Famous Sort Poems by Famous Poets

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

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An Essay On Criticism

...e Conceit in pompous Words exprest,
Is like a Clown in regal Purple drest;
For diff'rent Styles with diff'rent Subjects sort,
As several Garbs with Country, Town, and Court.
Some by Old Words to Fame have made Pretence;
Ancients in Phrase, meer Moderns in their Sense!
Such labour'd Nothings, in so strange a Style,
Amaze th'unlearn'd, and make the Learned Smile.
Unlucky, as Fungoso in the Play,
These Sparks with aukward Vanity display
What the Fine Gentleman wore Yesterday!
An...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander


Avons Harvest

...your coming, 
And, if it’s in me to see clear enough, 
To fish the reason out of a black well 
Where you see only a dim sort of glimmer
That has for you no light.” 

“I see the well,” 
I said, “but there’s a doubt about the glimmer— 
Say nothing of the light. I’m at your service; 
And though you say that I shall not be happy,
I shall be if in some way I may serve. 
To tell you fairly now that I know nothing 
Is nothing more than fair.”—“You know as much 
As any man alive—save...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Beowulf (Modern English)

...he banished him far away,
the Measurer for those wicked deeds, from the kindred of men.
From there was conceived all sorts of monstrous things,
ogres and elves and revenants, likewise the giants
who struggled against God for many ages—
who gave them back their just deserts. (ll. 99-114)

 

II.

Then Grendel departed to seek out, after the night had fallen,
that high house, how the Ring-Danes had occupied it
after their beer-taking—he discovered therein
a compa...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Beowulf (Old English)

...ker-of-rings,
for gear of combat to give him requital,
for hard-sword and helmet, if hap should bring
stress of this sort! Himself who chose us
from all his army to aid him now,
urged us to glory, and gave these treasures,
because he counted us keen with the spear
and hardy ’neath helm, though this hero-work
our leader hoped unhelped and alone
to finish for us, -- folk-defender
who hath got him glory greater than all men
for daring deeds! Now the day is come
that ...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Childhood

...gods 
Who scared my childhood. 

II 

I've seen people put 
A chrysalis in a match-box, 
"To see," they told me, "what sort of moth would come." 
But when it broke its shell 
It slipped and stumbled and fell about its prison 
And tried to climb to the light 
For space to dry its wings. 

That's how I was. 
Somebody found my chrysalis 
And shut it in a match-box. 
My shrivelled wings were beaten, 
Shed their colours in dusty scales 
Before the box was opened 
For the moth to ...Read more of this...
by Aldington, Richard


Endymion: Book IV

...artbreak, woe,
What is there to plain of? By Titan's foe
I am but rightly serv'd." So saying, he
Tripp'd lightly on, in sort of deathful glee;
Laughing at the clear stream and setting sun,
As though they jests had been: nor had he done
His laugh at nature's holy countenance,
Until that grove appear'd, as if perchance,
And then his tongue with sober seemlihed
Gave utterance as he entered: "Ha!" I said,
"King of the butterflies; but by this gloom,
And by old Rhadamanthus' tongu...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Hyperion

...?"---That word
Found way unto Olympus, and made quake
The rebel three.---Thea was startled up,
And in her bearing was a sort of hope,
As thus she quick-voic'd spake, yet full of awe.

 "This cheers our fallen house: come to our friends,
O Saturn! come away, and give them heart;
I know the covert, for thence came I hither."
Thus brief; then with beseeching eyes she went
With backward footing through the shade a space:
He follow'd, and she turn'd to lead the way
Through aged bo...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

On the Way

...ccumulate already in the air. 
I think a touch of ermine, Hamilton, 
Would be for you in your autumnal mood 
A pleasant sort of warmth along the shoulders. 

HAMILTON

If so it is you think, you may as well
Give over thinking. We are done with ermine. 
What I fear most is not the multitude, 
But those who are to loop it with a string 
That has one end in France and one end here. 
I’m not so fortified with observation
That I could swear that more than half a score 
Among us wh...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Paradise Lost: Book 09

...s 
May have diverted from continual watch 
Our great Forbidder, safe with all his spies 
About him. But to Adam in what sort 
Shall I appear? shall I to him make known 
As yet my change, and give him to partake 
Full happiness with me, or rather not, 
But keeps the odds of knowledge in my power 
Without copartner? so to add what wants 
In female sex, the more to draw his love, 
And render me more equal; and perhaps, 
A thing not undesirable, sometime 
Superiour; for, inferiou...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Samson Agonistes

...Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call'd Tragedy.


TRAGEDY, as it was antiently compos'd, hath been ever held the
gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other Poems:
therefore said by Aristotle to be of power by raising pity and fear,
or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions, that is
to temper and reduce them to just measure with a k...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Sea Dreams

...uddenly cried,
`A wreck, a wreck!' then turn'd, and groaning said, 

`Forgive! How many will say, "forgive," and find
A sort of absolution in the sound
To hate a little longer! No; the sin
That neither God nor man can well forgive,
Hypocrisy, I saw it in him at once.
Is it so true that second thoughts are best?
Not first, and third, which are a riper first?
Too ripe, too late! they come too late for use.
Ah love, there surely lives in man and beast
Something divine to warn th...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

Snow

...did with all that time.
And three miles more to go!”
“Don’t let him go.
Stick to him, Helen. Make him answer you.
That sort of man talks straight on all his life
From the last thing he said himself, stone deaf
To anything anyone else may say.
I should have thought, though, you could make him hear you.”

“What is he doing out a night like this?
Why can’t he stay at home?”

“He had to preach.”

“It’s no night to be out.”

“He may be small,
He may be good, but one thing’s sure,...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

The Bells

...the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells-
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

II

Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-gol...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan

The Female Vagrant

...y tongue.   So passed another day, and so the third:  Then did I try, in vain, the crowd's resort,  In deep despair by frightful wishes stirr'd,  Near the sea-side I reached a ruined fort:  There, pains which nature could no more support,  With blindness linked, did on my vitals fall;  Dizzy my brain, with interruption short  Of hideous sense; I sunk, nor step could crawl,  And th...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

The Four Ages of Man

...on the Stage, about he wheels;
1.34 But as he went, death waited at his heels.
1.35 The next came up, in a more graver sort,
1.36 As one that cared for a good report.
1.37 His Sword by's side, and choler in his eyes,
1.38 But neither us'd (as yet) for he was wise,
1.39 Of Autumn fruits a basket on his arm,
1.40 His golden rod in's purse, which was his charm.
1.41 And last of all, to act upon this Stage,
1.42 Leaning upon his staff, comes up old age.
1.43 Under his arm a Shea...Read more of this...
by Bradstreet, Anne

The Man of Laws Tale

...nty* to chaffare** *pleasure **deal
With them, and eke to selle them their ware.

Now fell it, that the masters of that sort
Have *shapen them* to Rome for to wend, *determined, prepared*
Were it for chapmanhood* or for disport, *trading
None other message would they thither send,
But come themselves to Rome, this is the end:
And in such place as thought them a vantage
For their intent, they took their herbergage.* *lodging

Sojourned have these merchants in that town
A certa...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Three Voices

...eir share
Of common earth and common air:
We come across them here and there: 

"We grant them - there is no escape -
A sort of semi-human shape
Suggestive of the man-like Ape." 

"In all such theories," said he,
"One fixed exception there must be.
That is, the Present Company." 

Baffled, she gave a wolfish bark:
He, aiming blindly in the dark,
With random shaft had pierced the mark. 

She felt that her defeat was plain,
Yet madly strove with might and main
To get the upper ...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

The Vision of Judgment

...his household abstinence; I grant 
His neutral virtues, which most monarchs want; 

XLVI 

'I know he was a constant consort; own 
He was a decent sire, and middling lord. 
All this is much, and most upon a throne; 
As temperance, if at Apicius' board, 
Is more than at an anchorite's supper shown. 
I grant him all the kindest can accord; 
And this was well for him, but not for those 
Millions who found him what oppression chose. 

XLVII 

'The New World shook him off; the Old...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Wife of Baths Tale

...cia liquorish lov'd her husband so,
That, for he should always upon her think,
She gave him such a manner* love-drink, *sort of
That he was dead before it were the morrow:
And thus algates* husbands hadde sorrow. *always
Then told he me how one Latumeus
Complained to his fellow Arius
That in his garden growed such a tree,
On which he said how that his wives three
Hanged themselves for heart dispiteous.
"O leve* brother," quoth this Arius, *dear
"Give me a plant of thilke* ble...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Witch Of Atlas

...sunlike gems; and round each temple-court
In dormitories ranged, row after row,
She saw the priests asleep,--all of one sort,
For all were educated to be so.
The peasants in their huts, and in the port
The sailors she saw cradled on the waves,
And the dead lulled within their dreamless graves.

And all the forms in which those spirits lay
Were to her sight like the diaphanous
Veils in which those sweet ladies oft array
Their delicate limbs who would conceal from us
Only their...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

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