Famous Relations Poems by Famous Poets

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

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In Memoriam A. H. H.: 78. Again at Christmas did we weave

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Again at Christmas did we weave 
The holly round the Christmas hearth;
The silent snow possess'd the earth,
And calmly fell our Christmas-eve:

The yule-log sparkled keen with frost,
No wing of wind the region swept,
But over all things brooding slept
The quiet sense of something lost.

As in the winters left behind,
Again our ancient games had place,
The mimic picture's breathing grace,
And dance and song...Read more of this...

To A Lady On The Death Of The Three Relations

by Phillis Wheatley
 WE trace the pow'r of Death from tomb to tomb,
And his are all the ages yet to come.
'Tis his to call the planets from on high,
To blacken Phoebus, and dissolve the sky;
His too, when all in his dark realms are hurl'd,
From its firm base to shake the solid world;
His fatal sceptre rules the spacious whole,
And trembling nature rocks from...Read more of this...

Five OClock Shadow

by John Betjeman
 This is the time of day when we in the Mens's ward
Think "one more surge of the pain and I give up the fight."
Whe he who strggles for breath can struggle less strongly:
This is the time of day which is worse than night.

A haze of thunder hangs on the hospital rose-beds,
A doctors' foursome out of the links is played,
Safe...Read more of this...

Jinny the Just

by Matthew Prior
 Releas'd from the noise of the butcher and baker 
Who, my old friends be thanked, did seldom forsake her, 
And from the soft duns of my landlord the Quaker, 

From chiding the footmen and watching the lasses, 
From Nell that burn'd milk, and Tom that broke glasses 
(Sad mischiefs thro' which a good housekeeper passes!) 

From some real care...Read more of this...

Angelic love

by Ehsan Sehgal
"Love includes sex in it, but sex does not include love, if love is an angelic feeling that is devoted to only related relations as parents, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers humanity and Almighty God."
Ehsan Sehgal...Read more of this...

Freddy

by Stevie Smith
 Nobody knows what I feel about Freddy
I cannot make anyone understand
I love him sub specie aet ernitaties
I love him out of hand.
I don't love him so much in the restaurants that's a fact
To get him hobnob with my old pub chums needs too much tact
He don't love them and they don't love him
In the pub lub lights they say...Read more of this...

The Maid Of The Mills Repentance

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 YOUTH.

AWAY, thou swarthy witch! Go forth

From out my house, I tell thee!
Or else I needs must, in my wrath,

Expel thee!
What's this thou singest so falsely, forsooth,
Of love and a maiden's silent truth?

Who'll trust to such a story!

GIPSY.

I sing of a maid's repentant fears,

And long and bitter yearning;
Her levity's changed to truth and tears

All-burning.
She dreads no more the threats of...Read more of this...

The Beasts Confession

by Jonathan Swift
 To the Priest, on Observing how most Men mistake their own Talents
When beasts could speak (the learned say, 
They still can do so ev'ry day),
It seems, they had religion then,
As much as now we find in men.
It happen'd, when a plague broke out
(Which therefore made them more devout),
The king of brutes (to make it plain,
Of quadrupeds I only mean)
By...Read more of this...

The Female of the Species

by Rudyard Kipling
 1911

When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if...Read more of this...

Rules and Regulations

by Lewis Carroll
 A short direction 
To avoid dejection, 
By variations 
In occupations, 
And prolongation 
Of relaxation, 
And combinations 
Of recreations, 
And disputation 
On the state of the nation 
In adaptation
To your station, 
By invitations 
To friends and relations, 
By evitation 
Of amputation, 
By permutation 
In conversation, 
And deep reflection 
You'll avoid dejection. 

Learn well your grammar, 
And never stammer, 
Write well...Read more of this...

Observation

by Ehsan Sehgal
"Do not observe people's relations to anyone in a wrong direction when you are not sure about, in this regard may you humiliate others or become yourself."
Ehsan Sehgal?...Read more of this...

The Jubilee Sovreign

by Marriott Edgar
 On Jubilee Day the Ramsbottoms
Invited relations to tea, 
Including young Albert's grandmother- 
An awkward old . . party, was she. 

She'd seen Queen Victoria's accession
And `er wedding to Albert (the Good) 
But she got quite upset when young Albert 
Asked `er `ow she'd got on in the Flood.

She cast quite a damper on't party, 
But she warmed up a...Read more of this...

Queen Matilda

by Marriott Edgar
 Henry the first, surnamed " Beauclare," 
Lost his only son William at sea,
So when Henry died it were hard to decide 
Who his heir and successor should be.

