Famous Taken Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Taken from men -- this morning

by Emily Dickinson
 Taken from men -- this morning --
Carried by men today --
Met by the Gods with banners --
Who marshalled her away --

One little maid -- from playmates --
One little mind from school --
There must be guests in Eden --
All the rooms are full --

Far -- as the East from Even --
Dim -- as the border star --
Courtiers quaint, in Kingdoms
Our...Read more of this...

You may indeed be taken with lips tinted with the

by Omar Khayyam
You may indeed be taken with lips tinted with the
color of the ruby, you may indeed appreciate the cup of
wine, you may indeed call for the noise of the drum, the
sound of the harp and of the flute, but these are only
trifles. God is my witness, while you do not break the
bonds of this dark world, you nothing are....Read more of this...

Respondez!

by Walt Whitman
 RESPONDEZ! Respondez! 
(The war is completed—the price is paid—the title is settled beyond recall;) 
Let every one answer! let those who sleep be waked! let none evade! 
Must we still go on with our affectations and sneaking? 
Let me bring this to a close—I pronounce openly for a new distribution of roles;
Let that which stood in front go behind!...Read more of this...

Queen Matilda

by Marriott Edgar
 Henry the first, surnamed " Beauclare," 
Lost his only son William at sea,
So when Henry died it were hard to decide 
Who his heir and successor should be.

There were two runners-up for the title- 
His daughter Matilda was one,
And the other, a boy, known as Stephen of Blois, 
His young sister Adela's son.

Matilda by right should have had it,
Being...Read more of this...

Recompense

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Straight through my heart this fact to-day, 
By Truth’s own hand is driven: 
God never takes one thing away, 
But something else is given.

I did not know in earlier years, 
This law of love and kindness; 
I only mourned through bitter tears
My loss, in sorrow’s blindness.

But, ever following each regret
O’er some departed treasure, 
My sad repining heart was met
With...Read more of this...

The Wish to be Generous

by Wendell Berry
 ALL that I serve will die, all my delights,
the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
the silent lilies standing in the woods,
the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
will burn in man's evil, or dwindle
in its own age. Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
my little light taken from me...Read more of this...

The Garden of Janus

by Aleister Crowley
 I

The cloud my bed is tinged with blood and foam.
The vault yet blazes with the sun
Writhing above the West, brave hippodrome
Whose gladiators shock and shun
As the blue night devours them, crested comb
Of sleep's dead sea
That eats the shores of life, rings round eternity!

II

So, he is gone whose giant sword shed flame
Into my bowels; my blood's bewitched;
My brain's afloat with...Read more of this...

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, 
And sorry I could not travel both 
And be one traveler, long I stood 
And looked down one as far as I could 
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 

Then took the other, as just as fair, 
And having perhaps the better claim 
Because it was grassy and wanted wear; 
Though as...Read more of this...

For Jane

by Charles Bukowski
 225 days under grass
and you know more than I.
they have long taken your blood,
you are a dry stick in a basket.
is this how it works?
in this room
the hours of love 
still make shadows.

when you left
you took almost
everything.
I kneel in the nights 
before tigers
that will not let me be.

what you were 
will not happen again.
the tigers have found me
and I...Read more of this...

One Step Backward Taken

by Robert Frost
 Not only sands and gravels
Were once more on their travels,
But gulping muddy gallons
Great boulders off their balance
Bumped heads together dully
And started down the gully.
Whole capes caked off in slices.
I felt my standpoint shaken
In the universal crisis.
But with one step backward taken
I saved myself from going.
A world torn loose went by me.
Then the rain stopped and the blowing,
And the sun...Read more of this...

Of all those who have taken the long road, who is there

by Omar Khayyam
Of all those who have taken the long road, who is there
now returned of whom I may ask news? O friend! beware
of putting any hope whatever in this sordid world,
for, know well that thou here shalt ne'er return....Read more of this...

The Good Part That Shall Not Be Taken Away

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 She dwells by Great Kenhawa's side,
In valleys green and cool;
And all her hope and all her pride
Are in the village school.

