Famous Specimen Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Stamp Collector

by Robert William Service
 My worldly wealth I hoard in albums three,
My life collection of rare postage stamps;
My room is cold and bare as you can see,
My coat is old and shabby as a tramp's;
Yet more to me than balances in banks,
My albums three are worth a million francs.

I keep them in that box beside my bed,
For who would dream such treasures it...Read more of this...

Jabed Meeker Humorist

by Ellis Parker Butler
 Twain? Oh, yes, I’ve heard Mark Twain
Heard him down to Pleasant Plain;
Funny? Yes, I guess so. Folks
Seemed to laugh loud at his jokes—
Laughed to beat the band; but I
Couldn’t rightly make out why.
Guess his humor ain’t refined.
Quite enough to suit my mind.
Mark’s all right—right clever speaker—
But he can’t touch Jabed Meeker;
And one thing that makes it *****
Is that Jabed...Read more of this...

Rhymed Distichs

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 RHYMED DISTICHS.

[The Distichs, of which these are given as a 
specimen, are about forty in number.]

WHO trusts in God,
Fears not His rod.

THIS truth may be by all believed:
Whom God deceives, is well deceived.

HOW? when? and where?--No answer comes from high;
Thou wait'st for the Because, and yet thou ask'st not Why?

IF the whole is ever to gladden thee,
That whole in...Read more of this...

How Beastly The Bourgeois Is

by D. H. Lawrence
 How beastly the bourgeois is
especially the male of the species--

Presentable, eminently presentable--
shall I make you a present of him?

Isn't he handsome? Isn't he healthy? Isn't he a fine specimen?
Doesn't he look the fresh clean Englishman, outside?
Isn't it God's own image? tramping his thirty miles a day
after partridges, or a little rubber ball?
wouldn't you like to be like that, well...Read more of this...

Elegy: Walking the Line

by Edgar Bowers
 Every month or so, Sundays, we walked the line,
The limit and the boundary. Past the sweet gum
Superb above the cabin, along the wall—
Stones gathered from the level field nearby
When first we cleared it. (Angry bumblebees
Stung the two mules. They kicked. Thirteen, I ran.)
And then the field: thread-leaf maple, deciduous
Magnolia, hybrid broom, and, further down,
In light shade, one Franklinia Alatamaha
In...Read more of this...

Fairy-Land

by Edgar Allan Poe
 Dim vales- and shadowy floods-
And cloudy-looking woods,
Whose forms we can't discover
For the tears that drip all over!
Huge moons there wax and wane-
Again- again- again-
Every moment of the night-
Forever changing places-
And they put out the star-light
With the breath from their pale faces.
About twelve by the moon-dial,
One more filmy than the rest
(A kind which, upon trial,
They have found to be the...Read more of this...

Tame Xenia

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 THE Epigrams bearing the title of XENIA were written 
by Goethe and Schiller together, having been first occasioned by 
some violent attacks made on them by some insignificant writers. 
They are extremely numerous, but scarcely any of them could be translated 
into English. Those here given are merely presented as a specimen.

GOD gave to mortals birth,

In his own image...Read more of this...

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