There were two runners-up for the title- 
His daughter Matilda was one,
And the other, a boy, known as Stephen of Blois, 
His young sister Adela's son.

Matilda by right should have had it,
Being...Read more of this...

we say

by Rg Gregory
 we say blame the teachers
don't we send our young to school
to be taught the simple rules
for decent public-spirited behaviour
do we pay such crushing rates
to have our children turned to louts
we're sick of all this fuss
we say blame the teachers
or the preachers
they're all the same to us

we say blame the preachers
what right have they to shake
their moral fingers every week
at...Read more of this...

The Blue Swallows

by Howard Nemerov
 Across the millstream below the bridge 
Seven blue swallows divide the air 
In shapes invisible and evanescent, 
Kaleidoscopic beyond the mind’s 
Or memory’s power to keep them there. 

“History is where tensions were,” 
“Form is the diagram of forces.” 
Thus, helplessly, there on the bridge, 
While gazing down upon those birds— 
How strange, to be above the birds!— 
Thus...Read more of this...

254. Caledonia: A Ballad

by Robert Burns
 THERE was once a day, but old Time wasythen young,
 That brave Caledonia, the chief of her line,
From some of your northern deities sprung,
 (Who knows not that brave Caledonia’s divine?)
From Tweed to the Orcades was her domain,
 To hunt, or to pasture, or do what she would:
Her heav’nly relations there fixed her reign,
 And pledg’d her their godheads...Read more of this...

Upon His Drinking a Bowl

by John Wilmot
 Vulcan, contrive me such a cup
As Nestor used of old;
Show all thy skill to trim it up,
Damask it round with gold.

Make it so large that, filled with sack
Up to the swelling brim,
Vast toasts on the delicious lake
Like ships at sea may swim.

Engrave not battle on its cheek:
With war I've nought to do;
I'm none of those that took Maastricht,
Nor Yarmouth...Read more of this...

An Epitaph

by Walter de la Mare
 Interr'd beneath this marble stone, 
Lie saunt'ring Jack and idle Joan. 
While rolling threescore years and one 
Did round this globe their courses run; 
If human things went ill or well; 
If changing empires rose or fell; 
The morning passed, the evening came, 
And found this couple still the same. 
They walk'd and eat, good folks: what then? 
Why...Read more of this...

Wittgensteins Ladder

by David Lehman
 "My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: 
 anyone who understands them eventually recognizes them as 
 nonsensical, when he has used them -- as steps -- to climb 
 up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder 
 after he has climbed up it.)" -- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus 

1. 

The first time...Read more of this...

The Professional Wanderer

by Henry Lawson
 When you’ve knocked about the country—been away from home for years; 
When the past, by distance softened, nearly fills your eyes with tears— 
You are haunted oft, wherever or however you may roam, 
By a fancy that you ought to go and see the folks at home. 
You forget the family quarrels—little things that used to jar— 
And you...Read more of this...

Disobedience

by Alan Alexander (A A) Milne
James James
Morrison Morrison
Weatherby George Dupree
Took great
Care of his Mother,
Though he was only three.
James James Said to his Mother,
"Mother," he said, said he;
"You must never go down
to the end of the town,
if you don't go down with me."

James James
Morrison's Mother
Put on a golden gown.
James James Morrison's Mother
Drove to the end of the town.
James James Morrison's Mother
Said to herself, said she:
"I can...Read more of this...

Not so the infinite Relations -- Below

by Emily Dickinson
 Not so the infinite Relations -- Below
Division is Adhesion's forfeit -- On High
Affliction but a Speculation -- And Woe
A Fallacy, a Figment, We knew --...Read more of this...

The Spellin'-bee

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
I never shall furgit that night when father hitched up Dobbin,
An' all us youngsters clambered in an' down the road went bobbin'
To school where we was kep' at work in every kind o' weather,
But where that night a spellin'-bee was callin' us together.
'Twas one o' Heaven's banner nights, the stars was all a glitter,
The moon was shinin' like the hand...Read more of this...

The Poor Relation

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 No longer torn by what she knows 
And sees within the eyes of others, 
Her doubts are when the daylight goes, 
Her fears are for the few she bothers. 
She tells them it is wholly wrong
Of her to stay alive so long; 
And when she smiles her forehead shows 
A crinkle that had been her mother’s. 

Beneath her beauty,...Read more of this...

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 TWELVE o’clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one,
The street-lamp sputtered,
The street-lamp muttered,
The street-lamp said, “Regard that woman
Who hesitates...Read more of this...

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