Famous Rule Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Rule poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous rule poems. These examples illustrate what a famous rule poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
John Betjeman
With one consuming roar along the shingle
The long wave claws and rakes the pebbles down
To where its backwash and the next wave mingle,
A mounting arch of water weedy-brown
Against the tide the off-shore breezes blow.
Oh wind and water, this is Felixstowe.
In winter when the sea winds chill and shriller
Than those of summer, all their cold unload
Full on the gimcrack attic...Read more of this...
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...
by
William Strode
Farewell Example, Living Rule farewell;
Whose practise shew'd goodness was possible,
Who reach'd the full outstretch'd perfection
Of Man, of Lawyer, and of Christian.
Suppose a Man more streight than Reason is,
Whose grounded Habit could not tread amisse
Though Reason slepd; a Man who still esteem'd
His wife his Bone; who still his children deem'd
His Limbes and future Selfe; Servants trayn'd friends;
Lov'd his Familiars for...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
WHEN Nature her great master-piece design’d,
And fram’d her last, best work, the human mind,
Her eye intent on all the mazy plan,
She form’d of various parts the various Man.
Then first she calls the useful many forth;
Plain plodding Industry, and sober Worth:
Thence peasants, farmers, native sons of earth,
And merchandise’ whole genus take their birth:
Each prudent cit a warm existence finds,
And...Read more of this...
by
Lewis Carroll
"OH, when I was a little Ghost,
A merry time had we!
Each seated on his favourite post,
We chumped and chawed the buttered toast
They gave us for our tea."
"That story is in print!" I cried.
"Don't say it's not, because
It's known as well as Bradshaw's Guide!"
(The Ghost uneasily replied
He hardly thought it was)....Read more of this...
by
George Meredith
Pitch here the tent, while the old horse grazes:
By the old hedge-side we'll halt a stage.
It's nigh my last above the daisies:
My next leaf'll be man's blank page.
Yes, my old girl! and it's no use crying:
Juggler, constable, king, must bow.
One that outjuggles all's been spying
Long to have me, and he has me now.
We've travelled times to this old common:
Often...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
Neither spite, fellow citizens,
Nor forgetfulness of the shiftlessness,
And the lawlessness and waste
Under democracy's rule in Spoon River
Made me desert the party of law and order
And lead the liberal party.
Fellow citizens! I saw as one with second sight
That every man of the millions of men
Who give themselves to Freedom,
And fail while Freedom fails,
Enduring waste and lawlessness,
And the rule of the...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
I.
Of the million or two, more or less,
I rule and possess,
One man, for some cause undefined,
Was least to my mind.
II.
I struck him, he grovelled of course---
For, what was his force?
I pinned him to earth with my weight
And persistence of hate:
And he lay, would not moan, would not curse,
As his lot might be worse.
III.
``Were the object less mean, would he...Read more of this...
by
Horace
Maecenas, born of monarch ancestors,
The shield at once and glory of my life!
There are who joy them in the Olympic strife
And love the dust they gather in the course;
The goal by hot wheels shunn'd, the famous...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
(The 110th anniversary of the completion of the "Decline and Fall" at the same hour and place)
A spirit seems to pass,
Formal in pose, but grave and grand withal:
He contemplates a volume stout and tall,
And far lamps fleck him through the thin acacias.
Anon the book is closed,
With "It is...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
I ranted to the knave and fool,
But outgrew that school,
Would transform the part,
Fit audience found, but cannot rule
My fanatic heart.
I sought my betters: though in each
Fine manners, liberal speech,
Turn hatred into sport,
Nothing said or done can reach
My fanatic heart.
Out of Ireland have we come.
Great hatred, little room,
Maimed us at the start.
I carry from my mother's womb
A fanatic heart....Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
Come all ye bold trainers attend to my song,
It's a rule of the A.J.C.
You mustn't train ponies, for that's very wrong
By the rules of the A.J.C.
You have to wear winkers when crossing the street,
For fear that a pony you'd happen to meet
If you hear one about, you must beat a retreat --
That's...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
v.7ff
C. M.
The power and majesty of God; or, Reverential worship.
With rev'rence let the saints appear,
And bow before the Lord;
His high commands with rev'rence hear,
And tremble at his word.
How terrible thy glories be!
How bright thine armies shine!
Where is the power that vies with thee,
Or truth compared to thine?
The northern pole and southern rest
On thy supporting hand;
Darkness and day, from...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
Life! Austere arbiter of each man's fate,
By whom he learns that Nature's steadfast laws
Are as decrees immutable; O pause
Your even forward march! Not yet too late
Teach me the needed lesson, when to wait
Inactive as a ship when no wind draws
To stretch the loosened cordage. One implores
Thy clemency, whose wilfulness innate
Has gone uncurbed and roughshod while the years
Have lengthened into...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
(EDWARD VII.)
1910
Who in the Realm to-day lays down dear life for the sake of a land more dear?
And, unconcerned for his own estate, toils till the last grudged sands have run?
Let him approach. It is proven here
Our King asks nothing of any man more than Our King himself, has done.
For to him above all was Life good, above all...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
So here's your Empire. No more wine, then?
Good.
We'll clear the Aides and khitmatgars away.
(You'll know that fat old fellow with the knife --
He keeps the Name Book, talks in English too,
And almost thinks himself the Government.)
O Youth, Youth, Youth! Forgive me, you're so young.
Forty from sixty -- twenty years of work
And power to back the working. Ay def mi!
You...Read more of this...
by
William Cullen Bryant
HOW shall I know thee in the sphere which keeps
The disembodied spirits of the dead
When all of thee that time could wither sleeps
And perishes among the dust we tread?
For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain 5
If there I meet thy gentle presence not;
Nor hear the voice I love nor read again...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
"Who would himself with shadows entertain,
Or gild his life with lights that shine in vain,
Or nurse false hopes that do but cheat the true?--
Though with my dream my heaven should be resigned--
Though the free-pinioned soul that once could dwell
In the large empire of the possible,
This workday life with iron chains may bind,
Yet thus the mastery o'er ourselves we find,
And...Read more of this...
by
Anne Kingsmill Finch
A WIT, transported with Inditing,
Unpay'd, unprais'd, yet ever Writing;
Who, for all Fights and Fav'rite Friends,
Had Poems at his Fingers Ends;
For new Events was still providing;
Yet now desirous to be riding,
He pack'd-up ev'ry Ode and Ditty
And in Vacation left the City;
So rapt with Figures, and Allusions,
With secret Passions, sweet Confusions;
With...Read more of this...
by
Anne Bradstreet
Proem.
1.1 Although great Queen, thou now in silence lie,
1.2 Yet thy loud Herald Fame, doth to the sky
1.3 Thy wondrous worth proclaim, in every clime,
1.4 And so has vow'd, whilst there is world or time.
1.5 So great's thy glory, and thine excellence,
1.6 The sound thereof raps every human sense
1.7 That men account it no...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
IF thou wouldst live unruffled by care,
Let not the past torment thee e'er;
As little as possible be thou annoy'd,
And let the present be ever enjoy'd;
Ne'er let thy breast with hate be supplied,
And to God the future confide.
1815.*...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
What lord is fit to rule but «Truth»? Not one.
What beings disobey His rule? Not one.
All things that are, are such as He decrees;
And naught is there beside beneath the sun....Read more of this...
by
James Thomson
When Britain first, at Heaven's command,
Arose from out the azure main;
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sung this strain:
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves."
The nations, not so blest as thee,
Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall:
While thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons...Read more of this...
by
Ezra Pound
For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start--
No, hardly, but seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;
Capaneus; trout for factitious bait;
Idmen gar toi panth, hos eni troie
Caught in...Read more of this...
by
William Cullen Bryant
WITHIN this lowly grave a Conqueror lies
And yet the monument proclaims it not
Nor round the sleeper's name hath chisel wrought
The emblems of a fame that never dies ¡ª
Ivy and amaranth in a graceful sheaf 5
Twined with the laurel's fair imperial leaf.
A simple name alone
To the great world unknown
Is...Read more of this...
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