Famous Selfsame Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

An Apple-Gathering

...ue season when I went to see
I found no apples there.
With dangling basket all along the grass
As I had come I went the selfsame track:
My neighbours mocked me while they saw me pass
So empty-handed back.

Lilian and Lilias smiled in trudging by,
Their heaped-up basket teazed me like a jeer;
Sweet-voiced they sang beneath the sunset sky,
Their mother's home was near.

Plump Gertrude passed me with her basket full,
A stronger hand than hers helped it along;
A voice talked with...Read more of this...
by Rossetti, Christina


Balin and Balan

...ce and shield, 
Nor stayed to crave permission of the King, 
But, mad for strange adventure, dashed away. 

He took the selfsame track as Balan, saw 
The fountain where they sat together, sighed 
'Was I not better there with him?' and rode 
The skyless woods, but under open blue 
Came on the hoarhead woodman at a bough 
Wearily hewing. 'Churl, thine axe!' he cried, 
Descended, and disjointed it at a blow: 
To whom the woodman uttered wonderingly 
'Lord, thou couldst lay the D...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Beloved Name

...heard the sound; 
 Be it the light in darksome fanes to shine, 
 The sacred word which at some hidden shrine, 
 The selfsame voice forever makes resound! 
 
 O friends! ere yet, in living strains of flame, 
 My muse, bewildered in her circlings wide, 
 With names the vaunting lips of pride proclaim, 
 Shall dare to blend the one, the purer name, 
 Which love a treasure in my breast doth hide,— 
 
 Must the wild lay my faithful harp can sing, 
 Be like the ...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

Cain

...lace is secure; 
 Here may we rest, for this is the world's end." 
 And he sat down; when, lo! in the sad sky, 
 The selfsame Eye on the horizon's verge, 
 And the wretch shook as in an ague fit. 
 "Hide me!" he cried; and all his watchful sons, 
 Their finger on their lip, stared at their sire. 
 Cain said to Jabal (father of them that dwell 
 In tents): "Spread here the curtain of thy tent," 
 And they spread wide the floating canvas roof, 
 And made it fast and f...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

Corn

...ourish lord in hall
Or beast in stall:
Thou took'st from all that thou mightst give to all.

O steadfast dweller on the selfsame spot
Where thou wast born, that still repinest not --
Type of the home-fond heart, the happy lot! --
Deeply thy mild content rebukes the land
Whose flimsy homes, built on the shifting sand
Of trade, for ever rise and fall
With alternation whimsical,
Enduring scarce a day,
Then swept away
By swift engulfments of incalculable tides
Whereon capricious ...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney


Death Of A Cockroach

...),
"Adventure is my destiny.

"By evolution I was planned,
And marvellously made as you;
And I am led to understand
The selfsame God conceived us two:
Sire, though the coup de grâce you give,
Even a roach has right to live."

Said I: "Of course you have a right,--
But not to blot my bath-room floor.
Yet though with slipper I may smite,
Your doom I morally deplore . . .
From cellar gloom to stellar space
Let bards and beetles have their place....Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Early Love Revisited

...r complete. 
 For none upon earth can achieve his scheme, 
 The best as the worst are futile here: 
 We awake at the selfsame point cf the dream— 
 All is here begun, and finished elsewhere. 
 
 Yes! others shall come in the bloom of the heart, 
 To enjoy in this pure and happy retreat, 
 All that nature to timid love can impart 
 Of solemn repose and communion sweet. 
 In our fields, in our paths, shall strangers stray, 
 In thy wood, my deare...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

...he folds for the sheep; and there, in his feathered seraglio,
Strutted the lordly turkey, and crowed the cock, with the selfsame
Voice that in ages of old had startled the penitent Peter.
Bursting with hay were the barns, themselves a village. In each one
Far o'er the gable projected a roof of thatch; and a staircase,
Under the sheltering eaves, led up to the odorous corn-loft.
There too the dove-cot stood, with its meek and innocent inmates
Murmuring ever of love; while abov...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Holy-Cross Day

...that!

VII.

Give your first groan---compunction's at work;
And soft! from a Jew you mount to a Turk.
Lo, Micah,---the selfsame beard on chin
He was four times already converted in!
Here's a knife, clip quick---it's a sign of grace---
Or he ruins us all with his hanging-face.

VIII.

Whom now is the bishop a-leering at?
I know a point where his text falls pat.
I'll tell him to-morrow, a word just now
Went to my heart and made me vow
I meddle no more with the worst of trades-...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

In an Artists Studio

...One face looks out from all his canvases,
     One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
     We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
     A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,
     A saint, an angel—every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
     And...Read more of this...
by Rossetti, Christina

Joy and Sorrow chapter VIII

...Then a woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow." 

And he answered: 

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. 

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. 

And how else can it be? 

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. 

Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven? 

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed wit...Read more of this...
by Gibran, Kahlil

MFingal - Canto III

...Spared not your best friend, Beelzebub,
O'erlook'd his favors, and forgot
The reverence due his cloven foot,
And in the selfsame furnace frying,
Stew'd him, and North and Bute and Tryon?
Did you not, in as vile and shallow way,
Fright our poor Philadelphian, Galloway,
Your Congress, when the loyal ribald
Belied, berated and bescribbled?
What ropes and halters did you send,
Terrific emblems of his end,
Till, least he'd hang in more than effigy,
Fled in a fog the trembling refu...Read more of this...
by Trumbull, John

Please Master

...to center, & **** me
 for good like a girl,
tenderly clasp me please master I take me to thee,
& drive in my belly your selfsame sweet heat-rood
you fingered in solitude Denver or Brooklyn or fucked in a maiden in Paris
 carlots
please master drive me thy vehicle, body of love drops, sweat ****
body of tenderness, Give me your dogh **** faster
please master make me go moan on the table
Go moan O please master do **** me like that
in your rhythm thrill-plunge & pull-back-bounc...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

The Convent Threshold

...e
Of hope that was, of guilt that was,
Of love that shall not yet avail;
Alas, my heart, if I could bare
My heart, this selfsame stain is there:
I seek the sea of glass and fire
To wash the spot, to burn the snare;
Lo, stairs are meant to lift us higher--
Mount with me, mount the kindled stair.

Your eyes look earthward, mine look up.
I see the far-off city grand,
Beyond the hills a watered land,
Beyond the gulf a gleaming strand
Of mansions where the righteous sup;
Who sleep...Read more of this...
by Rossetti, Christina

The Dream

..., but was not that which made
The Starlight of his Boyhood;—as he stood
Even at the altar, o'er his brow there came
The selfsame aspect and the quivering shock
That in the antique Oratory shook
His bosom in its solitude; and then— 
As in that hour—a moment o'er his face
The tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced—and then it faded as it came,
And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke
The fitting vows, but heard not his own words,
And all things reeled around him; he could s...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Flight Of The Duchess

...still her cheeks burned and eyes glistened,
As she listened and she listened:
When all at once a hand detained me,
The selfsame contagion gained me,
And I kept time to the wondrous chime,
Making out words and prose and rhyme,
Till it seemed that the music furled
Its wings like a task fulfilled, and dropped
From under the words it first had propped,
And left them midway in the world:
Word took word as hand takes hand,
I could hear at last, and understand,
And when I held the ...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

The Man Who Could Write

...moment he discovered men
Rise to high position through a ready pen.

Boanerges Blitzen argued therefore -- "I,
With the selfsame weapon, can attain as high."
Only he did not possess when he made the trial,
Wicked wit of C-lv-n, irony of L--l.

[Men who spar with Government need, to back their blows,
Something more than ordinary journalistic prose.]

Never young Civilian's prospects were so bright,
Till an Indian paper found that he could write:
Never young Civilian's prospect...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Pied Piper Of Hamelin

...the Pied Piper."
(And here they noticed round his neck
A scarf of red and yellow stripe,
To match with his coat of the selfsame cheque;
And at the scarf's end hung a pipe;
And his fingers, they noticed, were ever straying
As if impatient to be playing
Upon this pipe, as low it dangled
Over his vesture so old-fangled.)
"Yet," said he, "poor piper as I am,
In Tartary I freed the Cham,
Last June, from his huge swarms of gnats;
I eased in Asia the Nizam
Of a monstrous brood of v...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

The Statue and the Bust

...awakes: 
The past was a sleep, and their life began.

Now, love so ordered for both their sakes, 
A feast was held that selfsame night 
In the pile which the mighty shadow makes. 

(For Via Larga is three-parts light, 
But the palace overshadows one, 
Because of a crime which may God requite! 

To Florence and God the wrong was done, 
Through the first republic's murder there 
By Cosimo and his curs?d son.) 

The Duke (with the statue's face in the square) 
Turned in the mids...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

Tunbridge Wells

...a knight.
Though he alone were dismal signet enough,
His train contributed to set him off,
All of his shape, all of the selfsame stuff.
No spleen or malice need on them be thrown:
Nature has done the business of lampoon,
And in their looks their characters has shown.

Endeavoring this irksome sight to balk,
And a more irksome noise, their silly talk,
I silently slunk down t' th' Lower Walk,
But often when one would Charybdis shun,
Down upon Scilla 'tis one's fate to run,
For ...Read more of this...
by Wilmot, John

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Selfsame poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Get more exposure for your poetry and more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry

Member Area

My Admin
Profile and Settings
Edit My Poems
Edit My Quotes
Edit My Short Stories
Edit My Articles
My Comments Inboxes
My Comments Outboxes
Soup Mail
Poetry Contests
Contest Results/Status
Followers
Poems of Poets I Follow
Friend Builder

Soup Social

Poetry Forum
New/Upcoming Features
The Wall
Soup Facebook Page
Who is Online
Link to Us

Member Poems

Poems - Top 100 New
Poems - Top 100 All-Time
Poems - Best
Poems - by Topic
Poems - New (All)
Poems - New (PM)
Poems - New by Poet
Poems - Read
Poems - Unread

Member Poets

Poets - Best New
Poets - New
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems Recent
Poets - Top 100 Community
Poets - Top 100 Contest

Famous Poems

Famous Poems - African American
Famous Poems - Best
Famous Poems - Classical
Famous Poems - English
Famous Poems - Haiku
Famous Poems - Love
Famous Poems - Short
Famous Poems - Top 100

Famous Poets

Famous Poets - Living
Famous Poets - Most Popular
Famous Poets - Top 100
Famous Poets - Best
Famous Poets - Women
Famous Poets - African American
Famous Poets - Beat
Famous Poets - Cinquain
Famous Poets - Classical
Famous Poets - English
Famous Poets - Haiku
Famous Poets - Hindi
Famous Poets - Jewish
Famous Poets - Love
Famous Poets - Metaphysical
Famous Poets - Modern
Famous Poets - Punjabi
Famous Poets - Romantic
Famous Poets - Spanish
Famous Poets - Suicidal
Famous Poets - Urdu
Famous Poets - War

Poetry Resources

Anagrams
Bible
Book Store
Character Counter
Cliché Finder
Poetry Clichés
Common Words
Copyright Information
Grammar
Grammar Checker
Homonym
Homophones
How to Write a Poem
Lyrics
Love Poem Generator
New Poetic Forms
Plagiarism Checker
Poetics
Poetry Art
Publishing
Random Word Generator
Spell Checker
Store
What is Good Poetry?
Word Counter