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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American Feuillage

...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 eighty-third year of These State...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt


An Old Man To His Sleeping Young Bride

...ne be fond of bleak December?
I dare not wait to hear my heart reply.
I will forget the question-and remember
Alone the priceless feast spread for mine eye,
That radiant hair that flows across the pillows,
Like shimmering sunbeams over drifts of snow;
Those heaving breasts, like undulating billows,
Whose dangers or delights but Love can know,

That crimson mouth from which sly Cupid borrowed
The pattern for his bow, nor asked consent;
That smooth, unruffled brow which has not...Read more of this...
by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler

Balin and Balan

...t his gates 
Lest he should be polluted. This gray King 
Showed us a shrine wherein were wonders--yea-- 
Rich arks with priceless bones of martyrdom, 
Thorns of the crown and shivers of the cross, 
And therewithal (for thus he told us) brought 
By holy Joseph thither, that same spear 
Wherewith the Roman pierced the side of Christ. 
He much amazed us; after, when we sought 
The tribute, answered "I have quite foregone 
All matters of this world: Garlon, mine heir, 
Of him dem...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Because that you are going

...rything but He --

Of Heaven and Hell I also yield
The Right to reprehend
To whoso would commute this Face
For his less priceless Friend.

If "God is Love" as he admits
We think that me must be
Because he is a "jealous God"
He tells us certainly

If "All is possible with" him
As he besides concedes
He will refund us finally
Our confiscated Gods --...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

Dresser The

...ponge, 
Straight and swift to my wounded I go, 
Where they lie on the ground, after the battle brought in; 
Where their priceless blood reddens the grass, the ground;
Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof’d hospital; 
To the long rows of cots, up and down, each side, I return; 
To each and all, one after another, I draw near—not one do I miss; 
An attendant follows, holding a tray—he carries a refuse pail, 
Soon to be fill’d with clotted rags and blood, empti...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt


Galahad Knight Who Perished

...r of the trader is seen nevermore in the land,
Till we bring every maid of the age to one sheltering hand.
Ah, they are priceless, the pale and the ivory and red!
Breathless we gaze on the curls of each glorious head!
Arm them with strength mediaeval, thy marvellous dower,
Blast now their tempters, shelter their steps with thy power.
Leave not life's fairest to perish —strangers to thee,
Let not the weakest be shipwrecked, oh, star of the sea!...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel

Honors - Part Ii

...o I, being checked, am with my path at strife
  Which led to such a chasm, and there doth end.
False path! it cost me priceless years of life,
      My well-beloved friend.
There fell a flute when Ganymede went up—
  The flute that he was wont to play upon:
It dropped beside the jonquil's milk-white cup,
      And freckled cowslips wan—
Dropped from his heedless hand when, dazed and mute,
  He sailed upon the eagle's quivering wing,
Aspiring, panting—aye, it dropped...Read more of this...
by Ingelow, Jean

Honours Martyr

...to death,
To keep my honour fair;
Yet, I'll not give my inward faith
My honour's name to spare! 

Not even to keep your priceless love,
Dare I, Beloved, deceive;
This treason should the future prove,
Then, only then, believe! 

I know the path I ought to go;
I follow fearlessly,
Inquiring not what deeper woe
Stern duty stores for me. 

So foes pursue, and cold allies
Mistrust me, every one:
Let me be false in others' eyes,
If faithful in my own....Read more of this...
by Brontë, Emily

Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore

...please come flying.
We can sit down and weep; we can go shopping,
or play at a game of constantly being wrong
with a priceless set of vocabularies,
or we can bravely deplore, but please
please come flying.

With dynasties of negative constructions
darkening and dying around you,
with grammar that suddenly turns and shines
like flocks of sandpipers flying,
please come flying.

Come like a light in the white mackerel sky,
come like a daytime comet
with a long unn...Read more of this...
by Bishop, Elizabeth

My Rival

...ven She must older grow
 And end Her dancing days,
She can't go on forever so
 At concerts, balls and plays.
One ray of priceless hope I see
 Before my footsteps shine;
Just think, that She'll be eighty-one
 When I am forty-nine....Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

My Soviet Passport

...lf
 I'd chuck
 without mercy
every red-taped paper,
 But this ...
I pull out
 of my wide trouser-pockets
duplicate
of a priceless cargo.
 You now:
read this
 and envy,
 I'm a citizen
of the Soviet Socialist Union!


Transcribed: by Liviu Iacob....Read more of this...
by Mayakovsky, Vladimir

Purdah

...in
My eye
Veil is

A concatenation of rainbows.
I am his.
Even in his

Absence, I
Revolve in my
Sheath of impossibles,

Priceless and quiet
Among these parrakeets, macaws!
O chatterers

Attendants of the eyelash!
I shall unloose
One feather, like the peacock.

Attendants of the lip!
I shall unloose
One note

Shattering
The chandelier
Of air that all day flies

Its crystals
A million ignorants.
Attendants!

Attendants!
And at his next step
I shall unloose

I shall unloose --
F...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

Respectability

...f 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 of their sex,
Society's true ornament,---
Ere we dared wander, nights like this,
Thro' wind and rain, and watch the Seine,
And feel the Boulevart break again
To warmth and light and bliss?

III.

I know! the world proscribes not love;
Allows my finger to caress
Your lips' contour an...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

Shelleys Skylark (The neighbourhood of Leghorn: March)

...in the coming hue 
Of a grape on the slopes of yon inland scene. 

Go find it, faeries, go and find 
That tiny pinch of priceless dust, 
And bring a casket silver-lined, 
And framed of gold that gems encrust; 

And we will lay it safe therein, 
And consecrate it to endless time; 
For it inspired a bard to win 
Ecstatic heights in thought and rhyme....Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas

The Ballad Of Salvation Bill

...im back to health and strength again.
So there we were, benighted in the shadow of the Pole,
And he might have proved a priceless little pard,
If he hadn't got to worrying about my blessed soul,
And a-quotin' me his Bible by the yard.

Now there was I, a husky guy, whose god was Nicotine,
With a "coffin-nail" a fixture in my mug;
I rolled them in the pages of a pulpwood magazine,
And hacked them with my jack-knife from the plug.
For, Oh to know the bliss and glow that good to...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Bibliomaniacs Bride

...prose,
Verse when to verse inclined,--
Forever bringing sweet repose
To body, heart, and mind.

Oh, I should bind this priceless prize
In bindings full and fine,
And keep her where no human eyes
Should see her charms, but mine!

With such a fair unique as this
What happiness abounds!
Who--who could paint my rapturous bliss,
My joy unknown to Lowndes!...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene

The Driver

...hears the king,
And he says, "The cup is thine own,
And I purpose also to give thee this ring,
Adorned with a costly, a priceless stone,
If thou'lt try once again, and bring word to me
What thou saw'st in the nethermost depths of the sea."

His daughter hears this with emotions soft,
And with flattering accent prays she:
"That fearful sport, father, attempt not too oft!
What none other would dare, he hath ventured for thee;
If thy heart's wild longings thou canst not tame,
Le...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von

The Lost Pyx: A Mediaeval Legend

...thanked the Lord of Love, 
And Blessed Mary, Mother of God, 
 And all the saints above. 

And turning straight with his priceless freight, 
 He reached the dying one, 
Whose passing sprite had been stayed for the rite 
 Without which bliss hath none. 

And when by grace the priest won place, 
 And served the Abbey well, 
He reared this stone to mark where shone 
 That midnight miracle....Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas

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

...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...
by Khayyam, Omar

Unthrift

...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...
by Patmore, Coventry

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