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Famous Sought Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Shakespeare, William
...he blood, none of the mind;
Love made them not: with acture they may be,
Where neither party is nor true nor kind:
They sought their shame that so their shame did find;
And so much less of shame in me remains,
By how much of me their reproach contains.

''Among the many that mine eyes have seen,
Not one whose flame my heart so much as warm'd,
Or my affection put to the smallest teen,
Or any of my leisures ever charm'd:
Harm have I done to them, but ne'er was harm'd;
Kept ...Read more of this...



by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...nds, and drags them down to the ocean,
Deep in their sands to bury the scattered bones of the mammoth.
Friends they sought and homes; and many, despairing, heart-broken,
Asked of the earth but a grave, and no longer a friend nor a fireside.
Written their history stands on tablets of stone in the churchyards.
Long among them was seen a maiden who waited and wandered,
Lowly and meek in spirit, and patiently suffering all things.
Fair was she and young; but, alas...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...le thing he hated lurks within
Its sombre house, alone with God and memories of sin.

Still what avails it that she sought her cave
That murderous mother of red harlotries?
At Munich on the marble architrave
The Grecian boys die smiling, but the seas
Which wash AEgina fret in loneliness
Not mirroring their beauty; so our lives grow colourless

For lack of our ideals, if one star
Flame torch-like in the heavens the unjust
Swift daylight kills it, and no trump of war
Can wa...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
..., 
 Through other's merits or their own the fault. 
 Condoned?" And he, my covert speech that read, 
 - For surance sought I of my faith, - replied, 
 "Through the shrunk hells there came a Great One, crowned 
 And garmented with conquest. Of the dead, 
 He rescued from us him who earliest died, 
 Abel, and our first parent. Here He found, 
 Abraham, obedient to the Voice he heard; 
 And Moses, first who wrote the Sacred Word; 
 Isaac, and Israel and his sons, and...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...rn he tried — he ransack'd all below, 
And found his recompence in joy or woe, 
No tame, trite medium; for his feelings sought 
In that intenseness an escape from thought: 
The tempest of his heart in scorn had gazed 
On that the feebler elements hath raised; 
The rapture of his heart had look'd on high, 
And ask'd if greater dwelt beyond the sky: 
Chain'd to excess, the slave of each extreme, 
How woke he from the wildness of that dream? 
Alas! he told not — but he did awake...Read more of this...



by Wordsworth, William
...!  For I thy own dear mother am.  My love for thee has well been tried:  I've sought thy father far and wide.  I know the poisons of the shade,  I know the earth-nuts fit for food;  Then, pretty dear, be not afraid;  We'll find thy father in the wood.  Now laugh and be gay, to the woods away!  And there, my babe; we'll live for aye....Read more of this...

by Frost, Robert
...no proof that I aimed them at New Hampshire.
When I left Massachusetts years ago
Between two days, the reason why I sought
New Hampshire, not Connecticut,
Rhode Island, New York, or Vermont was this:
Where I was living then, New Hampshire offered
The nearest boundary to escape across.
I hadn't an illusion in my handbag
About the people being better there
Than those I left behind. I thought they weren't.
 I thought they couldn't be. And yet they were.
I...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather'd every rack, 
the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; But O heart! heart! heart! 
O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. 
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up- for you the flag is flung- for 
you t...Read more of this...

by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...ack,
Even to this day,
Being by no means from that frigid bosom weaned away,
If only she therewith be given me back?"
I sought her down that dolorous labyrinth,
Wherein no shaft of sunlight ever fell,
And in among the bloodless everywhere
I sought her, but the air,
Breathed many times and spent,
Was fretful with a whispering discontent,
And questioning me, importuning me to tell
Some slightest tidings of the light of day they know no more,
Plucking my sleeve, the eager shades...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...in twain.

He marked the wood and the cloven ways
With an old captain's eyes,
And he thought how many a time had he
Sought to see Doom he could not see;
How ruin had come and victory,
And both were a surprise.

Even so he had watched and wondered
Under Ashdown from the plains;
With Ethelred praying in his tent,
Till the white hawthorn swung and bent,
As Alfred rushed his spears and rent
The shield-wall of the Danes.

Even so he had watched and wondered,
Knowing ne...Read more of this...

by Bradstreet, Anne
...2.12 Spending was willing to be spent for me.
2.13 With wayward cries, I did disturb her rest,
2.14 Who sought still to appease me with her breast;
2.15 With weary arms, she danc'd, and By, By, sung,
2.16 When wretched I (ungrate) had done the wrong.
2.17 When Infancy was past, my Childishness
2.18 Did act all folly that it could express.
2.19 My silliness did only take delight,
2.20 In that which riper age did scorn and slight,...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...our strength for the job!"


FIT V.--THE BEAVER'S LESSON.

Fit the Fifth.

THE BEAVER'S LESSON.


They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
 They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
 They charmed it with smiles and soap.

Then the Butcher contrived an ingenious plan
 For making a separate sally;
And had fixed on a spot unfrequented by man,
 A dismal and desolate valley.

But the very same plan t...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...y again.
So well they lov'd, as olde bookes sayn,
That when that one was dead, soothly to sayn,
His fellow went and sought him down in hell:
But of that story list me not to write.
Duke Perithous loved well Arcite,
And had him known at Thebes year by year:
And finally at request and prayere
Of Perithous, withoute ranson
Duke Theseus him let out of prison,
Freely to go, where him list over all,
In such a guise, as I you tellen shall
This was the forword*, plainly to in...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...dmost foes appeared,
     With one brave bound the copse he cleared,
     And, stretching forward free and far,
     Sought the wild heaths of Uam-Var.
     III.

     Yelled on the view the opening pack;
     Rock, glen, and cavern paid them back;
     To many a mingled sound at once
     The awakened mountain gave response.
     A hundred dogs bayed deep and strong,
     Clattered a hundred steeds along,
     Their peal the merry horns rung out,
     A hundred ...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...e was, The man
who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds
reptiles of the mind.
But I arose, and sought for the mill, & there I found my
Angel, who surprised asked me, how I escaped?
I answerd. All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics: for
when you ran away, I found myself on a bank by moonlight hearing
a harper, But now we have seen my eternal lot, shall I shew you
yours? he laughd at my proposal: but I by force suddenly caught
him in my arms,...Read more of this...

by Poe, Edgar Allan
...mber 
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. 
Eagerly I wished the morrow;¡ªvainly I had sought to borrow 
From my books surcease of sorrow¡ªsorrow for the lost Lenore, 10 
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore: 
Nameless here for evermore. 

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain 
Thrilled me¡ªfilled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; 
So that now, to still the beating of my heart...Read more of this...

by Thomson, James
...pt the Brother, while the Tyrant bled.
Scipio, the humane Warriour, gently brave,
Fair Learning's Friend; who early sought the Shade,
To dwell, with Innocence, and Truth, retir'd.
And, equal to the best, the Theban, He
Who, single, rais'd his Country into Fame.
Thousands behind, the Boast of Greece and Rome,
Whom Vertue owns, the Tribute of a Verse
Demand, but who can count the Stars of Heaven?
Who sing their Influence on this lower World?
But see who yonder comes...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...rns the truth to know,
Still further inwardly may go,
And find Idea from Notion flow: 

"And thus the chain, that sages sought,
Is to a glorious circle wrought,
For Notion hath its source in Thought." 

So passed they on with even pace:
Yet gradually one might trace
A shadow growing on his face. 


The Second Voice 


THEY walked beside the wave-worn beach;
Her tongue was very apt to teach,
And now and then he did beseech 

She would abate her dulcet tone,
Because the...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...that the grass which methought hung so wide
And white, was but his thin discoloured hair,
And that the holes it vainly sought to hide
Were or had been eyes.--"lf thou canst forbear
To join the dance, which I had well forborne,"
Said the grim Feature, of my thought aware,
"I will now tell that which to this deep scorn
Led me & my companions, and relate
The progress of the pageant since the morn;
"If thirst of knowledge doth not thus abate,
Follow it even to the night, but...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...on black gates.
It seems to me that I alone
Have kept good health under this sky,
Because of this, that first I sought
To drink the deadly wine.



Parting
Evening and slanting,
Downward goes my way.
Yesterday in love still,
"Don't forget" you prayed.
Now there's only shepherds'
Cry, and glancing winds,
And the worried cedars
Stand by clear springs.



x x x

Yellow and fresh are the lanterns,
Black is the road of the garden at ...Read more of this...

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