Famous Speaks Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Speaks poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous speaks poems. These examples illustrate what a famous speaks poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...urious nor the pride of kings;
But truth meek-ey'd and warm benevolence
Wisdom's high breeding in her sons rever'd
Bespeaks them each the children[2] of a king.
The christian truth of origin divine,
Grows not beneath the shade of civil pow'r,
Riches or wealth accompanied with pride;
Nor shall it bloom transplanted to that soil,
Where persecution, in malignant streams,
Flows out to water it; black streams and foul
Which from the lake of Tartarus break forth,
The sic...Read more of this...
by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...ltars; there they'll talk you dead;
For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.
Distrustful Sense with modest Caution speaks;
It still looks home, and short Excursions makes;
But ratling Nonsense in full Vollies breaks;
And never shock'd, and never turn'd aside,
Bursts out, resistless, with a thundering Tyde!
But where's the Man, who Counsel can bestow,
Still pleas'd to teach, and not proud to know?
Unbiass'd, or by Favour or by Spite;
Not dully prepossest, nor blindly rig...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...e equalizer of his age and land,
He supplies what wants supplying—he checks what wants checking,
In peace, out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty, building populous
towns,
encouraging agriculture, arts, commerce, lighting the study of man, the Soul, health,
immortality, government;
In war, he is the best backer of the war—he fetches artillery as good as the
engineer’s—he can make every word he speaks draw blood;
The years straying toward infidelit...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...lowed to wield those weapons,
until they misplaced in the shield-play
beloved comrades and their own lives.
Then one speaks up in his beer, who sees that ringed weapon,
an old spear-fighter, he who remembers it all,
the shafted killing of men—his own heart is grim—
Misery-minded he tests out some young warrior
in the intentions of his breast, of his mind,
waking a warlike bale, and speaking these words: (ll. 2032-46)
[XXIX.]
“’Can’t you, my friend, recogni...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...ike harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.
This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it
Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman
Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers,--
Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands,
Darkened by s...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night's decay
Ushers in a drearier day....Read more of this...
by
Brontë, Emily
...homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.
Today, the first and last of every Tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the River.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River.
Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name, you
Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of
Other se...Read more of this...
by
Angelou, Maya
...ake his aspect could disclose,
And now was fix'd in horrible repose.
They raise him — bear him: hush! he breathes, he speaks!
The swarthy blush recolours in his cheeks,
His lip resumes its red, his eye, though dim,
Rolls wide and wild, each slowly quivering limb
Recalls its function, but his words are strung
In terms that seem not of his native tongue;
Distinct but strange, enough they understand
To deem them accents of another land,
And such they were, and meant to...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...e homeless, the teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the tree.
Today, the first and last of every tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river.
Each of you, descendant of some passed on
Traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name,
You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca,
You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me,
Then forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of other seekers-...Read more of this...
by
Angelou, Maya
...we eat
Of this fair fruit, our doom is, we shall die!
How dies the Serpent? he hath eaten and lives,
And knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discerns,
Irrational till then. For us alone
Was death invented? or to us denied
This intellectual food, for beasts reserved?
For beasts it seems: yet that one beast which first
Hath tasted envies not, but brings with joy
The good befallen him, author unsuspect,
Friendly to man, far from deceit or guile.
What fear I then? rat...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ghest praises.
Sam: I hear the sound of words, thir sense the air
Dissolves unjointed e're it reach my ear.
Chor: Hee speaks, let us draw nigh. Matchless in might,
The glory late of Israel, now the grief;
We come thy friends and neighbours not unknown
From Eshtaol and Zora's fruitful Vale
To visit or bewail thee, or if better,
Counsel or Consolation we may bring,
Salve to thy Sores, apt words have power to swage
The tumors of a troubl'd mind,
And are as Balm to fester'd wo...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...elpless to stop your daisies from dying,
although your voice cries into the telephone:
Marry me! Marry me!
and my voice speaks onto these keys tonight:
The love is in dark trouble!
