Famous Similar Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

images of snow - february 1996

by Rg Gregory
 snow is a thousand flowers
the chinese probably said
hundreds and thousands this morning
drop their garlands on my head
last night the festoons started
long before we went to bed

snow is a white-furred rabbit
the chinese probably wrote
hedgerows and fields this morning
wear a similar fluffy coat
last night the winter danced back
with a white fur round its throat

snow is a treacherous fox-face
the chinese probably thought
it...Read more of this...

The Scratch

by Raymond Carver
 I woke up with a spot of blood 
over my eye. A scratch 
halfway across my forehead. 
But I'm sleeping alone these days. 
Why on earth would a man raise his hand 
against himself, even in sleep? 
It's this and similar questions 
I'm trying to answer this morning. 
As I study my face in the window....Read more of this...

The Dream Of Wearing Shorts Forever

by Les Murray
 To go home and wear shorts forever
in the enormous paddocks, in that warm climate,
adding a sweater when winter soaks the grass, 

to camp out along the river bends
for good, wearing shorts, with a pocketknife,
a fishing line and matches, 

or there where the hills are all down, below the plain,
to sit around in shorts at evening
on the plank verandah -...Read more of this...

Syringa

by John Ashbery
 Orpheus liked the glad personal quality
Of the things beneath the sky. Of course, Eurydice was a part
Of this. Then one day, everything changed. He rends
Rocks into fissures with lament. Gullies, hummocks
Can't withstand it. The sky shudders from one horizon
To the other, almost ready to give up wholeness.
Then Apollo quietly told him: "Leave it all on earth.
Your lute, what point?...Read more of this...

Look What You Did Christopher!

by Ogden Nash
 In fourteen hundred and ninety-two,
Someone sailed the ocean blue.
Somebody borrowed the fare in Spain
For a business trip on the bounding main,
And to prove to the people, by actual test,
You could get to the East by sailing West.
Somebody said, Sail on! Sail on!
And studied China and China's lingo,
And cried from the bow, There's China now!
And promptly bumped into San Domingo.
Somebody...Read more of this...

The Battle of Atbara

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Ye Sons of Great Britain, pray list to me,
And I'll tell ye of a great victory.
Where the British defeated the Dervishes, without delay,
At the Battle of Atbara, without dismay. 

The attack took place, 'twas on the 8th of April, in the early morning dawn,
And the British behaved manfully to a man;
And Mahmud's front was raked fearfully, before the assault...Read more of this...

Bustopher Jones: The Cat About Town

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 Bustopher Jones is not skin and bones--
In fact, he's remarkably fat.
He doesn't haunt pubs--he has eight or nine clubs,
For he's the St. James's Street Cat!
He's the Cat we all greet as he walks down the street
In his coat of fastidious black:
No commonplace mousers have such well-cut trousers
Or such an impreccable back.
In the whole of St. James's the smartest of...Read more of this...

The New Hieroglyphics

by Les Murray
 In the World language, sometimes called
Airport Road, a thinks balloon with a gondola
under it is a symbol for speculation.

Thumbs down to ear and tongue:
World can be written and read, even painted
but not spoken. People use their own words.

Latin letters are in it for names, for e.g.
OK and H2S O4, for musical notes,
but mostly it's diagrams: skirt-figure, trousered figure

have escaped...Read more of this...

Caesarion

by Constantine P Cavafy
 Partly to verify an era,
partly also to pass the time,
last night I picked up a collection
of Ptolemaic epigrams to read.
The plentiful praises and flatteries
for everyone are similar. They are all brilliant,
glorious, mighty, beneficent;
each of their enterprises the wisest.
If you talk of the women of that breed, they too,
all the Berenices and Cleopatras are admirable.

When I had managed to verify...Read more of this...

More than the Grave is closed to me --

by Emily Dickinson
 More than the Grave is closed to me --
The Grave and that Eternity
To which the Grave adheres --
I cling to nowhere till I fall --
The Crash of nothing, yet of all --
How similar appears --...Read more of this...

The Pity Of It

by Thomas Hardy
 I walked in loamy Wessex lanes, afar
From rail-track and from highway, and I heard
In field and farmstead many an ancient word
Of local lineage like "Thu bist," "Er war,"
"Ich woll," "Er sholl," and by-talk similar,
Nigh as they speak who in this month's moon gird
At England's very loins, thereunto spurred
By gangs whose glory threats and slaughters are. 

Then seemed a Heart...Read more of this...

One Size Fits All: A Critical Essay

by David Lehman
 Though
Already
Perhaps
However.

On one level,
Among other things,
With
And with.
In a similar vein
To be sure:
Make no mistake.
Nary a trace.

However,
Aside from
With
And with,
Not
And not,
Rather
Manifestly
Indeed.

Which is to say,
In fictional terms,
For reasons that are never made clear,
Not without meaning,
Though (as is far from unusual)
Perhaps too late.

The first thing that must be said is
Perhaps, because
And, not least of all,
Certainly more,
Which is to say
In ever other respect
Meanwhile.

But then perhaps
Though
And...Read more of this...

Russian-american Romance

by Andrei Voznesensky
  In my land and yours they do hit the hay 
 and sleep the whole night in a similar way. 

 There's the golden Moon with a double shine. 
 It lightens your land and it lightens mine. 

 At the same low price, that is for free, 
 there's the sunrise for you and the sunset for...Read more of this...

Original Preface

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 I feel no small reluctance in venturing to give to the public a 
work of the character of that indicated by the title-page to the 
present volume; for, difficult as it must always be to render satisfactorily 
into one's own tongue the writings of the bards of other lands, 
the responsibility assumed by the translator is immeasurably increased 
when...Read more of this...

from Flying Home

by Galway Kinnell
3 
As this plane dragged 
its track of used ozone half the world long 
thrusts some four hundred of us 
toward places where actual known people 
live and may wait, 
we diminish down in our seats, 
disappeared into novels of lives clearer than ours, 
and yet we do not forget for a moment 
the life down there, the doorway each...Read more of this...

One Train May Hide Another

by Kenneth Koch
 (sign at a railroad crossing in Kenya)

In a poem, one line may hide another line,
As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.
That is, if you are waiting to cross
The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at
Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read
Wait until you have read the next line—
Then it...Read more of this...

We play at Paste

by Emily Dickinson
 We play at Paste --
Till qualified, for Pearl --
Then, drop the Paste --
And deem ourself a fool --

The Shapes -- though -- were similar --
And our new Hands
Learned Gem-Tactics --
Practicing Sands --...Read more of this...

One night I saw in thought a sage who said to me:

by Omar Khayyam
One night I saw in thought a sage who said to me:
Sleep, O my friend, has never caused the rose of happiness
to bloom for anyone; why lend yourself to aught so
similar to death? Rather drink wine, for you will sleep
enough when buried in the earth.
291...Read more of this...

The Quids

by Laura Riding Jackson
 The little quids, the million quids,
The everywhere, everything, always quids,
The atoms of the Monoton—
Each turned three essences where it stood
And ground a gisty dust from its neighbors' edges
Until a powdery thoughtfall stormed in and out,
The cerebration of a slippery quid enterprise.
Each quid stirred.
The united quids
Waved through a sinuous decision.

The quids, that had never done anything before
But be, be, be,...Read more of this...

So glad we are -- a Strangerd deem

by Emily Dickinson
 'Twas sorry, that we were --
For where the Holiday should be
There publishes a Tear --
Nor how Ourselves be justified --
Since Grief and Joy are done
So similar -- An Optizan
Could not decide between --...Read more of this...

Woe!

by Czeslaw Milosz
 It is true, our tribe is similar to the bees,
It gathers honey of wisdom, carries it, stores it in honeycombs.
I am able to roam for hours
Through the labyrinth of the main library, floor to floor.
But yesterday, looking for the words of masters and prophets,
I wandered into high regions
That are visited by practically no one.
I would open a book and...Read more of this...

Bohemia

by Dorothy Parker
 Authors and actors and artists and such
Never know nothing, and never know much.
Sculptors and singers and those of their kidney
Tell their affairs from Seattle to Sydney.
Playwrights and poets and such horses' necks
Start off from anywhere, end up at sex.
Diarists, critics, and similar roe
Never say nothing, and never say no.
People Who Do Things exceed my endurance;
God, for a man that...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Similar poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace