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Famous Surviving Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Akhmatova, Anna
...the temples – rich and thriving…
But sank in thoughts, and said with lighted face,
“You just provide the Bard Home’s surviving.”
...Read more of this...



by Kunitz, Stanley
...nd father I had none.

The sands whispered, Be separate,
the stones taught me, Be hard.
I dance, for the joy of surviving,
on the edge of the road....Read more of this...

by Petrarch, Francesco
...BALLATA I. Amor, quando fioria. HIS GRIEF AT SURVIVING HER IS MITIGATED BY THE CONSCIOUSNESS THAT SHE NOW KNOWS HIS HEART.  Yes, Love, at that propitious timeWhen hope was in its bloomy prime,And when I vainly fancied nighThe meed of all my con...Read more of this...

by Betjeman, John
...miles of black glass facia
And traffic thunder through.

And if there is some scenery,
Some unpretentious greenery,
Surviving anywhere,
It does not need protecting
For soon we'll be erecting
A Power Station there.

When all our roads are lighted
By concrete monsters sited
Like gallows overhead,
Bathed in the yellow vomit
Each monster belches from it,
We'll know that we are dead....Read more of this...

by Shakur, Tupac
...by the indians
slavery was a learning phase
forgotten with out a verdict
while justice is on a rampage
4 endangered surviving black males
i mean really if anyone really valued life
and cared about the masses
theyd take em both 2 pen optical
and get 2 pair of glasses...Read more of this...



by Clare, John
...in their blooming beds
Thus stript of boughs and bark in white
Their trunks shine in the mellow light
Beneath the green surviving trees
That wave above them in the breeze
And waking whispers slowly bends
As if they mournd their fallen friends
Each morning now the weeders meet
To cut the thistle from the wheat
And ruin in the sunny hours
Full many wild weeds of their flowers
Corn poppys that in crimson dwell
Calld 'head achs' from their sickly smell
And carlock yellow as the s...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...ace, who long have sold
Their souls and consciences for gold;
Who wish to stab their country's vitals,
Could they enjoy surviving titles;
With pride behold our mischiefs brewing,
Insult and triumph in our ruin?
Priests, who, if satan should sit down
To make a bible of his own,
Would gladly, for the sake of mitres,
Turn his inspired and sacred writers;
Lawyers, who, should he wish to prove
His claim to his old seat above,
Would, if his cause he'd give them fees in,
Bring writs...Read more of this...

by Betjeman, John
...ghts Elaine;
Hurries down the concrete station
With a frown of concentration,
Out into the outskirt's edges
Where a few surviving hedges
Keep alive our lost Elysium - rural Middlesex again.

Well cut Windsmoor flapping lightly,
Jacqmar scarf of mauve and green
Hiding hair which, Friday nightly,
Delicately drowns in Dreen;
Fair Elaine the bobby-soxer,
Fresh-complexioned with Innoxa,
Gains the garden - father's hobby -
Hangs her Windsmoor in the lobby,
Settles down to sandw...Read more of this...

by Campbell, Thomas
...

And Love's own strain to him was given,
To warble all its ecstacies
With Pythian words unsought, unwilled,—
Love, the surviving gift of Heaven
The choicest sweet of Paradise,
In life's else bitter cup distilled.

Who that has melted o'er his lay
To Mary's soul, in Heaven above ,
But pictured sees, in fancy strong,
The landscape and the livelong day
That smiled upon their mutual love ?
Who that has felt forgets the song ?

Nor skilled one flame alone to fan:
His country'...Read more of this...

by Carver, Raymond
...nto the river. One thing he'll do is learn
to tie his own flies. Maybe he should give
more money to each of his surviving
family members. The ones who already expect a little
something in the mail first of each month.
Every time they write they tell him
they're coming up short. He counts heads on his fingers
and finds they're all survivng. So what
if he'd rather be remembered in the dreams of strangers?
He raises his eyes to the skylights where rain
ha...Read more of this...

by Eluard, Paul
...cret
Plundered of their master's builders
All their thinkers all their ghosts 

Fields pattern of emerald
Bright living surviving
The harvest of the sky over our earth
Feeds my voice I dream and weep
I laugh and dream among the flames
Among the clusters of the sun 

And over my body your body spreads
The sheet of it's bright mirror....Read more of this...

by Stevens, Wallace
...et it survives in its own form, 
414 Beyond these changes, good, fat, guzzly fruit. 
415 So Crispin hasped on the surviving form, 
416 For him, of shall or ought to be in is. 

417 Was he to bray this in profoundest brass 
418 Arointing his dreams with fugal requiems? 
419 Was he to company vastest things defunct 
420 With a blubber of tom-toms harrowing the sky? 
421 Scrawl a tragedian's testament? Prolong 
422 His active force in an inactive dirge, 
423 W...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...pt so even that they neither got ahead. 
And the Cuff and Collar Captain, when he tumbled off to die, 
Was the last surviving player -- so the game was called a tie. 

Then the Captain of the Geebungs raised him slowly from the ground, 
Though his wounds were mostly mortal, yet he fiercely gazed around; 
There was no one to oppose him -- all the rest were in a trance, 
So he scrambled on his pony for his last expiring chance, 
For he meant to make an effort to get vic...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...is face to heaven,
Fallen Hassan lies - his unclosed eye
Yet lowering on his enemy,
As if the hour that sealed his fate
Surviving left his quenchless hate;
And o'er him bends that foe with brow
As dark as his that bled below.


'Yes, Leila sleeps beneath the wave,
But his shall be a redder grave;
Her spirit pointed well the steel
Which taught that felon heart to feel.
He called the Prophet, but his power
Was vain against the vengeful Giaour:
He called on Allah - but t...Read more of this...

by Verhaeren, Emile
...h,
There sojourneth
A man who toils, and has toiled for aye.
Digging the dried-up ground all day.


Some willows, surviving their own dead selves.
Weep there around him as he delves.
And a few poor flowers, disconsolate
Because the tempest and wind and wet
Vex them with ceaseless scourge and fret.


The ground is nothing but pits and cones,
Deep graves in every corner yawn;
The frost in the winter cracks the stones,
And when the summer in June is born
One hea...Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...of an ancient pastoral 
in those shires of the island where the cattle drank 
their pools of shadow from an older sky, 
surviving from when the landscape copied such objects as 
"Herefords at Sunset in the valley of the Wye." 
The mountain water that fell white from the mill wheel 
sprinkling like petals from the star-apple trees, 
and all of the windmills and sugar mills moved by mules 
on the treadmill of Monday to Monday, would repeat 
in tongues of water and wind and ...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...r>

"And ye, with them, will perish one by one.
If I must sigh to think that this shall be,
If I must weep when the surviving Sun
Shall smile on your decay--oh ask not me
To love you till your little race is run;
I cannot die as ye must.--Over me
Your leaves shall glance--the streams in which ye dwell
Shall be my paths henceforth; and so farewell."

She spoke and wept. The dark and azure well
Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears,
And every little ci...Read more of this...

by Marvell, Andrew
...ual fate,
Before thou couldst great Charles his death relate.
But what will deeper wound thy little mind,
Hast left surviving Davenant still behind
Who laughs to see in this thy death renew'd,
Right Romane poverty and gratitude.
Poor Poet thou, and grateful Senate they,
Who thy last Reckoning did so largely pay.
And with the publick gravity would come,
When thou hadst drunk thy last to lead thee home.
If that can be thy home where Spencer lyes
And reverend Cha...Read more of this...

by Justice, Donald
...ivid with all the Master simply won't tell you.

How frail our generation has got, how sallow
and pinched with just surviving! We all go off the deep end
finally, gold beaten thinly out to yellow.
And why this is, I'll never be able to tell you....Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...wn of the slum,
And the poor little children that's cradled in crime.
Sure I see them in terms of my pitiful worms,
surviving despite desperation and doom,
And I wish I was God, with a smile and a nod
To set them all down in a valley of bloom,
Saying: "Let these rejoice with a wonderful voice
For mothering earth and for fathering sea,
And healing of sun, for each weariful one
Of these poor human worms is a wee bit of me. . . .
Let your be the blame and you...Read more of this...

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