Famous Shallow Poems by Famous Poets

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

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On The New Forcers Of Conscience Under The Long Parliament

by John Milton
 Because you have thrown of your Prelate Lord,
And with stiff Vowes renounc'd his Liturgie
To seise the widdow'd whore Pluralitie
From them whose sin ye envi'd, not abhor'd,
Dare ye for this adjure the Civill Sword
To force our Consciences that Christ set free,
And ride us with a classic Hierarchy
Taught ye by meer A. S. and Rotherford?
Men whose Life, Learning, Faith and pure...Read more of this...

The Searched Soul

by Dorothy Parker
 When I consider, pro and con, 
What things my love is built upon -- 
A curly mouth; a sinewed wrist; 
A questioning brow; a pretty twist 
Of words as old and tried as sin; 
A pointed ear; a cloven chin; 
Long, tapered limbs; and slanted eyes 
Not cold nor kind nor darkly wise -- 
When so I ponder, here...Read more of this...

The Wizard in the Street

by Vachel Lindsay
 [Concerning Edgar Allan Poe]


Who now will praise the Wizard in the street 
With loyal songs, with humors grave and sweet — 
This Jingle-man, of strolling players born, 
Whom holy folk have hurried by in scorn, 
This threadbare jester, neither wise nor good, 
With melancholy bells upon his hood? 

The hurrying great ones scorn his Raven's croak, 
And well may...Read more of this...

The Sick Stockrider

by Adam Lindsay Gordon
 Hold hard, Ned! Lift me down once more, and lay me in the shade. 
Old man, you've had your work cut out to guide 
Both horses, and to hold me in the saddle when I swayed, 
All through the hot, slow, sleepy, silent ride. 
The dawn at "Moorabinda" was a mist rack dull and dense, 
The sun-rise was a...Read more of this...

To A Child

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Dear child! how radiant on thy mother's knee,
With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles,
Thou gazest at the painted tiles,
Whose figures grace,
With many a grotesque form and face.
The ancient chimney of thy nursery!
The lady with the gay macaw,
The dancing girl, the grave bashaw
With bearded lip and chin;
And, leaning idly o'er his gate,
Beneath the imperial fan of state,
The Chinese mandarin.

With what a...Read more of this...

In Due Season

by John McCrae
 If night should come and find me at my toil,
When all Life's day I had, tho' faintly, wrought,
And shallow furrows, cleft in stony soil
Were all my labour: Shall I count it naught

If only one poor gleaner, weak of hand,
Shall pick a scanty sheaf where I have sown?
"Nay, for of thee the Master doth demand
Thy work: the harvest rests with...Read more of this...

The King of Yellow Butterflies

by Vachel Lindsay
 (A Poem Game.)


The King of Yellow Butterflies,
The King of Yellow Butterflies,
The King of Yellow Butterflies,
Now orders forth his men.
He says "The time is almost here
When violets bloom again."
Adown the road the fickle rout
Goes flashing proud and bold,
A down the road the fickle rout
Goes flashing proud and bold,
Adown the road the fickle rout
Goes flashing proud and bold,
They shiver by the...Read more of this...

Be My Mistress Short or Tall

by Robert Herrick
 Be my mistress short or tall 
And distorted therewithall 
Be she likewise one of those 
That an acre hath of nose 
Be her teeth ill hung or set 
And her grinders black as jet 
Be her cheeks so shallow too 
As to show her tongue wag through 
Hath she thin hair, hath she none 
She's to me a paragon....Read more of this...

Sonnet to the Nightingale

by John Milton
 O nightingale that on yon blooming spray 
Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still, 
Thou with fresh hopes the Lover’s heart dost fill, 
While the jolly Hours lead on propitious May. 
Thy liquid notes that close the eye of Day,
First heard before the shallow cuckoo’s bill, 
Portend success in love. O if Jove’s will 
Have linked that...Read more of this...

Women

by Louise Bogan
 Women have no wilderness in them, 
They are provident instead, 
Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts 
To eat dusty bread. 

They do not see cattle cropping red winter grass,
They do not hear 
Snow water going down under culverts 
Shallow and clear. 

They wait, when they should turn to journeys, 
They stiffen, when they should bend. 
They...Read more of this...

The healed Heart shows its shallow scar

by Emily Dickinson
 The healed Heart shows its shallow scar
With confidential moan --
Not mended by Mortality
Are Fabrics truly torn --
To go its convalescent way
So shameless is to see
More genuine were Perfidy
Than such Fidelity....Read more of this...

The Deer Lay Down Their Bones

by Robinson Jeffers
 I followed the narrow cliffside trail half way up the mountain
Above the deep river-canyon. There was a little cataract crossed the path, 
 flinging itself
Over tree roots and rocks, shaking the jeweled fern-fronds, bright bubbling 
 water
Pure from the mountain, but a bad smell came up. Wondering at it I clam-
 bered down the steep stream
Some forty feet, and...Read more of this...

Jonah and the Grampus

by Marriott Edgar
 I'll tell you the story of Jonah,
A really remarkable tale;
A peaceful and humdrum existence he had
Until one day he went for a sail. 

The weather were grand when they started,
But later at turn of the tide
The wind started blowing, the water got rough,
And Jonah felt funny inside.

