Famous Per Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Code of Morals

...that sets the miles at naught.

And Love had made him very sage, as Nature made her fair;
So Cupid and Apollo linked , per heliograph, the pair.
At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise --
At e'en, the dying sunset bore her busband's homilies.

He warned her 'gainst seductive youths in scarlet clad and gold,
As much as 'gainst the blandishments paternal of the old;
But kept his gravest warnings for (hereby the ditty hangs)
That snowy-haired Lothario, Lie...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard


A Cooking Egg

...kidney.

I shall not want Capital in Heaven
For I shall meet Sir Alfred Mond.
We two shall lie together, lapt
In a five per cent. Exchequer Bond.

I shall not want Society in Heaven,
Lucretia Borgia shall be my Bride;
Her anecdotes will be more amusing
Than Pipit’s experience could provide.

I shall not want Pipit in Heaven:
Madame Blavatsky will instruct me
In the Seven Sacred Trances;
Piccarda de Donati will conduct me.
. . . . .
But where is the penny world I bought
To eat...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

a man who had fallen among thieves

...mong thieves

lay by the roadside on his back
dressed in fifteenthrate ideas
wearing a round jeer for a hat

fate per a somewhat more than less
emancipated evening
had in return for consciousness
endowed him with a changeless grin

whereon a dozen staunch and Meal
citizens did graze at pause
then fired by hypercivic zeal
sought newer pastures or because

swaddled with a frozen brook
of pinkest vomit out of eyes
which noticed nobody he looked
as if he did no...Read more of this...
by Cummings, Edward Estlin (E E)

America

...l of tears? 
America when will you send your eggs to India? 
I'm sick of your insane demands. 
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I 
 need with my good looks? 
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not 
 the next world. 
Your machinery is too much for me. 
You made me want to be a saint. 
There must be some other way to settle this argument. 
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back 
 it's sinister. 
Are you being sinister or is this som...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

Arithmetic on the Frontier

...it to face the foe --
The flying bullet down the Pass,
That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass."

Three hundred pounds per annum spent
 On making brain and body meeter
For all the murderous intent
 Comprised in "villanous saltpetre!"
And after -- ask the Yusufzaies
What comes of all our 'ologies.

A scrimmage in a Border Station --
 A canter down some dark defile --
Two thousand pounds of education
 Drops to a ten-rupee jezail --
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Sh...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard


Five-Per-Cent

...they sail and mine for me.
For me their toil is taxed unto that annual extent,
According to the holy shibboleth of Five-per-Cent.

So get ten thousand pounds, my friend, in any way you can.
And leave your future welfare to the noble Working Man.
He'll buy you suits of Harris tweed, an Airedale and a car;
Your golf clubs and your morning Times, your whisky and cigar.
He'll cosily install you in a cottage by a stream,
With every modern comfort, and a garden that's a dream>
Or i...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

from imperfect Eden

...toughened men could outdo friar tuck
so ravenous their faith blown off the sea
that god lived in the stomach raucously

perhaps cramped into scotts i felt it most
that you belonged in a living sea of men
who shared the one blood-vision of a coast
tides washed you to but washed you off again
too much history made the struggle plain
but all the time there was this rough-hewn glimmer
that truth wore dirty clothes and ate its dinner

at midday - scotts was a parliament of sorts
w...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg

Hymn to Demeter by Homer

...heard her voice, nor yet the olive-trees bearing rich fruit: only tenderhearted Hecate, bright-coiffed, the daughter of Persaeus, heard the girl from her cave, and the lord Helios, Hyperion's bright son, as she cried to her father, the Son of Cronos. But he was sitting aloof, apart from the gods, in his temple where many pray, and receiving sweet offerings from mortal men. So he, that Son of Cronos, of many names, who is Ruler of Many and Host of Many, was bearing her away by...Read more of this...
by Homer,

Inferno (Italian)

...LA DIVINA COMMEDIA di Dante Alighieri INFERNO


Inferno: Canto I



 Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura

ch? la diritta via era smarrita.

 Ahi quanto a dir qual era ? cosa dura

esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte

che nel pensier rinova la paura!

 Tant'? amara che poco ? pi? morte;

ma per trattar del ben ch'i' vi trovai,

dir? de l'altre cose ch'i' v'ho scorte.

 Io non so ben ridir com'i' v'intrai,

tant'era pien di sonno a quel punt...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

Inferno Canto03

...Per me si va ne la citt? dolente, 
per me si va ne l'etterno dolore, 
per me si va tra la perduta gente . 

THROUGH ME THE WAY INTO THE SUFFERING CITY, 
THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE ETERNAL PAIN, 
THROUGH ME THE WAY THAT RUNS AMONG THE LOST. 


Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore: 
fecemi la divina podestate, 
la somma sapienza e 'l primo amore . 

JUSTICE URGE...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

MFingal - Canto I

...arm of flesh, and trust the feet,
And work, like Christians undissembling,
Salvation out, by fear and trembling;
Taught Percy fashionable races,
And modern modes of Chevy-Chases:
From Boston, in his best array,
Great 'Squire M'Fingal took his way,
And graced with ensigns of renown,
Steer'd homeward to his native town.


His high descent our heralds trace
From Ossian's famed Fingalian race:
For though their name some part may lack,
Old Fingal spelt it with a Mac;
Which great M...Read more of this...
by Trumbull, John

Paradiso (Italian)

...LA DIVINA COMMEDIA
di Dante Alighieri
PARADISO



Paradiso: Canto I

 La gloria di colui che tutto move
per l'universo penetra, e risplende
in una parte pi? e meno altrove.
 Nel ciel che pi? de la sua luce prende
fu' io, e vidi cose che ridire
n? sa n? pu? chi di l? s? discende;
 perch? appressando s? al suo disire,
nostro intelletto si profonda tanto,
che dietro la memoria non pu? ire.
 Veramente quant'io del regno santo
ne la mia mente potei far tesoro,
sar?...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

Part 10 of Trout Fishing in America

...We took the garbage down to where there were three aban-

doned houses in a row. We carried sacks full of tin cans,

papers, peelings, bottles and Popeyes.

 We stopped at the last abandoned house where there were

thousands of old receipts to the San Francisco Chronicle

thrown all over the bed and the children's toothbrushes were

still in the bathroom medicine cabinet.

 Behind the place was an old outhouse and to get down to it,

you had to follow the path down past some...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard

Purgatorio (Italian)

...LA DIVINA COMMEDIA
di Dante Alighieri
PURGATORIO



Purgatorio: Canto I

 Per correr miglior acque alza le vele
omai la navicella del mio ingegno,
che lascia dietro a sé mar sì crudele;
 e canterò di quel secondo regno
dove l'umano spirito si purga
e di salire al ciel diventa degno.
 Ma qui la morta poesì resurga,
o sante Muse, poi che vostro sono;
e qui Caliopè alquanto surga,
 seguitando il mio canto con quel suono
di cui le Pic...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

The Ballad Of Hard-Luck Henry

...ated pard to cheer his solitary life,
A woman with soft, soothing ways, a confidant, a wife.
And while he cooked his supper on his little Yukon stove,
He wished that he had staked a claim in Love's rich treasure-trove;
When suddenly he paused and held aloft a Yukon egg,
For there in pencilled letters was the magic name of Peg.

You know these Yukon eggs of ours--some pink, some green, some blue--
A dollar per, assorted tints, assorted flavors too.
The supercilious cheechako m...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Broken Men

...as time and time to go --
Behind was dock and Dartmoor,
 Ahead lay Callao!

The widow and the orphan
 That pray for ten per cent,
They clapped their trailers on us
 To spy the road we went.
They watched the foreign sailings
 (They scan the shipping still),
And that's your Christian people
 Returning good for ill!

God bless the thoughtfull islands
 Where never warrants come;
God bless the just Republics
 That give a man a home,
That ask no foolish questions,
 But set him on h...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Mary Gloster

...t fight,
And now I'm Sir Anthony Gloster, dying, a baronite:
For I lunched with his Royal 'Ighness -- what was it the papers had?
"Not the least of our merchant-princes." Dickie, that's me, your dad!
I didn't begin with askings. I took my job and I stuck;
I took the chances they wouldn't, an' now they're calling it luck.
Lord, what boats I've handled -- rotten and leaky and old --
Ran 'em, or -- opened the bilge-cock, precisely as I was told.
Grub that 'ud bind you crazy, and...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Power of the Dog

...ou beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie --
Perfect passion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart for a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,
And the vet's unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns,
Then you will find -- it's your own affair --
But ...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Waste Land

...er of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid - troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended 
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned g...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

Trout Fishing in America

...ed 1790, Benjamin Franklin stands on a

 pedestal that looks like a house containing stone furniture.

 He holds some papers in one hand and his hat in the other.

Then the statue speaks, saying in marble:





 PRESENTED BY

 H. D. COGSWELL

 TO OUR

 BOYS AND GIRLS

 WHO WILL SOON

 TAKE OUR PLACES

 AND PASS ON.



Around the base of the statue are four words facing the

directions of this world, to the east WELCOME, to the west

WELCOME, to the north WELCOME, to the south...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard

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