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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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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...e far abroad,
Whare sailors gang to fish for cod.
 His locked, letter’d, braw brass collar
Shew’d him the gentleman an’ scholar;
But though he was o’ high degree,
The fient a pride, nae pride had he;
But wad hae spent an hour caressin,
Ev’n wi’ al tinkler-gipsy’s messin:
At kirk or market, mill or smiddie,
Nae tawted tyke, tho’ e’er sae duddie,
But he wad stan’t, as glad to see him,
An’ stroan’t on stanes an’ hillocks wi’ him.
 The tither was a ploughman’s collie—
A rhyming, ...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert



...with formidable mail, 
Rifling a printed letter as he talks. 
They seem afraid. He wouldn't have it so: 
Though a great scholar, he's a democrat, 
If not at heart, at least on principle. 
Lately when coming up to Lancaster 
His train being late he missed another train 
And had four hours to wait at Woodsville Junction 
After eleven o'clock at night. Too tired 
To think of sitting such an ordeal out, 
He turned to the hotel to find a bed. 
"No room," the night clerk said. "Unl...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...here Michael with his millions bows, 
Where dwells the seraph and his spouse 
 The cherub and her mate. 

 XX 
O David, scholar of the Lord! 
Of God and Love—the Saint elect 
 For infinite applause— 
To rule the land, and briny broad, 
To be laborious in His laud, 
 And heroes in His cause. 

 XXI 
The world—the clust'ring spheres He made, 
The glorious light, the soothing shade, 
 Dale, champaign, grove, and hill; 
The multitudinous abyss, 
Where secrecy remains in bliss, 
 ...Read more of this...
by Smart, Christopher
...
King Uther through his magic art; and one 
Is Merlin's master (so they call him) Bleys, 
Who taught him magic, but the scholar ran 
Before the master, and so far, that Bleys, 
Laid magic by, and sat him down, and wrote 
All things and whatsoever Merlin did 
In one great annal-book, where after-years 
Will learn the secret of our Arthur's birth.' 

To whom the King Leodogran replied, 
`O friend, had I been holpen half as well 
By this King Arthur as by thee today, 
Then beast...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...source before the term,-- 
And aptest in contrivance (under God) 
To baffle it by deftly stopping such:-- 
The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home 
Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace) 
Three samples of true snakestone--rarer still, 
One of the other sort, the melon-shaped, 
(But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs) 
And writeth now the twenty-second time. 

My journeyings were brought to Jericho; 
Thus I resume. Who studious in our art 
Shall count...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert



...gh doors—burst like a ruthless force, 
Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation; 
Into the school where the scholar is studying; 
Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he have now with his bride;
Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, plowing his field or gathering his grain; 
So fierce you whirr and pound, you drums—so shrill you bugles blow. 

2
Beat! beat! drums!—Blow! bugles! blow! 
Over the traffic of cities—over the rumble of wheels in the streets: 
A...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...im eighty; then you'd add
More years to that. He's old enough to be
The father of a world, and so he is.
"Ben, you're a scholar, what's the time of day?"
Says he; and there shines out of him again
An aged light that has no age or station -- 
The mystery that's his -- a mischievous
Half-mad serenity that laughs at fame
For being won so easy, and at friends
Who laugh at him for what he wants the most,
And for his dukedom down in Warwickshire; -- 
By which you see we're all a li...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
..., whet the appetite,
And make me, of three hundred bowls, one long drink!
... To the old master, Tsen,
And the young scholar, Tan-chiu,
Bring in the wine!
Let your cups never rest!
Let me sing you a song!
Let your ears attend!
What are bell and drum, rare dishes and treasure?
Let me br forever drunk and never come to reason!
Sober men of olden days and sages are forgotten,
And only the great drinkers are famous for all time.
... Prince Chen paid at a banquet in th...Read more of this...
by Bai, Li
...a thief, 
Or diseas’d, or rheumatic, or a prostitute—or are so now; 
Or from frivolity or impotence, or that you are no scholar, and never saw your name in
 print,
Do you give in that you are any less immortal? 

3
Souls of men and women! it is not you I call unseen, unheard, untouchable and untouching; 
It is not you I go argue pro and con about, and to settle whether you are alive or no; 
I own publicly who you are, if nobody else owns. 

Grown, half-grown, and babe, of thi...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...hat street a child walked down
whom you remember, in the corridors
of cities you inhabit, polyglot
as the distinguished scholar you were not
to be. A slight accent sets you apart,
but it would mark you on that peddlers'-cart
street now. Which language, after all, is yours?

Which language, after all these streets, is yours,
and why are you here, waiting for a train?
You could have run a hot bath, read Montaigne.
But would footsteps beyond the bathroom door's
bolt have disturb...Read more of this...
by Hacker, Marilyn
...words because 
The same wind, rising and rising, makes a sound 
Like the last muting of winter as it ends. 

A new scholar replacing an older one reflects 
A moment on this fantasia. He seeks 
For a human that can be accounted for. 

The spirit comes from the body of the world, 
Or so Mr. Homburg thought: the body of a world 
Whose blunt laws make an affectation of mind, 

The mannerism of nature caught in a glass 
And there become a spirit's mannerism, 
A glas...Read more of this...
by Stevens, Wallace
...the knife; 
The knights and ladies, all whose flesh and bone 
By avarice have been hardened into stone; 
The clerk, the scholar whom the love of pelf 
Tempts from his books and from his nobler self. 


The scholar and the world! The endless strife, 
The discord in the harmonies of life! 
The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, 
And all the sweet serenity of books; 
The market-place, the eager love of gain, 
Whose aim is vanity, and whose end is pain! 


But why, you ask ...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...wo white ones

playing cards near the window, a fourth white one staring

back with a harmonica in its mouth.

 I was a scholar until the mud puddles went dry and then I

picked cherries for two-and-a-half cents a pound in an old

orchard that was beside a long, hot dusty road.

 The cherry boss was a middle-aged woman who was a real

Okie. Wearing a pair of goofy overalls, her name was Rebel

Smith, and she'd been a friend of "Pretty Boy" Floyd's down

in Oklahoma. "I rememb...Read more of this...
by Brautigan, Richard
...white wrist of the daughter, 
The breath of the boy goes with the breath of the man, friend is inarm’d by friend, 
The scholar kisses the teacher, and the teacher kisses the scholar—the wrong’d
 is
 made
 right, 
The call of the slave is one with the master’s call, and the master salutes the
 slave,
The felon steps forth from the prison—the insane becomes sane—the suffering of
 sick
 persons is reliev’d, 
The sweatings and fevers stop—the throat that was unsound is sound—the...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...ow + ?" in Magic
Markered hearts all over her notebooks. She was an average
student, a daydreamer who might have been a scholar
if she'd only applied herself. She liked sappy music
and romance novels. She liked pies and cake
instead of fruit.
 The Queen remained the fairest in the land.
It was hard on Snow, having such a glamorous mom.
She rebelled by wearing torn shawls and baggy gowns.
Her mother would sometimes say, "Snow darling,
why don't you pull back your hair? Show th...Read more of this...
by Duhamel, Denise
...ies and in a ditch doth fall? 

Oh let me prop my mind, yet in his growth, 
And not in Nature, for best fruits unfit: 
"Scholar," saith Love, "bend hitherward your wit."...Read more of this...
by Sidney, Sir Philip
...t climbed the storms and cut the skies.
On their prows were painted terrible bright eyes.
But I was then a wizard and a scholar and a priest;
I stood upon the sand;
With lifted hand I looked upon them
And sunk their vessels with my wizard eyes,
And the stately lacquer-gate made safe again.
Deep, deep below the bay, the sea-weed and the spray,
Embalmed in amber every pirate lies,
Embalmed in amber every pirate lies."

Then this did the noble lady say:
"Bird, do you dream of ou...Read more of this...
by Lindsay, Vachel
...are*; *he cared not a rush*
He *crack'd his boast,* and swore it was not so. *talked big*

Then were there younge poore scholars two,
That dwelled in the hall of which I say;
Testif* they were, and lusty for to play; *headstrong 
And only for their mirth and revelry
Upon the warden busily they cry,
To give them leave for but a *little stound*, *short time*
To go to mill, and see their corn y-ground:
And hardily* they durste lay their neck, *boldly
The miller should not ste...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ers.

And near me on the grass lies Glanvil's book— 
Come, let me read the oft-read tale again!
The story of the Oxford scholar poor,
Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain,
Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door,
One summer-morn forsook
His friends, and went to learn the gypsy-lore,
And roamed the world with that wild brotherhood,
And came, as most men deemed, to little good,
But came to Oxford and his friends no more.

But once, years after, in the country lanes,
...Read more of this...
by Arnold, Matthew
...ale:
And for none other cause? say ye no?
Experience wot well it is not so.
So that the clerkes* be not with me wroth, *scholars
I say this, that they were made for both,
That is to say, *for office, and for ease* *for duty and
Of engendrure, there we God not displease. for pleasure*
Why should men elles in their bookes set,
That man shall yield unto his wife her debt?
Now wherewith should he make his payement,
If he us'd not his silly instrument?
Then were they made upon a c...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry