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Famous Prized Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...lse was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?
Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized?
Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,
Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:
But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;
The rest may reason and welcome; 'tis we musicians know.

Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign:
I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce.
Give me the keys. I fee...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert



...int in people's eyes appears,
Or has been sentenced piteously
Beneath the hangman's hand to die,
He's as a noted person prized,
In portrait is immortalized.
Engravings, woodcuts, are supplied,
And through the world spread far and wide.
Upon them all is seen his name,
And ev'ry one admits his claim;
Even the image of the Lord
Is not with greater zeal ador'd.
Strange fancy of the human race!
Half sinner frail, half child of grace
We see HERR WERTHER of the story
In all the pomp...Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...oy, 
--To seek which, the joy-hunger forces us: 
That, stung by straitness of our life, made strait 
On purpose to make prized the life at large-- 
Freed by the throbbing impulse we call death, 
We burst there as the worm into the fly, 
Who, while a worm still, wants his wings. But no! 
Zeus has not yet revealed it; and alas, 
He must have done so, were it possible! 

Live long and happy, and in that thought die: 
Glad for what was! Farewell. And for the rest, 
I cannot tell ...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...memory of those flowers
 that we both loved,
 even to this poor
colorless thing-
 I saw it
 when I was a child-
little prized among the living
 but the dead see,
 asking among themselves:
What do I remember
 that was shaped
 as this thing is shaped?
while our eyes fill
 with tears.
 Of love, abiding love
it will be telling
 though too weak a wash of crimson
 colors it
to make it wholly credible.
 There is something
 something urgent
I have to say to you
 and you alone
 but i...Read more of this...
by Williams, William Carlos (WCW)
...Genius, like gold and precious stones, 
is chiefly prized because of its rarity. 

Geniuses are people who dash of weird, wild, 
incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility, 
and get booming drunk and sleep in the gutter. 

Genius elevates its possessor to ineffable spheres 
far above the vulgar world and fills his soul 
with regal contempt for the gross and sordid things of earth. 

It is probably on a...Read more of this...
by Montgomery, Lucy Maud



...busied now,
I could not turn from such pursuit,
To weep a broken vow. 

Nor could I give to fatal risk
The fame I ever prized;
Even now, I fear, that precious fame
Is too much compromised.'
An inward trouble dims his eye,
Some riddle he would solve;
Some method to unloose a knot,
His anxious thoughts revolve. 

He, pensive, leans against a tree,
A leafy evergreen,
The boughs, the moonlight, intercept, 
And hide him like a screen;
He starts­the tree shakes with his tremor, 
Y...Read more of this...
by Bronte, Charlotte
...own: with all I sympathized;
And though struck speechless, I did not forget
That what was mourned for, I, too, once had prized.

XV 
Still, how to bear such loss I deemed
The insistent question for each animate mind,
And gazing, to my growing sight there seemed
A pale yet positive gleam low down behind,

XVI 
Whereof, to lift the general night,
A certain few who stood aloof had said,
'See you upon the horizon that small light --
Swelling somewhat?' Each mourner shook his head...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas
...nd clasps another bride;
My children mothers she.

My brethren, sisters, and my friends
Care not to meet my sprite:
Who prized me most I did not know
Till I passed down from sight."

I said: "My days are lonely here;
I need thy smile alway:
I'll use this night my ball or blade,
And join thee ere the day."

A tremor stirred her tender lips,
Which parted to dissuade:
"That cannot be, O friend," she cried;
"Think, I am but a Shade!

"A Shade but in its mindful ones
Has immortali...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas
...n the full morning came, she had devised
How she might secret to the forest hie;
How she might find the clay, so dearly prized,
And sing to it one latest lullaby;
How her short absence might be unsurmised,
While she the inmost of the dream would try.
Resolv'd, she took with her an aged nurse,
And went into that dismal forest-hearse.

XLIV.
See, as they creep along the river side,
How she doth whisper to that aged Dame,
And, after looking round the champaign wide,
Shows her a ...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...,
And dashes off the ascending waves,
And onward we advance
We reach the slippery shore at length,
A haven I but little prized,
For all behind was dark and drear
And all before was night and fear.
How many hours of night or day
In those suspended pangs I lay,
I could not tell; I scarcely knew
If this were human breath I drew.

XV

'With glossy skin, and dripping mane,
And reeling limbs, and reeking flank,
The wild steed's sinewy nerves still strain
Up the repelling bank.
We g...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...s Divine;
And they, perchance, heard vows of mine,
And saw my offerings on their shrine;
But, careless gifts are seldom prized,
And mine were worthily despised. 

