Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Published Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Burns, Robert
...se he restored in printing his second edition, as noted on p. 174. The following are the verses which he left unpublished.]


 Note 1. Duan, a term of Ossian’s for the different divisions of a digressive poem. See his Cath-Loda, vol. 2 of M’Pherson’s translation.—R. B. [back]
Note 2. The seven stanzas following this were first printed in the Edinburgh edition, 1787. Other stanzas, never published by Burns himself, are given on p.Read more of this...



by Frost, Robert
...br> They were Robinsons.
You must have heard of Clara Robinson,
The poetess who wrote the book of verses
And had it published. It was all about
The posies on her inner windowsill,
And the birds on her outer windowsill,
And how she tended both, or had them tended:
She never tended anything herself.
She was 'shut in' for life. She lived her whole
Life long in bed, and wrote her things in bed.
I'll show You how she had her sills extended
To entertain the bird...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...ety isn't mine--you won't think that. 
I pick it up a dollar at a time 
All round the country for the Weekly News, 
Published in Bow. You know the Weekly News?" 
"Known it since I was young." 
"Then you know me. 
Now we are getting on together--talking. 
I'm sort of Something for it at the front. 
My business is to find what people want: 
They pay for it, and so they ought to have it. 
Fairbanks, he says to me--he's editor-- 
Feel out the public se...Read more of this...

by Hikmet, Nazim
...s most people visit
 mosques churches temples synagogues sorcerers
 but I've had my coffee grounds read
my writings are published in thirty or forty languages
 in my Turkey in my Turkish they're banned
cancer hasn't caught up with me yet
and nothing says it will
I'll never be a prime minister or anything like that
and I wouldn't want such a life
nor did I go to war
or burrow in bomb shelters in the bottom of the night
and I never had to take to the road under diving planes
bu...Read more of this...

by Zaran, Lisa
...e clock? The one that 
always runs ahead. The one 
that always tries to crush me with 
its future. 

Originally published in Literati Magazine, Winter 2005.
Copyright © Lisa Zaran 2005...Read more of this...



by Walcott, Derek
...f the single human through the cause.

So every spring these branches load their shelves,
like libraries with newly published leaves,
till waste recycles them—paper to snow—
but, at zero of suffering, one mind
lasts like this oak with a few brazen leaves.

As the train passed the forest's tortured icons,
ths floes clanging like freight yards, then the spires
of frozen tears, the stations screeching steam,
he drew them in a single winters' breath
whose freezing consona...Read more of this...

by Zaran, Lisa
...he whispers as she closes her eyes, 
descending into thin air, where no arms 
outstretch to catch her. 

Originally published in Magaera, Spring 2005.
Copyright © Lisa Zaran, 2005...Read more of this...

by Ginsberg, Allen
...Drinking my tea
Without sugar-
 No difference.

The sparrow shits
 upside down
--ah! my brain & eggs

Mayan head in a
Pacific driftwood bole
--Someday I'll live in N.Y.

Looking over my shoulder
my behind was covered
with cherry blossoms.

 Winter Haiku
I didn't know the names 
of the flowers--now
my garden is gone.

I slapped the mosqu...Read more of this...

by Harcombe, Dale
...has since been
  swept out of reach,
  particles of sand cling and
  memories are water-cold companions.



*first published Westerly Autumn 1995...Read more of this...

by Homer,
...ymn of the Eleusinian Mysteries. The text below was translated from the Greek by Hugh G. Evelyn-White and first published by the Loeb Classical Library in 1914. This text has been scanned and proof-read by Edward A. Beach, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.]

I begin to sing of rich-haired Demeter, awful goddess -- of her and her trim-ankled daughter whom Aidoneus [Hades] rapt away, given to him by all-see...Read more of this...

by Brown, Fleda
...root beer, to make her happy.

from Breathing In, Breathing Out, Anhinga Press, 2002
© 2000, Fleda Brown
(first published in The Southern Review, 36 [2000])
...Read more of this...

by Padel, Ruth
...(published on BLINKING EYE, http://www.blinking-eye.co.uk/writer/padel2.html )



Then spoke the thunder, shattering the looming blackness of our national life. The rumble that breaks a spell of the dry season

 – Saro-Wiwa, "The Storm Breaks"



Does a zebra foal dream? Head lower, lower
under lenticular dark cloud,
he drags harlequin fet...Read more of this...

by Bukowski, Charles
...brain
later.

"an intruder," I could hear him telling them,
"ravishing one of my helpless x-wives."

I see him published in some of the magazines
now. not very good stuff.

a poem about me
too: the Polack.

the Polack whines too much. the Polack whines about his
country, other countries, all countries, the Polack
works overtime in a factory like a fool, among other
fools with "pre-drained spirits."
the Polack drinks seas of green beer
full of acid...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...is another thing.

 No mention of it in "The treatyse of fysshynge wyth an

angle," in the Boke of St. Albans, published 1496. No mention

of it in Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream, by H. C. Cutcliffe,

published in 1910. No mention of it in Truth Is Stranger than Fishin',

by Beatrice Cook, published in 1955. No mention of it in

Northern Memoirs, by Richard Franck, published in 1694.

No mention of it in I Go A-Fishing, by W. C. Pri...Read more of this...

by Zaran, Lisa
...imagine him drawing a breath, sensing 
his lungs once again filling with air, his thoughts ballooning. 

Originally published in The Rose & Thorn, Summer 2004.
Copyright © Lisa Zaran, 2004...Read more of this...

by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...[First published in Schiller's Horen, in connection 
with a
friendly contest in the art of ballad-writing between the two
great poets, to which many of their finest works are owing.]

ONCE a stranger youth to Corinth came,

Who in Athens lived, but hoped that he
From a certain townsman there might claim,

As his father's friend, kind courtesy.

Son and daug...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
... [Footnote 5: Collins's Ode on the death of Thomson, the last written,I believe, of the poems which were published during his life-time.This Ode is also alluded to in the next stanza.]...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...nius Sophus, of whom Valerius Maximus tells in his
sixth book.

28. The tract of Walter Mapes against marriage, published
under the title of "Epistola Valerii ad Rufinum."

29. "Ars Amoris."

30. All the mark of Adam: all who bear the mark of Adam i.e.
all men.

31. The Children of Mercury and Venus: those born under the
influence of the respective planets.

32. A planet, according to the old astrologers, was in
"exaltation" whe...Read more of this...

by Brown, Fleda
...e his first major hit with 
"Only the Lonely," trying his best to sound like Elvis.

© 1999, Fleda Brown
(first published in The Iowa Review, 29 [1999])
...Read more of this...

by Simic, Charles
...
This currently out-of-print edition:
Copyright ©1980 Logbridge-Rhodes, Inc.

An earlier version of White was first published 
by New Rivers Press in 1972....Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Published poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs