Famous Priceless Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Unrecorded

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
The splendors of a southern sun
  Caress the glowing sky;
O'er crested waves, the colors glance
  And gleaming, softly die.
A gentle calm from heaven falls
  And weaves a mystic spell;
A glowing grace that charms the soul—
  Whose glory none can tell.
Oh, warm sweet treasures of a sun
  Of endless fire and love;
Those dying embers are the...Read more of this...

The Driver

by Friedrich von Schiller
 "What knight or what vassal will be so bold
As to plunge in the gulf below?
See! I hurl in its depths a goblet of gold,
Already the waters over it flow.
The man who can bring back the goblet to me,
May keep it henceforward,--his own it shall be."

Thus speaks the king, and he hurls from the height
Of the cliffs that, rugged and...Read more of this...

The Bibliomaniacs Bride

by Eugene Field
 The women-folk are like to books,--
Most pleasing to the eye,
Whereon if anybody looks
He feels disposed to buy.

I hear that many are for sale,--
Those that record no dates,
And such editions as regale
The view with colored plates.

Of every quality and grade
And size they may be found,--
Quite often beautifully made,
As often poorly bound.

Now, as for me, had I my choice,
I'd choose no...Read more of this...

Purdah

by Sylvia Plath
 Jade --
Stone of the side,
The antagonized

Side of green Adam, I
Smile, cross-legged,
Enigmatical,

Shifting my clarities.
So valuable!
How the sun polishes this shoulder!

And should
The moon, my
Indefatigable cousin

Rise, with her cancerous pallors,
Dragging trees --
Little bushy polyps,

Little nets,
My visibilities hide.
I gleam like a mirror.

At this facet the bridegroom arrives
Lord of the mirrors!
It is himself he guides

In among these silk
Screens, these rustling appurtenances.
I breathe, and the...Read more of this...

The Gourd

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
In the heavy earth the miner
Toiled and laboured day by day,
Wrenching from the miser mountain
[Pg 108]Brilliant treasure where it lay.
And the artist worn and weary
Wrought with labour manifold
That the king might drink his nectar
From a goblet made of gold.
On the prince's groaning table
Mid the silver gleaming bright
Mirroring the happy faces
Giving back the flaming light,
Shine the cups of priceless...Read more of this...

This priceless ruby comes from a mine of its own, this

by Omar Khayyam
This priceless ruby comes from a mine of its own, this
rare pearl is pregnant with a character its own; our
different dogmas on this matter are erroneous, since the
enigma of perfect love is explained in a language of its
own [and that is not conveyed to us]....Read more of this...

The stork

by Eugene Field
 Last night the Stork came stalking,
And, Stork, beneath your wing
Lay, lapped in dreamless slumber,
The tiniest little thing!
From Babyland, out yonder
Beside a silver sea,
You brought a priceless treasure
As gift to mine and me!

Last night my dear one listened -
And, wife, you knew the cry -
The dear old Stork has sought our home
A many times gone by!
And in your gentle bosom
I...Read more of this...

My Soviet Passport

by Vladimir Mayakovsky
 I'd tear
 like a wolf
 at bureaucracy.
For mandates
 my respect's but the slightest.
To the devil himself
 I'd chuck without mercy
every red-taped paper.
 But this ...
Down the long front
 of coupés and cabins
File the officials
 politely.
They gather up passports
 and I give in
My own vermilion booklet.
For one kind of passport -
smiling lips part
For others -
 an attitude scornful.
They take
 with...Read more of this...

Because that you are going

by Emily Dickinson
 Because that you are going
And never coming back
And I, however absolute,
May overlook your Track --

Because that Death is final,
However first it be,
This instant be suspended
Above Mortality --

Significance that each has lived
The other to detect
Discovery not God himself
Could now annihilate

Eternity, Presumption
The instant I perceive
That you, who were Existence
Yourself forgot to live --

The "Life that is" will then have been
A thing...Read more of this...

Respectability

by Robert Browning
 I.

Dear, had the world in its caprice
Deigned to proclaim ``I know you both,
``Have recognized your plighted troth,
Am sponsor for you: live in peace!''---
How many precious months and years
Of youth had passed, that speed so fast,
Before we found it out at last,
The world, and what it fears?

II.

How much of priceless life were spent
With men that every virtue decks,
And women models...Read more of this...

Closing

by William Butler Yeats
 While I, that reed-throated whisperer
Who comes at need, although not now as once
A clear articulation in the air,
But inwardly, surmise companions
Beyond the fling of the dull ass's hoof
- Ben Johnson's phrase - and find when June is come
At Kyle-na-no under that ancient roof
A sterner conscience and a friendlier home,
I can forgive even that wrong of wrongs,
Those undreamt accidents that...Read more of this...

I cautious scanned my little life

by Emily Dickinson
 I cautious, scanned my little life --
I winnowed what would fade
From what would last till Heads like mine
Should be a-dreaming laid.

I put the latter in a Barn --
The former, blew away.
I went one winter morning
And lo - my priceless Hay

Was not upon the "Scaffold" --
Was not upon the "Beam" --
And from a thriving Farmer --
A Cynic, I became.

Whether a...Read more of this...

Shelleys Skylark (The neighbourhood of Leghorn: March)

by Thomas Hardy
 Somewhere afield here something lies 
In Earth's oblivious eyeless trust 
That moved a poet to prophecies - 
A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust 

The dust of the lark that Shelley heard, 
And made immortal through times to be; - 
Though it only lived like another bird, 
And knew not its immortality. 

Lived its meek life; then, one day, fell...Read more of this...

An Old Man To His Sleeping Young Bride

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 As when the old moon lighted by the tender
And radiant crescent of the new is seen,
And for a moment's space suggests the splendor
Of what in its full prime it once has been,
So on my waning years you cast the glory
Of youth and pleasure, for a little hour;
And life again seems like an unread story,
And joy and hope both stir...Read more of this...

America

by Claude McKay
 Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within...Read more of this...

My Rival

by Rudyard Kipling
 I go to concert, party, ball --
 What profit is in these?
I sit alone against the wall
 And strive to look at ease.
The incense that is mine by right
 They burn before her shrine;
And that's because I'm seventeen
 And She is forty-nine.

I cannot check my girlish blush,
 My color comes and goes;
I redden to my finger-tips,
 And sometimes to...Read more of this...

American Feuillage

by Walt Whitman
 AMERICA always! 
Always our own feuillage! 
Always Florida’s green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the
 cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas! 
Always California’s golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains of New
 Mexico!
 Always soft-breath’d Cuba! 
Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern Sea—inseparable with the slopes
 drain’d
 by the Eastern and Western Seas;
The area the...Read more of this...

Unthrift

by Coventry Patmore
 Ah, wasteful woman, she who may 
On her sweet self set her own price, 
Knowing men cannot choose but pay, 
How she has cheapen'd paradise; 
How given for nought her priceless gift, 
How spoil'd the bread and spill'd the wine, 
Which, spent with due, respective thrift, 
Had made brutes men, and men divine....Read more of this...

Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore

by Elizabeth Bishop
From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.
In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals,
please come flying,
to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums
descending out of the mackerel sky
over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water,
please come flying.

Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing. The ships
are signaling cordially with multitudes of flags
rising and falling like birds all over...Read more of this...

Galahad Knight Who Perished

by Vachel Lindsay
 A POEM DEDICATED TO ALL CRUSADERS AGAINST THE INTERNATIONAL AND INTERSTATE TRAFFIC IN YOUNG GIRLS


Galahad . . . soldier that perished . . . ages ago,
Our hearts are breaking with shame, our tears overflow.
Galahad . . . knight who perished . . . awaken again,
Teach us to fight for immaculate ways among men.
Soldiers fantastic, we pray to the star...Read more of this...

Sonnet IX

by Alan Seeger
 Amid the florid multitude her face 
Was like the full moon seen behind the lace 
Of orchard boughs where clouded blossoms part 
When Spring shines in the world and in the heart. 
As the full-moon-beams to the ferny floor 
Of summer woods through flower and foliage pour, 
So to my being's innermost recess 
Flooded the light of so much...Read more of this...

The Lost Pyx: A Mediaeval Legend

by Thomas Hardy
 Some say the spot is banned; that the pillar Cross-and-Hand 
 Attests to a deed of hell; 
But of else than of bale is the mystic tale 
 That ancient Vale-folk tell. 

Ere Cernel's Abbey ceased hereabout there dwelt a priest, 
 (In later life sub-prior 
Of the brotherhood there, whose bones are now bare 
 In the field...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of Salvation Bill

by Robert William Service
 'Twas in the bleary middle of the hard-boiled Arctic night,
I was lonesome as a loon, so if you can,
Imagine my emotions of amazement and delight
When I bumped into that Missionary Man.
He was lying lost and dying in the moon's unholy leer,
And frozen from his toes to finger-tips'
The famished wolf-pack ringed him; but he didn't seem to fear,
As he pressed...Read more of this...

Our Hands Have Met

by William Morris
 Our hands have met, our lips have met
Our souls - who knows when the wind blows
How light souls drift mid longings set,
If thou forget'st, can I forget
The time that was not long ago?

Thou wert not silent then, but told
Sweet secrets dear - I drew so near
Thy shamefaced cheeks grown overbold,
That scarce thine eyes might I behold!
Ah was it then...Read more of this...

Salomes Dancing-Lesson

by Dorothy Parker
 She that begs a little boon
(Heel and toe! Heel and toe!)
Little gets- and nothing, soon.
(No, no, no! No, no, no!)
She that calls for costly things
Priceless finds her offerings-
What's impossible to kings?
(Heel and toe! Heel and toe!)

Kings are shaped as other men.
(Step and turn! Step and turn!)
Ask what none may ask again.
(Will you learn? Will you learn?)
Lovers whine, and kisses...Read more of this...

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