Famous Realized Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Life Cycles

by Nikki Giovanni
Life Cyclesshe realized  she wasn't one  of life's winners  when she wasn't sure  life to her was some dark  dirty secret that  like some unwanted child  too late for an abortion  was to be borne  alone    she had so many private habits  she would masturbate sometimes  she...Read more of this...

Our Souls Are Mirrors

by Rupi Kaur
god must have kneaded you and i
from the same dough
rolled us out as one on the baking sheet
must have suddenly realized
how unfair it was
to put that much magic in one person
and sadly split that dough in two
how else is it that
when i look in the mirror
i am looking at you
when you breathe
my own lungs fill with air
that we just met...Read more of this...

We Aint Got No Money Honey But We Got Rain

by Charles Bukowski
 call it the greenhouse effect or whatever
but it just doesn't rain like it used to.
I particularly remember the rains of the 
depression era.
there wasn't any money but there was
plenty of rain.
it wouldn't rain for just a night or
a day,
it would RAIN for 7 days and 7
nights
and in Los Angeles the storm drains
weren't built to carry off taht much
water
and the...Read more of this...

The Code

by Robert Frost
 There were three in the meadow by the brook 
Gathering up windrows, piling cocks of hay, 
With an eye always lifted toward the west 
Where an irregular sun-bordered cloud 
Darkly advanced with a perpetual dagger 
Flickering across its bosom. Suddenly 
One helper, thrusting pitchfork in the ground, 
Marched himself off the field and home. One stayed. 
The town-bred farmer...Read more of this...

The Channel Swimmer

by Marriott Edgar
 Would you hear a Wild tale of adventure 
Of a hero who tackled the sea,
A super-man swimming the ocean,
Then hark to the tale of Joe Lee.

Our Channel, our own Straits of Dover
Had heen swum by an alien lot:
Our British-born swimmers had tried it, 
But that was as far as they'd got.

So great was the outcry in England, 
Darts Players...Read more of this...

The Fool Errant

by Amy Lowell
 The Fool Errant sat by the highway of life
And his gaze wandered up and his gaze wandered down,
A vigorous youth, but with no wish to walk,
Yet his longing was great for the distant town.
He whistled a little frivolous tune
Which he felt to be pulsing with ecstasy,
For he thought that success always followed desire,
Such a very superlative fool was he.
A...Read more of this...

Before the Throne of Beauty XXVI

by Kahlil Gibran
 One heavy day I ran away from the grim face of society and the dizzying clamor of the city and directed my weary step to the spacious alley. I pursued the beckoning course of the rivulet and the musical sounds of the birds until I reached a lonely spot where the flowing branches of the trees prevented the sun...Read more of this...

Sams Racehorse

by Marriott Edgar
 When Sam Small retired from the Army 
He'd a pension of ninepence a day,
And seven pounds fourteen and twopence 
He'd saved from his rations and pay.

He knew this 'ere wasn't a fortune, 
But reckoned with prudence and care
He'd find some investment to save him 
From hard work and things like that there.

He thought he'd invest in a race orse,...Read more of this...

All is Truth

by Walt Whitman
 O ME, man of slack faith so long! 
Standing aloof—denying portions so long; 
Only aware to-day of compact, all-diffused truth; 
Discovering to-day there is no lie, or form of lie, and can be none, but grows as
 inevitably
 upon
 itself as the truth does upon itself, 
Or as any law of the earth, or any natural production of the...Read more of this...

Meditation On Saviors

by Robinson Jeffers
 I
When I considered it too closely, when I wore it like an element
 and smelt it like water,
Life is become less lovely, the net nearer than the skin, a
 little troublesome, a little terrible.

I pledged myself awhile ago not to seek refuge, neither in death
 nor in a walled garden,
In lies nor gated loyalties, nor in the gates of...Read more of this...

Night on The Prairies

by Walt Whitman
 NIGHT on the prairies; 
The supper is over—the fire on the ground burns low; 
The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in their blankets: 
I walk by myself—I stand and look at the stars, which I think now I never realized
 before.


Now I absorb immortality and peace,
I admire death, and test propositions. 

How plenteous! How spiritual! How resumé! 
The same Old...Read more of this...

Mazies Ghost

by Robert William Service
 In London City I evade
For charming Burlington Arcade -
For thee in youth I met a maid
 By name of Mazie,
Who lost no time in telling me
The Ritz put up a topping tea,
But having only shillings three
 My smile was hazy.

:Instead," said I, "it might be sport
To take a bus to Hampton Court,"
(Her manner, I remarked, was short,)
 But she...Read more of this...

An Evening Of Poetry

by Barry Tebb
 Arriving for a reading an hour too early:

Ruefully, the general manager stopped putting out the chairs.

“You don’t get any help these days. I have

To sort out everything from furniture to faxes.

Why not wander round the park? There are ducks

And benches where you can sit and watch.”



I realized it was going to be a hungry evening

With not even a packet...Read more of this...

Long time, indeed, with cup in hand, I walked among

by Omar Khayyam
Long time, indeed, with cup in hand, I walked among
the flowers; nevertheless none of my projects has been
realized in this world. But, although wine has not led
me to the goal of my desires, I will not stray from its
path, for when one follows a road he cannot retrogress....Read more of this...

Heritage

by Countee Cullen
 What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?

So I lie, who all day long
Want no sound except the song
Sung by wild barbaric birds
Goading massive...Read more of this...

Coffee

by Richard Brautigan
 Sometimes life is merely a matter of coffee and whatever intimacy a cup of coffee
affords. I once read something about coffee. The thing said that coffee is good for you;
it stimulates all the organs.
I thought at first this was a strange way to put it, and not altogether pleasant, but
as time goes by I have found out that it...Read more of this...

Tar

by C K Williams
 The first morning of Three Mile Island: those first disquieting, uncertain, 
mystifying hours.
All morning a crew of workmen have been tearing the old decrepit roof
off our building,
and all morning, trying to distract myself, I've been wandering out to 
watch them
as they hack away the leaden layers of asbestos paper and disassemble 
the disintegrating drains.
After half a night of listening...Read more of this...

The Ax-Helve

by Robert Frost
 I've known ere now an interfering branch
Of alder catch my lifted ax behind me.
But that was in the woods, to hold my hand
From striking at another alder's roots,
And that was, as I say, an alder branch.
This was a man, Baptiste, who stole one day
Behind me on the snow in my own yard
Where I was working at the chopping block,
And...Read more of this...

1. Faith

by Mark Doty
 "I've been having these
awful dreams, each a little different,
though the core's the same-

we're walking in a field,
Wally and Arden and I, a stretch of grass
with a highway running beside it,

or a path in the woods that opens
onto a road. Everything's fine,
then the dog sprints ahead of us,

exicted; we're calling but
he's racing down a scent and doesn't hear us,
and that's...Read more of this...

In Plaster

by Sylvia Plath
 I shall never get out of this! There are two of me now:
This new absolutely white person and the old yellow one,
And the white person is certainly the superior one.
She doesn't need food, she is one of the real saints.
At the beginning I hated her, she had no personality --
She lay in bed with me like a dead body
And...Read more of this...

The Way

by Amy Lowell
 At first a mere thread of a footpath half blotted 
out by the grasses
Sweeping triumphant across it, it wound between hedges of roses
Whose blossoms were poised above leaves as pond lilies float on 
the water,
While hidden by bloom in a hawthorn a bird filled the morning with 
singing.
It widened a highway, majestic, stretching ever 
to distant horizons,
Where shadows of...Read more of this...

Octaves

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I 

We thrill too strangely at the master's touch;
We shrink too sadly from the larger self
Which for its own completeness agitates
And undetermines us; we do not feel -- 
We dare not feel it yet -- the splendid shame
Of uncreated failure; we forget,
The while we groan, that God's accomplishment
Is always and unfailingly at hand. 

II 

Tumultuously void of a clean...Read more of this...

Crows Theology

by Ted Hughes
Crow realized God loved him-
Otherwise, he would have dropped dead. 
So that was proved. 
Crow reclined, marvelling, on his heart-beat. 

And he realized that God spoke Crow-
Just existing was His revelation. 

But what Loved the stones and spoke stone? 
They seemed to exist too. 
And what spoke that strange silence
After his clamour of caws faded? 

And what loved the shot-pellets
That...Read more of this...

The Hill We Climb

by Amanda Gorman
When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade
We've braved the belly of the beast
We've learned that quiet isn't always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn't always just-ice
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we've weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn't...Read more of this...

I Met A Genius

by Charles Bukowski
 I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train 
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.

it was the first time I'd 
realized 
that....Read more of this...

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