a gaunt luxuriating beast
Where he...Read more of this...
by
John Donne
So, so, break off this last lamenting kiss,
Which sucks two souls, and vapors both away,
Turn thou ghost that way, and let me turn this,
And let our selves benight our happiest day,
We ask none leave to love; nor will we owe
Any, so cheap a death, as saying, Go;
Go; and if that word have not quite kil'd thee,
...Read more of this...
by
Laurence Binyon
Of the old house, only a few, crumbled
Courses of brick, smothered in nettle and dock,
Or a shaped stone lying mossy where it tumbled!
Sprawling bramble and saucy thistle mock
What once was fire-lit floor and private charm,
Whence, seen in a windowed picture, were hills fading
At night, and all was memory-coloured and warm,
And voices talked,...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
Give me your hand, my brother, search my face;
Look in these eyes lest I should think of shame;
For we have made an end of all things base.
We are returning by the road we came.
Your lot is with the ghosts of soldiers dead,
And I am in the field where men must fight.
But in the...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Moore
And doth not a meeting like this make amends
For all the long years I've been wandering away --
To see thus around me my youth's early friends,
As smiling and kind as in that happy day?
Though haply o'er some of your brows, as o'er mine,
The snow -- fall of time may be stealing -- what then?...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
(ROOSEVELT)
He turned aside to see the carcase of the lion: and behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcase of the lion … And the men of the city said unto him, What is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion?—Judges, 14.
The palms of Mammon have disowned
The gift of our complacency;...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
Soldiers are citizens of death's gray land,
Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.
I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
From where I lingered in a lull in march
outside the sugar-house one night for choice,
I called the fireman with a careful voice
And bade him leave the pan and stoke the arch:
'O fireman, give the fire another stoke,
And send more sparks up chimney with the smoke.'
I thought a few might tangle, as they did,
Among bare maple boughs, and in the...Read more of this...
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