When the ship started pitching and tossing
He tried hard his feelings to smother,
At...Read more of this...

Elegy: Walking the Line

by Edgar Bowers
 Every month or so, Sundays, we walked the line,
The limit and the boundary. Past the sweet gum
Superb above the cabin, along the wall—
Stones gathered from the level field nearby
When first we cleared it. (Angry bumblebees
Stung the two mules. They kicked. Thirteen, I ran.)
And then the field: thread-leaf maple, deciduous
Magnolia, hybrid broom, and, further down,
In light shade, one Franklinia Alatamaha
In...Read more of this...

Risus Dei

by Thomas Edward Brown
 Methinks in Him there dwells alway
A sea of laughter very deep,
Where the leviathans leap,
And little children play,
Their white feet twinkling on its crisped edge;
But in the outer bay
The strong man drives the wedge
Of polished limbs,
And swims.
Yet there is one will say:--
'It is but shallow, neither is it broad'--
And so he frowns; but is he nearer God?

One saith that God...Read more of this...

A Family

by W S Merwin
Would you believe me
if I told you the name of the farmers
at the end of the lake
where it grew shallow over the mossy rocks
and if you came in the morning the grass was blue
the fur of the rocks was wet the small frogs jumped
and the lake was silent behind you
except for echoes

you tied your boat carefully to a tree
before setting...Read more of this...

The Tradesman and the Scholar

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 A Citizen of mighty Pelf, 
But much a Blockhead, in himself 
Disdain'd a Man of shining Parts, 
Master of Sciences and Arts, 
Who left his Book scarce once a day 
For sober Coffee, Smoak, or Tea; 
Nor spent more Money in the Town 
Than bought, when need requir'd, a Gown; 
Which way of Living much offends 
The Alderman, who...Read more of this...

Two in my garden

by Omer Tarin
They stand together
The twin stalks
In my backyard,
Sometimes reminders
Of some things not done,
Some weeds not plucked
When it was time to do so;

Why I did not clear the yard
Is not so important now
As why did I want to?
Indeed, I see no petal
Half as nice as those two
That grow together, in their awkward fashion,
And they have some part of me
Where it wouldn't do;

It...Read more of this...

American Feuillage

by Walt Whitman
 AMERICA always! 
Always our own feuillage! 
Always Florida’s green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of Louisiana! Always the
 cotton-fields of Alabama and Texas! 
Always California’s golden hills and hollows—and the silver mountains of New
 Mexico!
 Always soft-breath’d Cuba! 
Always the vast slope drain’d by the Southern Sea—inseparable with the slopes
 drain’d
 by the Eastern and Western Seas;
The area the...Read more of this...

Dream Song 101: A shallow lake with many waterbirds

by John Berryman
 A shallow lake, with many waterbirds,
especially egrets: I was showing Mother around,
An extraordinary vivid dream
of Betty & Douglass, and Don-”his mother's estate
was on the grounds of a lunatic asylum.
He showed me around.

A policeman trundled a siren up the walk.
It was 6:05 p.m., Don was late home.
I askt if he ever saw
the inmates-”'No, they never leave their cells.'
Betty was downstairs,...Read more of this...

Resurrection

by Barry Tebb
 I thought of my ‘faculty of poetry’

As of the eye

The bream or white-bait showed

In its hysterical dance of death

When the receding tide

Left it asleep

In a shallow pool on the shore.



Why did I fail to take it?

Was I strangely compassionate

Or merely afraid to touch

The jerking spasm of flesh

With the still eye?



Or was it I on the shore

In the shallow pool,...Read more of this...

Ireland With Emily

by John Betjeman
 Bells are booming down the bohreens,
White the mist along the grass,
Now the Julias, Maeves and Maureens
Move between the fields to Mass.
Twisted trees of small green apple
Guard the decent whitewashed chapel,
Gilded gates and doorway grained,
Pointed windows richly stained
With many-coloured Munich glass.

See the black-shawled congregations
On the broidered vestment gaze
Murmer past the painted stations
As Thy Sacred Heart displays
Lush Kildare of scented meadows,
Roscommon,...Read more of this...

Just Before April Came

by Carl Sandburg
 THE SNOW piles in dark places are gone.
Pools by the railroad tracks shine clear.
The gravel of all shallow places shines.
A white pigeon reels and somersaults.

Frogs plutter and squdge—and frogs beat the air with a recurring thin steel sliver of melody.
Crows go in fives and tens; they march their black feathers past a blue pool; they celebrate an old festival.
A...Read more of this...

Understanding

by Sara Teasdale
 I understood the rest too well,
And all their thoughts have come to be
Clear as grey sea-weed in the swell
Of a sunny shallow sea.

But you I never understood,
Your spirit's secret hides like gold
Sunk in a Spanish galleon
Ages ago in waters cold....Read more of this...

To The Pious Memory Of The Accomplished Young Lady Mrs. Anne Killigrew

by John Dryden
 Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies,
 Made in the last promotion of the Blest;
Whose palms, new pluck'd from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green above the rest:
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us, in thy wand'ring race,
 Or, in procession fix'd and regular,
 Mov'd with the Heavens' majestic pace:
 Or, call'd to more superior...Read more of this...

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