Famous Scholar Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Scholar poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous scholar poems. These examples illustrate what a famous scholar poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Denise Duhamel
At first she was sure it was just a bit of dried strawberry juice,
or a fleck of her mother's red nail polish that had flaked off
when she'd patted her daughter to sleep the night before.
But as she scrubbed, Snow felt a bump, something festering
under the surface, like a tapeworm curled up and living
in her left cheek.
Doc the Dwarf...Read more of this...
by
Kahlil Gibran
And then a scholar said, "Speak of Talking."
And he answered, saying:
You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;
And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.
And in much of your talking, thinking is half...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
In a great land, a new land, a land full of labour
and riches and confusion,
Where there were many running to and fro, and
shouting, and striving together,
In the midst of the hurry and the troubled noise,
I heard the voice of one singing.
"What are you doing there, O man, singing
quietly amid all this tumult?
This is the time for...Read more of this...
by
Sir Philip Sidney
The wisest scholar of the wight most wise
By Phoebus' doom, with sugar'd sentence says,
That Virtue, if it once met with our eyes,
Strange flames of love it in our souls would raise;
But for that man with pain his truth descries,
Whiles he each thing in sense's balance weighs,
And so nor will, nor can behold those...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
Think not that incense-smoke has had its day.
My friends, the incense-time has but begun.
Creed upon creed, cult upon cult shall bloom,
Shrine after shrine grow gray beneath the sun.
And mountain-boulders in our aged West
Shall guard the graves of hermits truth-endowed:
And there the scholar from the Chinese hills
Shall do deep honor, with his wise...Read more of this...
by
Li Po
See how the Yellow River's water move out of heaven.
Entering the ocean,never to return.
See how lovely locks in bright mirrors in high chambers,
Though silken-black at morning, have changed by night to snow.
... Oh, let a man of spirit venture where he pleases
And never tip his golden cup empty toward the moon!
Since heaven gave the talent, let it be employed!
Spin...Read more of this...
by
Anne Kingsmill Finch
A Citizen of mighty Pelf,
But much a Blockhead, in himself
Disdain'd a Man of shining Parts,
Master of Sciences and Arts,
Who left his Book scarce once a day
For sober Coffee, Smoak, or Tea;
Nor spent more Money in the Town
Than bought, when need requir'd, a Gown;
Which way of Living much offends
The Alderman, who...Read more of this...
by
Du Fu
Life not mutual see Act like Shen and Shang Today evening again which evening Share this candle light Young and vigorous able how long Temple hair each already grey Enquire old partly be ghosts Exclaim excited in intestines Didn't know twenty years Again at your hall Past part you not married Boys girls suddenly form a line...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
Holy Mother of God, Merciful Mary. Hear
me! I am very weary. I have come
from a village miles away, all day I have been coming, and I ache
for such
far roaming. I cannot walk as light as I used, and my
thoughts grow confused.
I am heavier than I was. Mary Mother, you know the cause!
Beautiful Holy Lady, take my...Read more of this...
by
Du Fu
Eight month autumn high wind angry howl Sweep off my house on three layers thatch Thatch fly across river sprinkle river beside High ones catch stick great forest top Low ones float turn sink pool hollow South village mob children bully me old without strength Bear able to face to steal be robbers Openly carry thatch...Read more of this...
by
Du Fu
Chang'an commoner who notice Be locked in weigh gate watch surround wall Old people not go grow weeds Child without worry walk wind rain Rain sound sough and sigh hasten early cold West goose wing wet high fly hard Autumn come have not see white sun Mud dirt after earth what time dry In Chang'an,...Read more of this...
by
Tony Harrison
I
Baked the day she suddenly dropped dead
we chew it slowly that last apple pie.
Shocked into sleeplessness you're scared of bed.
We never could talk much, and now don't try.
You're like book ends, the pair of you, she'd say,
Hog that grate, say nothing, sit, sleep, stare…
The 'scholar' me, you, worn out on poor pay,
only our silence made us seem a pair.
Not...Read more of this...
by
Wallace Stevens
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom the book is...Read more of this...
by
Li Bai
See how the Yellow River's water move out of heaven.
Entering the ocean,never to return.
See how lovely locks in bright mirrors in high chambers,
Though silken-black at morning, have changed by night to snow.
... Oh, let a man of spirit venture where he pleases
And never tip his golden cup empty toward the moon!
Since heaven gave the talent, let it be employed!
Spin a...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
[Concerning O. Henry (Sidney Porter)]
"He could not forget that he was a Sidney."
Is this Sir Philip Sidney, this loud clown,
The darling of the glad and gaping town?
This is that dubious hero of the press
Whose slangy tongue and insolent address
Were spiced to rouse on Sunday afternoon
The man with yellow journals round him strewn.
We laughed...Read more of this...
by
Brooks Haxton
I made sackcloth also my garment; and I
became a proverb to them. They that sit in
the gate speak against me; and I was the
song of drunkards. Psalm 102
I made sackcloth my garment once, by cutting
arm and neck holes into a burlap bag.
A croker sack they called it. Sackdragger
they called the man who dragged...Read more of this...
by
Du Fu
Rain in small plants autumn rot die Steps under jueming colour fresh Branch leaf full stem green feather canopy Blossom innumerable yellow gold money Cool wind sough and sigh blow you hard Fear you after now hard stand alone Hall above scholar free white head Face wind three smell fragrance weep In autumn rain,...Read more of this...
by
Edward Taylor
for my father, 1922-1944
Your face did not rot
like the others--the co-pilot,
for example, I saw him
yesterday. His face is corn-
mush: his wife and daughter,
the poor ignorant people, stare
as if he will compose soon.
He was more wronged than Job.
But your face did not rot
like the others--it grew dark,
and hard like ebony;
the features progressed in their
distinction. If I could cajole
you to come...Read more of this...
by
Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
A piece of bone, found at Trondhjem in 1901, with the following runic inscription (about A.D. 1050) cut on it: I loved her as a maiden; I will not trouble Erlend's detestable wife; better she should be a widow.
Words scored upon a bone,
Scratched in despair or rage --
Nine hundred years have gone;
Now, in another age,...Read more of this...
by
Mother Goose
A diller, a dollar, a ten o'clock scholar!
What makes you come so soon?
You used to come at ten o'clock,
But now you come at noon....Read more of this...
by
Oliver Wendell Holmes
COME, dear old comrade, you and I
Will steal an hour from days gone by,
The shining days when life was new,
And all was bright with morning dew,
The lusty days of long ago,
When you were Bill and I was Joe.
Your name may flaunt a titled trail
Proud as a cockerel's rainbow tail,
And mine as brief appendix wear
As Tam O'Shanter's luckless mare;
To-day, old...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Ah me! How hard is destiny!
If we could only know. . . .
I bought my son from Sicily
A score of years ago;
I haled him from our sunny vale
To streets of din and squalor,
And left it to professors pale
To make of him a scholar.
Had he remained a peasant lad,
A shepherd on the hill,
like golden faun in goatskin clad
He might be...Read more of this...
by
David Lehman
If Ezra Pound were alive today
(and he is)
he'd be teaching
at a small college in the Pacific Northwest
and attending the annual convention
of writing instructors in St. Louis
and railing against tenure,
saying tenure
is a ladder whose rungs slip out
from under the scholar as he climbs
upwards to empty heaven
by the angels abandoned
for tenure killeth the spirit
(with tenure no man becomes master)
Texts are...Read more of this...
by
Archibald MacLeish
Will it last? he says.
Is it a masterpiece?
Will generation after generation
Turn with reverence to the page?
Birdseye scholar of the frozen fish,
What would he make of the sole, clean, clear
Leap of the salmon that has disappeared?
To be, yes!--whether they like it or not!
But not to last when leap and water are forgotten,
A plank of standard pinkness in the dish.
They also...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
I meditate upon a swallow's flight,
Upon a aged woman and her house,
A sycamore and lime-tree lost in night
Although that western cloud is luminous,
Great works constructed there in nature's spite
For scholars and for poets after us,
Thoughts long knitted into a single thought,
A dance-like glory that those walls begot.
There Hyde before he had beaten into prose
That noble blade the Muses buckled...Read more of this...
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