Famous Relation Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Relation poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous relation poems. These examples illustrate what a famous relation poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Milton, John
...ty spell, if not
Your learned hands, can loose this Gordian knot?
The next Quantity and Quality, spake in Prose, then Relation
was call'd by his Name.
Rivers arise; whether thou be the Son,
Of utmost Tweed, or Oose, or gulphie Dun,
Or Trent, who like some earth-born Giant spreads
His thirty Armes along the indented Meads,
Or sullen Mole that runneth underneath,
Or Severn swift, guilty of Maidens death,
Or Rockie Avon, or of Sedgie Lee,
Or Coaly Tine, or antient hallowe...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...ave a God
Ere I can be aught, do aught?--no mere name
Want, but the true thing with what proves its truth,
To wit, a relation from that thing to me,
Touching from head to foot--which touch I feel,
And with it take the rest, this life of ours!
I live my life here; yours you dare not live.
--Not as I state it, who (you please subjoin)
Disfigure such a life and call it names,
While, to your mind, remains another way
For simple men: knowledge and power have rights,...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...thy sinews.
ELD. BRO. Why, prithee,
Shepherd,
How durst thou then thyself approach so near
As to make this relation?
SPIR. Care and utmost
shifts
How to secure the Lady from surprisal
Brought to my mind a certain shepherd lad,
Of small regard to see to, yet well skilled
In every virtuous plant and healing herb
That spreads her verdant leaf to the morning ray.
He loved me well, and oft would beg me sing;
Which when I did, he on the tender grass
Would sit,...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...cessation
202 But day or night, within, without, vexation,
203 Troubles from foes, from friends, from dearest, near'st Relation.
30
204 And yet this sinful creature, frail and vain,
205 This lump of wretchedness, of sin and sorrow,
206 This weather-beaten vessel wrackt with pain,
207 Joys not in hope of an eternal morrow.
208 Nor all his losses, crosses, and vexation,
209 In weight, in frequency and long duration
210 Can make him deeply groan for that divine Tran...Read more of this...
by
Stevenson, Robert Louis
...gh her unrivalled circulation,
Or, sanctimonious insincere,
She damned me with a misquotation -
A chequered but a sweet relation,
Say, was it not, my granny dear?
Believe me, granny, altogether
Yours, though perhaps to your surprise.
Oft have you spruced my wounded feather,
Oft brought a light into my eyes -
For notice still the writer cries.
In any civil age or nation,
The book that is not talked of dies.
So that shall be my termination:
Whether in praise or exe...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...thee fair-spoken?'
But the Seer replied,
'Know ye not then the Riddling of the Bards?
"Confusion, and illusion, and relation,
Elusion, and occasion, and evasion"?
I mock thee not but as thou mockest me,
And all that see thee, for thou art not who
Thou seemest, but I know thee who thou art.
And now thou goest up to mock the King,
Who cannot brook the shadow of any lie.'
Unmockingly the mocker ending here
Turned to the right, and past along the plain;
Whom...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...ess they'll hold their peace.
But Louis was of memory but dull
And to St Albans too undutiful,
Nor word nor near relation did revere,
But asked him bluntly for his character.
The gravelled Count did with the answer faint--
His character was that which thou didst paint--
Trusses his baggage and the camp does fly.
Yet Louis writes and, lest our heart should break,
Consoles us morally out of Seneque.
Two letters next unto Breda are sent:
In cipher one...Read more of this...
by
Masters, Edgar Lee
..., suppose:
You are a woman well endowed,
And the only man with whom the law and morality
Permit you to have the marital relation
Is the very man that fills you with disgust
Every time you think of it--while you think of it
Every time you see him?
That's why I drove him away from home
To live with his dog in a dingy room
Back of his office....Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...at thou tellest
Hath passed in Heaven, some doubt within me move,
But more desire to hear, if thou consent,
The full relation, which must needs be strange,
Worthy of sacred silence to be heard;
And we have yet large day, for scarce the sun
Hath finished half his journey, and scarce begins
His other half in the great zone of Heaven.
Thus Adam made request; and Raphael,
After short pause assenting, thus began.
High matter thou enjoinest me, O prime of men,
Sa...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...d furious rage.
Glad we returned up to the coasts of light
Ere sabbath-evening: so we had in charge.
But thy relation now; for I attend,
Pleased with thy words no less than thou with mine.
