Famous Recognized Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Unwanted

by Edward Field
 The poster with my picture on it
Is hanging on the bulletin board in the Post Office.

I stand by it hoping to be recognized
Posing first full face and then profile

But everybody passes by and I have to admit
The photograph was taken some years ago.

I was unwanted then and I'm unwanted now
Ah guess ah'll go up echo mountain and crah.

I wish...Read more of this...

She slept beneath a tree

by Emily Dickinson
 She slept beneath a tree --
Remembered but by me.
I touched her Cradle mute --
She recognized the foot --
Put on her carmine suit
And see!...Read more of this...

The Poet VIII

by Kahlil Gibran
 He is a link between this and the coming world. 
He is 
A pure spring from which all thirsty souls may drink. 


He is a tree watered by the River of Beauty, bearing 
Fruit which the hungry heart craves; 
He is a nightingale, soothing the depressed 
Spirit with his beautiful melodies; 
He is a white cloud appearing over the...Read more of this...

The Moment I Knew My Life Had Changed

by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
 It was not until later
that I knew, recognized the moment
for what it was, my life before it,
a gray landscape, shapeless and misty;
my life after, flowering full and leafy
as the cherry trees that only today
have torn into bloom.
Imagine: my cousin at 19, tall,
slender. She worked in New York City.
For my thirteenth birthday she took me
to New York. We ate at...Read more of this...

The Death of Grandfather

by Aleksandr Blok
 We waited commonly for sleep or even death. 
The instances were wearisome as ages. 
But suddenly the wind's refreshing breath 
Touched through the window the Holy Bible's pages: 

An old man goes there - who's now all white-haired - 
With rapid steps and merry eyes, alone, 
He smiles to us, and often calls with hand, 
And leaves us with...Read more of this...

A Dream Of Whitman Paraphrased Recognized And Made More Vivid By Renoir

by Delmore Schwartz
 Twenty-eight naked young women bathed by the shore
Or near the bank of a woodland lake
Twenty-eight girls and all of them comely
Worthy of Mack Sennett's camera and Florenz Ziegfield's
Foolish Follies.

They splashed and swam with the wondrous unconsciousness
Of their youth and beauty
In the full spontaneity and summer of the fieshes of
 awareness
Heightened, intensified and softened
By the soft and the silk of...Read more of this...

On The Sea-Shore Smell Of Iodine

by Regina Derieva
 On the sea-shore, smell of iodine,
and square as in Sicily, and dancing.

An intellectual that came from the common people,
preparing himself to be Rosencrantz.
He decides to serve Claudius and therefore
spy on Prince Hamlet from the fountain.

All over the world — the prison. At the world's 
end a certain John plays the piano.

Already darkness, and the end is in sight :
Ophelia...Read more of this...

Poseidonians

by Constantine P Cavafy
 The Poseidonians forgot the Greek language
after so many centuries of mingling
with Tyrrhenians, Latins, and other foreigners.
The only thing surviving from their ancestors
was a Greek festival, with beautiful rites,
with lyres and flutes, contests and wreaths.
And it was their habit toward the festival's end
to tell each other about their ancient customs
and once again to speak Greek names
that only few of them...Read more of this...

Pullman Porter

by Robert William Service
 The porter in the Pullman car
Was charming, as they sometimes are.
He scanned my baggage tags: "Are you
The man who wrote of Lady Lou?"
When I said "yes" he made a fuss -
Oh, he was most assiduous;
And I was pleased to think that he
Enjoyed my brand of poetry.

He was forever at my call,
So when we got to Montreal
And he had brushed...Read more of this...

Death In The Lounge Bar

by Vernon Scannell
 The bar he went inside was not 
A place he often visited; 
He welcomed anonymity; 
No one to switch inquisitive 
Receivers on, no one could see, 
Or wanted to, exactly what 
He was, or had been, or would be; 
A quiet brown place, a place to drink 
And let thought simmer like good stock, 
No mirrors to distract, no...Read more of this...

The New Ergonomics

by James Tate
 The new ergonomics were delivered 
just before lunchtime 
so we ignored them.
Without revealing the particulars 
let me just say that 
lunch was most satisfying. 
Jack and Roberta went with 
the corned beef for a change. 
Jack believes in alien abduction 
and Roberta does not, 
although she has had 
several lost weekends lately 
and one or two unexplained scars 
on...Read more of this...

Deer Dancer

by Joy Harjo
 Nearly everyone had left that bar in the middle of winter except the
hardcore.It was the coldest night of the year, every place shut down, but
not us.Of course we noticed when she came in.We were Indian ruins.She
was the end of beauty.No one knew her, the stranger whose tribe we
recognized, her family related to deer, if that's who she was, a...Read more of this...

The Son In Old Age

by Victor Hugo
 ("Ma Regina, cette noble figure.") 
 
