Famous Shorter Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Shorter poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous shorter poems. These examples illustrate what a famous shorter poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
...er:
Mackinlay, Russell, are the boys
That heresy can torture;
They’ll gie her on a rape a hoyse,
And cowe her measure shorter
By th’ head some day.
Come, bring the tither mutchkin in,
And here’s—for a conclusion—
To ev’ry New Light 12 mother’s son,
From this time forth, Confusion!
If mair they deave us wi’ their din,
Or Patronage intrusion,
We’ll light a *****, and ev’ry skin,
We’ll rin them aff in fusion
Like oil, some day.
Note 1. Alluding to a scoffing ballad ...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...of the debtors!"
He was imprisoned on the 30th.
Perpetual motion of the nose!
It's long, while life is getting shorter.
At night on faces, pale as blotter,
like a black hawk, or pumping hose,
the nose absorbs us, I suppose.
They say, the Northern Eskimos
kiss one another with the nose
It hasn't caught on here, of course.
© Copyright Alec Vagapov's translation...Read more of this...
by
Voznesensky, Andrei
...arn,
Seeing nature go astern.
Things deteriorate in kind,
Lemons run to leaves and rind,
Meagre crop of figs and limes,
Shorter days and harder times.
Flowering April cools and dies
In the insufficient skies;
Imps at high Midsummer blot
Half the sun's disk with a spot;
'Twill not now avail to tan
Orange cheek, or skin of man:
Roses bleach, the goats are dry,
Lisbon quakes, the people cry.
Yon pale scrawny fisher fools,
Gaunt as bitterns in the pools,
Are no brothers of my blo...Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...ound--
The Roof was scarcely visible--
The Cornice--in the Ground--
Since then--'tis Centuries--and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity-- ...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...g forward, coiled up,
rushing toward its destiny. The shield sheltered
the life and body of that famous prince
for a shorter time, that his desire had hoped,
where for the space of that very first day,
he would not be allowed to take control
of glory in battle, just as the way of the world
had decreed for him. The lord of the Geats
raised up his hand, striking the awful flecked skin
with his mighty sword, but that blade faltered,
brown on the bony scales, biting mor...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...ed-one waited.
Now, spire by spire, fast sped and glided
that blazing serpent. The shield protected,
soul and body a shorter while
for the hero-king than his heart desired,
could his will have wielded the welcome respite
but once in his life! But Wyrd denied it,
and victory’s honors. -- His arm he lifted
lord of the Geats, the grim foe smote
with atheling’s heirloom. Its edge was turned
brown blade, on the bone, and bit more feebly
than its noble master had need of...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...lker
(I think that both of us we're on our third)
you said you'd always been a clumsy talker
and couldn't find another, shorter word
for 'beloved' or for 'wife' in the inscription,
but not too clumsy that you can't still cut:
You're supposed to be the bright boy at description
and you can't tell them what the **** to put!
I've got to find the right words on my own.
I've got the envelope that he'd been scrawling,
mis-spelt, mawkish, stylistically appalling
but I can't squee...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
...s from Danube's banks,
Our Vizier nobly thins his ranks,
For which the Giaour may give him thanks!
Our sultan hath a shorter way
Such costly triumph to repay.
But, mark me, when the twilight drum
Hath warn'd the troops to food and sleep,
Unto thy cell will Selim come:
Then softly from the Haram creep
Where we may wander by the deep:
Our garden-battlements are steep;
Nor these will rash intruder climb
To list our words, or stint our time;
And if he doth, I want no...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...ace, all time,
(The stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns,
Swelling, collapsing, ending—serving their longer, shorter use,) Fill’d with
Eidólons only.
The noiseless myriads!
The infinite oceans where the rivers empty!
The separate, countless free identities, like eyesight; The true realities,
Eidólons.
Not this the World,
Nor these the Universes—they the Universes,
Purport and end—ever the permanent life of life, Eidólons, Eidólons.
Beyond thy lectures, le...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...re.
False terrors our believing fears devise,
And the French army one from Calais spies.
Bennet and May and those of shorter reach
Change all for guineas, and a crown for each,
But wiser men and well foreseen in chance
In Holland theirs had lodged before, and France.
Whitehall's unsafe; the court all meditates
To fly to Windsor and mure up the gates.
Each does the other blame, and all distrust;
(That Mordaunt, new obliged, would sure be just.)
Not such a fatal stup...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...’s reasoning.
Nature craves love, and then creates love king,
and makes the heart a palace where he’ll stay,
perhaps a shorter or a longer day,
breathing quietly, gently slumbering.
Then beauty in a virtuous woman’s face
makes the eyes yearn, and strikes the heart,
so that the eyes’ desire’s reborn again,
and often, rooting there with longing, stays,
Till love, at last, out of its dreaming starts.
Woman’s moved likewise by a virtuous man....Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...e time
When the first grew immortal, while both of us strained
To the height he had gained.
X.
And letters still came, shorter, sadder, more strong,
Writ now but in one hand, `I was not to faint, --
One loved me for two -- would be with me ere long :
And Viva l' Italia ! -- he died for, our saint,
Who forbids our complaint."
XI.
My Nanni would add, `he was safe, and aware
Of a presence that turned off the balls, -- was imprest
It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bea...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...the Azores; whether the prime orb,
Incredible how swift, had thither rolled
Diurnal, or this less volubil earth,
By shorter flight to the east, had left him there
Arraying with reflected purple and gold
The clouds that on his western throne attend.
Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad;
Silence accompanied; for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...of words began:—
"Well have we speeded, and o'er hill and dale,
Forest, and field, and flood, temples and towers,
Cut shorter many a league. Here thou behold'st
Assyria, and her empire's ancient bounds,
Araxes and the Caspian lake; thence on
As far as Indus east, Euphrates west,
And oft beyond; to south the Persian bay,
And, inaccessible, the Arabian drouth:
Here, Nineveh, of length within her wall
Several days' journey, built by Ninus old,
Of that first golden monarchy th...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...s from Danube's banks,
Our Vizier nobly thins his ranks,
For which the Giaour may give him thanks!
Our sultan hath a shorter way
Such costly triumph to repay.
But, mark me, when the twilight drum
Hath warn'd the troops to food and sleep,
Unto thy cell will Selim come:
Then softly from the Haram creep
Where we may wander by the deep:
Our garden-battlements are steep;
Nor these will rash intruder climb
To list our words, or stint our time;
And if he doth, I want no...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...ng, it is not --
At Morning, in a Truffled Hut
It stop upon a Spot
As if it tarried always
And yet its whole Career
Is shorter than a Snake's Delay
And fleeter than a Tare --
'Tis Vegetation's Juggler --
The Germ of Alibi --
Doth like a Bubble antedate
And like a Bubble, hie --
I feel as if the Grass was pleased
To have it intermit --
This surreptitious scion
Of Summer's circumspect.
Had Nature any supple Face
Or could she one contemn --
Had Nature an Apostate --
That Mus...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...That Shakespeare should be quite forgotten,
And therefore got on a Committee
With several chaps out of the City,
And Shorter and Sir Herbert Tree,
Lord Rothschild and Lord Rosebery,
And F.C.G. and Comyn Carr
Two dukes and a dramatic star,
Also a clergy man now dead;
And while the vain world careless sped
Unheeding the heroic name --
The souls most fed with Shakespeare's flame
Still sat unconquered in a ring,
Remembering him like anything.
Lord Lilac did not long...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...t shows us what should be?
Too subtle, that. Too decent, too. Oh hell,
Only the young can be alone freely.
The time is shorter now for company,
And sitting by a lamp more often brings
Not peace, but other things.
Beyond the light stand failure and remorse
Whispering Dear Warlock-Williams: Why, of course--...Read more of this...
by
Larkin, Philip
...ashioned wit?
But he takes up with younger folks,
Who for his wine will bear his jokes.
Faith! he must make his stories shorter,
Or change his comrades once a quarter:
In half the time he talks them round,
There must another set be found.
"For poetry he's past his prime:
He takes an hour to find a rhyme;
His fire is out, his wit decayed,
His fancy sunk, his Muse a jade.
I'd have him throw away his pen; -
But there's no talking to some men!"
And then their tenderness appear...Read more of this...
by
Swift, Jonathan
...carp lay on the bottom, resting, while dusk took shape
in the form of the first stirrings of his hunger,
and the trees, shorter and heavier, breathed heavily upward.
Into this sodden, nourishing afternoon I emerged,
partway toward a paycheck, halfway toward the weekend,
carrying the last mail and holding above still puddles
the books of noble ideas. Through the fervent branches,
carried by momentary breezes of local origin,
the palpable Sublime flickered as motes on broad lea...Read more of this...
by
Bell, Marvin
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Shorter poems.