Famous Secretary Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Farewell to Secretary Shu-yun at the Hsieh Tiao Villa in Hsuan-Chou

...Since yesterday had throw me and bolt,
Today has hurt my heart even more.
The autumn wildgeese have a long wing for escort
As I face them from this villa, drinking my wine.
The bones of great writers are your brushes, in the school of heaven,
And I am Lesser Hsieh growing up by your side.
We both are exalted to distant thought,
Aspiring to the sky an...Read more of this...
by Bai, Li


An Early Audience at the Palace of Light. (Harmonizing a poem for Secretary Jia Zhi.)

...The red-capped Cock-Man has just announced morning; 
The Keeper of the Robes brings Jade-Cloud Furs; 
Heaven's nine doors reveal the palace and its courtyards; 
And the coats of many countries bow to the Pearl Crown. 
Sunshine has entered the giants' carven palms; 
Incense wreathes the Dragon Robe: 
The audience adjourns-and the five-coloured edict 
Sets g...Read more of this...
by Wei, Wang

Dream Song 66: All virtues enter into this world:)

...'All virtues enter into this world:')
A Buddhist, doused in the street, serenely burned.
The Secretary of State for War,
winking it over, screwed a redhaired whore.
Monsignor Capovilla mourned. What a week.
A journalism doggy took a leak

against absconding coon ('but take one virtue,
without which a man can hardly hold his own')
the sun in the willow
shivers itself & shakes itself green-yellow
(Abba Pimen groaned, over the telephone,
when asked wha...Read more of this...
by Berryman, John

Farewell to Secretary Shu-yun at the Hsieh Tiao Villa in Hsuan-Chou

...Since yesterday had throw me and bolt,
Today has hurt my heart even more.
The autumn wildgeese have a long wing for escort
As I face them from this villa, drinking my wine.
The bones of great writers are your brushes, in the school of heaven,
And I am Lesser Hsieh growing up by your side.
We both are exalted to distant thought,
Aspiring to the sky and the ...Read more of this...
by Po, Li

Flee On Your Donkey

...like an overcoat
that someone had thrown away.
You carried me back in,
awkwardly, tenderly,
with help of the red-haired secretary
who was built like a lifeguard.
My shoes,
I remember,
were lost in the snowbank
as if I planned never to walk again.

That was the winter
that my mother died,
half mad on morphine,
blown up, at last,
like a pregnant pig.
I was her dreamy evil eye.
In fact,
I carried a knife in my pocketbook—
my husband's good L. L. Bean hunting knife.
I wasn't sure...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne


Hiram Scates

...ith the door
Which closed on my heels just as I entered,
Flattered by Solomon's invitation,
To be the County -- board's secretary.
And out in the cold stood all my followers:
Young idealists, broken warriors
Hobbling on one crutch of hope --
Souls that staked their all on the truth,
Losers of worlds at heaven's bidding,
Watching the Devil kick the Millennium
Over the Golden Mountain....Read more of this...
by Masters, Edgar Lee

Holy-Cross Day

...nversions which did incontinently
reward him: though not to my
lord be altogether the glory.''---_Diary by the
Bishop's Secretary,_ 1600.]

What the Jews really said, on thus being
driven to church, was rather to this effect:---

I.

Fee, faw, fum! bubble and squeak!
Blessedest Thursday's the fat of the week.
Rumble and tumble, sleek and rough,
Stinking and savoury, simug and gruff,
Take the church-road, for the bell's due chime
Gives us the summons---'tis sermon-time!

II.

...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

Lord Lundy

...wenty-six,
They shoved him into politics;
In which profession he commanded
The Income that his rank demanded
In turn as Secretary for
India, the Colonies, and War.
But very soon his friends began
To doubt is he were quite the man:
Thus if a member rose to say
(As members do from day to day),
"Arising out of that reply . . .!"
Lord Lundy would begin to cry.
A Hint at harmless little jobs
Would shake him with convulsive sobs.
While as for Revelations, these
Would simply bring h...Read more of this...
by Belloc, Hilaire

Potomac River Mist

...ALL the policemen, saloonkeepers and efficiency experts in Toledo knew Bern Dailey; secretary ten years when Whitlock was mayor.
Pickpockets, yeggs, three card men, he knew them all and how they flit from zone to zone, birds of wind and weather, singers, fighters, scavengers.

