Famous Played Out Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Sonnet 24: Mine eye hath played the painter and hath stelled

by William Shakespeare
 Mine eye hath played the painter and hath stelled
Thy beauty's form in table of my heart;
My body is the frame wherein 'tis held,
And perspective it is best painter's art.
For through the painter must you see his skill
To find where your true image pictured lies,
Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,
That hath his windows glazèd with thine eyes.
Now see...Read more of this...

Ryton Firs

by Lascelles Abercrombie
The Dream
All round the knoll, on days of quietest air,
Secrets are being told; and if the trees
Speak out — let them make uproar loud as drums — 
'Tis secrets still, shouted instead of whisper'd.

There must have been a warning given once:
No tree, on pain of withering and sawfly,
To reach the slimmest of his snaky toes
Into this mounded sward and rumple...Read more of this...

New Years Eve

by Henry Van Dyke
 I 

The other night I had a dream, most clear 
And comforting, complete
In every line, a crystal sphere,
And full of intimate and secret cheer. 
Therefore I will repeat
That vision, dearest heart, to you,
As of a thing not feigned, but very true,
Yes, true as ever in my life befell;
And you, perhaps, can tell
Whether my dream was really sad or sweet....Read more of this...

The Barefoot Boy

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace;
From my heart I give thee joy, -
I was once a barefoot boy!
Prince thou art, - the grown-up man
Only is republican.
Let the million-dollared...Read more of this...

As the Bell Clinks

by Rudyard Kipling
 As I left the Halls at Lumley, rose the vision of a comely
Maid last season worshipped dumbly, watched with fervor from afar;
And I wondered idly, blindly, if the maid would greet me kindly.
That was all -- the rest was settled by the clinking tonga-bar.
Yea, my life and hers were coupled by the tonga coupling-bar.

For my misty meditation, at the...Read more of this...

The Break Away

by Anne Sexton
 Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce:
the courtroom a cement box,
a gas chamber for the infectious Jew in me
and a perhaps land, a possibly promised land
for the Jew in me,
but still a betrayal room for the till-death-do-us—
and yet a death, as in the unlocking of scissors
that makes the now separate parts useless,
even to cut each other up...Read more of this...

Ghost

by Robinson Jeffers
 There is a jaggle of masonry here, on a small hill
Above the gray-mouthed Pacific, cottages and a thick-walled tower, all made of rough sea rock
And Portland cement. I imagine, fifty years from now,
A mist-gray figure moping about this place in mad moonlight, examining the mortar-joints, pawing the 
Parasite ivy: "Does the place stand? How did it take that last...Read more of this...

Krinken

by Eugene Field
 Krinken was a little child,--
It was summer when he smiled.
Oft the hoary sea and grim
Stretched its white arms out to him,
Calling, "Sun-child, come to me;
Let me warm my heart with thee!"
But the child heard not the sea,
Calling, yearning evermore
For the summer on the shore.

Krinken on the beach one day
Saw a maiden Nis at play;
On the pebbly beach she played
In...Read more of this...

Hiawathas Fishing

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Forth upon the Gitche Gumee, 
On the shining Big-Sea-Water, 
With his fishing-line of cedar, 
Of the twisted bark of cedar, 
Forth to catch the sturgeon Nahma, 
Mishe-Nahma, King of Fishes, 
In his birch canoe exulting 
All alone went Hiawatha.
Through the clear, transparent water 
He could see the fishes swimming 
Far down in the depths below him; 
See the yellow...Read more of this...

The White Ships and the Red

by Joyce Kilmer
 (For Alden March)

With drooping sail and pennant
That never a wind may reach,
They float in sunless waters
Beside a sunless beach.
Their mighty masts and funnels
Are white as driven snow,
And with a pallid radiance
Their ghostly bulwarks glow.
Here is a Spanish galleon
That once with gold was gay,
Here is a Roman trireme
Whose hues outshone the day.
But Tyrian dyes have faded,
And prows that once were...Read more of this...

The Ghost Of The Past

by Thomas Hardy
 We two kept house, the Past and I,
The Past and I;
I tended while it hovered nigh,
Leaving me never alone.
It was a spectral housekeeping
Where fell no jarring tone,
As strange, as still a housekeeping
As ever has been known.

As daily I went up the stair,
And down the stair,
I did not mind the Bygone there --
The Present once to me;
Its moving meek companionship
I...Read more of this...

Plain Language From Truthful James

by Bret Harte
Which I wish to remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar,
Which the same I would rise to explain.

Ah Sin was his name;
And I shall not deny,
In regard to the same,
What that name might imply;
But his smile it was pensive and childlike,
As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye.

It was...Read more of this...

