Famous Seventh Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Book of Urizen: Chapter IV

by William Blake
 a

1. Los smitten with astonishment
Frightend at the hurtling bones

2. And at the surging sulphureous
Perturbed Immortal mad raging

3. In whirlwinds & pitch & nitre 
Round the furious limbs of Los

4. And Los formed nets & gins 
And threw the nets round about

5. He watch'd in shuddring fear
The dark changes & bound every change 
With rivets of iron & brass;

6. And...Read more of this...

The Child Bearers

by Anne Sexton
 Jean, death comes close to us all,
flapping its awful wings at us
and the gluey wings crawl up our nose.
Our children tremble in their teen-age cribs,
whirling off on a thumb or a motorcycle,
mine pushed into gnawing a stilbestrol cancer
I passed on like hemophilia,
or yours in the seventh grade, with her spleen
smacked in by the balance beam.
And we, mothers, crumpled, and...Read more of this...

Hans Sachs Poetical Mission

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [I feel considerable hesitation in venturing 
to offer this version of a poem which Carlyle describes to be 'a 
beautiful piece (a very Hans Sacks beatified, both in character 
and style), which we wish there was any possibility of translating.' 
The reader will be aware that Hans Sachs was the celebrated Minstrel- 
Cobbler of Nuremberg, who Wrote 208 plays,...Read more of this...

The Organ-Blower

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 DEVOUTEST of my Sunday friends,
The patient Organ-blower bends;
I see his figure sink and rise,
(Forgive me, Heaven, my wandering eyes!)
A moment lost, the next half seen,
His head above the scanty screen,
Still measuring out his deep salaams
Through quavering hymns and panting psalms.

No priest that prays in gilded stole,
To save a rich man's mortgaged soul;
No sister, fresh from holy vows,
So humbly stoops,...Read more of this...

The Sinner

by George Herbert
 Lord, how I am all ague, when I seek
What I have treasur'd in my memory! 
Since, if my soul make even with the week, 
Each seventh note by right is due to thee.
I find there quarries of pil'd vanities, 
But shreds of holiness, that dare not venture
To show their face, since cross to thy decrees: 
There the circumference earth...Read more of this...

Apple Tragedy

by Ted Hughes
So on the seventh day
The serpent rested, 
God came up to him. 
"I've invented a new game," he said. 

The serpent stared in surprise
At this interloper. 
But God said: "You see this apple?" 
I squeeze it and look-cider." 

The serpent had a good drink
And curled up into a question mark. 
Adam drank and said: "Be my god." 
Eve drank and...Read more of this...

Baby Picture

by Anne Sexton
 It's in the heart of the grape
where that smile lies.
It's in the good-bye-bow in the hair
where that smile lies.
It's in the clerical collar of the dress
where that smile lies.
What smile?
The smile of my seventh year,
caught here in the painted photograph.

It's peeling now, age has got it,
a kind of cancer of the background
and also in the assorted features.
It's like a...Read more of this...

Theme For English B

by Langston Hughes
 The instructor said,

 Go home and write
 a page tonight.
 And let that page come out of you--
 Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it's that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from...Read more of this...

McGonagalls Ode to the King

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Oh! God, I thank Thee for restoring King Edward the Seventh's health again,
And let all his subjects throughout the Empire say Amen;
May God guard him by night and day,
At home and abroad, when he's far away. 

May angels guard his bed at night when he lies down,
And may his subjects revere him, and on him do not frown;
May he...Read more of this...

Henry the Seventh

by Marriott Edgar
 Henry the Seventh of England
Wasn't out of the Royal top drawer,
The only connection of which he could boast,
He were King's nephew's brother-in-law.

It were after the Wars of the Roses
That he came to the front, as it were,
When on strength of his having slain Richard the Third 
He put himself up as his heir.

T'were a bit of a blow to...Read more of this...

The Hon. Sec

by John Betjeman
 The flag that hung half-mast today
Seemed animate with being
As if it knew for who it flew
And will no more be seeing.

He loved each corner of the links-
The stream at the eleventh,
The grey-green bents, the pale sea-pinks,
The prospect from the seventh;

To the ninth tee the uphill climb,
A grass and sandy stairway,
And at the top the scent of thyme
And long extent...Read more of this...

Three Odes To My Friend

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 THESE are the most singular of all the Poems 
of Goethe, and to many will appear so wild and fantastic, as to 
leave anything but a pleasing impression. Those at the beginning, 
addressed to his friend Behrisch, were written at the age of eighteen, 
and most of the remainder were composed while he was still quite 
young. Despite, however,...Read more of this...

Never To Dream Of Spiders

by Audre Lorde
 Time collapses between the lips of strangers
my days collapse into a hollow tube 
soon implodes against now
like an iron wall
my eyes are blocked with rubble 
a smear of perspectives
blurring each horizon 
in the breathless precision of silence
One word is made.

Once the renegade flesh was gone
fall air lay against my face 
sharp and blue as a needle
but the rain fell...Read more of this...

The Twelve Days Of Christmas

by Anonymous
The first day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
A partridge in a pear tree.

The second day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.

The third day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.

The fourth day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Four...Read more of this...

Upon Parson Beanes

by Robert Herrick
 Old Parson Beanes hunts six days of the week,
And on the seventh, he has his notes to seek.
Six days he hollows so much breath away
That on the seventh he can nor preach or pray....Read more of this...

The Trumpets Of The Mind

by Victor Hugo
 ("Sonnez, clairons de la pensée!") 
 
 {Bk. VII. i., March 19, 1853.} 


 Sound, sound for ever, Clarions of Thought! 
 
 When Joshua 'gainst the high-walled city fought, 
 He marched around it with his banner high, 
 His troops in serried order following nigh, 
 But not a sword was drawn, no shaft outsprang, 
 Only...Read more of this...

Turtle Swan

by Mark Doty
 Because the road to our house
is a back road, meadowlands punctuated
by gravel quarry and lumberyard,
there are unexpected travelers
some nights on our way home from work.
Once, on the lawn of the Tool

and Die Company, a swan;
the word doesn't convey the shock
of the thing, white architecture
rippling like a pond's rain-pocked skin,
beak lifting to hiss at my approach.
Magisterial, set down in elegant...Read more of this...

An Island

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Take it away, and swallow it yourself. 
Ha! Look you, there’s a rat. 
Last night there were a dozen on that shelf, 
And two of them were living in my hat. 
Look! Now he goes, but he’ll come back—
Ha? But he will, I say … 
Il reviendra-z-à Pâques, 
Ou à la Trinité …
Be very sure that he’ll return again;...Read more of this...

Hymn 65

by Isaac Watts
 The kingdoms of the world become the kingdoms of our Lord; or, The day of judgment.

Rev. 11:15-18. 

Let the seventh angel sound on high,
Let shouts be heard through all the sky;
Kings of the earth, with glad accord,
Give up your kingdoms to the Lord.

Almighty God, thy power assume,
Who wast, and art, and art to come:
Jesus, the Lamb who once was...Read more of this...

Variations of Greek Themes

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I
A HAPPY MAN
(Carphyllides)

When these graven lines you see, 
Traveler, do not pity me; 
Though I be among the dead, 
Let no mournful word be said. 

Children that I leave behind,
And their children, all were kind; 
Near to them and to my wife, 
I was happy all my life. 

My three sons I married right, 
And their sons I rocked...Read more of this...

The Birth

by Paul Muldoon
 Seven o'clock. The seventh day of the seventh month of the year.
No sooner have I got myself up in lime-green scrubs,
a sterile cap and mask,
and taken my place at the head of the table

than the windlass-woman ply their shears
and gralloch-grub
for a footling foot, then, warming to their task,
haul into the inestimable

realm of apple-blossoms and chanterelles and damsons and eel-spears
and...Read more of this...

The Seven Sages

by William Butler Yeats
 The First. My great-grandfather spoke to Edmund Burke
 In Grattan's house.
The Second. My great-grandfather shared
 A pot-house bench with Oliver Goldsmith once.
The Third. My great-grandfather's father talked of music,
 Drank tar-water with the Bishop of Cloyne.
The Fourth. But mine saw Stella once.
The Fifth. Whence came our thought?
The Sixth. From four great minds that hated Whiggery.
The Fifth. Burke was a...Read more of this...

Madonna Mia

by Oscar Wilde
 A lily-girl, not made for this world's pain,
With brown, soft hair close braided by her ears,
And longing eyes half veiled by slumberous tears
Like bluest water seen through mists of rain:
Pale cheeks whereon no love hath left its stain,
Red underlip drawn in for fear of love,
And white throat, whiter than the silvered dove,
Through whose wan marble creeps one purple vein.
Yet,...Read more of this...

Triumph

by Robert William Service
 Why am I full of joy although
 It drizzles on the links?
Why am I buying Veuve Cliquot,
 And setting up the drinks?
Why stand I like a prince amid
 My pals and envy none?
Ye gods of golf! Today I did
 A Hole in One.

I drove my ball to heaven high,
 It over-topped the hill;
I tried to guess how it would...Read more of this...

Fit the Seventh ( Hunting of the Snark )

by Lewis Carroll
 The Banker's Fate 

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope; 
They threatened its life with a railway-share; 
They charmed it with smiles and soap. 
And the Banker, inspired with a courage so new
It was matter for general remark, 
Rushed madly ahead and was lost to their view
In his zeal to...Read more of this...

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