The Washington monument pointed to a new moon for us and a gang from over the river sang ragtime to a ukelele.
The river mist marched up and down the Potomac, we hunt...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl

Secretary

...My Master is a man of might
 With manners like a hog;
He makes me slave from morn to night
 And treats me like a dog.
He thinks there's nothing on this earth
 His money cannot buy,
And claims to get full wages worth
 From hirelings such as I.

But does he? Though a Man of State,
 And fabulously rich,
He little guesses that his mate
 Is just a bonny *****.
...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Shit List; Or Omnium-gatherum Of Diversity Into Unity

..., earthworm **** (a soilure), crab ****,

wolf **** upon the germicidal ice, snake ****, giraffe
**** that accelerates, secretary bird ****, turtle
**** suspension invites, remora **** slightly in

advance of the shark ****, hornet **** (difficult to
assess), camel **** that slaps the ghastly dry
siliceous, frog ****, beetle ****, bat **** (the

marmoreal), contemptible cat ****, penguin ****,
hermit crab ****, prairie hen ****, cougar ****, eagle
**** (high totem stuff), buf...Read more of this...
by Ammons, A R

Shut Up And Eat Your Toad

...s skipped several meetings in a row
which is a pattern I find almost fatally attractive.
Down at headquarters there's a secretary
and a janitor who I shall call Suzie
and boy can she ever shoot straight.
She'll shoot you straight in the eye if you ask her to.
I mow the grass every other Saturday
and that's the day she polishes the trivets
whether they need it or not, I don't know
if there is a name for this kind of behavior,
hers or mine, but somebody once said something or a...Read more of this...
by Taylor, Edward

Shut Up And Eat Your Toad

...s skipped several meetings in a row
which is a pattern I find almost fatally attractive.
Down at headquarters there's a secretary
and a janitor who I shall call Suzie
and boy can she ever shoot straight.
She'll shoot you straight in the eye if you ask her to.
I mow the grass every other Saturday
and that's the day she polishes the trivets
whether they need it or not, I don't know
if there is a name for this kind of behavior,
hers or mine, but somebody once said something or a...Read more of this...
by Tate, James

The Bee Meeting

...miling and taking out veils tacked to ancient hats.

I am nude as a chicken neck, does nobody love me?
Yes, here is the secretary of bees with her white shop smock,
Buttoning the cuffs at my wrists and the slit from my neck to my knees.
Now I am milkweed silk, the bees will not notice.
They will not smell my fear, my fear, my fear.

Which is the rector now, is it that man in black?
Which is the midwife, is that her blue coat?
Everybody is nodding a square black head, they are...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

The Right to Grief

...dead child of a millionaire,
And the pity of Death refusing any check on the bank
Which the millionaire might order his secretary to
scratch off
And get cashed.

Very well,
You for your grief and I for mine.
Let me have a sorrow my own if I want to.

I shall cry over the dead child of a stockyards hunky.
His job is sweeping blood off the floor.
He gets a dollar seventy cents a day when he works
And it's many tubs of blood he shoves out with a broom
day by day.

Now his three ...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl

The Solution

...After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?...Read more of this...
by Brecht, Bertolt

To The Right Honourable William Earl Of Dartmouth His Majestys Principal Secretary Of The State For North-America

...HAIL, happy day, when, smiling like the morn,
Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn:
The northern clime beneath her genial ray,
Dartmouth, congratulates thy blissful sway:
Elate with hope her race no longer mourns,
Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns,
While in thine hand with pleasure we behold
The silken reins, and Freedom's charms unfold.
Long ...Read more of this...
by Wheatley, Phillis

Toads Revisited

...some bed of lobelias,
Nowhere to go but indoors,
Nor friends but empty chairs -

No, give me my in-tray,
My loaf-haired secretary,
My shall-I-keep-the-call-in-Sir:
What else can I answer,

When the lights come on at four
At the end of another year?
Give me your arm, old toad;
Help me down Cemetery Road....Read more of this...
by Larkin, Philip

Womens Suffrage

...n;
Besides, upon members of parliament they have no claim
As a deputation, which is a very great shame. 

Yes, the Home Secretary of the present day,
Against working women's deputations, has always said- nay;
Because they haven't got the parliamentary Franchise-,
That is the reason why he does them despise. 

And that, in my opinion, is really very unjust;
But the time is not far distant, I most earnestly trust,
When women will have a parliamentary vote,
And many of them, I h...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz

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