Famous Pompous Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Rom: On the Palatine

by Thomas Hardy
 We walked where Victor Jove was shrined awhile, 
And passed to Livia's rich red mural show, 
Whence, thridding cave and Criptoportico, 
We gained Caligula's dissolving pile. 

And each ranked ruin tended to beguile 
The outer sense, and shape itself as though 
It wore its marble hues, its pristine glow 
Of scenic frieze and pompous peristyle. 

When lo, swift hands,...Read more of this...

No Brigadier throughout the Year

by Emily Dickinson
 No Brigadier throughout the Year
So civic as the Jay --
A Neighbor and a Warrior too
With shrill felicity
Pursuing Winds that censure us
A February Day,
The Brother of the Universe
Was never blown away --
The Snow and he are intimate --
I've often seem them play
When Heaven looked upon us all
With such severity
I felt apology were due
To an insulted sky
Whose pompous frown was Nutriment
To...Read more of this...

83. The Cotter's Saturday Night

by Robert Burns
 MY lov’d, my honour’d, much respected friend!
 No mercenary bard his homage pays;
With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end,
 My dearest meed, a friend’s esteem and praise:
 To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,
The lowly train in life’s sequester’d scene,
 The native feelings strong, the guileless ways,
What Aiken in a cottage would have been;
Ah! tho’ his worth...Read more of this...

Bill and Joe

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 COME, dear old comrade, you and I
Will steal an hour from days gone by,
The shining days when life was new,
And all was bright with morning dew,
The lusty days of long ago,
When you were Bill and I was Joe.

Your name may flaunt a titled trail
Proud as a cockerel's rainbow tail,
And mine as brief appendix wear
As Tam O'Shanter's luckless mare;
To-day, old...Read more of this...

Prelude to an Unwritten Masterpiece

by Siegfried Sassoon
 You like my bird-sung gardens: wings and flowers; 
Calm landscapes for emotion; star-lit lawns; 
And Youth against the sun-rise ... ‘Not profound; 
‘But such a haunting music in the sound: 
‘Do it once more; it helps us to forget’.

Last night I dreamt an old recurring scene— 
Some complex out of childhood; (sex, of course!) 
I can’t remember how the...Read more of this...

Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle IV To Richard Boyle

by Alexander Pope
 Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu se 
Impediat verbis lassas onerantibus aures: 
Et sermone opus est modo tristi, saepe jocoso, 
Defendente vicem modo Rhetoris atque Poetae, 
Interdum urbani, parcentis viribus, atque
Extenuantis eas consulto.
(Horace, Satires, I, x, 17-22)
'Tis strange, the miser should his cares employ 
To gain those riches he can ne'er enjoy:
Is it less strange, the prodigal should...Read more of this...

The Ghosts of the Buffaloes

by Vachel Lindsay
 Last night at black midnight I woke with a cry,
The windows were shaking, there was thunder on high,
The floor was a-tremble, the door was a-jar,
White fires, crimson fires, shone from afar.
I rushed to the door yard. The city was gone.
My home was a hut without orchard or lawn.
It was mud-smear and logs near a whispering stream,
Nothing else built by...Read more of this...

Rome: On the Palatine

by Thomas Hardy
 We walked where Victor Jove was shrined awhile, 
And passed to Livia's rich red mural show, 
Whence, thridding cave and Criptoportico, 
We gained Caligula's dissolving pile. 

And each ranked ruin tended to beguile 
The outer sense, and shape itself as though 
It wore its marble hues, its pristine glow 
Of scenic frieze and pompous peristyle. 

When lo, swift hands,...Read more of this...

A Tale of Starvation

by Amy Lowell
 There once was a man whom the gods didn't love,
And a disagreeable man was he.
He loathed his neighbours, and his neighbours hated him,
And he cursed eternally.
He damned the sun, and he damned the stars,
And he blasted the winds in the sky.
He sent to Hell every green, growing thing,
And he raved at the birds as they fly.
His oaths were many,...Read more of this...

How lonesome the Wind must feel Nights --

by Emily Dickinson
 How lonesome the Wind must feel Nights --
When people have put out the Lights
And everything that has an Inn
Closes the shutter and goes in --

How pompous the Wind must feel Noons
Stepping to incorporeal Tunes
Correcting errors of the sky
And clarifying scenery

How mighty the Wind must feel Morns
Encamping on a thousand dawns
Espousing each and spurning all
Then soaring to his Temple Tall...Read more of this...

The White Lady

by Dorothy Parker
 I cannot rest, I cannot rest
In straight and shiny wood,
My woven hands upon my breast--
The dead are all so good!

The earth is cool across their eyes;
They lie there quietly.
But I am neither old nor wise;
They do not welcome me.

Where never I walked alone before,
I wander in the weeds;
And people scream and bar the door,
And rattle at their beads.

We cannot...Read more of this...

247. Ode Sacred to the Memory of Mrs. Oswald of Auchencruive

by Robert Burns
 DWELLER in yon dungeon dark,
 Hangman of creation! mark,
 Who in widow-weeds appears,
 Laden with unhonour’d years,
 Noosing with care a bursting purse,
 Baited with many a deadly curse?


STROPHE View the wither’d Beldam’s face;
 Can thy keen inspection trace
Aught of Humanity’s sweet, melting grace?
 Note that eye, ’tis rheum o’erflows;
 Pity’s flood there never rose,
 See these hands ne’er...Read more of this...

The Rape of the Lock: Canto 3

by Alexander Pope
 Close by those meads, for ever crown'd with flow'rs, 
Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs,
There stands a structure of majestic frame,
Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name.
Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom
Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home;
Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take--and sometimes tea.
Hither the heroes and the...Read more of this...

Stanzas Written under an Oak in Windsor Forest

by Mary Darby Robinson
 "HERE POPE FIRST SUNG!" O, hallow'd Tree !
Such is the boast thy bark displays;
Thy branches, like thy Patron's lays,
Shall ever, ever, sacred be; 
Nor with'ring storm, nor woodman's stroke, 
Shall harm the POET'S favourite Oak. 

'Twas HERE, he woo'd his MUSE of fire,
While Inspiration's wond'rous art,
Sublimely stealing thro' his heart
Did Fancy's proudest themes inspire: 
'Twas HERE he wisely learnt...Read more of this...

Accordion

by Robert William Service
 Some carol of the banjo, to its measure keeping time;
Of viol or of lute some make a song.
My battered old accordion, you're worthy of a rhyme,
You've been my friend and comforter so long.
Round half the world I've trotted you, a dozen years or more;
You've given heaps of people lots of fun;
You've set a host of happy feet a-tapping on...Read more of this...

312. Elegy on the late Miss Burnet of Monboddo

by Robert Burns
 LIFE ne’er exulted in so rich a prize,
As Burnet, lovely from her native skies;
Nor envious death so triumph’d in a blow,
As that which laid th’ accomplish’d Burnet low.


Thy form and mind, sweet maid, can I forget?
 In richest ore the brightest jewel set!
In thee, high Heaven above was truest shown,
 As by His noblest work the Godhead best is...Read more of this...

When Golda Meir was in Africa

by Alice Walker
When Golda Meir
Was in Africa
She shook out her hair
And combed it
Everywhere she went.


According to her autobiography
Africans loved this.


In Russia, Minneapolis, London, Washington, D.C.,
Germany, Palestine, Tel Aviv and
Jerusalem
She never combed at all.
There was no point. In those
Places people said, "She looks like
Any other aging grandmother. She looks
Like a troll. Let's sell her cookery
And guns."


"Kreplach your cookery," said Golda.


Only in Africa could...Read more of this...

153. Inscription for the Headstone of Fergusson the Poet

by Robert Burns
 NO 1 sculptured marble here, nor pompous lay,
 “No storied urn nor animated bust;”
This simple stone directs pale Scotia’s way,
 To pour her sorrows o’er the Poet’s dust.


ADDITIONAL STANZASShe mourns, sweet tuneful youth, thy hapless fate;
 Tho’ all the powers of song thy fancy fired,
Yet Luxury and Wealth lay by in state,
 And, thankless, starv’d what they so much...Read more of this...

Sonnet XI: O! Reason!

by Mary Darby Robinson
 O! Reason! vaunted Sovreign of the mind!
Thou pompous vision with a sounding name!
Can'st thou, the soul's rebellious passions tame!
Can'st thou in spells the vagrant fancy bind?
Ah, no! capricious as the wav'ring wind,
Are sighs of Love that dim thy boasted flame, 
While Folly's torch consumes the wreath of fame,
And Pleasure's hands the sheaves of truth unbind.
Press'd by the storms of...Read more of this...

Saadi

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Trees in groves,
Kine in droves,
In ocean sport the scaly herds,
Wedge-like cleave the air the birds,
To northern lakes fly wind-borne ducks,
Browse the mountain sheep in flocks,
Men consort in camp and town,
But the poet dwells alone.

God who gave to him the lyre,
Of all mortals the desire,
For all breathing men's behoof,
Straitly charged him, "Sit aloof;"
Annexed a warning, poets say,
To the bright premium,—
Ever...Read more of this...

Faust In Old Age

by Delmore Schwartz
 "Poet and veteran of childhood, look!
See in me the obscene, for you have love,

For you have hatred, you, you must be judge,
Deliver judgement, Delmore Schwartz.

Well-known wishes have been to war,
The vicious mouth has chewed the vine.

The patient crab beneath the shirt
Has charmed such interests as Indies meant.

For I have walked within and seen each sea,
The fish that flies, the...Read more of this...

A Sincere Man Am I

by José Martí
A sincere man am I
From the land where palm trees grow,
And I want before I die
My soul's verses to bestow.

I'm a traveler to all parts,
And a newcomer to none:
I am art among the arts,
With the mountains I am one.

I know how to name and class
All the strange flowers that grow;
I know every blade of grass,
Fatal lie and sublime woe.

I have...Read more of this...

Pragmatic

by Robert William Service
 When young I was an Atheist,
 Yea, pompous as a pigeon
No opportunity I missed
 To satirize religion.
I sneered at Scripture, scoffed at Faith,
 I blasphemed at believers:
Said I: "There's nothing after Death,--
 Your priests are just deceivers."

In middle age I was not so
 Contemptuous and caustic.
Thought I: "There's much I do not know:
 I'd better be agnostic.
The hope of...Read more of this...

March is the Month of Expectation

by Emily Dickinson
 March is the Month of Expectation.
The things we do not know --
The Persons of prognostication
Are coming now --
We try to show becoming firmness --
But pompous Joy
Betrays us, as his first Betrothal
Betrays a Boy....Read more of this...

Sonnet LXXVII

by Edmund Spenser
 Was it a dreame, or did I see it playne,
a goodly table of pure yvory:
all spred with iuncats, fit to entertayne,
the greatest Prince with pompous roialty.
Mongst which there in a siluer dish did ly,
twoo golden apples of vnualewd price:
far passing those which Hercules came by,
or those which Atalanta did entice.
Exceeding sweet, yet voyd of sinfull vice,
That many sought yet...Read more of this...

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