Epitaphs For Two Players

by Vachel Lindsay
 I. EDWIN BOOTH

An old actor at the Player's Club told me that Edwin Booth first impersonated Hamlet when a barnstormer in California. There were few theatres, but the hotels were provided with crude assembly rooms for strolling players.


The youth played in the blear hotel.
The rafters gleamed with glories strange.
And winds of mourning Elsinore
Howling at chance and fate and change;
Voices...Read more of this...

306. Election Ballad at close of Contest for representing the Dumfries Burghs 1790

by Robert Burns
 FINTRY, my stay in wordly strife,
Friend o’ my muse, friend o’ my life,
 Are ye as idle’s I am?
Come then, wi’ uncouth kintra fleg,
O’er Pegasus I’ll fling my leg,
 And ye shall see me try him.


But where shall I go rin a ride,
That I may splatter nane beside?
 I wad na be uncivil:
In manhood’s various paths and ways
There’s aye...Read more of this...

Jimmy Dooleys Army

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 There's a dashin' sort of boy 
Which they call his Party's Joy, 
And his smile-that-won't-come-off would quite disarm ye; 
And he played the leadin' hand 
In the Helter-Skelter Band, 
Known as Jimmy Dooley's Circulating Army. 
When the rank and file they found, 
They were marchin' round and round, 
They one and all began to act unruly; 
And the letter...Read more of this...

Prelude

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Between the green bud and the red
Youth sat and sang by Time, and shed
From eyes and tresses flowers and tears,
From heart and spirit hopes and fears,
Upon the hollow stream whose bed
Is channelled by the foamless years;
And with the white the gold-haired head
Mixed running locks, and in Time's ears
Youth's dreams hung singing, and Time's truth
Was half not harsh in the...Read more of this...

Lord Roberts Triumphal Entry into Pretoria

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1900, and on the 5th of June,
Lord Roberts entered Pretoria in the afternoon;
His triumphal entry was magnificent to see,
The British Army marching behind him fearlessly. 

With their beautiful banners unfurled to the breeze,
But the scene didn't the Boers please;
And they immediately made some show of fight,
But at the charge of the bayonet they were...Read more of this...

I Am The People The Mob

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...

The Girt Woak Tree

by William Barnes
 The girt woak tree that's in the dell !
There's noo tree I do love so well;
Vor times an' times when I wer young
I there've a-climb'd, an' there've a-zwung,
An' pick'd the eacorns green, a-shed
In wrestlen storms from his broad head,
An' down below's the cloty brook
Where I did vish with line an' hook,
An' beat, in playsome dips and zwims,
The foamy stream,...Read more of this...

To Sylvia

by Amy Levy
 "O love, lean thou thy cheek to mine,
And let the tears together flow"--
Such was the song you sang to me
Once, long ago.

Such was the song you sang; and yet
(O be not wroth!) I scarcely knew
What sounds flow'd forth; I only felt
That you were you.

I scarcely knew your hair was gold,
Nor of the heavens' own blue your eyes.
Sylvia and song,...Read more of this...

A Subalterns Love Song

by John Betjeman
 Miss J.Hunter Dunn, Miss J.Hunter Dunn,
Furnish'd and burnish'd by Aldershot sun,
What strenuous singles we played after tea,
We in the tournament - you against me!

Love-thirty, love-forty, oh! weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy,
With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn

Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,
How mad...Read more of this...

There was an Old Man with a flute—

by Edward Lear
There was an Old Man with a flute,—A "sarpint" ran into his boot!But he played day and night, till the "sarpint" took flight,And avoided that Man with a flute. ...Read more of this...

To Leonide Massine in ‘Cleopatra'

by Siegfried Sassoon
 O beauty doomed and perfect for an hour, 
Leaping along the verge of death and night, 
You show me dauntless Youth that went to fight 
Four long years past, discovering pride and power. 

You die but in our dreams, who watch you fall
Knowing that to-morrow you will dance again. 
But not to ebbing music were they slain 
Who sleep...Read more of this...

Conscripts

by Siegfried Sassoon
 ‘Fall in, that awkward squad, and strike no more 
Attractive attitudes! Dress by the right! 
The luminous rich colours that you wore 
Have changed to hueless khaki in the night. 
Magic? What’s magic got to do with you?
There’s no such thing! Blood’s red, and skies are blue.’ 

They gasped and sweated, marching up and down. 
I drilled them till...Read more of this...

Chaplin

by A S J Tessimond
 The sun, a heavy spider, spins in the thirsty sky.
The wind hides under cactus leaves, in doorway corners. Only the wry

Small shadow accompanies Hamlet-Petrouchka's march - the slight
Wry sniggering shadow in front of the morning, turning at noon, behind towards night.

The plumed cavalcade has passed to tomorrow, is lost again;
But the wisecrack-mask, the quick-flick-fanfare of the cane remain.

Diminuendo of...Read more of this...

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