Famous Pleasant Poems by Famous Poets

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

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An Essay On Criticism

...a Foreign Reign
Did all the Dregs of bold Socinus drain;
Then Unbelieving Priests reform'd the Nation,
And taught more Pleasant Methods of Salvation;
Where Heav'ns Free Subjects might their Rights dispute,
Lest God himself shou'd seem too Absolute.
Pulpits their Sacred Satire learn'd to spare,
And Vice admir'd to find a Flatt'rer there!
Encourag'd thus, Witt's Titans brav'd the Skies,
And the Press groan'd with Licenc'd Blasphemies--
These Monsters, Criticks! with your Darts...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander


Beowulf (Modern English)

...all-wood clattered
until he addressed that wise man wordfully,
the lord of the Ingwines, asking him if he had
had an pleasant night according to his wish. (ll. 1310-20)

 

XX.

Hrothgar spoke, the helmet of the Scyldings:
“Do not ask after pleasantries. Sorrow is renewed
for the Danish people. Æschere is dead,
the older brother of Yrmenlaf, my rune-speaker,
and my counselor—he was my shoulder-brother
when we at the flame-point guarded our heads,
when the foot ...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

...like rivers that water the woodlands,
Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven?
Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed!
Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October
Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o'er the ocean
Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pre.

Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient,
Ye who believe in the beauty and st...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Hyperion

...ull completion of fair day,---
For rest divine upon exalted couch,
And slumber in the arms of melody,
He pac'd away the pleasant hours of ease
With stride colossal, on from hall to hall;
While far within each aisle and deep recess,
His winged minions in close clusters stood,
Amaz'd and full offear; like anxious men
Who on wide plains gather in panting troops,
When earthquakes jar their battlements and towers.
Even now, while Saturn, rous'd from icy trance,
Went step for step ...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Maple

...ood home;
The house one story high in front, three stories
On the end it presented to the road.
(The arrangement made a pleasant sunny cellar.)
Her mother's bedroom was her father's still,
Where she could watch her mother's picture fading.
Once she found for a bookmark in the Bible
A maple leaf she thought must have been laid
In wait for her there. She read every word
Of the two pages it was pressed between,
As if it was her mother speaking to her.
But forgot to put the leaf ...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert


On the Way

...y frost
Accumulate already in the air. 
I think a touch of ermine, Hamilton, 
Would be for you in your autumnal mood 
A pleasant sort of warmth along the shoulders. 

HAMILTON

If so it is you think, you may as well
Give over thinking. We are done with ermine. 
What I fear most is not the multitude, 
But those who are to loop it with a string 
That has one end in France and one end here. 
I’m not so fortified with observation
That I could swear that more than half a score 
Am...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Paradise Lost: Book 05

...e ear one called me forth to walk 
With gentle voice; I thought it thine: It said, 
'Why sleepest thou, Eve? now is the pleasant time, 
'The cool, the silent, save where silence yields 
'To the night-warbling bird, that now awake 
'Tunes sweetest his love-laboured song; now reigns 
'Full-orbed the moon, and with more pleasing light 
'Shadowy sets off the face of things; in vain, 
'If none regard; Heaven wakes with all his eyes, 
'Whom to behold but thee, Nature's desire? 
'In...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Paradise Lost: Book 09

...husband thus began. 
Adam, well may we labour still to dress 
This garden, still to tend plant, herb, and flower, 
Our pleasant task enjoined; but, till more hands 
Aid us, the work under our labour grows, 
Luxurious by restraint; what we by day 
Lop overgrown, or prune, or prop, or bind, 
One night or two with wanton growth derides 
Tending to wild. Thou therefore now advise, 
Or bear what to my mind first thoughts present: 
Let us divide our labours; thou, where choice 
Le...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

...out it.

A breeze like the turning of a page
Brings back your face: the moment
Takes such a big bite out of the haze
Of pleasant intuition it comes after.
The locking into place is "death itself,"
As Berg said of a phrase in Mahler's Ninth;
Or, to quote Imogen in Cymbeline, "There cannot
Be a pinch in death more sharp than this," for,
Though only exercise or tactic, it carries
The momentum of a conviction that had been building.
Mere forgetfulness cannot remove it
Nor wishing...Read more of this...
by Ashbery, John

The Ballad of the White Horse

...ight Harold stood,
The kinsman of the King.

Young Harold, coarse, with colours gay,
Smoking with oil and musk,
And the pleasant violence of the young,
Pushed through his people, giving tongue
Foewards, where, grey as cobwebs hung,
The banners of the Usk.

But as he came before his line
A little space along,
His beardless face broke into mirth,
And he cried: "What broken bits of earth
Are here? For what their clothes are worth
I would sell them for a song."

