Famous Solved Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Solved poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous solved poems. These examples illustrate what a famous solved poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Crowley, Aleister
...my unworthiness ---
Nay! but my worthiness, since I was sense
And spirit too of that same excellence.
So thus we solved the earth's revolving riddle:
I could write verse, and you could play the fiddle,
While, as for love, the sun went through the signs,
And not a star but told him how love twines
A wreath for every decanate, degree,
Minute and second, linked eternally
In chains of flowers that never fading are,
Each one as sempiternal as a star.
Let me go back to ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...And wonder what it means.
Ah! If I had the eyes to see,
And brain to understand,
I think Life's mystery might be
Solved in this grain of sand....Read more of this...
by
Wright, James
...wn black twilight
Of bamboo ropes and waters.
Where is Yuan Chen, the friend you loved?
Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness
Of the Midwest?Where is Minneapolis? I can see nothing
But the great terrible oak tree darkening with winter.
Did you find the city of isolated men beyond mountains?
Or have you been holding the end of a frayed rope
For a thousand years?...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...us,
Just as we tighten or relax our hold.
So, others matters equal, we'll revert
To the first problem--which, if solved my way
And thrown into the balance, turns the scale--
How we may lead a comfortable life,
How suit our luggage to the cabin's size.
Of course you are remarking all this time
How narrowly and grossly I view life,
Respect the creature-comforts, care to rule
The masses, and regard complacently
"The cabin," in our old phrase. Well, I do...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten
By the dwellers in cities—ever, however, implacable.
Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder
Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated
By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.
His rhythm was present in the nursery bedroom,
In the rank ailanthus of the Apri...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...ce and edification, and appointing place, where the Lord has not appointed.
For the Ethiopian question is already solved in that the Blacks are the children of Cain.
For the phenomenon of the horizontal moon is the truth -- she appears bigger in the horizon because she actually is so.
For it was said of old 'can the Ethiopian change his skin?' the Lord has answered the question by his merit and death he shall. --
For the moon is magnified in the horizo...Read more of this...
by
Sherrick, Fannie Isabelle
...ry is this of care
And endless doubts; will faith ne'er come again?"
Oh, striving heart, no mind the problem yet
Has solved of life—'tis happier to forget;
When once the mind is roused to questioning thought
With endless misery it may be wrought;
The happiest minds are those that question not—
To live in faith is mankind's fairest lot.
And darker grow the shadows of the night,
She looks upon the sea, the distant height;
Upon the waves the ships go gliding by,
The l...Read more of this...
by
Meredith, George
...ht,
To feel it large of the great life they hold:
In them to come, or vaster intervolved,
The issues known in us, our unsolved solved:
That there with toil Life climbs the self-same Tree,
Whose roots enrichment have from ripeness dropped.
So may we read and little find them cold:
Let it but be the lord of Mind to guide
Our eyes; no branch of Reason's growing lopped;
Nor dreaming on a dream; but fortified
By day to penetrate black midnight; see,
Hear, feel, outside the sen...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...lost redhead,
I tell the gods.
I do it and feel quite bad
quite sad,
then I rise
CLEANSED
even though nothing
is solved.
that's what I get for kicking
religion in the ass.
I should have kicked the redhead
in the ass
where her brains and her bread and
butter are
at ...
but, no, I've felt sad
about everything:
the lost redhead was just another
smash in a lifelong
loss ...
I listen to drums on the radio now
and grin.
there is somet...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...s fair change, and to our Saviour came;
Yet with no new device (they all were spent),
Rather by this his last affront resolved,
Desperate of better course, to vent his rage
And mad despite to be so oft repelled.
Him walking on a sunny hill he found,
Backed on the north and west by a thick wood;
Out of the wood he starts in wonted shape,
And in a careless mood thus to him said:—
"Fair morning yet betides thee, Son of God,
After a dismal night. I heard the wrack,
As e...Read more of this...
by
Bishop, Elizabeth
...e, no frightening birds; the rain
is brightening now. The face is pale
that tried the puzzle of their prison
and solved it with an unexpected kiss,
whose freckled unsuspected hands alit....Read more of this...
by
Hood, Thomas
...d terrific,
Hinted some tragedy of that old hall,
Locked up in hieroglyphic.
Some tale that might, perchance, have solved the doubt,
Wherefore, among those flags so dull and livid,
The banner of the bloody hand shone out
So ominously vivid.
Some key to that inscrutable appeal
Which made the very frame of Nature quiver,
And every thrilling nerve and fiber feel
So ague-like a shiver.
For over all there hung a cloud of fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
...Read more of this...
by
Simic, Charles
...eps.
She banged at the door till her fist hurt.
Her name was Alma, a propitious sign.
She knew someone who solved life's riddles
In a voice of an ancient Sumerian queen.
We had a long talk about that
While shivering and stamping our wet feet.
It was necessary to stay calm, I explained,
Even with the earth trembling,
And to continue to watch oneself
As if one were a complete stranger.
Once in Chicago, for instance,
I caught sight of a man in a shavin...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...y read.
Seek yonder brake beneath the cliff,—
There lies Red Murdoch, stark and stiff.
Thus Fate hath solved her prophecy;
Then yield to Fate, and not to me.
To James at Stirling let us go,
When, if thou wilt be still his foe,
Or if the King shall not agree
To grant thee grace and favor free,
I plight mine honor, oath, and word
That, to thy native strengths restored,
With each advantage shalt thou stand
T...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...not brook in forest-paths,
On their perpetual pine, nor round the beech;
They fuse themselves to little spicy baths,
Solved in the tender blushes of the peach;
They lose themselves and die
On that new life that gems the hawthorn line;
Thy gay lent-lilies wave and put them by,
And out once more in varnish'd glory shine
Thy stars of celandine.
She floats across the hamlet. Heaven lours,
But in the tearful splendour of her smiles
I see the slowl-thickening ch...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...sed we talk about what else
there might be to do,
but being together solves most of it
for as long as those things stay solved
in the history of women and
man, it's different for each-
for me, it's splendid enough to remember
past the memories of pain and defeat and unhappiness:
when you take it away
do it slowly and easily
make it as if I were dying in my sleep instead of in
my life, amen....Read more of this...
by
Hecht, Anthony
...epaulets
And decorations on every birch and aspen.
And the eye, self-satisfied, will be misled,
Thinking the puzzle solved, supposing at last
It can look forth and comprehend the world.
That's when you have to really watch yourself.
So I hope that you won't think me plain ungrateful
For not selecting one of your fine books,
And I take it very kindly that you came
And sat here and let me rattle on this way....Read more of this...
by
Stafford, William
...st nights, Berky, I have thought for you,
and no matter how lucky I've been I've touched wood.
There are things not solved in our town though tomorrow came:
there are things time passing can never make come true.
We live in an occupied country, misunderstood;
justice will take us millions of intricate moves.
Sirens wil hunt down Berky, you survivors in your beds
listening through the night, so far and good....Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...sisteth and what seems.
One with low tones that decide 15
And doubt and reverend use defied
With a look that solved the sphere
And stirr'd the devils everywhere
Gave his sentiment divine
Against the being of a line. 20
'Line in nature is not found;
Unit and universe are round;
In vain produced all rays return;
Evil will bless and ice will burn.'
As Uriel spoke with piercing eye 25
A shudder ran around the sky;
The stern old war-gods sh...Read more of this...
by
Lehman, David
..., and
"the value of this work," Wittgenstein wrote, "is that
it shows how little is achieved when these problems
are solved." When I quoted Gertrude Stein's line
about Oakland, "there's no there there," he nodded.
Was there a there, I persisted. His answer: Yes and No.
It was as impossible to feel another's person's pain
as to suffer another person's toothache.
9.
At Cambridge the dons quoted him reverently.
I asked them what they thought...Read more of this...
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