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Famous Plotted Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Sexton, Anne
...she laughed as you did, Rose, at the first 
story. Someday, I promised her, I'll be someone 
going somewhere and we plotted it in the humdrum 
school for proper girls. The next April the plane 
bucked me like a horse, my elevators turned 
and fear blew down my throat, that last profane 
gauge of a stomach coming up. And then returned 
to land, as unlovely as any seasick sailor, 
sincerely eighteen; my first story, my funny failure. 
Maybe Rose, there is always...Read more of this...



by Matthew, John
...and past mingle,
Where now stand glitzy malls, I know, blood had flowed,
In your dark corners soldiers, spies, princes plotted to kill,
You witnessed the dethroning of emperor Shah Jehan,
And the ascendance of his wily progeny, Aurangazeb,
And you covered your face in the folds of your veil.

Yet, now, mother city, your tears are dry, your sobs silent,
Slowly you die, spent and ravaged by your many lovers.
Though it is kitsch melodies that you hum today, you were,
Se...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Robert
...and scraping of my will. . . .
I have sat and listened to too many
words of the collaborating muse,
and plotted perhaps too freely with my life,
not avoiding injury to others,
not avoiding injury to myself--
to ask compassion . . . this book, half fiction, 
an eelnet made by man for the eel fighting 

my eyes have seen what my hand did....Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...dus; once tame and mild
As grazing ox unworried in the meads;
Now tiger-passion'd, lion-thoughted, wroth,
He meditated, plotted, and even now
Was hurling mountains in that second war,
Not long delay'd, that scar'd the younger Gods
To hide themselves in forms of beast and bird.
Not far hence Atlas; and beside him prone
Phorcus, the sire of Gorgons. Neighbour'd close
Oceanus, and Tethys, in whose lap
Sobb'd Clymene among her tangled hair.
In midst of all lay Themis,...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...I saw that the Flake was on it
But plotted with Time to dispute --
"Unchanged" I urged with a candor
That cost me my honest Heart --

But "you" -- she returned with valor
Sagacious of my mistake
"Have altered -- Accept the pillage
For the progress' sake" --...Read more of this...



by Meredith, George
...ut the sun are curled; 
At least, the sun far brighter there did beam. 
My crime is, that the puppet of a dream, 
I plotted to be worthy of the world. 
Oh, had I with my darling helped to mince 
The facts of life, you still had seen me go 
With hindward feather and with forward toe, 
Her much-adored delightful Fairy Prince!...Read more of this...

by Hopkins, Gerard Manley
...For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                                          P...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...

The female that loves unrequited sleeps, 
And the male that loves unrequited sleeps,
The head of the money-maker that plotted all day sleeps, 
And the enraged and treacherous dispositions—all, all sleep. 

2
I stand in the dark with drooping eyes by the worst-suffering and the most restless, 
I pass my hands soothingly to and fro a few inches from them, 
The restless sink in their beds—they fitfully sleep.

Now I pierce the darkness—new beings appear, 
The earth rec...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...a kid.
I gave him excuse, I bore his abuse in every way that I could;
I swore to prevail; I camped on his trail; I plotted and planned for his good.
By day and by night I strove in men's sight to gather him into the fold,
With precept and prayer, with hope and despair, in hunger and hardship and cold.
I followed him into Gehennas of sin, I sat where the sirens sit;
In the shade of the Pole, for the sake of his soul, I strove with the powers of the Pit.
I shad...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...rm.
Such was his craft and his knowledge, such was his skill at the game,
Never was woman could flout him, so be he plotted her shame.
And so he drank deep of pleasure, and then it fell on a day
He gazed on the wife of Tellus and marked her out for his prey.

Tellus, the smith, was merry, and the time of the year it was June,
So he said to his stalwart helpers: "Shut down the forge at noon.
Go ye and joy in the sunshine, rest in the coolth of the grove,
Drift ...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...'Twas in the year of 1854, and on the 5th November,
Which Britain will no doubt long remember,
When the Russians plotted to drive the British army into the sea,
But at the bayonet charge the British soon made them flee. 

With fourteen hundred British, fifteen thousand Russians were driven back,
At half-past seven o'clock in the morning they made the attack,
But the Grenadiers and Scottish Fusilier Guards, seven hundred strong,
Moved rapidly and fearlessly all alon...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...te with Kwasind.
But the mischievous Puk-Wudjies,
They the envious Little People,
They the fairies and the pygmies,
Plotted and conspired against him.
"If this hateful Kwasind," said they,
"If this great, outrageous fellow
Goes on thus a little longer,
Tearing everything he touches,
Rending everything to pieces,
Filling all the world with wonder,
What becomes of the Puk-Wudjies?
Who will care for the Puk-Wudjies?
He will tread us down like mushrooms,
Drive us all into...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...,
Till I heard the mile-wide mutterings of unimagined rivers,
 And beyond the nameless timber saw illimitable plains!

'Plotted sites of future cities, traced the easy grades between 'em;
 Watched unharnessed rapids wasting fifty thousand head an hour;
Counted leagues of water-frontage through the axe-ripe woods that screen 'em --
 Saw the plant to feed a people -- up and waiting for the power!

Well, I know who'll take the credit -- all the clever chaps that followed --
 Cam...Read more of this...

by Bradstreet, Anne
...ead.
5.55 I've seen, and so have ye, for 'tis but late,
5.56 The desolation of a goodly State.
5.57 Plotted and acted so that none can tell
5.58 Who gave the counsell, but the Prince of hell.
5.59 I've seen a land unmoulded with great pain,
5.60 But yet may live to see't made up again.
5.61 I've seen it shaken, rent, and soak'd in blood,
5.62 But out of troubles ye may see much good.
5.63 These are no old wives' tales, b...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...ant to break
 When the fit hour should strike.

They traded with the careless earth,
 And good return it gave:
They plotted by their neighbour's hearth
 The means to make him slave.

When all was ready to their hand
 They loosed their hidden sword,
And utterly laid waste a land
 Their oath was pledged to guard.

Coldly they went about to raise
 To life and make more dread
Abominations of old days,
 That men believed were dead.

They paid the price to reach the...Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...e.
Outward and visible indication of the plan within,
The complex, manifold involvednes,s of an individual creature
Plotted out
On this small bird, this rudiment,
This little dome, this pediment
Of all creation,
This slow one....Read more of this...

by Field, Eugene
...dear old Pan,
And the lyre that Hermes plays.

But he paid no heed unto me--
Nay, that graceless little boy
Coolly plotted to undo me--
With his songs of tender joy;
And my pedantry o'erthrown,
Eager was I to employ
His sweet ritual for mine own!

Ah, these years of ours are fleeting!
Yet I have not vainly wrought,
Since to-day I am repeating
What dear lessons Eros taught;
Love, and always love, and then--
Counting all things else for naught--
Love and always love again!...Read more of this...

by Cavafy, Constantine P
...then.

In the dissolute life of my youth
the desires of my poetry were being formed,
the scope of my art was being plotted.

This is why my repentances were never stable.
And my resolutions to control myself, to change
lasted for two weeks at the very most....Read more of this...

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