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Famous Set Up Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...nam’d like His Grace—
Perhaps related to the race:
Then, when I’m tir’d-and sae are ye,
Wi’ mony a fulsome, sinfu’ lie,
Set up a face how I stop short,
For fear your modesty be hurt.


 This may do—maun do, sir, wi’ them wha
Maun please the great folk for a wamefou;
For me! sae laigh I need na bow,
For, Lord be thankit, I can plough;
And when I downa yoke a naig,
Then, Lord be thankit, I can beg;
Sae I shall say—an’ that’s nae flatt’rin—
It’s just sic Poet an’ sic Patron....Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...r>

This centre-piece for them: 
Look! all orderly citizens—look from the windows, women! 

The committee open the box, set up the regal ribs, glue those that will not stay, 
Clap the skull on top of the ribs, and clap a crown on top of the skull. 

You have got your revenge, old buster! The crown is come to its own, and more than its
 own.

Stick your hands in your pockets, Jonathan—you are a made man from this day; 
You are mighty cute—and here is one of your bargai...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...urfs, 
And squared and stuck there squares of soft white chalk, 
And, with a fish-tooth, scratched a moon on each, 
And set up endwise certain spikes of tree, 
And crowned the whole with a sloth's skull a-top, 
Found dead i' the woods, too hard for one to kill. 
No use at all i' the work, for work's sole sake; 
'Shall some day knock it down again: so He. 


'Saith He is terrible: watch His feats in proof! 
One hurricane will spoil six good months' hope. 
He hath a...Read more of this...

by Arnold, Matthew
...I of late have been
Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the living bread."
O human soul! as long as thou canst so
Set up a mark of everlasting light,
Above the howling senses' ebb and flow,
To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam—
Not with lost toil thou labourest through the night!
Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home....Read more of this...

by Yevtushenko, Yevgeny
...red lamps
stands Bilbao-with the soul
 of a poet -- in bronze.
Bilbao was a tramp and a rebel.
Originally
 they set up the monument, fenced off
by a chain, with due pomp, right in the center,
although the poet had lived in the slums.
Then there was some minor overthrow or other,
and the poet was thrown out, beyond the gates.
Sweating,
 they removed
 the pedestal
to a filthy little red-light district.
And the poet stood,
 as the sailor's adopted brother,
ag...Read more of this...



by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...gtide miracle of the soul's nativity
that oft hath set philosophers adrift in dream;
which thing Christ taught, when he set up a little child
to teach his first Apostles and to accuse their pride,
saying, 'Unless ye shall receive it as a child,
ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.'
So thru'out all his young mental apprenticehood
the child of very simplicity, and in the grace
and beauteous attitude of infantine wonder,
is apt to absorb Ideas in primal purity,
and by...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...d 
Break into furious flame; being repulsed 
By Yniol and yourself, I schemed and wrought 
Until I overturned him; then set up 
(With one main purpose ever at my heart) 
My haughty jousts, and took a paramour; 
Did her mock-honour as the fairest fair, 
And, toppling over all antagonism, 
So waxed in pride, that I believed myself 
Unconquerable, for I was wellnigh mad: 
And, but for my main purpose in these jousts, 
I should have slain your father, seized yourself. 
I live...Read more of this...

by Larkin, Philip
...go through with it; where she
Lay back, and 'all became a burning mist'.
And, in those offices, my doggerel
Was not set up in blunt ten-point, nor read
By a distinguished cousin of the mayor,

Who didn't call and tell my father There
Before us, had we the gift to see ahead -
'You look as though you wished the place in Hell,'
My friend said, 'judging from your face.' 'Oh well,
I suppose it's not the place's fault,' I said.

'Nothing, like something, happens anywher...Read more of this...

by Berry, Wendell
...
whose branches spread above.

For want of songs and stories
they have dug away the soil,
paved over what is left,

set up their perfunctory walls
in tribute to no god,
for the love of no man or woman,

so that the good that was here
cannot be called back
except by long waiting, by great

sorrows remembered and to come
by invoking the thunderstones
of the world, and the vivid air.

II.

The poem is important,
as the want of it
proves. It is the stewardship

of...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...supreme;
Her follies nursed in all their stages,
For sake of liveries and wages;
In Stephen's Chapel then in state too
Set up her golden calf to pray to;
Proclaim'd its power and right divine,
And call'd for worship at its shrine;
And for poor heretics to burn us,
Bade North prepare his fiery furnace;
Struck bargains with the Romish churches,
Infallibility to purchase;
Set wide for Popery the door,
Made friends with Babel's scarlet whore,
Till both the matrons join'd in clan...Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...pshire has
One real reformer who would change the world
So it would be accepted by two classes,
Artists the minute they set up as artists,
Before, that is, they are themselves accepted,
And boys the minute they get out of college.
I can't help thinking those are tests to go by.

And she has one I don't know what to call him,
Who comes from Philadelphia every year
With a great flock of chickens of rare breeds
He wants to give the educational
Advantages of growing almos...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...t with me.
Never was.
Oh, Lord! Why did I do it?
Why ain't it yesterday, and Ed here agin?
Many's the time I've set up with him nights
When he had cramps, or rheumatizm, or somethin'.
I used ter nurse him same's ef he was a baby.
I wouldn't hurt him, I love him!
Don't you dare to say I killed him. 'Twarn't me!
Somethin' got aholt o' me. I couldn't help it.
Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do!
Yes, Sir.
No, Sir.
I beg your pardon, I -- I --...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...hus, laws and rites 
Established, such delight hath God in Men 
Obedient to his will, that he vouchsafes 
Among them to set up his tabernacle; 
The Holy One with mortal Men to dwell: 
By his prescript a sanctuary is framed 
Of cedar, overlaid with gold; therein 
An ark, and in the ark his testimony, 
The records of his covenant; over these 
A mercy-seat of gold, between the wings 
Of two bright Cherubim; before him burn 
Seven lamps as in a zodiack representing 
The heavenly ...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...ust. The dust looked like the

 light from a Coleman lantern.

 Mr. Norris pitched his tent right there and set up all his

 equipment and soon had it all going at once. After he finished

 eating a dehydrated beef Stroganoff dinner, he turned off all

 his equipment with the master air switch and went to sleep,

 for it was now dark.

 It was about midnight when they brought the body and

placed it beside the tent, less than a foot away from where

Mr.Read more of this...

by Berman, David
...em slow-witted and obvious now.

It's just that our advances are irrepressible.
Nowadays little kids can't even set up lemonade stands.
It makes people too self-conscious about the past,
though try explaining that to a kid.

I'm not saying it should be this way.

All this new technology
will eventually give us new feelings
that will never completely displace the old ones
leaving everyone feeling quite nervous
and split in two.

We will travel to Mars
e...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...
 fitting spheres, 
Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to the moment of death.

Not the types set up by the printer return their impression, the meaning, the
 main concern, 
Any more than a man’s substance and life, or a woman’s substance and
 life, return in the body and the Soul, 
Indifferently before death and after death. 

Behold! the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern—and includes
 and is the Soul; 
Whoever you are! how supe...Read more of this...

by Scott, Duncan Campbell
...y,
Only a half-filled
Ear for their lot;
Man that has taken
God for a master
Made him a law,
Mocked him and cursed him,
Set up this hunger,
Called it necessity,
Put in the blameless mouth
Juda's language:
The poor ye have with you
Always, unending.
But up from the impotent
Anguish of children,
Up from the labor
Fruitless, unmeaning,
Of millions of mothers,
Hugely necessitous,
Grew by a just law
Stern and implacable,
Art born of poverty,
The making of sickles
Meet for the ...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...im down; 
But having but my keys, and not my brand, 
I only knock'd his head from out his hand. 

XX 

'And then he set up such a headless howl, 
That all the saints came out and took him in; 
And there he sits by St. Paul, cheek by jowl; 
That fellow Paul— the parven?! The skin 
Of St. Bartholomew, which makes his cowl 
In heaven, and upon earth redeem'd his sin, 
So as to make a martyr, never sped 
Better than did this weak and wooden head. 

XXI 

'But had ...Read more of this...

by Levis, Larry
...through. The pains in my stomach had grown
Gradually sharper & more frequent as the day
Wore on, & now a fever had set up house.
In the villages there wasn't much point in asking
Anyone for help. In those places, where tanks
Were bivouacked in shade on their way back
From some routine exercise along
The Danube, even food was scarce that year.
And the languages shifted for no clear reason
From two hard quarries of Slavic into German,
Then to a shred of Latin s...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...it grow?
Paul durste not commanden, at the least,
A thing of which his Master gave no hest.* *command
The dart* is set up for virginity; *goal 6
Catch whoso may, who runneth best let see.
But this word is not ta'en of every wight,
*But there as* God will give it of his might. *except where*
I wot well that th' apostle was a maid,
But natheless, although he wrote and said,
He would that every wight were such as he,
All is but counsel to virginity.
And, since t...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs