Famous Signature Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Cairo Jag

...and hashish. The women
offering their children brown-paper breasts
dry and twisted, elongated like the skull,
Holbein's signature. But his stained white town
is something in accordance with mundane conventions-
Marcelle drops her Gallic airs and tragedy
suddenly shrieks in Arabic about the fare
with the cabman, links herself so
with the somnambulists and legless beggars:
it is all one, all as you have heard.

But by a day's travelling you reach a new world
the vegetation is o...Read more of this...
by Douglas, Keith


For the Record

...e trees didn't volunteer to be cut into boards
nor the thorns for tearing flesh
Look around at all of it

and ask whose signature 
is stamped on the orders, traced
in the corner of the building plans
Ask where the illiterate, big-bellied
women were, the drunks and crazies,
the ones you fear most of all: ask where you were....Read more of this...
by Rich, Adrienne

Hero Worship

...I scarce dared look,
yet he would have been kind, I'm sure;
But though I clutched his precious book
I feared to beg his signature.
Ah yes, my friend, I merit mirth.
You're bold, you have the right to laugh,
And if Christ came again to earth
 You'd cadge his autograph."...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

In The Beginning

...rst sun,
And, burning ciphers on the round of space,
Heaven and hell mixed as they spun.

In the beginning was the pale signature,
Three-syllabled and starry as the smile,
And after came the imprints on the water,
Stamp of the minted face upon the moon;
The blood that touched the crosstree and the grail
Touched the first cloud and left a sign.

In the beginning was the mounting fire
That set alight the weathers from a spark,
A three-eyed, red-eyed spark, blunt as a flower,
Li...Read more of this...
by Rilke, Rainer Maria

Model For The Laureate

...men
Applaud a modern throne:
Those cheers that can be bought or sold,
That office fools have run,
That waxen seal, that signature.
For things like these what decent man
Would keep his lover waiting,
 Keep his lover waiting?...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler


My Father

...records say.

He has gone away down the long avenue

Of death, on the hand-held minor no mist

Of his breath, his firm signature no more.

No more holding down his hat in the wind,

Running to catch the last post, he has gone

Beyond the wind-shaped stones on the high wall.

His breath in that final coma came steady.

Stertorous, the oxygen mask, the catheter,

The telephone call summons and night train,

The taxi over the moors, the charge nurse

With little to say but kind...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

Richard Coeur de Lion

...e home in the moonlight 
He heard someone trying to croon, 
And there by the roadside stood Blondel, 
Still playing his signature tune. 

He'd worked out his passage from England 
In search of his Master and Lord, 
And had swum the last part of the journey 
'Cos his tune got 'im thrown overboard. 

This meeting filled Richard with panic: 
He rode off and never drew rein 
Till he got past the Austrian border 
And felt he could breathe once again. 

He hid in a neighbouring Cas...Read more of this...
by Edgar, Marriott

Signet of Eternity

...he signet of eternity upon 
many a fleeting moment of my life. 

And today when by chance I light upon them and see thy signature, 
I find they have lain scattered in the dust mixed with the memory of 
joys and sorrows of my trivial days forgotten. 

Thou didst not turn in contempt from my childish play among dust, 
and the steps that I heard in my playroom 
are the same that are echoing from star to star....Read more of this...
by Tagore, Rabindranath

The Bistro Styx

...parquet;
that's when I saw she was dressed all in gray,
from a kittenish cashmere skirt and cowl

down to the graphite signature of her shoes.
"Sorry I'm late," she panted, though
she wasn't, sliding into the chair, her cape

tossed off in a shudder of brushed steel.
We kissed.Then I leaned back to peruse
my blighted child, this wary aristocratic mole.

"How's business?" I asked, and hazarded
a motherly smile to keep from crying out:
Are you content to conduct your life
as a...Read more of this...
by Dove, Rita

The Break

...erely bored

with all this waiting around. But the heart,
this child of myself that resides in the flesh,
this ultimate signature of the me, the start
of my blindness and sleep, builds a death crèche.

The figures are placed at the grave of my bones.
All figures knowing it is the other death
they came for. Each figure standing alone.
The heart burst with love and lost its breath.

This little town, this little country is real
and thus it is so of the post and the cup
and thus...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

The Bride of Abydos

...y command of the refractory patient; if, on the contrary, he is weak or loyal, he bows, kisses the Sultan's respectable signature, and is bowstrung with great complacency. In 1810, several of "these presents" were exhibited in the niche of the Seraglio gate: among others, the head of the Pacha of Bagdad, a brave young man, cut off by treachery, after a desperate resistance. 

(9) Clapping of the hands calls the servants. The Turks hate a superfluous expenditure of voice, and ...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

To The One Upstairs

...Stop pretending you're too busy to take notice.

Your hands are empty and so are your eyes.
There's nothing to put your signature to,
Even if you knew your own name,
Or believed the ones I keep inventing,
As I scribble this note to you in the dark....Read more of this...
by Simic, Charles

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