The love is starting to die,
right now--
we are in the process of it.
The empty process of it.
I see two deaths,
and the two men plod toward the mortuary of my heart,
and though I willed one away in court today
and I whisper dreams and birthdays into the other,
they both die like waves breaking ov...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...
Thine has a great hook nose like thine;
Mine has a snub nose like to mine.
Thine is the Friend of all Mankind;
Mine speaks in parables to the blind.
Thine loves the same world that mine hates;
Thy heaven doors are my hell gates.
Socrates taught what Meletus
Loath’d as a nation’s bitterest curse,
And Caiaphas was in his own mind
A benefactor to mankind.
Both read the Bible day and night,
But thou read’st black where I read white.
Was Jesus gentle, or did He
Give...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...any months, we have sailed many weeks,
(Four weeks to the month you may mark),
But never as yet ('tis your Captain who speaks)
Have we caught the least glimpse of a Snark!
"We have sailed many weeks, we have sailed many days,
(Seven days to the week I allow),
But a Snark, on the which we might lovingly gaze,
We have never beheld till now!
"Come, listen, my men, while I tell you again
The five unmistakable marks
By which you may know, wheresoever you go,
The warranted ...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
..., the homeless, the teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the tree.
Today, the first and last of every tree
Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river.
Each of you, descendant of some passed on
Traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name,
You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca,
You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me,
Then forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of other seekers--
Desper...Read more of this...
by
Angelou, Maya
...wide: the Clouds commixt,
With Stars, swift-gliding, sweep along the Sky.
All Nature reels. -- But hark! the Almighty speaks:
Instant, the chidden Storm begins to pant,
And dies, at once, into a noiseless Calm.
AS yet, 'tis Midnight's Reign; the weary Clouds,
Slow-meeting, mingle into solid Gloom:
Now, while the drousy World lies lost in Sleep,
Let me associate with the low-brow'd Night,
And Contemplation, her sedate Compeer;
Let me shake off th'intrusive Cares of Day,
An...Read more of this...
by
Thomson, James
...the publications of others, be they what they may?
I say nothing of the cowardice of such a proceeding, its meanness speaks for itself; but I wish to touch upon the motive, which is neither more nor less than that Mr. S. has been laughed at a little in some recent publications, as he was of yore in the 'Anti-jacobin,' by his present patrons. Hence all this 'skimble-scamble stuff' about 'Satanic,' and so forth. However, it is worthy of him — 'qualis ab incepto.'
If there ...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...ourish the arts there of joy.
With the image of life the eyes by the sculptor are ravished,
And by the chisel inspired, speaks e'en the sensitive stone.
Skies artificial repose on slender Ionian columns,
And a Pantheon includes all that Olympus contains.
Light as the rainbow's spring through the air, as the dart from the bowstring,
Leaps the yoke of the bridge over the boisterous stream.
But in his silent chamber the thoughtful sage is projecting
Magical circles, and steals ...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...ffin,
the
earth is swiftly shovel’d in,
The mound above is flatted with the spades—silence,
A minute—no one moves or speaks—it is done,
He is decently put away—is there anything more?
He was a good fellow, free-mouth’d, quick-temper’d, not bad-looking, able to
take his
own part, witty, sensitive to a slight, ready with life or death for a friend, fond of
women,
gambled, ate hearty, drank hearty, had known what it was to be flush, grew low-spirited
toward
the last,...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...d the cloverleaf turnoffs
'Souls eat souls in the general emptiness'
A piano concerto comes out a kitchen window
A yogi speaks at Ojai
'It's all taking pace in one mind'
On the lawn among the trees
lovers are listening
for the master to tell them they are one
with the universe
Eyes smell flowers and become them
There's a deathless hush
on the freeway tonight
as a Pacific tidal wave a mile high
sweeps in
Los Angeles breathes its last gas
and sinks into the sea like the Titanic...Read more of this...
by
Ferlinghetti, Lawrence
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