Famous Second Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Second poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous second poems. These examples illustrate what a famous second poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Shakespeare, William
...rd childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything....Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...s Head—
'Tis better than the Eider-Duck's
Deep Pillow—to have shared—
To foe of His—I'm deadly foe—
None stir the second time—
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye—
Or an emphatic Thumb—
Though I than He—may no longer live
He longer must—than I—
For I have but the power to kill,
Without—the power to die—
829
Ample make this Bed—
Make this Bed with Awe—
In it wait till Judgment break
Excellent and Fair.
Be its Mattress straight—
Be its Pillow round—
Let n...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...less cathedrals praying
for each other's salvation and light and breasts,
until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for
impossible criminals with golden heads and the
charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet
blues to Alcatraz,
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky
Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys
or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or
Harvard to Narcissus to Woodl...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...he meads;
Now tiger-passion'd, lion-thoughted, wroth,
He meditated, plotted, and even now
Was hurling mountains in that second war,
Not long delay'd, that scar'd the younger Gods
To hide themselves in forms of beast and bird.
Not far hence Atlas; and beside him prone
Phorcus, the sire of Gorgons. Neighbour'd close
Oceanus, and Tethys, in whose lap
Sobb'd Clymene among her tangled hair.
In midst of all lay Themis, at the feet
Of Ops the queen; all clouded round fro...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...The spirits in pain, and hear the hopeless woe,
The unending cries, of those whose only plea
Is judgment, that the second death to be
Fall quickly. Further shalt thou climb, and go
To those who burn, but in their pain content
With hope of pardon; still beyond, more high,
Holier than opens to such souls as I,
The Heavens uprear; but if thou wilt, is one
Worthier, and she shall guide thee there, where none
Who did the Lord of those fair realms deny
May ...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...h day but dawn on ills increased,
That sleep, the loveliest, since it dreams the least.
____________
CANTO THE SECOND.
I.
Night wanes — the vapours round the mountains curl'd,
Melt into morn, and Light awakes the world.
Man has another day to swell the past,
And lead him near to little, but his last;
But mighty Nature bounds as from her birth,
The sun is in the heavens, and life on earth;
Flowers in the valley, splendour in the beam,
Health on ...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...the lizards run
By the stone lions blinking in the sun.
Byron dwelt here in love and revelry
For two long years - a second Anthony,
Who of the world another Actium made!
Yet suffered not his royal soul to fade,
Or lyre to break, or lance to grow less keen,
'Neath any wiles of an Egyptian queen.
For from the East there came a mighty cry,
And Greece stood up to fight for Liberty,
And called him from Ravenna: never knight
Rode forth more nobly to wild scenes of fight!
No...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...u shall possess the good of the earth and sun—(there are millions of suns
left;)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the
eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books;
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me:
You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from yourself.
3
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the
end;
But I do not talk of the beginn...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...world end,
O God, how long ago.
For the end of the world was long ago,
And all we dwell to-day
As children of some second birth,
Like a strange people left on earth
After a judgment day.
For the end of the world was long ago,
When the ends of the world waxed free,
When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves,
And the sun drowned in the sea.
When Caesar's sun fell out of the sky
And whoso hearkened right
Could only hear the plunging
Of the nations in the night.
...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...e first: son unto Phlegm, grand-child to water,
1.4 Unstable, supple, moist, and cold's his Nature.
1.5 The second: frolic claims his pedigree;
1.6 From blood and air, for hot and moist is he.
1.7 The third of fire and choler is compos'd,
1.8 Vindicative, and quarrelsome dispos'd.
1.9 The last, of earth and heavy melancholy,
1.10 Solid, hating all lightness, and all folly.
1.11 Childhood was cloth'd in white, and given to show,
...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...culpture, set betwixt
With many a mystic symbol, gird the hall:
And in the lowest beasts are slaying men,
And in the second men are slaying beasts,
And on the third are warriors, perfect men,
And on the fourth are men with growing wings,
And over all one statue in the mould
Of Arthur, made by Merlin, with a crown,
And peaked wings pointed to the Northern Star.
And eastward fronts the statue, and the crown
And both the wings are made of gold, and flame
At sunris...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...doubted that, rather than die, he would have gasped out "Rilchiam!"
CONTENTS
Fit the First. The Landing
Fit the Second. The Bellman's Speech
Fit the Third. The Baker's Tale
Fit the Fourth. The Hunting
Fit the Fifth. The Beaver's Lesson
Fit the Sixth. The Barrister's Dream
Fit the Seventh. The Banker's Fate
Fit the Eighth. The Vanishing
Fit the First.
THE LANDING
"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his cre...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...nk in undisturbed repose,
Until the heath-cock shrilly crew,
And morning dawned on Benvenue.
CANTO SECOND.
The Island.
I.
At morn the black-cock trims his jetty wing,
'T is morning prompts the linnet's blithest lay,
All Nature's children feel the matin spring
Of life reviving, with reviving day;
And while yon little bark glides down the bay,
Wafting the stranger on his way again,
Morn's...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...Dragon-Man, clearing away the
rubbish from a caves mouth; within, a number of Dragons were
hollowing the cave,
In the second chamber was a Viper folding round the rock & the
cave, and others adorning it with gold silver and precious
stones.
In the third chamber was an Eagle with wings and feathers of
air, he caused the inside of the cave to be infinite, around were
numbers of Eagle like men, who built palaces in the immense
cliffs.
In the fourth chamber were Lions ...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...hought."
So passed they on with even pace:
Yet gradually one might trace
A shadow growing on his face.
The Second Voice
THEY walked beside the wave-worn beach;
Her tongue was very apt to teach,
And now and then he did beseech
She would abate her dulcet tone,
Because the talk was all her own,
And he was dull as any drone.
She urged "No cheese is made of chalk":
And ceaseless flowed her dreary talk,
Tuned to the footfall of a walk.
Her voice was ve...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...desert Labrador,
Whilst the fierce wolf from which they fled amazed
"Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore
Until the second bursts--so on my sight
Burst a new Vision never seen before.--
"And the fair shape waned in the coming light
As veil by veil the silent splendour drops
From Lucifer, amid the chrysolite
"Of sunrise ere it strike the mountain tops--
And as the presence of that fairest planet
Although unseen is felt by one who hopes
"That his day's path may end as h...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...s foretold beast; but ours are born
Less formidable in the head than horn.
VIII
In the first year of freedom's second dawn
Died George the Third; although no tyrant, one
Who shielded tyrants, till each sense withdrawn
Left him nor mental nor external sun:
A better farmer ne'er brush'd dew from lawn,
A worse king never left a realm undone!
He died — but left his subjects still behind,
One half as mad — and t'other no less blind.
IX
He died! his death mad...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...not my own?
I thought of my father's deep traditional wrath
Against England— the redcoat bully— the ancient foe—
That second reaping of hate, that aftermath
Of a ruler's folly and ignorance long ago—
Long, long ago— yet who can honestly say
England is utterly changed— not I— not I.
Arrogance, ignorance, folly are here today,
And for these my son must die?
I thought of these years, these last dark terrible years
When the leaders of England bade the English believe
Lies a...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...s brown feathers.
I cannot help smiling at what it is I know.
Leaves and petals attend me. I am ready.
SECOND VOICE:
When I first saw it, the small red seep, I did not believe it.
I watched the men walk about me in the office. They were so flat!
There was something about them like cardboard, and now I had caught it,
That flat, flat, flatness from which ideas, destructions,
Bulldozers, guillotines, white chambers of shrieks proceed,
Endlessly proceed--...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...golden verses
Immortalized my anguish
Over future I do secret magic
If the evening is truly blue,
And I divine a second meeting,
Unavoidable meeting with you.
x x x
How spacious are these squares,
How resonant bridges and stark!
Heavy, peaceful, and starless
Is the covering of the dark.
And we walk on the fresh snow
As if we were mortal people.
That we are together this hour
Unseparable -- is it not a miracle?
The knees go unwitting...Read more of this...
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