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Famous Sub Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...se,
(Th’ enamour’d laurels kiss her brows!)
 Led on the Loves and Graces:
She won each gaping burgess’ heart,
While he, sub rosa, played his part
 Amang their wives and lasses.


Craigdarroch led a light-arm’d core,
Tropes, metaphors, and figures pour,
 Like Hecla streaming thunder:
Glenriddel, skill’d in rusty coins,
Blew up each Tory’s dark designs,
 And bared the treason under.


In either wing two champions fought;
Redoubted Staig, who set at nought
 The wildest savage To...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert



...simul.
Ingens Virgineo spirat Gustavus in ore:
Agnoscas animos, fulmineumque Patrem.
Nulla suo nituit tam lucida Stella sub Axe;
Non Ea quae meruit Crimine Nympha Polum.
Ah quoties pavidum demisit conscia Lumen,
Utque suae timuit Parrhasis Ora Deae!
Et, simulet falsa ni Pictor imagine Vultus,
Delia tam similis nec fuit ipsa sibi.
Ni quod inornati Triviae sint forte Capilli,
Sollicita sed buic distribuantur Acu.
Scilicet ut nemo est illa reverentior aequi;
Haud ipsas igitur fe...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew
...l deremit;
But if Schmitt bust in der pizness, we collars der girl from Schmitt."

They passed one resolution: -- "Your sub-committee believe
You can lighten the curse of Adam when you've lightened the curse of Eve.
But till we are built like angels, with hammer and chisel and pen,
We will work for ourself and a woman, for ever and ever, amen."

Now this is the tale of the Council the German Kaiser held --
The day that they razored the Grindstone, the day that the Cat was bel...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard
...the people are very small and shrink,
dwarves on the way to netsuke hell
bound for a flea circus in full
retreat toward sub-atomic particles--
 difficult to keep in focus, the figures
at that end are nearly indistinguishable,
generals at the heads of minute armies
differing little from fishwives,
emperors the same as eskimos
huddled under improvisations of snow--
 eskimos, though, now have the advantage,
for it seems to be freezing there, a climate
which might explain the pop...Read more of this...
by Bradley, George
...he God or no?
Thus far and no farther? farther? be it so!
Now, enough of your chicane of prudent pauses,
Sage provisos, sub-intents and saving-clauses!

IX.

Ah, ``forgive'' you bid him? While God's champion lives,
Wrong shall be resisted: dead, why, he forgives.
But you must not end my friend ere you begin him;
Evil stands not crowned on earth, while breath is in him.

X.

Once more---Will the wronger, at this last of all,
Dare to say, ``I did wrong,'' rising in his fall?
No...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert



...into mists of cloud;
Corpselike and stark was the land, with a quiet that crushed and awed,
 And the stars of the weird sub-arctic glimmered over its shroud.

Deep in the trench of the valley two men stationed the Post,
 Seymour and Clancy the reckless, fresh from the long patrol;
Seymour, the sergeant, and Clancy--Clancy who made his boast
 He could cinch like a bronco the Northland, and cling to the prongs of the Pole.

Two lone men on detachment, standing for law on the tr...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...in the west,
She unobserved steals unto her throne,
And there she sits most meek and most alone;
As if she had not pomp subservient;
As if thine eye, high Poet! was not bent
Towards her with the Muses in thine heart;
As if the ministring stars kept not apart,
Waiting for silver-footed messages.
O Moon! the oldest shades 'mong oldest trees
Feel palpitations when thou lookest in:
O Moon! old boughs lisp forth a holier din
The while they feel thine airy fellowship.
Thou dost ble...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...to his gnawing head
That he no longer has a thing
To lose, and so can walk

Out into the open, in the full

Pale of the sub-Arctic sun
Where a single spruce tree is dying

Higher and higher. Let him climb it
With all his meanness and strength.
Lord, we have come to the end
Of this kind of vision of heaven,

As the sky breaks open

Its fans around him and shimmers
And into its northern gates he rises

Snarling complete in the joy of a weasel
With an elk's horned heart in his s...Read more of this...
by Dickey, James
...lothes for the others 
And chucking clods at referee! 

So next time selection committee 
Came round to ask him for his sub 
He told them if they didn’t play him, 
He’d transfer to some other club. 

Committee they coaxed and cudgelled him 
But found he’d have none of their shifts 
So they promised to play him next weekend 
In match against Todmorden Swifts. 

This match were the plum of the season 
An annual fixture it stood, 
‘T were reckoned as good as a cup tie 
By them a...Read more of this...
by Edgar, Marriott
...ard.
The King of Iceland's Eldest Son
Said, "Thank you! I am taking none!"
The Aged Duchess of Athlone
Remarked, in her sub-acid tone,
"I doubt if He is what we need!"
With which the Bishops all agreed;
And even Lady Mary Flood
(So kind, and oh! So really good)
Said, "No! He wouldn't do at all,
He'd make us feel a lot too small."
The Chamberlain said, "Well, well, well!
No doubt you're right. One cannot tell!"
He took his Gold and Diamond Pen
And scratched Godolphin out again...Read more of this...
by Belloc, Hilaire
...- they do remind me often
Of funerals, of weddings and of balls;
Their presence on tables for a dinner calls.

But sub-eternal roses' ever simple charm
Which was my solace when I was a child,
Has stayed - my heritage - a set of years behind,
Like Mozart's ever-living music's hum.
...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna
...certo!.

 Rispuosemi: «Non omo, omo gi? fui,

e li parenti miei furon lombardi,

mantoani per patria ambedui.

 Nacqui sub Iulio, ancor che fosse tardi,

e vissi a Roma sotto 'l buono Augusto

nel tempo de li d?i falsi e bugiardi.

 Poeta fui, e cantai di quel giusto

figliuol d'Anchise che venne di Troia,

poi che 'l superbo Ili?n fu combusto.

 Ma tu perch? ritorni a tanta noia?

perch? non sali il dilettoso monte

ch'? principio e cagion di tutta gioia?».

 «Or se' tu que...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante
...d me: "Not man; I once was man.
Both of my parents came from Lombardy,
and both claimed Mantua as native city.


Nacqui sub Iulio, ancor che fosse tardi,
e vissi a Roma sotto 'l buono Augusto
nel tempo de li d?i falsi e bugiardi .

And I was born, though late, sub Julio, 
and lived in Rome under the good Augustus- 
the season of the false and lying gods.


Poeta fui, e cantai di quel giusto
figliuol d'Anchise che venne di Troia,
poi che 'l superbo Ili?n fu combusto .

I was a...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante
...
Unshakeable, 
By its side 
The crazy vegetables 
Uncurled 
Their tendrills and leaf-crowns, 
Throbbing bulbs, 
In the sub-soil 
The carrot 
With its red mustaches 
Was sleeping, 
The grapevine 
Hung out to dry its branches 
Through which the wine will rise, 
The cabbage 
Dedicated itself 
To trying on skirts, 
The oregano 
To perfuming the world, 
And the sweet 
Artichoke 
There in the garden, 
Dressed like a warrior, 
Burnished 
Like a proud 
Pomegrante. 
And one day 
Side...Read more of this...
by Neruda, Pablo
...erse bone;
Which boys and bruckel'd children call
(Playing for points and pins) cockall.
Whose linen-drapery is a thin,
Sub|ile, and ductile codling's skin;
Which o'er the board is smoothly spread
With little seal-work damasked.
The fringe that circumbinds it, too,
Is spangle-work of trembling dew,
Which, gently gleaming, makes a show,
Like frost-work glitt'ring on the snow.
Upon this fetuous board doth stand
Something for shew-bread, and at hand
(Just in the middle of the al...Read more of this...
by Herrick, Robert
...When Julius Fabricius, Sub-Prefect of the Weald,
In the days of Diocletian owned our Lower River-field,
He called to him Hobdenius-a Briton of the Clay,
Saying: "What about that River-piece for layin'' in to hay?"

And the aged Hobden answered: "I remember as a lad
My father told your father that she wanted dreenin' bad.
An' the more that you neeglect her the less you'll get her c...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard
...III. For the Creche 

Form 8277059, Sub-Section K 

I remember my mother, the day that we met, 
A thing I shall never entirely forget; 
And I toy with the fancy that, young as I am, 
I should know her again if we met in a tram. 
But mother is happy in turning a crank 
That increases the balance in somebody's bank; 
And I feel satisfaction that mother is free 
From the sinister task of attendin...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K
...In the cold for almost a year, well-wishers pinning messages

To the tree she sat under - "Tityre, tu patulae recubans

Sub tegmine fagi" and twelve hundred and forty dons had

"The Pain Clinic" in a single day and she was fourteen

Times in the national press, a column in "The Guardian"

And a whole page with a picture in the 'Times Higher' -

"A Well Versed Protester"

JC, if you call Myslexia’s editor a ‘kick-**** virago’

You’ve got to expect a few kicks back.

All this i...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry
...ernoon
And an evening-morning pervades the dripping, weeping
Rain tree, and gushing, tumbling, sewerless rain drains
Sub-cutaneously eddy sampan fed, muddy, fingerless rivers
Down with crocodile logs to the Malacca Sea.

This is the land of stately dipterocarp, casuarina
And coco-palms reeding north easterly over ancient rites
Of turtle bound breeding sands.

This is the land of the chignoned swaying bottoms
Of sarong-kebaya, sari and cheongsam.
The residual perch...Read more of this...
by Wignesan, T
...at the bone
and the case we had against them was airtight,
both exits shoehorned shut with puddingstone,
but they had a sub-sub-basement out of range.

Next morning they turned up again, no worse
for the cyanide than we for our cigarettes
and state-store Scotch, all of us up to scratch.
They brought down the marigolds as a matter of course
and then took over the vegetable patch
nipping the broccoli shoots, beheading the carrots.

The food from our mouths, I said, righteously ...Read more of this...
by Kumin, Maxine

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry