Famous Rima Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Alas Madam for Stealing of a Kiss

by Sir Thomas Wyatt
 Alas, madam, for stealing of a kiss
Have I so much your mind there offended?
Have I then done so grievously amiss
That by no means it may be amended? 

Then revenge you, and the next way is this:
Another kiss shall have my life ended, 
For to my mouth the first my heart did suck; 
The next shall clean out of my...Read more of this...

Epistle To Augusta

by George (Lord) Byron
 My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine;
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:
Go where I will, to me thou art the same— 
A loved regret which I would not resign.
There yet are two things in my destiny,— 
A world to roam through, and a...Read more of this...

Lux My Fair Falcon

by Sir Thomas Wyatt
 Lux, my fair falcon, and your fellows all, 
How well pleasant it were your liberty. 
Ye not forsake me that fair might ye befall, 
But they that sometime liked my company, 
Like lice away from dead bodies they crawl. 
Lo, what a proof in light adversity. 
But ye, my birds, I swear by all your bells, 
Ye be my...Read more of this...

Petrarch's Triumphs

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 322] PETRARCH'S TRIUMPHS....Read more of this...

The Gyres

by William Butler Yeats
 The gyres! the gyres! Old Rocky Face, look forth;
Things thought too long can be no longer thought,
For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth,
And ancient lineaments are blotted out.
Irrational streams of blood are staining earth;
Empedocles has thrown all things about;
Hector is dead and there's a light in Troy;
We that look on but laugh in tragic joy.

What matter though numb...Read more of this...

Lines On Seeing Schillers Skull

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [This curious imitation of the ternary metre 
of Dante was written at the age of 77.]

WITHIN a gloomy charnel-house one day

I view'd the countless skulls, so strangely mated,
And of old times I thought, that now were grey.

Close pack'd they stand, that once so fiercely hated,
And hardy bones, that to the death contended,

Are lying cross'd,--to lie for ever, fated.
What held...Read more of this...

In Spain

by Sir Thomas Wyatt
 Tagus, farewell! that westward with thy streams 
Turns up the grains of gold already tried
With spur and sail, for I go to seek the Thames
Gainward the sun that shewth her wealthy pride, 
And to the town which Brutus sought by dreams, 
Like bended moon doth lend her lusty side. 
My king, my country, alone for whome I live, 
Of...Read more of this...

Infirmities

by Robert William Service
 Because my teeth are feebly few
I cannot bolt my grub like you,
But have to chew and chew and chew
 As you can see;
Yet every mouthful seems so good
I would not haste it if I could,
And so I salivate my food
 With ecstasy.
Because my purse is poor in pence
I spend my dough with common-sense,
And live without the least pretence
 In...Read more of this...

Pan liveth

by Eugene Field
 They told me once that Pan was dead,
And so, in sooth, I thought him;
For vainly where the streamlets led
Through flowery meads I sought him--
Nor in his dewy pasture bed
Nor in the grove I caught him.
"Tell me," 'twas so my clamor ran--
"Tell me, oh, where is Pan?"

But, once, as on my pipe I played
A requiem sad and tender,
Lo, thither came...Read more of this...

Heap cassia sandal-buds and stripes

by Robert Browning
 Heap cassia, sandal-buds and stripes 
Of labdanum, and aloe-balls, 
Smeared with dull nard an Indian wipes 
From out her hair: such balsam falls 
Down sea-side mountain pedestals, 
From tree-tops where tired winds are fain, 
Spent with the vast and howling main, 
To treasure half their island-gain. 

And strew faint sweetness from some old 
Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud 
Which breaks...Read more of this...

On a Line From Valery (Gulf War)

by Carolyn Kizer
 Tout le ciel vert se meurt
Le dernier arbre brûle.

The whole green sky is dying. The last tree flares
With a great burst of supernatural rose
Under a canopy of poisonous airs.

Could we imagine our return to prayers
To end in time before time's final throes,
The green sky dying as the last tree flares?

But we were young in judgment, gray in hairs
Who could...Read more of this...

Veronicas Napkin

by William Butler Yeats
 The Heavenly Circuit; Berenice's Hair;
Tent-pole of Eden; the tent's drapery;
Symbolical glory of thc earth and air!
The Father and His angelic hierarchy
That made the magnitude and glory there
Stood in the circuit of a needle's eye.

Some found a different pole, and where it stood
A pattern on a napkin dipped in blood....Read more of this...

haunting the quark

by Rg Gregory
 (I)
if you can’t scientifically explain it
dawkins says it has no value – some hope
inside the mechanical framework of a guess
(as far as any fact can truly grope)
doubts roam – mere looking can’t attain it

twentieth-century science perceived that mess
the more you probed the inner – more the scope
for chaos (uncertainty) – no mind could drain it
tie it to a marriage...Read more of this...

The Poets Calendar

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 January

Janus am I; oldest of potentates; 
Forward I look, and backward, and below 
I count, as god of avenues and gates, 
The years that through my portals come and go. 
I block the roads, and drift the fields with snow; 
I chase the wild-fowl from the frozen fen; 
My frosts congeal the rivers in their flow, 
My fires light...Read more of this...

The Whip

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 The doubt you fought so long 
The cynic net you cast, 
The tyranny, the wrong, 
The ruin, they are past; 
And here you are at last,
Your blood no longer vexed. 
The coffin has you fast, 
The clod will have you next. 

But fear you not the clod, 
Nor ever doubt the grave:
The roses and the sod 
Will not forswear...Read more of this...

The Hymn

by John Milton
 I

It was the Winter wilde,
While the Heav'n-born-childe, 
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature in aw to him
Had doff't her gawdy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize:
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the Sun her lusty Paramour.

II

Only with speeches fair
She woo'd the gentle Air
To hide her guilty front with innocent Snow,
And on her naked...Read more of this...

Ariosto. Orlando Furioso Canto X 91-99

by Alan Seeger
 Ruggiero, to amaze the British host, 
And wake more wonder in their wondering ranks, 
The bridle of his winged courser loosed, 
And clapped his spurs into the creature's flanks; 
High in the air, even to the topmost banks 
Of crudded cloud, uprose the flying horse, 
And now above the Welsh, and now the Manx, 
And now across the sea...Read more of this...

Sailing To Byzantium

by William Butler Yeats
 I

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

 II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon...Read more of this...

The Burghers

by Thomas Hardy
 THE sun had wheeled from Grey's to Dammer's Crest,
And still I mused on that Thing imminent:
At length I sought the High-street to the West.

The level flare raked pane and pediment
And my wrecked face, and shaped my nearing friend
Like one of those the Furnace held unshent.

"I've news concerning her," he said. "Attend.
They fly to-night at the late moon's first gleam:
Watch...Read more of this...

Psalm 02

by John Milton
 Done Aug. 8. 1653. Terzetti.


Why do the Gentiles tumult, and the Nations
Muse a vain thing, the Kings of th'earth upstand
With power, and Princes in their Congregations
Lay deep their plots together through each Land,
Against the Lord and his Messiah dear.
Let us break off; say they, by strength of hand
Their bonds, and cast from us, no more to wear,
Their twisted cords:...Read more of this...

A Dream of the Unknown

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I DREAM'D that as I wander'd by the way 
Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring, 
And gentle odours led my steps astray, 
Mix'd with a sound of waters murmuring 
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay 5 
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling 
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, 
But kiss'd it and...Read more of this...

Song VIII: While Ye Deemed Him A-Sleeping

by William Morris
 Love is enough: while ye deemed him a-sleeping,
There were signs of his coming and sounds of his feet;
His touch it was that would bring you to weeping,
When the summer was deepest and music most sweet:
In his footsteps ye followed the day to its dying,
Ye went forth by his gown-skirts the morning to meet:
In his place on the beaten-down orchard-grass...Read more of this...

Ode to the West Wind

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being¡ª 
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead 
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, 
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, 
Pestilence-stricken multitudes!¡ªO thou 5 
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed 
The wing¨¨d seeds, where they lie cold and low, 
Each like a corpse within its grave,...Read more of this...

The Choice

by William Butler Yeats
 The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story's finished, what's the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse....Read more of this...

Acquainted With the Night

by Robert Frost
 I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain --and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over...Read more of this...

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