Famous Significant Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Significant poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous significant poems. These examples illustrate what a famous significant poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Stojanovic, Dejan
...Tell me something less significant,
Something about our biology, for instance,
About what you hear while sitting under the tree,
About lonely lions in the prairies;
Forget decorated generals;
Tell me about Private Ryan,
Tell me something only you know
And make a new friend. ...Read more of this...
by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...light appears, with which compar'd,
That was a twilight shed by rite obscure,
And ceremony dark and sacrifice
Dimly significant of things to come.
Blest with this light no more they deviate
In out-way path; distinguished no more
By school or sect, Essene or Saducee,
Cairite or Scribe of Pharisaic mould.
Jew and Samaritan debate no more,
Whether on Gerizim or Zion hill
They shall bow down. Above Moriah's mount
Each eye is raised to him, whose temple is ...Read more of this...
by
Spicer, Jack
...amned wheelbarrow. Whatever
It is. Dogs and crocodiles, sunlamps. Not
For their significance.
For their significant. For being human
The signs escape you. You, who aren't very bright
Are a signal for them. Not,
I mean, the dogs and crocodiles, sunlamps. Not
Their significance....Read more of this...
by
de la Mare, Walter
...t as morn, as mid-day bright,
Gentle as evening, cool as night:
--'Tis true; but all too weakly said.
'Twas more significant, she's dead....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ent custodians, the real custodians, standing, menacing,
silent—the mechanics, Manhattanese, western men, southerners, significant alike in
their
apathy, and in the promptness of their love?
Does it see what finally befalls, and has always finally befallen, each temporizer,
patcher,
outsider, partialist, alarmist, infidel, who has ever ask’d anything of America?
What mocking and scornful negligence?
The track strew’d with the dust of skeletons;
By the roadside others ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...onsuming flame
I knew the preciousness of peace.
Such veneration for the law!
How decorous was every one!
And then (significant) I saw
Each copper packed a tommy gun.
Well, maybe it is best that way.
Peace can mean more than liberty:
These people, state-directed, may
Be happier than those more free.
When politics wield evil grip,
And warring factions rise and fall,
Benevolent dictatorship
May be the answer, after all....Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...Death sets a thing significant
The eye had hurried by,
Except a perished creature
Entreat us tenderly
To ponder little workmanships
In crayon or in wool,
With "This was last her fingers did,"
Industrious until
The thimble weighed too heavy,
The stitches stopped themselves,
And then 't was put among the dust
Upon the closet shelves.
A book I have, a friend...Read more of this...
by
Hardy, Thomas
...c thins and fails,
And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine -
All smalling slowly to the gray sea line -
And each significant red smoke-shaft pales,
Keen sense of severance everywhere prevails,
Which shapes the late long tramp of mounting men
To seeming words that ask and ask again:
"How long, O striving Teutons, Slavs, and Gaels
Must your wroth reasonings trade on lives like these,
That are as puppets in a playing hand? -
When shall the saner softer polities
...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...e gone on trying;
We, content at the last
If our temporal reversion nourish
(Not too far from the yew-tree)
The life of significant soil....Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...nowing its own crimes,
Deceit, averments incompatible,
Equivocations, and the thoughts which dwell
In Janus-spirits—the significant eye
Which learns to lie with silence—the pretext
Of Prudence, with advantages annexed—
The acquiescence in all things which tend,
No matter how, to the desired end—
All found a place in thy philosophy.
The means were worthy, and the end is won—
I would not do by thee as thou hast done!...Read more of this...
by
Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...tropped,
take -
like a rattlesnake huge and long
with at least
20 fangs
poison-tipped.
The porter's eyes
give a significant flick
(I'll carry your baggage
for nix,
mon ami...)
The gendarmes enquiringly
look at the tec,
the tec, -
at the gendarmerie.
With what delight
that gendarme caste
would have me
strung-up and whipped raw
because I hold
in my hands
hammered-fast
sickle-clasped
my red Soviet passport.
I'd tear
like a wolf
at bureaucra...Read more of this...
by
Lewis, C S
...ng to no future, receive the massive thrust
And surge of the many-dimensional timeless rays converging
On this small, significant dew drop, the present that mirrors all....Read more of this...
by
Stevens, Wallace
...I
An old man sits
In the shadow of a pine tree
In China.
He sees larkspur,
Blue and white,
At the edge of the shadow,
Move in the wind.
His beard moves in the wind.
The pine tree moves in the wind.
Thus water flows
Over weeds.
II
The night is of the colour
Of a woman's arm:
Night, the female,
Obscure,
Fragrant and supp...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...resh, undimm’d, look forth—the same immortal face
looks
forth;
(A glimpse as of thy mother’s face, Columbia,
A flash significant as of a sword,
Beaming towards thee.)
Nor think we forget thee, Maternal;
Lag’d’st thou so long? Shall the clouds close again upon thee?
Ah, but thou hast Thyself now appear’d to us—we know thee;
Thou hast given us a sure proof, the glimpse of Thyself;
Thou waitest there, as everywhere, thy time....Read more of this...
by
Lazarus, Emma
...eing sun.
Salute him with free heart and choral voice,
'Midst flippant, feeble crowds of spectres wan,
The bold, significant, successful man....Read more of this...
by
Field, Eugene
...t
The various vittles an' things he had et;
When a stranger, most likely a tramp, come along,
He'd lift up his voice in significant song -
You wondered, by gum! how there ever wuz space
In that bosom o' his'n to hold so much bass!
Of daytimes he'd sneak to the road an' lie down,
An' tackle the country dorgs comin' to town;
By common consent he wuz boss in St. Joe,
For what he took hold of he never let go!
An' a dude that come courtin' our girl left a slice
Of his white f...Read more of this...
by
Duncan, Robert
...the beautil boundaries of the empire
naked, rapt round in the smell of a lion.
(The barbarians have passt over the significant phrase)
-When I was asleep,
a certain guard says,
a man shed his clothes as if he shed tears
and appeard as a lonely lion
waiting for a song under the shed-roof of wars.
I sang the song that he waited to hear,
I, the Prize-Winner, the Poet Acclaimd.
Dear, Dear, Dear, Dear, I sang,
believe, believe, believe, believe.
The shed o...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...
worthy to meet me,
And I charge you that you be patient and perfect till I come.
Till then, I salute you with a significant look, that you do not forget me....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ice, silver stars fading,
Milky hue ript, weft of white detaching,
Coals thirty-eight, baleful and burning,
Scarlet, significant, hands off warning,
Now and henceforth flaunt from these shores. 5...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Significant poems.