So spake the Godlike Power, and thus our Sire.
For Man to tell how human life began
Is hard; for who himself beginning knew
Desire with thee still longer to converse
Induced me. As new waked from soundest sleep,
Soft on the flowery herb I found me laid,
In bal...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...thou art called
The Son of God, which bears no single sense.
The Son of God I also am, or was;
And, if I was, I am; relation stands:
All men are Sons of God; yet thee I thought
In some respect far higher so declared.
Therefore I watched thy footsteps from that hour,
And followed thee still on to this waste wild,
Where, by all best conjectures, I collect
Thou art to be my fatal enemy.
Good reason, then, if I beforehand seek
To understand my adversary, who
And what...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...Earth,
Cast wanton eyes on the daughters of men,
And coupled with them, and begot a race.
Have we not seen, or by relation heard,
In courts and regal chambers how thou lurk'st,
In wood or grove, by mossy fountain-side,
In valley or green meadow, to waylay
Some beauty rare, Calisto, Clymene,
Daphne, or Semele, Antiopa,
Or Amymone, Syrinx, many more
Too long—then lay'st thy scapes on names adored,
Apollo, Neptune, Jupiter, or Pan,
Satyr, or Faun, or Silvan? But these hau...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...rgue its further detention.
(Big, but not coarse, merely on another scale,
Like a dozing whale on the sea bottom
In relation to the tiny, self-important ship
On the surface.) But your eyes proclaim
That everything is surface. The surface is what's there
And nothing can exist except what's there.
There are no recesses in the room, only alcoves,
And the window doesn't matter much, or that
Sliver of window or mirror on the right, even
As a gauge of the weather, w...Read more of this...
by
Stevens, Wallace
...erous drops,
570 And so distorting, proving what he proves
571 Is nothing, what can all this matter since
572 The relation comes, benignly, to its end?
573 So may the relation of each man be clipped....Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...o was she?---Her duty and station,
The wisdom of age and the folly of youth, at once,
Its decent regard and its fitting relation---
In brief, my friend, set all the devils in hell free
And turn them out to carouse in a belfry
And treat the priests to a fifty-part canon,
And then you may guess how that tongue of hers ran on!
Well, somehow or other it ended at last
And, licking her whiskers, out she passed;
And after her,---making (he hoped) a face
Like Emperor Nero or Sultan S...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...honour to maintain;
4.24 If not, yet wealth, Nobility can gain.
4.25 For time, for place, likewise for each relation,
4.26 I wanted not my ready allegation.
4.27 Yet all my powers for self-ends are not spent,
4.28 For hundreds bless me for my bounty sent,
4.29 Whose loins I've cloth'd, and bellies I have fed,
4.30 With mine own fleece, and with my household bread.
4.31 Yea, justice I have done, was I in place,
4.32 To cheer the ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...Like bold Columbus take a chance,
And may your number be a winner.
Far be it from me to advise,
But in the marital relation
The safest bet is Compromise
And Mutual Consideration....Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...ies, the gift
Of your small breath, the drenched grass
Smell of your sleeps, lilies, lilies.
Their flesh bears no relation.
Cold folds of ego, the calla,
And the tiger, embellishing itself ----
Spots, and a spread of hot petals.
The comets
Have such a space to cross,
Such coldness, forgetfulness.
So your gestures flake off ----
Warm and human, then their pink light
Bleeding and peeling
Through the black amnesias of heaven.
Why am I given
These lamp...Read more of this...
by
Taylor, Jane
...My father and mother are dead,
Nor friend, nor relation I know;
And now the cold earth is their bed,
And daisies will over them grow.
I cast my eyes into the tomb,
The sight made me bitterly cry;
I said, "And is this the dark room,
Where my father and mother must lie?"
I cast my eyes round me again,
In hopes some protector to see;
Alas! but the search was in vain,
For none had compassion ...Read more of this...
by
Swift, Jonathan
...arice, and pride:
He gave it all -but first he died.
And had the Dean, in all the nation,
No worthy friend, no poor relation?
So ready to do strangers good,
Forgetting his own flesh and blood!"
Now Grub Street wits are all employed;
With elegies the town is cloyed:
Some paragraph in ev'ry paper,
To curse the Dean, or bless the Drapier.
The doctors, tender of their fame,
Wisely on me lay all the blame:
"We must confess his case was nice;
But he would never take advic...Read more of this...
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