Famous Simple Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Simple poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous simple poems. These examples illustrate what a famous simple poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Emily Dickinson
To venerate the simple days
Which lead the seasons by,
Needs but to remember
That from you or I,
They may take the trifle
Termed mortality!...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
I bought a dollar and a half's worth of small red potatoes,
took them home, boiled them in their jackets
and ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt.
Then I walked through the dried fields
on the edge of town. In middle June the light
hung on in the dark furrows at my feet,
and in the mountain oaks overhead the...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Summer laid her simple Hat
On its boundless Shelf --
Unobserved -- a Ribbon slipt,
Snatch it for yourself.
Summer laid her supple Glove
In its sylvan Drawer --
Wheresoe'er, or was she --
The demand of Awe?...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
You say, "Where goest thou?" I cannot tell,
And still go on. If but the way be straight,
It cannot go amiss! before me lies
Dawn and the Day; the Night behind me; that
Suffices me; I break the bounds; I see,
And nothing more; believe, and nothing less.
My future is not...Read more of this...
by
Robert Desnos
To the right, the sky, to the left, the sea.
And before your eyes, the grass and its flowers.
A cloud, the road, follows its vertical way
Parallel to the plumb line of the horizon,
Parallel to the rider.
The horse races towards its imminent fall
And the other climbs interminably.
How simple and strange everything is.
Lying on my left side
I take no interest in the...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
Tell me, my simple and tranquil sweetheart, tell me how much an absence, even of a day, saddens and stirs up love, and reawakens it in all its sleeping scalds?
I go to meet those who are returning from the wondrous distances to which at dawn you went; I sit beneath a tree at a bend of the path, and, on...Read more of this...
by
Mercy Otis Warren
Modest! Polite! Genteel! Heavens what deceit
Dwells in the breast of those I termed grat!
But now too late, my shame and grief appear.
I'm lost! Undone! Stopped short in my career.
A barn my dwelling, paltry fish my food,
With insuylts, scorn, and execrations lewd.
Oh sad disgrace! But this is not the worst.
I'm by my husband and my daughter cursed.
Our Bashaw, to, forever in...Read more of this...
by
Mother Goose
Simple Simon met a pieman,
Going to the fair;
Says Simple Simon to the pieman,
"Let me taste your ware."
Says the pieman to Simple Simon,
"Show me first your penny,"
Says Simple Simon to the pieman,
"Indeed, I have not any."
Simple Simon went a-fishing
For to catch...Read more of this...
by
Laura Riding Jackson
The secrets of the mind convene splendidly,
Though the mind is meek.
To be aware inwardly
of brain and beauty
Is dark too recognizable.
Thought looking out on thought
Makes one an eye:
Which it shall be, both decide.
One is with the mind alone,
The other is with other thoughts gone
To be seen from afar and not known.
When openly these inmost sights
Flash and speak fully,
Each head at...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I've learned--Of all the friends I've won
Dame Nature is the best,
And to her like a child I run
Craving her mother breast
To comfort me in soul distress,
And in green glade to find
Far from the world's unloveliness
Pure peace of mind.
I've learned--the worth of simple ways,
And though I've loved to roam,
I know the glow of hearth ablaze,
...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
She bore it till the simple veins
Traced azure on her hand --
Til pleading, round her quiet eyes
The purple Crayons stand.
Till Daffodils had come and gone
I cannot tell the sum,
And then she ceased to bear it --
And with the Saints sat down.
No more her patient figure
At twilight soft to meet --
No more her timid bonnet
Upon the village street --
But Crowns...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
Shake out my pockets! Harken to the call
Of that calm voice that makes no sound at all!
Take of me all you can; my average weight
May make amends for this, my low estate.
But do not shake, Green Thumb, as once you did
My heart and liver, or my prostate bid
Good Morning to -- leave it,...Read more of this...
by
Ogden Nash
Foreigners are people somewhere else,
Natives are people at home;
If the place you’re at
Is your habitat,
You’re a foreigner, say in Rome.
But the scales of Justice balance true,
And tit leads into tat,
So the man who’s at home
When he stays in Rome
Is abroad when he’s where you’re at.
When we leave the limits of the land in which
Our birth certificates sat us,
It does...Read more of this...
by
Audre Lorde
There are so many roots to the tree of anger
that sometimes the branches shatter
before they bear.
Sitting in Nedicks
the women rally before they march
discussing the problematic girls
they hire to make them free.
An almost white counterman passes
a waiting brother to serve them first
and the ladies neither notice nor reject
the slighter pleasures of their slavery.
But I who...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
As in the simple ages, I have given you my heart, like a wide-spreading flower that opens pure and lovely in the dewy hours; within its moist petals my lips have rested.
The flower, I gathered it with fingers of flame; say nothing to it: for all words are perilous; it is through the eyes that soul listens to soul.
The flower...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous
Despise not simple things:The humblest flower that wakesIn early spring, to scent the airOf woodland brakes,Should have thy love as wellAs blushing parlor rose,That never felt the perfect breathOf nature round it close.[Pg 033]Despise not simple things:The poor demand thy love,As well as those who in the hallsOf splendor move.The beggar at thy doorThou shouldst not e’er despise;For that may...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I've got an arrow here.
Loving the hand that sent it
I the dart revere.
Fell, they will say, in "skirmish"!
Vanquished, my soul will know
By but a simple arrow
Sped by an archer's bow....Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
He's the man from Eldorado, and he's just arrived in town,
In moccasins and oily buckskin shirt.
He's gaunt as any Indian, and pretty nigh as brown;
He's greasy, and he smells of sweat and dirt.
He sports a crop of whiskers that would shame a healthy hog;
Hard work has racked his joints and stooped his back;
He slops along the...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
When Katie walks, this simple pair accompany her side,
When Katie runs unwearied they follow on the road,
When Katie kneels, their loving hands still clasp her pious knee --
Ah! Katie! Smile at Fortune, with two so knit to thee!...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Clover's simple Fame
Remembered of the Cow --
Is better than enameled Realms
Of notability.
Renown perceives itself
And that degrades the Flower --
The Daisy that has looked behind
Has compromised its power --...Read more of this...
by
Pablo Neruda
I like for you to be still
It is as though you are absent
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not touch you
It seems as though your eyes had flown away
And it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth
As all things are filled with my soul
You emerge from the things
Filled with my soul
You are like my...Read more of this...
by
Dejan Stojanovic
I feel the light inside and out
Sun is a close keen
The world glows, and so I glow
The world is growing
And I grow glowing
Thinking so is so simple
Not to think, but glisten
Not to analyze, but feel
The light inside and out
And grow by glowing
...Read more of this...
by
Richard Wilbur
The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded
soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and
simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with
angels.
Some are in bed-sheets, some are
in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there
they are.
Now they are rising together in calm
swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling...Read more of this...
by
Alan Seeger
There is a power whose inspiration fills
Nature's fair fabric, sun- and star-inwrought,
Like airy dew ere any drop distils,
Like perfume in the laden flower, like aught
Unseen which interfused throughout the whole
Becomes its quickening pulse and principle and soul.
Now when, the drift of old desire renewing,
Warm tides flow northward over valley and field,
When...Read more of this...
by
José Martí
Once I was sailing for fun
On a lake of great allure,
Like gold the sun shone so pure,
And my soul more than the sun.
Then suddenly I could smell
Before I saw at my feet,
A foul fish, with death replete,
At the bottom of the well
...Read more of this...
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