Famous Suits Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Reverie of Mahomed Akram at the Tamarind Tank

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   The Desert is parched in the burning sun
   And the grass is scorched and white.
   But the sand is passed, and the march is done,
   We are camping here to-night.
        I sit in the shade of the Temple walls,
     ...Read more of this...

The Hard Times In Elfland

by Sidney Lanier
 A Story of Christmas Eve.

Strange that the termagant winds should scold
The Christmas Eve so bitterly!
But Wife, and Harry the four-year-old,
Big Charley, Nimblewits, and I,

Blithe as the wind was bitter, drew
More frontward of the mighty fire,
Where wise Newfoundland Fan foreknew
The heaven that Christian dogs desire --

Stretched o'er the rug, serene and grave,
Huge nose on heavy paws reclined,
With never a drowning...Read more of this...

The Advice

by Thomas Chatterton
 Revolving in their destin'd sphere, 
The hours begin another year 
As rapidly to fly; 
Ah! think, Maria, (e'er in grey 
Those auburn tresses fade away
So youth and beauty die. 
Tho' now the captivating throng 
Adore with flattery and song, 
And all before you bow; 
Whilst unattentive to the strain, 
You hear the humble muse complain, 
Or wreathe your frowning...Read more of this...

The Choirmasters Burial

by Thomas Hardy
 He often would ask us
That, when he died,
After playing so many
To their last rest,
If out of us any
Should here abide,
And it would not task us,
We would with our lutes
Play over him
By his grave-brim
The psalm he liked best—
The one whose sense suits
"Mount Ephraim"—
And perhaps we should seem
To him, in Death's dream,
Like the seraphim.

As soon as I knew
That his spirit was...Read more of this...

Hamatreya

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint, 
Possessed the land which rendered to their toil 
Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool and wood. 
Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm, 
Saying, "'Tis mine, my children's and my name's. 
How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees! 
How graceful climb those shadows on my hill! 
I fancy...Read more of this...

Canzone I

by Francesco Petrarch
CANZONE I. Che debb' io far? che mi consigli, Amore? HE ASKS COUNSEL OF LOVE, WHETHER HE SHOULD FOLLOW LAURA, OR STILL ENDURE EXISTENCE.  What should I do? what, Love, dost thou advise?Full time it is to die:And longer than I wish have I delay'd.My mistress is no more, and with her...Read more of this...

Turns

by Tony Harrison
 I thought it made me look more 'working class'
(as if a bit of chequered cloth could bridge that gap!)
I did a turn in it before the glass.
My mother said: It suits you, your dad's cap.
(She preferred me to wear suits and part my hair:
You're every bit as good as that lot are!)

All the pension queue came out to stare.
Dad...Read more of this...

Friendship Between Ephelia And Ardelia

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 Eph. What Friendship is, ARDELIA shew. 
Ard. 'Tis to love, as I love You. 
Eph. This Account, so short (tho' kind)
Suits not my enquiring Mind. 
Therefore farther now repeat; 
What is Friendship when complete? 
Ard. 'Tis to share all Joy and Grief; 
'Tis to lend all due Relief
From the Tongue, the Heart, the Hand; 
'Tis to mortgage House and...Read more of this...

Not in this World to see his face

by Emily Dickinson
 Not in this World to see his face --
Sounds long -- until I read the place
Where this -- is said to be
But just the Primer -- to a life --
Unopened -- rare -- Upon the Shelf --
Clasped yet -- to Him -- and Me --

And yet -- My Primer suits me so
I would not choose -- a Book to...Read more of this...

The Congo: A Study of the Negro Race

by Vachel Lindsay
 I. THEIR BASIC SAVAGERY

Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, 
A deep rolling bass.
Pounded on the table,
Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,
Hard as they were able,
Boom, boom, BOOM,
With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.
THEN I had religion, THEN...Read more of this...

Sonnet XLII: Oh! Canst Thou Bear

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Oh! can'st thou bear to see this faded frame,
Deform'd and mangled by the rocky deep?
Wilt thou remember, and forbear to weep,
My fatal fondness, and my peerless fame?
Soon o'er this heart, now warm with passion's flame,
The howling winds and foamy waves shall sweep;
Those eyes be ever clos'd in death's cold sleep,
And all of Sappho perish, but her name!
Yet, if the...Read more of this...

Jet

by Tony Hoagland
 Sometimes I wish I were still out
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel
with the boys, getting louder and louder
as the empty cans drop out of our paws
like booster rockets falling back to Earth

and we soar up into the summer stars.
Summer. The big sky river rushes overhead,
bearing asteroids and mist, blind fish
and old space suits with skeletons inside.
On Earth, men...Read more of this...

however grown up

by Rg Gregory
 six...six...why only yesterday
it seems that fist shot out
that one eye winked...and yet
now that this day's arrived
it really is as if six years
have blinked - and you've sprung
through a thousand instant snaps
into this boy whose tongue
can't help but say thought not thinked
who's no longer to be fed
with ideas any more than food
will pick and choose as he wishes
will draw with...Read more of this...

The Sun is gay or stark

by Emily Dickinson
 The Sun is gay or stark
According to our Deed.
If Merry, He is merrier --
If eager for the Dead

Or an expended Day
He helped to make too bright
His mighty pleasure suits Us not
It magnifies our Freight...Read more of this...

Nature Study

by Craig Raine
 (for Rona, Jeremy, Sam & Grace)

All the lizards are asleep--
perched pagodas with tiny triangular tiles,
each milky lid a steamed-up window.
Inside, the heart repeats itself like a sleepy gong,
summoning nothing to nothing.

In winter time, the zoo reverts to metaphor,
God's poetry of boredom:
the cobra knits her Fair-Isle skin,
rattlers titter over the same joke.
All of them endlessly finish spaghetti.
The python runs down...Read more of this...

Hay and Hell and Booligal

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 "You come and see me, boys," he said; 
"You'll find a welcome and a bed 
And whisky any time you call; 
Although our township hasn't got 
The name of quite a lively spot -- 
You see, I live in Booligal. 
"And people have an awful down 
Upon the district and the town -- 
Which worse than hell itself the...Read more of this...

Praise for Faith

by William Cowper
 Of all the gifts Thine hand bestows,
Thou Giver of all good!
Not heaven itself a richer knows
Than my Redeemer's blood.

Faith too, the blood-receiving grace,
From the same hand we gain;
Else, sweetly as it suits our case,
That gift had been in vain.

Till Thou Thy teaching power apply,
Our hearts refuse to see,
And weak, as a distemper'd eye,
Shut out the view of Thee.

Blind to...Read more of this...

My heart

by Frank O'Hara
I'm not going to cry all the time
nor shall I laugh all the time 
I don't prefer one "strain" to another 
I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie 
not just a sleeper but also the big 
over-produced first-run kind. I want to be
at least as alive as the vulgar. And if
some aficionado of my mess says "That's
not like Frank!"...Read more of this...

The Merchantmen

by Rudyard Kipling
 King Solomon drew merchantmen,
 Because of his desire
 For peacocks, apes, and ivory,
 From Tarshish unto Tyre,
 With cedars out of Lebanon
 Which Hiram rafted down;
 But we be only sailormen
 That use in London town.

Coastwise -- cross-seas -- round the world and back again --
 Where the paw shall head us or the full Trade suits --
Plain-sail --...Read more of this...

Clothes

by Anne Sexton
 Put on a clean shirt
before you die, some Russian said.
Nothing with drool, please,
no egg spots, no blood,
no sweat, no sperm.
You want me clean, God,
so I'll try to comply.

The hat I was married in,
will it do?
White, broad, fake flowers in a tiny array.
It's old-fashioned, as stylish as a bedbug,
but is suits to die in something nostalgic.

And I'll take
my painting shirt
washed...Read more of this...

The Old Men Used to Sing

by Alice Walker
The old men used to sing
And lifted a brother
Carefully
Out the door
I used to think they
Were born
Knowing how to
Gently swing
A casket
They shuffled softly
Eyes dry
More awkward
With the flowers
Than with the widow
After they'd put the
Body in
And stood around waiting
In their
Brown suits. ...Read more of this...

The Whitsun Weddings

by Philip Larkin
 That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
 Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday 
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran 
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence 
The river's level drifting breadth began, 
Where sky and Lincolnshire and...Read more of this...

Richard Coeur de Lion

by Marriott Edgar
 Richard the First, Coeur-de-Lion, 
Is a name that we speak of with pride, 
Though he only lived six months in England
From his birth to the day that he died. 

He spent all his time fighting battles, 
Dressed up in most rigid attire, 
For he had his suits made by the Blacksmith, 
And his underwear knitted of wire. 

He married...Read more of this...

The Palace of Humbug

by Lewis Carroll
 Lays of Mystery,
Imagination, and Humor 

Number 1 

I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And each damp thing that creeps and crawls
Went wobble-wobble on the walls. 

Faint odours of departed cheese,
Blown on the dank, unwholesome breeze,
Awoke the never ending sneeze. 

Strange pictures decked the arras drear,
Strange characters of woe and fear,
The humbugs of the social sphere. 

One showed a vain...Read more of this...

Memories of West Street and Lepke

by Robert Lowell
Only teaching on Tuesdays, book-worming
in pajamas fresh from the washer each morning,
I hog a whole house on Boston's 
"hardly passionate Marlborough Street,"
where even the man
scavenging filth in the back alley trash cans,
has two children, a beach wagon, a helpmate,
and is "a young Republican."
I have a nine months' daughter,
young enough to be my granddaughter.
Like the sun she rises in her flame-flamingo...Read more of this...

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