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Famous Sooner Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...s.
Look next if human nature makes amends;
Whose principles are most generous and just,
- And to whose morals you would sooner trust:

Be judge yourself, I'll bring it to the test,
Which is the basest creature, man or beast
Birds feed on birds, beasts on each other prey,
But savage man alone does man betray:
Pressed by necessity; they kill for food,
Man undoes man, to do himself no good.
With teeth and claws, by nature armed, they hunt
Nature's allowance, to supply their want...Read more of this...
by Wilmot, John



...epper is harried by hounds,
the stag with strong horns may seek a forested security,
fearfully put to flight—he would sooner risk his life
on the shore, before he wishes to dive into it
to hide his head. That is no good place! (ll. 1361b-72)

“There the roiling waves rise upwards,
dark against the heavens, when the wind stirs
up hateful weather, until the breeze is blackened
and the skies weep. Now is the answer yours
again, and yours alone. You do not know yet
thi...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,
...ct to wander your way as spies
in Danish land. Now, dwellers afar,
ocean-travellers, take from me
simple advice: the sooner the better
I hear of the country whence ye came.”



IV

To him the stateliest spake in answer;
the warriors’ leader his word-hoard unlocked: --
“We are by kin of the clan of Geats,
and Hygelac’s own hearth-fellows we.
To folk afar was my father known,
noble atheling, Ecgtheow named.
Full of winters, he fared away
aged from earth; he is ...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,
..., study, and make friends; 
And when night overtakes me, down I lie, 
Sleep, dream a little, and get done with it, 
The sooner the better, to begin afresh. 
What's midnight doubt before the dayspring's faith? 
You, the philosopher, that disbelieve, 
That recognize the night, give dreams their weight-- 
To be consistent you should keep your bed, 
Abstain from healthy acts that prove you man, 
For fear you drowse perhaps at unawares! 
And certainly at night you'll sleep and dre...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...u may be safe
Till further quest.
 LADY. Shepherd, I take thy word,
And trust thy honest-offered courtesy,
Which oft is sooner found in lowly sheds,
With smoky rafters, than in tapestry halls
And courts of princes, where it first was named,
And yet is most pretended. In a place
Less warranted than this, or less secure,
I cannot be, that I should fear to change it.
Eye me, blest Providence, and square my trial
To my proportioned strength! Shepherd, lead on.

The TWO BROTHERS.
...Read more of this...
by Milton, John



...age—I dotard to control— 
 Pretended gallants changed to lovers now. 
 So, brother, this being fact for us to know 
 Sooner or later, 'gainst our best intent 
 About her we should quarrel. Evident 
 Is it our compact would be broken through. 
 There is one only thing for us to do, 
 And that is, kill her." 
 
 "Logic very clear," 
 Said musing Joss, "but what of blood shed here?" 
 Then Zeno stooped and lifted from the ground 
 An edge of carpet—groped until he fo...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor
...ifick deeds, 
Thy trophies! which thou viewest as not thine own; 
Thou art their author, and prime architect: 
For I no sooner in my heart divined, 
My heart, which by a secret harmony 
Still moves with thine, joined in connexion sweet, 
That thou on earth hadst prospered, which thy looks 
Now also evidence, but straight I felt, 
Though distant from thee worlds between, yet felt, 
That I must after thee, with this thy son; 
Such fatal consequence unites us three! 
Hell could ...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...a wonderous ark, as thou beheldst, 
To save himself, and houshold, from amidst 
A world devote to universal wrack. 
No sooner he, with them of man and beast 
Select for life, shall in the ark be lodged, 
And sheltered round; but all the cataracts 
Of Heaven set open on the Earth shall pour 
Rain, day and night; all fountains of the deep, 
Broke up, shall heave the ocean to usurp 
Beyond all bounds; till inundation rise 
Above the highest hills: Then shall this mount 
Of Para...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...ome ease,
Ease to the body some, none to the mind
From restless thoughts, that like a deadly swarm
Of Hornets arm'd, no sooner found alone, 
But rush upon me thronging, and present
Times past, what once I was, and what am now.
O wherefore was my birth from Heaven foretold
Twice by an Angel, who at last in sight
Of both my Parents all in flames ascended
From off the Altar, where an Off'ring burn'd,
As in a fiery column charioting
His Godlike presence, and from some great act
O...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...e air materializing behind it,
A convention. And we have really
No time for these, except to use them
For kindling. The sooner they are burnt up
The better for the roles we have to play.
Therefore I beseech you, withdraw that hand,
Offer it no longer as shield or greeting,
The shield of a greeting, Francesco:
There is room for one bullet in the chamber:
Our looking through the wrong end
Of the telescope as you fall back at a speed
Faster than that of light to flatten ultimate...Read more of this...
by Ashbery, John
..., the gentle Cypria,
Illumined by her fiery crown,
Then stands before her full-grown son
Unveiled--as great Urania;
The sooner only by him caught,
The fairer he had fled away!
Thus stood, in wonder rapture-fraught,
Ulysses' noble son that day,
When the sage mentor who his youth beguiled;
Herself transfigured as Jove's glorious child!

Man's honor is confided to your hand,--
There let it well protected be!
It sinks with you! with you it will expand!
Poesy's sacred sorcery
Obey...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von
...The tangle of the forest in his hair,
The silence of the woodland in his eyes,
Wooing that drifting imagery which is
No sooner kissed than broken; memories of Salmacis

Who is not boy nor girl and yet is both,
Fed by two fires and unsatisfied
Through their excess, each passion being loth
For love's own sake to leave the other's side
Yet killing love by staying; memories
Of Oreads peeping through the leaves of silent moonlit trees,

Of lonely Ariadne on the wharf
At Naxos, whe...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...r possibly with an after-intention,
She was come, she said, to pay her duty
To the new Duchess, the youthful beauty.
No sooner had she named his lady,
Than a shine lit up the face so shady,
And its smirk returned with a novel meaning---
For it struck him, the babe just wanted weaning;
If one gave her a taste of what life was and sorrow,
She, foolish to-day, would be wiser tomorrow;
And who so fit a teacher of trouble
As this sordid crone bent well-nigh double?
So, glancing at...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...hou false, I dare well sayn,"

This Arcita full proudly spake again:
"Thou shalt," quoth he, "be rather* false than I, *sooner
And thou art false, I tell thee utterly;
For par amour I lov'd her first ere thou.
What wilt thou say? *thou wist it not right now* *even now thou
Whether she be a woman or goddess. knowest not*
Thine is affection of holiness,
And mine is love, as to a creature:
For which I tolde thee mine aventure
As to my cousin, and my brother sworn
I pose*, that t...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...it the breeze affects mine eye?
     Or dost thou come, ill-omened tear!
     A messenger of doubt or fear?
     No! sooner may the Saxon lance
     Unfix Benledi from his stance,
     Than doubt or terror can pierce through
     The unyielding heart of Roderick Dhu!
     'tis stubborn as his trusty targe.
     Each to his post!—all know their charge.'
     The pibroch sounds, the bands advance,
     The broadswords gleam, the banners dance'
     Obedient to the Ch...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...o which my pheasant flew?
Confiscate his evening ****** under which my conies ran,
And summons him to judgment? I would sooner summons Pan.

His dead are in the churchyard--thirty generations laid.
Their names were old in history when Domesday Book was made;
 And the passion and the piety and prowess of his line
 Have seeded, rooted, fruited in some land the Law calls mine.

 Not for any beast that burrows, not for any bird that flies,
 Would I lose his large sound council, m...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard
...e would be cunning. 

Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without
Improvement, are roads of Genius. 

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires 

Where man is not nature is barren.

Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be
believ'd.

Enough! or Too much



PLATE 11 

The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or
Geniuses calling them by the names and adorning them with the
properties of woods, rivers, m...Read more of this...
by Blake, William
...ue.
'Twas then Belinda, if Report say true,
Thy Eyes first open'd on a Billet-doux.
Wounds, Charms, and Ardors, were no sooner read,
But all the Vision vanish'd from thy Head. 

And now, unveil'd, the Toilet stands display'd,
Each Silver Vase in mystic Order laid.
First, rob'd in White, the Nymph intent adores
With Head uncover'd, the cosmetic Pow'rs.
A heav'nly Image in the Glass appears,
To that she bends, to that her Eyes she rears;
Th' inferior Priestess, at her Altar's s...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander
...old 
The rottenness of eighty years in gold. 

XI 

So mix his body with the dust! It might 
Return to what it must far sooner, were 
The natural compound left alone to fight 
Its way back into earth, and fire, and air; 
But the unnatural balsams merely blight 
What nature made him at his birth, as bare 
As the mere million's base unmarried clay — 
Yet all his spices but prolong decay. 

XII 

He's dead — and upper earth with him has done; 
He's buried; save the undertaker's ...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...
I were a cross between parrot and eel. 
I thought her blank and cold and stiff.

XVI 
And presently she said as they 
Sooner or later always say: 
'You're an American, Miss Dunne? 
Really you do not speak like one.' 
She seemed to think she'd said a thing 
Both courteous and flattering. 
I answered though my wrist were weak 
With anger: 'Not at all, I speak— 
At least I've always thought this true— 
As educated people do 
In any country-even mine.' 
'Really?' I saw her head...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry