Famous Shared Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Letter From Li Po

...
the eyes exchange the secret under rain,
rain all the way from heaven: and all three
know and are known, share and are shared, a silent
moment of union and communion.
Have we come
this way before, and at some other time?
Is it the Wind Wheel Circle we have come?
We know the eye of death, and in it too
the eye of god, that closes as in sleep,
giving its light, giving its life, away:
clouding itself as consciousness from pain,
clouding itself, and then, the shutter shut.
And w...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad


Beowulf (Old English)

...de along
with sturdy steps to the spot they knew
where the battle-king young, his burg within,
slayer of Ongentheow, shared the rings,
shelter-of-heroes. To Hygelac
Beowulf’s coming was quickly told, --
that there in the court the clansmen’s refuge,
the shield-companion sound and alive,
hale from the hero-play homeward strode.
With haste in the hall, by highest order,
room for the rovers was readily made.
By his sovran he sat, come safe from battle,
kinsman by kin...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Burning Drift-Wood

...

And with them, friends whom Heaven has spared, 
Whose love my heart has comforted, 
And, sharing all my joys, has shared 
My tender memories of the dead,—

Dear souls who left us lonely here, 
Bound on their last, long voyage, to whom 
We, day by day, are drawing near, 
Where every bark has sailing room. 

I know the solemn monotone 
Of waters calling unto me; 
I know from whence the airs have blown 
That whisper of the Eternal Sea. 

As low my fires of dri...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf

Captain Craig

...nned it there, 
Choked under, like a jest in Holy Writ, 
By Tilbury prudence. He had lived his life 
And in his way had shared, with all mankind,
Inveterate leave to fashion of himself, 
By some resplendent metamorphosis, 
Whatever he was not. And after time, 
When it had come sufficiently to pass 
That he was going patch-clad through the streets,
Weak, dizzy, chilled, and half starved, he had laid 
Some nerveless fingers on a prudent sleeve, 
And told the sleeve, in furtive ...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Dickinson Poems by Number

...And when at Night—Our good Day done—
I guard My Master's Head—
'Tis better than the Eider-Duck's
Deep Pillow—to have shared—

To foe of His—I'm deadly foe—
None stir the second time—
On whom I lay a Yellow Eye—
Or an emphatic Thumb—

Though I than He—may no longer live
He longer must—than I—
For I have but the power to kill,
Without—the power to die—

829

Ample make this Bed—
Make this Bed with Awe—
In it wait till Judgment break
Excellent and Fair.

Be...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily


Forgotten Language

...flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly
in my bed.
Once I heard and answered all the questions
of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow,
Once I spoke the language of the flowers. . . .
How did it go?
How did it go?...Read more of this...
by Silverstein, Shel

Inferno (English)

...of the intellect, and bared 
 The secret things of nature; while anigh, 
 But lowlier, grouped the greatest names that shared 
 His searchings. All regard and all revere 
 They gave him. Plato there, and Socrates 
 I marked, who closeliest reached his height; and near 
 Democritus, who dreamed a world of chance 
 Born blindly in the whirl of circumstance; 
 And Anaxagoras, Diogenes, 
 Thales, Heraclitus, Empedocles, 
 Zeno, were there; and Dioscorides 
 Who searched the heal...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

Lara

...k beneath 
The men with whom he felt condemn'd to breathe, 
And long'd by good or ill to separate 
Himself from all who shared his mortal state; 
His mind abhorring this had fix'd her throne 
Far from the world, in regions of her own; 
Thus coldly passing all that pass'd below, 
His blood in temperate seeming now would flow: 
Ah! happier if it ne'er with guilt had glow'd, 
But ever in that icy smoothness flow'd: 
'Tis true, with other men their path he walk'd, 
And like the r...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

LoveSpell: Against Endings

...ce--
I do not know
the sweet demi-boredom
of life as it lingers,
of man and wife
regarding each other
across a table of shared witnesses,
of the hand-in-hand dreams
of those who have slept
a half-century together
in a bed so used and familiar
it is rutted
with love.

I would know that
before this life closes,
a soulmate to share my roses--
I would make a spell
with long grey beard hairs
and powdered rosemary and rue,
with the jacket of a tux
for a tall man
with broad shoulder...Read more of this...
by Jong, Erica

Nothing Can Come Between Us

...ust reveal
in our eternal comadery
in my heart i know
there will never be a day
that i don't remember
the times we shared
u were a friend
when i was at my lowest
and being a friend to me
was not easy or fashionable
regardless of how popular
I became u remain
my unconditional friend
unconditional in it's truest sense
did u think i would forget
did u for 1 moment dream
that I would ignore u
if so remember this from here 2 forever
nothing can come between us ...Read more of this...
by Shakur, Tupac

Requiem

...Not under foreign skies
 Nor under foreign wings protected -
 I shared all this with my own people
 There, where misfortune had abandoned us.
 [1961]

INSTEAD OF A PREFACE

During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I
spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in
Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone 'picked me out'.
On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me,
her lips blue with cold, who, of cours...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

Snowbound a Winter Idyl

...ere merry mowers, hale and strong, 
Swept, scythe on scythe, their swaths along 
The low green prairies of the sea. 
We shared the fishing off Boar's Head, 
And round the rocky Isles of Shoals 
The hake-broil on the drift-wood coals; 
The chowder on the sand-beach made, 
Dipped by the hungry, steaming hot, 
With spoons of clam-shell from the pot. 
We heard the tales of witchcraft old, 
And dream and sign and marvel told 
To sleepy listeners as they lay 
Stretched idly on the ...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf

The Bride of Abydos

...vain to hide, 
I must not see thee Osman's bride: 
But had not thine own lips declared 
How much of that young heart I shared, 
I could not, must not, yet have shown 
The darker secret of my own. 
In this I speak not now of love; 
That, let time, truth, and peril prove: 
But first — oh! never wed another — 
Zuleika! I am not thy brother!" 

XI. 

"Oh! not my brother! — yet unsay — 
God! am I left alone on earth 
To mourn — I dare not curse the day 
That saw my solitary birth...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Flight Of The Duchess

...g
Over each shoulder, loose and abundant,
As her head thrown back showed the white throat curving;
And the very tresses shared in the pleasure,
Moving to the mystic measure,
Bounding as the bosom bounded.
I stopped short, more and more confounded,
As 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,
Til...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

The Lady of the Lake

...ay.'
     But, ere she followed, with the grace
     And open bounty of her race,
     She bade her slender purse be shared
     Among the soldiers of the guard.
     The rest with thanks their guerdon took,
     But Brent, with shy and awkward look,
     On the reluctant maiden's hold
     Forced bluntly back the proffered gold:—
     'Forgive a haughty English heart,
     And O, forget its ruder part!

     The vacant purse shall be my share,
     Which in my b...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Man Against the Sky

...mount where more of him shall yet be given, 
Bereft of all retreat,
To sevenfold heat,— 
As on a day when three in Dura shared 
The furnace, and were spared 
For glory by that king of Babylon 
Who made himself so great that God, who heard,
Covered him with long feathers, like a bird. 

Again, he may have gone down easily, 
By comfortable altitudes, and found, 
As always, underneath him solid ground 
Whereon to be sufficient and to stand
Possessed already of the promised land,...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

The Road To Haworth Moor

...tch; your thumb might still

Make it yield, not in the sturm und drang of adolescence but in

The quieter intimacies of shared grief.



The hills have not moved nor the clouds altered the stance of their lazy azure

Nor has the watery Pennine sun gone in before the swallows gather.



Perhaps I have lost that jouissance-and who would not given the tornadoes,

Undivined and undeserved that seized our lives in their burning fury,

Leaving us awake in a world of dark horizons a...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

The Triumph Of Fame

...Two fathers of the great Cornelian name,With their three noble sons who shared their fame,One singly march'd before, and, hand in hand,His two heroic partners trod the strand.The last was first in fame; but brighter beamsHis follower flung around in solar streams.Metaurus' champion, whom the moon beheld,Read more of this...
by Petrarch, Francesco

To Atthis

...My Atthis, although our dear Anaktoria
lives in distant Sardis,
she thinks of us constantly, and

of the life we shared in days when for her
you were a splendid goddess,
and your singing gave her deep joy.
 
Now she shines among Lydian women as
when the red-fingered moon
rises after sunset, erasing

stars around her, and pouring light equally
across the salt sea 
and over densely flowered fields;

and lucent dew spreads on the earth to quicken
roses and fr...Read more of this...
by Sappho,

You Came, Too

...I found you    I came to the crowd to weep  I came to the crowd to laugh    You dried my tears  You shared my happiness    I went from the crowd seeking you  I went from the crowd seeking me  I went from the crowd forever    You came, too    ...Read more of this...
by Giovanni, Nikki

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