For Colan was hun...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K

The Dungeon

...h an incident in which he was concerned.   In the sweet shire of Cardigan,  Not far from pleasant Ivor-hall,  An old man dwells, a little man,  I've heard he once was tall.  Of years he has upon his back,  No doubt, a burthen weighty;  He says he is three score and ten,  But others say he's eighty.   A long blue livery-coat has he,  That's fair behind, and fai...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

The Everlasting Mercy

...e purple flaps on either cheek, 
A stately house, and time for knowledge, 
And gold to send your sons to college, 
That pleasant place, where getting learning 
Is also key to money earning. 
But quite your damndest want of grace 
Is what you do to save your face; 
The way you sit astride the gates 
By padding wages out of rates; 
Your Christmas gifts of shoddy blankets 
That every working soul may thank its 
Loving parson, loving squire 
Through whom he can't afford a fire. 
...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John

The Four Ages of Man

...ers now are few, my sight doth fail,
5.70 My skin is wrinkled, and my cheeks are pale.
5.71 No more rejoice, at music's pleasant noise,
5.72 But do awake at the cock's clanging voice.
5.73 I cannot scent savours of pleasant meat,
5.74 Nor sapors find in what I drink or eat.
5.75 My hands and arms, once strong, have lost their might.
5.76 I cannot labour, nor I cannot fight:
5.77 My comely legs, as nimble as the Roe,
5.78 Now stiff and numb, can hardly creep or go.
5.79 My hea...Read more of this...
by Bradstreet, Anne

The Growth of Love

...orce
From off his mind the soil of passion's gust. 

My brow I bare then, and with slacken'd speed
Can view the country pleasant on all sides,
And to kind salutation give good heed:
I ride as one who for his pleasure rides,
And stroke the neck of my delighted steed,
And seek what cheer the village inn provides. 

38
An idle June day on the sunny Thames,
Floating or rowing as our fancy led,
Now in the high beams basking as we sped,
Now in green shade gliding by mirror'd stems;...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour

The Holy Grail

...g-pin, 
And blew my merry maidens all about 
With all discomfort; yea, and but for this, 
My twelvemonth and a day were pleasant to me." 

`He ceased; and Arthur turned to whom at first 
He saw not, for Sir Bors, on entering, pushed 
Athwart the throng to Lancelot, caught his hand, 
Held it, and there, half-hidden by him, stood, 
Until the King espied him, saying to him, 
"Hail, Bors! if ever loyal man and true 
Could see it, thou hast seen the Grail;" and Bors, 
"Ask me not,...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Lady of the Lake

...th they bring,
     When back by lake and glen they wind,
     And in the Lowland leave behind,
     Where once some pleasant hamlet stood,
     A mass of ashes slaked with blood.
     The hand that for my father fought
     I honor, as his daughter ought;
     But can I clasp it reeking red
     From peasants slaughtered in their shed?
     No! wildly while his virtues gleam,
     They make his passions darker seem,
     And flash along his spirit high,
     Like...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

...p from his station into the mill;
I remain'd alone, & then this appearance was no more, but I found
myself sitting on a pleasant bank beside a river by moon light
hearing a harper who sung to the harp. & his theme was, The man
who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds
reptiles of the mind.
But I arose, and sought for the mill, & there I found my
Angel, who surprised asked me, how I escaped?
I answerd. All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics: for
when...Read more of this...
by Blake, William

The Princess (prologue)

...stmas here, 
And ~what's my thought~ and ~when~ and ~where~ and ~how~, 
As here at Christmas.' 
She remembered that: 
A pleasant game, she thought: she liked it more 
Than magic music, forfeits, all the rest. 
But these--what kind of tales did men tell men, 
She wondered, by themselves? 
A half-disdain 
Perched on the pouted blossom of her lips: 
And Walter nodded at me; '~He~ began, 
The rest would follow, each in turn; and so 
We forged a sevenfold story. Kind? what kind? 
...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Waste Land

...he Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, 
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.
 The river sweats
 Oil and tar
 The barges drift
 With the turning tide
 Red sails 
 Wide
 To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
 The barges wash
 Drifting logs
 Down Green...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

White Flock

...
I know that you're sick very badly:
You seek death and the end you fear.



x x x

The early chills are most pleasant to me.
Torment releases me when I come there.
Mysterious, dark places of habitation --
Are storehouses of labor and prayer.

The calm and confident loving
I can't surmount in this side of mine:
A drop of Novgorod blood inside me
Is like a piece of ice in foamy wine.

And this can not in any way be corrected,
She has not been melted by gre...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

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