Famous Persons Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Persons poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous persons poems. These examples illustrate what a famous persons poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...oncrete suits.
Now the damned make way for the double-damned
Who emerge with shuffling pace
From the nightmare zone of persons unknown,
With neither name nor face.
And poor Dot King to one doth cling,
Joined in a ghastly jig,
While Elwell doth jape at a goblin shape
And tickle it with his wig.
See Rothstein pass like breath on a glass,
The original Black Sox kid;
He riffles the pack, riding piggyback
On the killer whose name he hid.
And smeared like brine on a slavering swi...Read more of this...
by
Nash, Ogden
...ompact lands—lands tied at the hips with the belt stringing the huge
oval
lakes;
Always the West, with strong native persons—the increasing density there—the
habitans,
friendly, threatening, ironical, scorning invaders;
All sights, South, North, East—all deeds, promiscuously done at all times,
All characters, movements, growths—a few noticed, myriads unnoticed,
Through Mannahatta’s streets I walking, these things gathering;
On interior rivers, by night, in the glare o...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...is prohibited—not God’s, or any.
All comes by the body—only health puts you rapport with the universe.
Produce great persons, the rest follows.
4
America isolated I sing;
I say that works made here in the spirit of other lands, are so much poison in The States.
(How dare such insects as we see assume to write poems for America?
For our victorious armies, and the offspring following the armies?)
Piety and conformity to them that like!
Peace, obesity, allegiance, to ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...A Masque Presented At Ludlow Castle, 1634, Before
The Earl Of Bridgewater, Then President Of Wales.
The Persons
The ATTENDANT SPIRIT, afterwards in the habit of THYRSIS.
COMUS, with his Crew.
The LADY.
FIRST BROTHER.
SECOND BROTHER.
SABRINA, the Nymph.
The Chief Persons which presented were:—
The Lord Brackley;
Mr. Thomas Egerton, his Brother;
The Lady Alice Egerton.
The first Scene discovers a wild wood.
The ATTENDANT SPIRIT descends or enters.
BEFORE...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...long since fled.
68 It makes a man more aged in conceit
69 Than was Methuselah or's grand-sire great,
70 While of their persons and their acts his mind doth treat.
11
71 Sometimes in Eden fair he seems to be,
72 See glorious Adam there made Lord of all,
73 Fancies the Apple dangle on the Tree
74 That turn'd his Sovereign to a naked thrall,
75 Who like a miscreant's driven from that place
76 To get his bread with pain and sweat of face.
77 A penalty impos'd on his backslid...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...aste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achie...Read more of this...
by
Ehrmann, Max
...ardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone—
This is the Hour of Lead—
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—
First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—
441
This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me—
The simple News that Nature told—
With tender Majesty
Her Message is committed
To Hands I cannot see—
For love of Her—Sweet—countrymen—
Judge tenderly—of Me.
448
This was a Poet—It is That
Distills amazin...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...ns which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,
Being between two lives—unflowering, between
The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:
For liberation—not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...lots who shall be
kill’d, to
preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor,
and
upon
*******, and the like;
All these—All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon,
See, hear, and am silent....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ch sharing the earth with all.
What widens within you, Walt Whitman?
What waves and soils exuding?
What climes? what persons and lands are here?
Who are the infants? some playing, some slumbering?
Who are the girls? who are the married women?
Who are the groups of old men going slowly with their arms about each other’s necks?
What rivers are these? what forests and fruits are these?
What are the mountains call’d that rise so high in the mists?
What myriads of dwelling...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...g through the Poets error of intermixing Comic
stuff with Tragic sadness and gravity; or introducing trivial and
vulgar persons, which by all judicious hath bin counted absurd; and
brought in without discretion, corruptly to gratifie the people. And
though antient Tragedy use no Prologue, yet using sometimes, in
case of self defence, or explanation, that which Martial calls an
Epistle; in behalf of this Tragedy coming forth after the antient
manner, much different from what a...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...nd the master salutes the
slave,
The felon steps forth from the prison—the insane becomes sane—the suffering of
sick
persons is reliev’d,
The sweatings and fevers stop—the throat that was unsound is sound—the lungs of
the
consumptive are resumed—the poor distress’d head is free,
The joints of the rheumatic move as smoothly as ever, and smoother than ever,
Stiflings and passages open—the paralyzed become supple,
The swell’d and convuls’d and congested awake to themsel...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...n there are plentiful athletic bards, inland and seaboard,
When through These States walk a hundred millions of superb persons,
When the rest part away for superb persons, and contribute to them,
When breeds of the most perfect mothers denote America,
Then to me and mine our due fruition.
I have press’d through in my own right,
I have sung the Body and the Soul—War and Peace have I sung,
And the songs of Life and of Birth—and shown that there are many births:
I have o...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...my cornets and my drums,
I play not marches for accepted victors only—I play great marches for
conquer’d and slain persons.
Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?
I also say it is good to fall—battles are lost in the same spirit in which
they are won.
I beat and pound for the dead;
I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.
Vivas to those who have fail’d!
And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!
And to those themsel...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
..., Willamette,
The slow progress, the scant fare, the axe, rifle, saddle-bags;
The beauty of all adventurous and daring persons,
The beauty of wood-boys and wood-men, with their clear untrimm’d faces,
The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves,
The American contempt for statutes and ceremonies, the boundless impatience of restraint,
The loose drift of character, the inkling through random types, the solidification;
The butcher in the slaughter-...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...thousand beautiful forms of women appear’d, it would not astonish me.
Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air, and to eat and sleep with the earth.
Here a great personal deed has room;
A great deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,
Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law, and mocks all authority and all argument
against
it.
Here is the test of wisdom;
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools;
Wi...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...uty in power also.
You children must widen your minds' eyes to take mountains
Instead of faces, and millions
Instead of persons; not to hate life; and massed power
After the lone hawk's dead.
III
That light blood-loving weasel, a tongue of yellow
Fire licking the sides of the gray stones,
Has a more passionate and more pure heart
In the snake-slender flanks than man can imagine;
But he is betrayed by his own courage,
The man who kills him is like a cloud hiding a star.
The...Read more of this...
by
Jeffers, Robinson
...ble that some readers may object, in these objectionable times, to the freedom with which saints, angels, and spiritual persons discourse in this 'Vision.' But, for precedents upon such points, I must refer him to Fielding's 'Journey from the World to the next,' and to the Visions of myself, the said Quevedo, in Spanish or translated. The reader is also requested to observe, that no doctrinal tenets are insisted upon or discussed; that the person of the Deity is carefully wit...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...sformation cannot be eluded,
The law of heroes and good-doers cannot be eluded,
The law of drunkards, informers, mean persons—not one iota thereof can be eluded.
8
Slow moving and black lines go ceaselessly over the earth,
Northerner goes carried, and Southerner goes carried, and they on the Atlantic side, and
they
on the Pacific, and they between, and all through the Mississippi country, and all over
the
earth.
The great masters and kosmos are well as they go—the h...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...hoes;
Despised the fools with stars and garters,
So often seen caressing Chartres.
He never courted men in station,
Nor persons held in admiration.
Of no man's greatness was afraid,
Because he sought for no man's aid.
Though trusted long in great affairs,
He gave himself no haughty airs.
Without regarding private ends,
Spent all his credit for his friends;
And only chose the wise and good;
No flatterers; no allies in blood;
But succoured virtue in distress,
And seldom failed ...Read more of this...
by
Swift, Jonathan
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