Famous Refrained Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Victor Dog

by James Merrill
 Bix to Buxtehude to Boulez,
The little white dog on the Victor label
Listens long and hard as he is able.
It's all in a day's work, whatever plays.

From judgment, it would seem, he has refrained.
He even listens earnestly to Bloch,
Then builds a church upon our acid rock.
He's man's--no--he's the Leiermann's best friend,

Or would be if hearing and listening were the same.
Does...Read more of this...

Fight to a Finish

by Siegfried Sassoon
 The boys came back. Bands played and flags were flying, 
And Yellow-Pressmen thronged the sunlit street 
To cheer the soldiers who’d refrained from dying, 
And hear the music of returning feet. 
‘Of all the thrills and ardours War has brought,
This moment is the finest.’ (So they thought.) 

Snapping their bayonets on to charge the mob, 
Grim Fusiliers broke ranks...Read more of this...

Improvisations: Light And Snow

by Conrad Aiken
 I

The girl in the room beneath 
Before going to bed 
Strums on a mandolin 
The three simple tunes she knows. 
How inadequate they are to tell how her heart feels! 
When she has finished them several times 
She thrums the strings aimlessly with her finger-nails 
And smiles, and thinks happily of many things.

II

I stood for a long while before...Read more of this...

Monolog From A Mattress

by Louis Untermeyer
Can that be you, la mouche? Wait till I lift
This palsied eye-lid and make sure... Ah, true.
Come in, dear fly, and pardon my delay
In thus existing; I can promise you
Next time you come you'll find no dying poet—
Without sufficient spleen to see me through,
The joke becomes too tedious a jest.
I am afraid my mind is dull to-day;
I have that—something—heavier on...Read more of this...

Forbearance

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Hast thou named all the birds without a gun;
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk;
At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse;
Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust;
And loved so well a high behavior
In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained,
Nobility more nobly to repay?—
O be my friend, and teach me to be thine!...Read more of this...

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