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Famous Spends Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Carroll, Lewis
...The lover, if for certain days
His fair one be denied his gaze,
Sinks not in grief and wild amaze,
But, wiser wooer,
He spends the time in writing lays,
And posts them to her.

And if the verse flow free and fast,
Till even the poet is aghast,
A touching Valentine at last
The post shall carry,
When thirteen days are gone and past
Of February.

Farewell, dear friend, and when we meet,
In desert waste or crowded street,
Perhaps before this week shall fleet,
Perhaps to-m...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...iendly hand toward the future. 

Bravas to all impulses sending sane children to the next age! 
But damn that which spends itself, with no thought of the stain, pains, dismay, feebleness
 it
 is bequeathing.

9
I listened to the Phantom by Ontario’s shore, 
I heard the voice arising, demanding bards; 
By them, all native and grand—by them alone can The States be fused into the compact
 organism of a Nation. 

To hold men together by paper and seal, or by compulsio...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...t there. 
He leaves his towers and gorgeous palaces 
To build the trimmest house in Stratford town; 


Saves money, spends it, owns the worth of things, 
Giulio Romano's pictures, Dowland's lute; 
Enjoys a show, respects the puppets, too, 
And none more, had he seen its entry once, 
Than "Pandulph, of fair Milan cardinal." 
Why then should I who play that personage, 
The very Pandulph Shakespeare's fancy made, 
Be told that had the poet chanced to start 
From where I ...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...en I have a mind: 
This Quiet, all it hath a mind to, doth. 
'Esteemeth stars the outposts of its couch, 
But never spends much thought nor care that way. 
It may look up, work up,--the worse for those 
It works on! 'Careth but for Setebos 
The many-handed as a cuttle-fish, 
Who, making Himself feared through what He does, 
Looks up, first, and perceives he cannot soar 
To what is quiet and hath happy life; 
Next looks down here, and out of very spite 
Makes this a ba...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...
And strains, from hard-bound brains, eight lines a year:
He, who still wanting, though he lives on theft,
Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left:
And he, who now to sense, now nonsense leaning,
Means not, but blunders round about a meaning:
And he, whose fustian's so sublimely bad,
It is not poetry, but prose run mad:
All these, my modest satire bade translate,
And own'd, that nine such poets made a Tate.
How did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe?
And s...Read more of this...



by Gregory, Rg
...e-tag in exchange and marts

who wants mathematics in a singing lark
(oh it’s there all right – it’s not what listening spends)
the mystic truth lies somewhere in the heart – 
lies (you see) - all best truth has the bends
it’s blood not thought that asks the muse to heark

no artist helps – no doughty horse but cart
receptacle for undeciphered legends
science hunts (it’s art that haunts) the quark...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ther faith"--thus much I spoke
And noting he replied not, added: "See
This lovely child, blithe, innocent and free;
She spends a happy time with little care,
While we to such sick thoughts subjected are
As came on you last night. It is our will
That thus enchains us to permitted ill.
We might be otherwise. We might be all
We dream of happy, high, majestical.
Where is the love, beauty, and truth we seek
But in our mind? and if we were not weak
Should we be less...Read more of this...

by Crane, Hart
...are,--
The only worth all granting.

It is to be learned--
This cleaving and this burning,
But only by the one who 
Spends out himself again.

Twice and twice
(Again the smoking souvenir,
Bleeding eidolon!) and yet again.
Until the bright logic is won
Unwhispering as a mirror
Is believed.

Then, drop by caustic drop, a perfect cry
Shall string some constant harmony,--
Relentless caper for all those who step
The legend of their youth into the noon....Read more of this...

by Brecht, Bertolt
..., dear.
Bet you Mackie's back in town.

Louie Miller disappeared, dear
After drawing out his cash;
And Macheath spends like a sailor.
Did our boy do something rash?

Sukey Tawdry, Jenny Diver,
Polly Peachum, Lucy Brown
Oh, the line forms on the right, dear
Now that Mackie's back in town....Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...e
cannot be happy. The Emperor smarts under the thought 
of her ingratitude.
What could he do more? And yet she spends, spends as 
never before.
It is ridiculous. Can she not enjoy life at a smaller 
figure?
Was ever monarch plagued with so extravagant an ex-wife. She 
owes
her chocolate-merchant, her candle-merchant, her sweetmeat purveyor;
her grocer, her butcher, her poulterer; her architect, and the shopkeeper
who sells her rouge; her perfumer, her dre...Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...e of death looking for corpses,
it is the needle of death looking for thread.

Death is inside the folding cots:
it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,
in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:
it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets,
and the beds go sailing toward a port
where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral....Read more of this...

by Taylor, Marilyn L
...the scythe will sweep for Jeanne
and Angela, Patricia and Diane—
pause, and return for Karen and Christine
while Susan spends a sleepless night again. 
 Ah, Debra, how can you be growing old? 
 Jennifer, Michelle, your hands are cold....Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...>
He's seen a lot; he's bound to see the rest,
 and if I protest

Le Roy answers with a frown,
"Darling, when I earns I spends.
The world is wide; it still extends....
I'm going to get a job in the next town."
Le Roy, you're earning too much money now.

 II

The time has come to call a halt;
 and so it ends.
 He's gone off with his other friends.
 He needn't try to make amends,
this occasion's all his fault.
 Through rain and dark I see...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...s name is Jock MacPherson, and he lives on Boulder Creek;
An old-time hard-rock miner, and a wild and wastrel loon,
Who spends his nights in glory, playing pibrochs to the moon.
I'll seek him out; beyond a doubt on next Saint Andrew's night
We'll proudly hear the pipes to cheer and charm our appetite.

Oh lads were neat and lassies sweet who graced Saint Andrew's Ball;
But there was none so full of fun as Treasurer MacCall.
And as Maloney's rag-time bank struck up...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...ort base
Reach to their end by steps well understood. 
Me whom thou sawest of late strive with the pains
Of one who spends his strength to rule his nerve,
--Even as a painter breathlessly who stains
His scarcely moving hand lest it should swerve--
Behold me, now that I have cast my chains,
Master of the art which for thy sake I serve.


2
For thou art mine: and now I am ashamed
To have uséd means to win so pure acquist,
And of my trembling fear that might have misst
T...Read more of this...

by Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...s.

Patron thou art to ev'ry gross Abuse,
The sullen Husband's feign'd Excuse,
When the ill Humour with his Wife he spends,
And bears recruited Wit, and Spirits to his Friends. 
The Son of Bacchus pleads thy Pow'r, 
As to the Glass he still repairs,
Pretends but to remove thy Cares,
Snatch from thy Shades one gay, and smiling Hour,
And drown thy Kingdom in a purple Show'r. 
When the Coquette, whom ev'ry Fool admires,
Wou'd in Variety be Fair,
And, changing hastily...Read more of this...

by Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...ney in the Town 
Than bought, when need requir'd, a Gown; 
Which way of Living much offends 
The Alderman, who gets and spends, 
And grudges him the Vital Air, 
Who drives no Trade, and takes no Care. 
Why Bookworm! to him once he cry'd, 
Why, setting thus the World aside, 
Dost thou thy useless Time consume, 
Enclos'd within a lonely Room, 
And poring damnify thy Wit, 
'Till not for Men, or Manners fit ? 
Hop'st thou, with urging of thy Vein, 
To spin a Fortune from thy ...Read more of this...

by Scannell, Vernon
...d their hope stuffed and put on the mantelpiece 
But found, after a while, that they did not notice it. 

While she spends many hours looking in the bottoms of teacups 
He reads much about association football 
And waits for the marvellous envelope to fall: 
Their eyes are strangers and they rarely speak. 
They did not expect this....Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...beneath that lady's foot
Rather than trample under mine
The laurels of the Florentine,
And you shall see how the devil spends
A fire God gave for other ends!
I tell you, I stride up and down
This garret, crowned with love's best crown,
And feasted with love's perfect feast,
To think I kill for her, at least,
Body and soul and peace and fame,
Alike youth's end and manhood's aim,
---So is my spirit, as flesh with sin,
Filled full, eaten out and in
With the face of her, the eye...Read more of this...

by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...th the repression,
And strives with plenitude of bitter pain,
There lives a thought that clamors for expression,
And spends its undelivered force in vain.
What boots it that some other may have thought it?
The right of thoughts' expression is divine;
The price of pain I pay for it has bought it,
I care not who lays claim to it—'t is mine!
And yet not mine until it be delivered;
The manner of its birth shall prove the test.
Alas, alas, my rock of pride is shivered—
...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs