Famous Planted Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Hypochondriac

by Chris Tusa
 Maybe it’s Emphysema, a shiny black jewel of phlegm 
humming like a clump of bees in my chest. 
Perhaps a tumor crawling in the crook of my armpit, 
a blood clot opening like a tiny red flower in my brain.

Maybe it’s too early to show up on an X-ray, 
a kind of cancerous seed planted deep 
in my intestine,...Read more of this...

Mabel Osborne

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Your red blossoms amid green leaves
Are drooping, beautiful geranium!
But you do not ask for water.
You cannot speak! You do not need to speak --
Everyone knows that you are dying of thirst,
Yet they do not bring water!
They pass on, saying:
"The geranium wants water."
And I, who had happiness to share
And longed to share your happiness;
I who loved you, Spoon River,
And craved...Read more of this...

The Last Ride Together

by Robert Browning
 I.

I said---Then, dearest, since 'tis so,
Since now at length my fate I know,
Since nothing all my love avails,
Since all, my life seemed meant for, fails,
Since this was written and needs must be---
My whole heart rises up to bless
Your name in pride and thankfulness!
Take back the hope you gave,---I claim
---Only a memory of the same,
---And this beside, if you will...Read more of this...

A Dream Of Death

by William Butler Yeats
 I dreamed that one had died in a strange place
Near no accustomed hand,
And they had nailed the boards above her face,
The peasants of that land,
Wondering to lay her in that solitude,
And raised above her mound
A cross they had made out of two bits of wood,
And planted cypress round;
And left her to the indifferent stars above
Until I carved these words:
She...Read more of this...

The Little Park Planted

by Yehuda Amichai
 The little park planted in memory of a boy
who fell in the war begins 
to resemble him
as he was twenty eight years ago.
Year by year they look more alike.
His old parents come almost daily
to sit on a bench
and look at him.

And every night the memory in the garden
hums like a little motor.
During the day you can't hear it....Read more of this...

525. Song—Had I the wyte she bade me

by Robert Burns
 HAD I the wyte, had I the wyte,
 Had I the wyte? she bade me;
She watch’d me by the hie-gate side,
 And up the loan she shaw’d me.
And when I wadna venture in,
 A coward loon she ca’d me:
Had Kirk an’ State been in the gate,
 I’d lighted when she bade me.


Sae craftilie she took me ben,
 And bade...Read more of this...

Completion

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 When I shall meet God’s generous dispensers
Of all the riches in the heavenly store, 
Those lesser gods, who act as Recompensers
For loneliness and loss upon this shore, 
Methinks abashed, and somewhat hesitating, 
My soul its wish and longing will declare, 
Lest they reply: ‘Here are no bounties waiting: 
We gave on earth, your portion and your share.’

Then shall I...Read more of this...

Democracy

by Langston Hughes
 Democracy will not come
Today, this year
 Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.

I have as much right 
As the other fellow has
 To stand
On my two feet 
And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say, 
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I'm dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.

 Freedom
 Is a...Read more of this...

Alphonso Of Castile

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 I Alphonso live and learn,
Seeing nature go astern.
Things deteriorate in kind,
Lemons run to leaves and rind,
Meagre crop of figs and limes,
Shorter days and harder times.
Flowering April cools and dies
In the insufficient skies;
Imps at high Midsummer blot
Half the sun's disk with a spot;
'Twill not now avail to tan
Orange cheek, or skin of man:
Roses bleach, the goats are dry,
Lisbon quakes, the...Read more of this...

Taking a nap

by Matsuo Basho
 Taking a nap,
feet planted
 against a cool wall....Read more of this...

Cinderella

by Anne Sexton
 You always read about it:
the plumber with the twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.

Or the nursemaid,
some luscious sweet from Denmark
who captures the oldest son's heart.
from diapers to Dior.
That story.

Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,
eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,
the white truck like an ambulance
who goes into real estate
and makes a pile.
From homogenized to martinis at...Read more of this...

Psalm 01

by John Milton
 Done into Verse, 1653.


Bless'd is the man who hath not walk'd astray
In counsel of the wicked, and ith'way
Of sinners hath not stood, and in the seat
Of scorners hath not sate. But in the great
Jehovahs Law is ever his delight,
And in his law he studies day and night.
He shall be as a tree which planted grows
By watry streams, and in...Read more of this...

The Task: Book I The Sofa (excerpts)

by William Cowper
 Thou know'st my praise of nature most sincere,
And that my raptures are not conjur'd up
To serve occasions of poetic pomp,
But genuine, and art partner of them all.
How oft upon yon eminence our pace
Has slacken'd to a pause, and we have borne
The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,
While admiration, feeding at the eye,
And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene.
Thence...Read more of this...

478. Epigram on a Suicide

by Robert Burns
 EARTH’D up, here lies an imp o’ hell,
 Planted by Satan’s dibble;
Poor silly wretch, he’s damned himsel’,
 To save the Lord the trouble....Read more of this...

Ode to W. H. Channing

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Though loath to grieve
The evil time's sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My honied thought
For the priest's cant,
Or statesman's rant.

If I refuse
My study for their politique,
Which at the best is trick,
The angry Muse
Puts confusion in my brain.

But who is he that prates
Of the culture of mankind,
Of better arts and life?
Go, blindworm, go,
Behold the famous States
Harrying Mexico
With rifle and with knife!

Or who, with accent...Read more of this...

Disappointed

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
An old man planted and dug and tended,
Toiling in joy from dew to dew;
The sun was kind, and the rain befriended;
Fine grew his orchard and fair to view.
Then he said: "I will quiet my thrifty fears,
For here is fruit for my failing years."
But even then the storm-clouds gathered,
Swallowing up the azure sky;
The sweeping winds into white foam lathered
The placid breast...Read more of this...

I See The Boys Of Summer

by Dylan Thomas
 I

I see the boys of summer in their ruin
Lay the gold tithings barren,
Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils;
There in their heat the winter floods
Of frozen loves they fetch their girls,
And drown the cargoed apples in their tides.

These boys of light are curdlers in their folly,
Sour the boiling honey;
The jacks of frost they finger in the hives;
There in...Read more of this...

Testament

by Wendell Berry
 1.
Dear relatives and friends, when my last breath
Grows large and free in air, don't call it death --
A word to enrich the undertaker and inspire
His surly art of imitating life; conspire
Against him. Say that my body cannot now
Be improved upon; it has no fault to show
To the sly cosmetician. Say that my flesh
Has a perfect compliance with the grass
Truer...Read more of this...

A Planted Life -- diversified

by Emily Dickinson
 A Planted Life -- diversified
With Gold and Silver Pain
To prove the presence of the Ore
In Particles -- 'tis when

A Value struggle -- it exist --
A Power -- will proclaim
Although Annihilation pile
Whole Chaoses on Him --...Read more of this...

The Fruit Shop

by Amy Lowell
 Cross-ribboned shoes; a muslin gown,
High-waisted, girdled with bright blue;
A straw poke bonnet which hid the frown
She pluckered her little brows into
As she picked her dainty passage through
The dusty street. "Ah, Mademoiselle,
A dirty pathway, we need rain,
My poor fruits suffer, and the shell
Of this nut's too big for its kernel, lain
Here in the sun it has shrunk again.
The baker down...Read more of this...

Byzantium

by William Butler Yeats
 The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.

Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the...Read more of this...

310. Tam o' Shanter: A Tale

by Robert Burns
 WHEN chapman billies leave the street,
And drouthy neibors, neibors, meet;
As market days are wearing late,
And folk begin to tak the gate,
While we sit bousing at the nappy,
An’ getting fou and unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps and stiles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Where sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering...Read more of this...

Wild Peaches

by Elinor Wylie
 1

When the world turns completely upside down 
You say we'll emigrate to the Eastern Shore 
Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore; 
We'll live among wild peach trees, miles from town, 
You'll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown 
Homespun, dyed butternut's dark gold colour. 
Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor, 
We'll swim in milk and honey till we drown.

The winter...Read more of this...

The Bough of Nonsense

by Robert Graves
 AN IDYLL


Back from the Somme two Fusiliers 
Limped painfully home; the elder said, 
S. “Robert, I’ve lived three thousand years 
This Summer, and I’m nine parts dead.” 
R. “But if that’s truly so,” I cried, “quick, now,
Through these great oaks and see the famous bough 

”Where once a nonsense built her nest 
With skulls and flowers and all things...Read more of this...

No Road

by Philip Larkin
 Since we agreed to let the road between us
Fall to disuse,
And bricked our gates up, planted trees to screen us,
And turned all time's eroding agents loose,
Silence, and space, and strangers - our neglect
Has not had much effect.

Leaves drift unswept, perhaps; grass creeps unmown;
No other change.
So clear it stands, so little overgrown,
Walking that way tonight would not seem strange,
And still...Read more of this...

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