Famous Period Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Period poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous period poems. These examples illustrate what a famous period poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Emily Dickinson
Not all die early, dying young --
Maturity of Fate
Is consummated equally
In Ages, or a Night --
A Hoary Boy, I've known to drop
Whole statured -- by the side
Of Junior of Fourscore -- 'twas Act
Not Period -- that died....Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
SHORTLY AFTER THE REVIVAL OF
LEARNING IN EUROPE.
Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
Singing together.
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes
Each in its tether
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain,
Cared-for till cock-crow:
Look out if yonder be not day again
Rimming the rock-row!
That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought,
Rarer, intenser,
Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,
Chafes in the censer.
Leave...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
At Aix-la-Chapelle, in imperial array,
In its halls renowned in old story,
At the coronation banquet so gay
King Rudolf was sitting in glory.
The meats were served up by the Palsgrave of Rhine,
The Bohemian poured out the bright sparkling wine,
And all the Electors, the seven,
Stood waiting around the world-governing one,
As the chorus of stars encircle the sun,
That honor might duly be given.
And...Read more of this...
by
Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
proud of his scientific attitude
and liked the prince of wales wife wants to die
but the doctors won't let her comman considers fr
ood
whom he pronounces young mistaken and
cradles in rubbery one somewhat hand
the paper destinies of nations sic
item a bounceless period unshy
the empty house is full O Yes of guk
rooms daughter item son a woopsing *****
colon hobby photography never has plumbed
the...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Shells from the Coast mistaking --
I cherished them for All --
Happening in After Ages
To entertain a Pearl --
Wherefore so late -- I murmured --
My need of Thee -- be done --
Therefore -- the Pearl responded --
My Period begin...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Spring is the Period
Express from God.
Among the other seasons
Himself abide,
But during March and April
None stir abroad
Without a cordial interview
With God....Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Not if men's tongues and angels' all in one
Spake, might the word be said that might speak thee.
Streams, winds, woods, flowers, fields, mountains, yea, the sea,
What power is in them all to praise the sun?
His praise is this--he can be praised of none.
Man, woman, child, praise God for him; but he
Exults not to be worshiped, but to be.
He is;...Read more of this...
by
William Strode
Thou pretty heav'n whose great and lesser spheares
With constant wheelings measure hours and yeares
Soe faithfully that thou couldst solve the doubt
Of erring Time if Nature should be out,
Where's thy intelligence? thy Soule? the Key
That gives thee Life and Motion? must thou stay
Thus cramp'd with rusty Sloth? and shall each wheele
Disorganis'd confess it is but steele?
Art's Living Creature, is thy...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Alas! the period of adolescence reaches home. The
springtime of our pleasures slips away! That bird of
gaiety which is called youth, alas! I know not when it
came nor when it flew away!
311...Read more of this...
by
Frank O'Hara
It's not so much
abstractions are available:
the lofty period of the mind
ending a sentence while the pain endures:
departures absences.
And you are still on the dock
the smoke hasn't cleared in The Narrows
At noon I sit in Jim's Place waiting for George
Who is mopping the stage up
While two girls cry in the last row.
I think they got laid last...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
A light exists in spring
Not present on the year
At any other period.
When March is scarcely here
A color stands abroad
On solitary hills
That science cannot overtake,
But human nature feels.
It waits upon the lawn;
It shows the furthest tree
Upon the furthest slope we know;
It almost speaks...Read more of this...
by
David Lehman
The woman said yes she would go to Australia with him
Unless he heard wrong and she said Argentina
Where they could learn the tango and pursue the widows
Of Nazi war criminals unrepentant to the end.
But no, she said Australia. She'd been born in New Zealand.
The difference between the two places was the difference
Between a hamburger and a chocolate malted, she...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
No Other can reduce
Our mortal Consequence
Like the remembering it be nought
A Period from hence
But Contemplation for
Contemporaneous Nought
Our Single Competition
Jehovah's Estimate....Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
THE KINGDOM OF MY HEART
1
The halcyon settled on the Aire of our days
Kingfisher-blue it broke my heart in two
Shall I forget you? Shall I forget you?
I am the mad poet first love
You never got over
You are my blue-eyed
Madonna virgin bride
I shall carve ‘MG loves BT’
On the bark of every
Wind-bent tree in
East End Park
2
The park itself will blossom
And...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET ***. Quand' io mi volgo indietro a mirar gli anni. THE REMEMBRANCE OF THE PAST ENHANCES HIS MISERY. When I look back upon the many yearsWhich in their flight my best thoughts have entomb'd,And spent the fire, that, spite her ice, consumed,And finish'd the repose so full of tears,Broken the...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
YE Irish lords, ye knights an’ squires,
Wha represent our brughs an’ shires,
An’ doucely manage our affairs
In parliament,
To you a simple poet’s pray’rs
Are humbly sent.
Alas! my roupit Muse is hearse!
Your Honours’ hearts wi’ grief ’twad pierce,
To see her sittin on her ****
Low i’ the dust,
And scriechinh out prosaic verse,
An like to brust!
Tell them wha hae the...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
The first time I drank gin
I thought it must be hair tonic.
My brother swiped the bottle
from a guy whose father owned
a drug store that sold booze
in those ancient, honorable days
when we acknowledged the stuff
was a drug. Three of us passed
the bottle around, each tasting
with disbelief. People paid
for this? People had to have
it, the way we had to have
the women...Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
I. Reference to a Passage in Plutarch's Life of Sulla
The people buying and selling, consuming pleasures, talking in the archways,
Were all suddenly struck quiet
And ran from under stone to look up at the sky: so shrill and mournful,
So fierce and final, a brazen
Pealing of trumpets high up in the air, in the summer blue over Tuscany.
They marvelled; the soothsayers...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
Visits of condolence is all we get from them.
They squat at the Holocaust Memorial,
They put on grave faces at the Wailing Wall
And they laugh behind heavy curtains
In their hotels.
They have their pictures taken
Together with our famous dead
At Rachel's Tomb and Herzl's Tomb
And on Ammunition Hill.
They weep over our sweet boys
And lust after our tough girls
And hang up their underwear
To...Read more of this...
by
Julia Ward Howe
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have...Read more of this...
by
William Cowper
Hatred and vengence—my eternal portion
Scarce can endure delay of execution—
Wait with impatient readiness to seize my
Soul in a moment.
Damned below Judas; more abhorred than he was,
Who for a few pence sold his holy Master!
Twice betrayed, Jesus me, the last delinquent,
Deems the profanest.
Man disavows, and Deity disowns me:
Hell might afford my miseries a shelter;
Therefore Hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths...Read more of this...
by
Billy Collins
Remember the 1340's? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called "Find the Cow."
Everything was...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Spider holds a Silver Ball
In unperceived Hands --
And dancing softly to Himself
His Yarn of Pearl -- unwinds --
He plies from Nought to Nought --
In unsubstantial Trade --
Supplants our Tapestries with His --
In half the period --
An Hour to rear supreme
His Continents of Light --
Then dangle from the Housewife's Broom --
His Boundaries -- forgot --...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
"Do I believe," sayest thou, "what the masters of wisdom would teach me,
And what their followers' band boldly and readily swear?
Cannot I ever attain to true peace, excepting through knowledge,
Or is the system upheld only by fortune and law?
Must I distrust the gently-warning impulse, the precept
That thou, Nature, thyself hast in my bosom impressed,
Till the schools have affixed to...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
My period had come for Prayer --
No other Art -- would do --
My Tactics missed a rudiment --
Creator -- Was it you?
God grows above -- so those who pray
Horizons -- must ascend --
And so I stepped upon the North
To see this Curious Friend --
His House was not -- no sign had He --
By Chimney -- nor by Door
Could I...Read more of this...
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