So, with a ready heart I swore
To seek their altar-stone no more;
And gave my spirit to adore
Thee, ever - present, phantom thing;
My slave, my comrade, and my king, 

A slave, because I rule thee still;
Incline thee to my changeful will,
And make thy influence good or ill:
A comrade, for by day and night
Thou art m...Read more of this...
by Brontë, Emily
...eck, or nurse apart,
Full many an impulse of the heart
And many a darling thought:
What my soul worshipped, sought, and prized,
Were slighted, questioned, or despised; -­
This pained me more than aught. 
And as my love the warmer glowed
The deeper would that anguish sink,
That this dark stream between us flowed,
Though both stood bending o'er its brink;
Until, as last, I learned to bear
A colder heart within my breast;
To share such thoughts as I could share,
And calmly keep ...Read more of this...
by Bronte, Anne
...on and daughter, they

Had been wont to say

Should thereafter bride and bridegroom be.

But can he that boon so highly prized,

Save tis dearly bought, now hope to get?
They are Christians and have been baptized,

He and all of his are heathens yet.

For a newborn creed,

Like some loathsome weed,

Love and truth to root out oft will threat.

Father, daughter, all had gone to rest,

And the mother only watches late;
She receives with courtesy the guest,

And conducts him to ...Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...ve my inner self abused,  Foregone the home delight of constant truth,  And clear and open soul, so prized in fearless youth.   Three years a wanderer, often have I view'd,  In tears, the sun towards that country tend  Where my poor heart lost all its fortitude:  And now across this moor my steps I bend—  Oh! tell me whither—for no earthly friend  Have I.—She ceased, and weeping turned away...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William
...r'd in sorrow only; and in sin
Took no delight; but being forced apart
From thee, without thee hoping thee to win,
Most prized what most thou madest as thou art
On earth, till heaven were open to enter in." 

67
Dreary was winter, wet with changeful sting
Of clinging snowfall and fast-flying frost;
And bitterer northwinds then withheld the spring,
That dallied with her promise till 'twas lost.
A sunless and half-hearted summer drown'd
The flowers in needful and unwelcom'd rai...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...ed hands and eyes, they prayed
     For blessings on his generous head
     Who for his country felt alone,
     And prized her blood beyond his own.
     Old men upon the verge of life
     Blessed him who stayed the civil strife;
     And mothers held their babes on high,
     The self-devoted Chief to spy,
     Triumphant over wrongs and ire,
     To whom the prattlers owed a sire.
     Even the rough soldier's heart was moved;
     As if behind some bier belove...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...as a thing not quite worth while. 
He may have been so great
That satraps would have shivered at his frown, 
And all he prized alive may rule a state 
No larger than a grave that holds a clown; 
He may have been a master of his fate, 
And of his atoms,—ready as another
In his emergence to exonerate 
His father and his mother; 
He may have been a captain of a host, 
Self-eloquent and ripe for prodigies, 
Doomed here to swell by dangerous degrees,
And then give up the ghost. 
N...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...t Wavre all day had lain, 
And thirty thousand men. 

O Saints, had I but lost my earing corn 
And saved the cause once prized!
O Saints, why such false witness had I borne 
When late I’d sympathized!… 

So, now, being old, my children eye askance 
My slowly dwindling store, 
And crave my mite; till, worn with tarriance,
I care for life no more. 

To Almighty God henceforth I stand confessed, 
And Virgin-Saint Marie; 
O Michael, John, and Holy Ones in rest, 
Entreat the Lord ...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas
...nelt; but Lady Blanche erect 
Stood up and spake, an affluent orator. 

'It was not thus, O Princess, in old days: 
You prized my counsel, lived upon my lips: 
I led you then to all the Castalies; 
I fed you with the milk of every Muse; 
I loved you like this kneeler, and you me 
Your second mother: those were gracious times. 
Then came your new friend: you began to change-- 
I saw it and grieved--to slacken and to cool; 
Till taken with her seeming openness 
You turned your ...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...our;
Now seldom come I, since I came with him.
That single elm-tree bright
Against the west--I miss it! is it goner?
We prized it dearly; while it stood, we said,
Our friend, the Gipsy-Scholar, was not dead;
While the tree lived, he in these fields lived on.

Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here,
But once I knew each field, each flower, each stick;
And with the country-folk acquaintance made
By barn in threshing-time, by new-built rick.
Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we...Read more of this...
by Arnold, Matthew

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry