Famous Preferring Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Hill Wife

by Robert Frost
 I. LONELINESS

 Her Word

One ought not to have to care
 So much as you and I
Care when the birds come round the house
 To seem to say good-bye;

Or care so much when they come back
 With whatever it is they sing;
The truth being we are as much
 Too glad for the one thing

As we are too sad for the...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXXXIII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LXXXIII. Volo con l' ali de' pensieri al cielo. HE SEEMS TO BE WITH HER IN HEAVEN.  So often on the wings of thought I flyUp to heaven's blissful seats, that I appearAs one of those whose treasure is lodged there,The rent veil of mortality thrown by.A pleasing chillness thrills...Read more of this...

Tourist

by Robert William Service
 To Italy a random tour
I took to crown my education,
Returning relatively poor
In purse yet rich in conversation.
Old Rome put up a jolly show,
But I am not a classic purist,
Preferring to Mike Angelo
The slim stems of a lady tourist.

Venice, they say, was built on piles;
I used to muse, how did they do it?
I tramped the narrow streets for miles,
Religiously I...Read more of this...

The Fox And Crane

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 ONCE two persons uninvited

Came to join my dinner table;
For the nonce they lived united,

Fox and crane yclept in fable.

Civil greetings pass'd between us

Then I pluck'd some pigeons tender
For the fox of jackal-genius,

Adding grapes in full-grown splendour.

Long-neck'd flasks I put as dishes

For the crane, without delaying,
Fill'd with gold and silver fishes,

In the limpid water playing.

Had ye witness'd Reynard planted

At his...Read more of this...

No You Be A Lone Eagle

by Ogden Nash
 I find it very hard to be fair-minded
About people who go around being air-minded.
I just can't see any fun
In soaring up up up into the sun
When the chances are still a fresh cool orchid to a paper geranium
That you'll unsoar down down down onto your (to you) invaluable
cranium.
I know the constant refrain
About how safer up in God's trafficless heaven...Read more of this...

Blight

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Give me truths;
For I am weary of the surfaces,
And die of inanition. If I knew
Only the herbs and simples of the wood,
Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain and agrimony,
Blue-vetch and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras,
Milkweeds and murky brakes, quaint pipes and sun-dew,
And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woods
Draw untold juices from the common earth,
Untold, unknown, and I could surely spell
Their fragrance, and...Read more of this...

The Intruder

by Carolyn Kizer
 My mother-- preferring the strange to the tame:
Dove-note, bone marrow, deer dung,
Frog's belly distended with finny young,
Leaf-mould wilderness, hare-bell, toadstool,
Odd, small snakes loving through the leaves,
Metallic beetles rambling over stones: all
Wild and natural -flashed out her instinctive love,
and quick, she
Picked up the fluttering. bleeding bat the cat laid at her feet,
And held the little horror to the mirror, where
He...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXVIII

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 257] SONNET XXVIII. I' mi soglio accusare, ed or mi scuso. HE GLORIES IN HIS LOVE.  I now excuse myself who wont to blame,Nay, more, I prize and even hold me dear,For this fair prison, this sweet-bitter shame,Which I have borne conceal'd so many a year.O envious...Read more of this...

Coming To This

by Mark Strand
 We have done what we wanted.
We have discarded dreams, preferring the heavy industry
of each other, and we have welcomed grief
and called ruin the impossible habit to break.

And now we are here.
The dinner is ready and we cannot eat.
The meat sits in the white lake of its dish.
The wine waits.

Coming to this
has its rewards: nothing is promised, nothing is taken...Read more of this...

On a young Lady Whose LORD was Travelling

by Anne Killigrew
 NO sooner I pronounced Celindas name,
But Troops of wing'd Pow'rs did chant the fame: 
Not those the Poets Bows and Arrows lend, 
But such as on the Altar do attend. 
Celinda nam'd, Flow'rs spring up from the Ground,
Excited meerly with the Charming Sound. 
Celinda, the Courts Glory, and its fear,
The gaz'd at Wonder, where she does appear. 
Celinda great...Read more of this...

Horace to phyllis

by Eugene Field
 Come, Phyllis, I've a cask of wine
That fairly reeks with precious juices,
And in your tresses you shall twine
The loveliest flowers this vale produces.

My cottage wears a gracious smile,--
The altar, decked in floral glory,
Yearns for the lamb which bleats the while
As though it pined for honors gory.

Hither our neighbors nimbly fare,--
The boys agog, the maidens snickering;
And savory smells possess the...Read more of this...

Evolution

by Sharmagne Leland-St John
 I swim near summer shadows
glide over dappled shoals
keeping to the fluid shallows
reminiscent of the womb 
where I learned to swallow 
gulps 
of tantalising air

in the amniotic sac
where I shed scales 
preferring skin and 
hanks of auburn hair
upon my head
where I dispensed 
with fins and gills
grew hands and feet
with which to tread
and push away 
from muddy banks

I've no desire to...Read more of this...

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