 {LES BURGRAVES, Part II.} 


 Thy noble face, Regina, calls to mind 
 My poor lost little one, my latest born. 
 He was a gift from God—a sign of pardon— 
 That child vouchsafed me in my eightieth year! 
 I to his little cradle went, and went, 
 And even...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...

You Cant Can Love

by Robert William Service
 I don't know how the fishes feel, but I can't help thinking it odd,
That a gay young flapper of a female eel should fall in love with a cod.
Yet - that's exactly what she did and it only goes to prove,
That' what evr you do you can't put the lid on that crazy feeling Love. 

Now that young tom-cod...Read more of this...

Dictionary of Sounds

by Dejan Stojanovic
Born from the natural attraction
Of vowels and consonants
Alliterating or merging into a fugue

Of sounds flowing 
From the fountain of language.
Meanings embodied 

In blasts of thunder, chirping, blowing; 
Sounds becoming meanings
In, for, and of themselves; 

A huge dictionary of sounds
Craving to be recognized and translated
Either into language or into understanding. ...Read more of this...

Writing To Onegin

by Ruth Padel
 (After Pushkin) 
Look at the bare wood hand-waxed floor and long 
White dressing-gown, the good child's writing-desk 
And passionate cold feet
Summoning music of the night - tumbrils, gongs
And gamelans - with one neat pen, one candle
Puttering its life out hour by hour. 
Is "Tell Him I love him" never a good idea? You can't wish this
Unlived - this world...Read more of this...

As I Walk These Broad Majestic Days

by Walt Whitman
 AS I walk these broad, majestic days of peace, 
(For the war, the struggle of blood finish’d, wherein, O terrific Ideal! 
Against vast odds, having gloriously won, 
Now thou stridest on—yet perhaps in time toward denser wars, 
Perhaps to engage in time in still more dreadful contests, dangers,
Longer campaigns and crises, labors beyond all others; 
—As I walk solitary,...Read more of this...

The New Ergonomics

by Edward Taylor
 The new ergonomics were delivered 
just before lunchtime 
so we ignored them.
Without revealing the particulars 
let me just say that 
lunch was most satisfying. 
Jack and Roberta went with 
the corned beef for a change. 
Jack believes in alien abduction 
and Roberta does not, 
although she has had 
several lost weekends lately 
and one or two unexplained scars 
on...Read more of this...

The Englishman In Italy

by Robert Browning
 (PIANO DI SORRENTO.)

Fortu, Frotu, my beloved one,
Sit here by my side,
On my knees put up both little feet!
I was sure, if I tried,
I could make you laugh spite of Scirocco;
Now, open your eyes— 
Let me keep you amused till he vanish
In black from the skies,
With telling my memories over
As you tell your beads;
All the memories plucked at Sorrento
—The flowers,...Read more of this...

Sky Harbor

by Norman Dubie
 The flock of pigeons rises over the roof,
and just beyond them, the shimmering asphalt fields
gather their dull colored airliners.

It is the very early night,
a young brunette sits before the long
darkening glass of the airport's west wall.

She smells coffee burning
and something else-- her old mother's
bureau filled with mothballs.

Her nearly silver blouse smells of anise
and the heat of an iron.
She suddenly...Read more of this...

Green Fields

by W S Merwin
 By this part of the century few are left who believe
 in the animals for they are not there in the carved parts
of them served on plates and the pleas from the slatted trucks
 are sounds of shadows that possess no future
there is still game for the pleasure of killing
 and there are pets for the children but the...Read more of this...

The Drowned Man

by Alexander Pushkin
 Children running into izba,
Calling father, dripping sweat:
"Daddy, daddy! come -- there is a
Deadman caught inside our net."
"Fancy, fancy fabrication..."
Grumbled off their weary Pa,
"Have these imps imagination!
Deadman, really! ya-ha-ha...

"Well... the court may come to bother -
What'll I say before the judge?
Hey you brats, go have your mother
Bring my coat; I better trudge...
Show me, where?" -- "Right there, Dad, farther!"
On the...Read more of this...

A Man

by Charles Bukowski
 George was lying in his trailer, flat on his back, watching a small portable T.V. His
dinner dishes were undone, his breakfast dishes were undone, he needed a shave, and ash
from his rolled cigarettes dropped onto his undershirt. Some of the ash was still burning.
Sometimes the burning ash missed the undershirt and hit his skin, then he cursed, brushing
it away....Read more of this...

For The One Who Would Not Take His Life In His Hands

by Delmore Schwartz
 Athlete, virtuoso,
Training for happiness,
Bend arm and knee, and seek
The body's sharp distress,
For pain is pleasure's cost,
Denial is route
To speech before the millions
Or personal with the flute.

The ape and great Achilles,
Heavy with their fate,
Batter doors down, strike
Small children at the gate,
Driven by love to this,
As knock-kneed Hegel said,
To seek with a sword their peace,
That the child may be taken away
From...Read more of this...

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