Famous People Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous People poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous people poems. These examples illustrate what a famous people poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Elizabeth Smart
Let us invoke a healthy heart-breaking
Towards the horrible world:
Let us say 0 poor people
How can they help being so absurd,
Misguided, abused, misled?
With unsifted saving graces jostling about
On a mucky medley of needs,
Like love-lit ****,
Year after cyclic year
The unidentifiable flying god is missed.
Emotions sit in their heads disguised as judges,
Or are twisted to look like mathematical formulae,
And only...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The feet of people walking home
With gayer sandals go --
The Crocus -- til she rises
The Vassal of the snow --
The lips at Hallelujah
Long years of practise bore
Til bye and bye these Bargemen
Walked singing on the shore.
Pearls are the Diver's farthings
Extorted from the Sea --
Pinions -- the Seraph's wagon
Pedestrian once -- as we --
Night is the morning's Canvas
Larceny -- legacy...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
I TELL them where the wind comes from,
Where the music goes when the fiddle is in the box.
Kids—I saw one with a proud chin, a sleepyhead,
And the moonline creeping white on her pillow.
I have seen their heads in the starlight
And their proud chins marching in a mist of stars.
They are the only people I never lie to.
...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
tangwena says
this is our land
soiled by the blood
of black centuries
smith says
the white tongue
goes bang bang
black must learn
words of a new march
tangwena says
every tree here
is made in the image
of a black ghost
smith says
the white tongue
goes bang bang
you must make your ghosts
in the image of new trees
tangwena...Read more of this...
by
Ehsan Sehgal
"Good and characterful people never change and break their words of promise in written and spoken."
Ehsan Sehgal...Read more of this...
by
Ogden Nash
When people aren't asking questions
They're making suggestions
And when they're not doing one of those
They're either looking over your shoulder or stepping on your toes
And then as if that weren't enough to annoy you
They employ you.
Anybody at leisure
Incurs everybody's displeasure.
It seems to be very irking
To people at work to see other...Read more of this...
by
Jean Toomer
To those fixed on white,
White is white,
To those fixed on black,
It is the same,
And red is red,
Yellow, yellow-
Surely there are such sights
In the many colored world,
Or in the mind.
The strange thing is that
These people never see themselves
Or you, or me.
Are they not in their minds?
Are we not in the world?
This is a curious blindness
For those that are color blind.
What...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Her sovereign People
Nature knows as well
And is as fond of signifying
As if fallible --...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I know of people in the Grave
Who would be very glad
To know the news I know tonight
If they the chance had had.
'Tis this expands the least event
And swells the scantest deed --
My right to walk upon the Earth
If they this moment had....Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
They are always with us, the thin people
Meager of dimension as the gray people
On a movie-screen. They
Are unreal, we say:
It was only in a movie, it was only
In a war making evil headlines when we
Were small that they famished and
Grew so lean and would not round
Out their stalky limbs again though peace
Plumped the bellies of the mice
Under the meanest...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
I AM the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is
done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the
world's food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons
come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And
then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground....Read more of this...
by
Charles Bukowski
the lady has me temporarily off the bottle
and now the pecker stands up
better.
however, things change overnight--
instead of listening to Shostakovich and
Mozart through a smeared haze of smoke
the nights change, new
complexities:
we drive to Baskin-Robbins,
31 flavors:
Rocky Road, Bubble Gum, Apricot Ice, Strawberry
Cheesecake, Chocolate Mint...
we park outside and look at icecream
people
a very healthy and satisfied people,
nary a potential suicide in sight
(they probably...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
The people say, «Why not drink somewhat less?
What reasons have you for such great excess?»
First, my Love's face, second, my morning draught;
Can there be clearer reasons, now confess?...Read more of this...
by
G K Chesterton
Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget;
For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.
There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully,
There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.
There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.
There is hunger...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I noticed People disappeared
When but a little child --
Supposed they visited remote
Or settled Regions wild --
But did because they died
A Fact withheld the little child --...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
Some good people, daring & subtle voices
and their tense faces, as I think of it
I see sank underground.
I see. My radar digs. I do not dig.
Cool their flushing blood, them eyes is shut-”
eyes?
Appalled: by all the dead: Henry brooded.
Without exception! All.
ALL.
The senior population waits. Come down! come down!
A ghastly & flashing pause, clothed,
life called; us do.
In a madhouse heard...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
MY people are gray,
pigeon gray, dawn gray, storm gray.
I call them beautiful,
and I wonder where they are going....Read more of this...
by
The Bible
“Because you said: ‘Jehovah is my refuge,’
You have made the Most High himself your dwelling;
No calamity will befall you,
And not even a plague will draw near to your tent.
For he will give his own angels a command concerning you,
To guard you in all your ways.
Upon their hands they will carry you,
That you may not strike your foot against any stone.”
—Ps....Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
I will let loose against you the fleet-footed vines--
I will call in the Jungle to stamp out your lines!
The roofs shall fade before it,
The house-beams shall fall;
And the Karela,. the bitter Karela,
Shall cover it all!
In the gates of these your councils my people shall sing.
In the doors of these your garners the Bat-folk shall cling;
...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Markham
WHEN the Norn Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour
Greatening and darkening as it hurried on,
She left the Heaven of Heroes and came down
To make a man to meet the mortal need.
She took the tried clay of the common road--
Clay warm yet with the genial heat of earth,
Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy;...Read more of this...
by
A E Housman
There pass the careless people
That call their souls their own:
Here by the road I loiter,
How idle and alone.
Ah, past the plunge of plummet,
In seas I cannot sound,
My heart and soul and senses,
World without end, are drowned.
His folly has not fellow
Beneath the blue of day
That gives to man or woman...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
I TOOK away three pictures.
One was a white gull forming a half-mile arch from the pines toward Waukegan.
One was a whistle in the little sandhills, a bird crying either to the sunset gone or the dusk come.
One was three spotted waterbirds, zigzagging, cutting scrolls and jags, writing a bird Sanscrit of wing points, half over the sand, half over...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Dunn
Relax. This won't last long.
Or if it does, or if the lines
make you sleepy or bored,
give in to sleep, turn on
the T.V., deal the cards.
This poem is built to withstand
such things. Its feelings
cannot be hurt. They exist
somewhere in the poet,
and I am far away.
Pick it up anytime. Start it
in the middle if you wish.
It is as approachable as...Read more of this...
by
Du Fu
Fu (this) duke old guest Finish wine drunk sing open gold halberd Ride horse suddenly remember youth time Scatter hoof pour fall Qutang stone Baidicheng gate water cloud outside Lower body straight down eight thousand feet Whitewashed battlements lightning pass purple loose reins East gain level ridge out heaven cliff River village country hall fight enter eye...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
DID I see a crucifix in your eyes
and nails and Roman soldiers
and a dusk Golgotha?
Did I see Mary, the changed woman,
washing the feet of all men,
clean as new grass
when the old grass burns?
Did I see moths in your eyes, lost moths,
with a flutter of wings that meant:
we can never come again.
Did I see No Man’s Land in your eyes
and...Read more of this...
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