Her soul, like the transparent air
That robes the hills above,
Though not of earth, encircles there
All things with arms of love.

And thus she walks among her girls
With praise and mild rebukes;
Subduing e'en rude village churls
By her angelic looks.

She reads to...Read more of this...

The Relic Taken What Avails The Shrine?

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 THE relic taken, what avails the shrine?
The locket, pictureless? O heart of mine,
Art thou not worse than that,
Still warm, a vacant nest where love once sat?

Her image nestled closer at my heart
Than cherished memories, healed every smart
And warmed it more than wine
Or the full summer sun in noon-day shine.

This was the little weather gleam that lit
The cloudy promontories -...Read more of this...

The Snow Fairy

by Claude McKay
 I 

Throughout the afternoon I watched them there, 
Snow-fairies falling, falling from the sky, 
Whirling fantastic in the misty air, 
Contending fierce for space supremacy. 
And they flew down a mightier force at night, 
As though in heaven there was revolt and riot, 
And they, frail things had taken panic flight 
Down to the calm earth seeking peace and...Read more of this...

pain is a foreign language

by Razvan Tupa
a romanian body knows how to sidestep decisions it feels
that in such cases it can no longer justify its comfortable suffering
for this with your entire body you must stay here until it’s very late
you can be a keychain or a gummed sticker
but one day the music of breathing will disappear
all on its own

or conversely

my hands ready to receive silence
like a...Read more of this...

The Widening Spell Of Leaves

by Larry Levis
 --The Carpathian Frontier, October, 1968
 --for my brother

Once, in a foreign country, I was suddenly ill.
I was driving south toward a large city famous
For so little it had a replica, in concrete,
In two-thirds scale, of the Arc de Triomphe stuck
In the midst of traffic, & obstructing it.
But the city was hours away, beyond the hills
Shaped like the bodies of...Read more of this...

The Unknown Citizen

by Wystan Hugh (W H) Auden
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to beOne against whom there was no official complaint,And all the reports on his conduct agreeThat, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was asaint,For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.Except for the War till the day he retiredHe worked in a factory and never got fired,But...Read more of this...

A Lovers Quarrel

by Robert Browning
 I.

Oh, what a dawn of day!
How the March sun feels like May!
All is blue again
After last night's rain,
And the South dries the hawthorn-spray.
Only, my Love's away!
I'd as lief that the blue were grey,

II.

Runnels, which rillets swell,
Must be dancing down the dell,
With a foaming head
On the beryl bed
Paven smooth as a hermit's cell;
Each with a tale to tell,
Could my Love...Read more of this...

A Ballad of Death

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Kneel down, fair Love, and fill thyself with tears,
Girdle thyself with sighing for a girth
Upon the sides of mirth,
Cover thy lips and eyelids, let thine ears
Be filled with rumour of people sorrowing;
Make thee soft raiment out of woven sighs
Upon the flesh to cleave,
Set pains therein and many a grievous thing,
And many sorrows after each his wise
For armlet and for...Read more of this...

My Mother On An Evening In Late Summer

by Mark Strand
 1
When the moon appears
and a few wind-stricken barns stand out
in the low-domed hills
and shine with a light
that is veiled and dust-filled
and that floats upon the fields,
my mother, with her hair in a bun,
her face in shadow, and the smoke
from their cigarette coiling close
to the faint yellow sheen of her dress,
stands hear the house
and watches the seepage of late light
down...Read more of this...

On The Late Indecent Liberties Taken With The Remains Of Milton

by William Cowper
 "Me too, perchance, in future days,
The sculptured stone shall show,
With Paphian myrtle or with bays
Parnassian on my brow.

But I, or e'er that season come,
Escaped from every care,
Shall reach my refuge in the tomb,
And sleep securely there."

So sang, in Roman tone and style,
The youthful bard, ere long
Ordained to grace his native isle
With her sublimest song.

Who then but must conceive disdain,
Hearing...Read more of this...

Last Lines

by Anne Bronte
 Jan 7th

A dreadful darkness closes in
On my bewildered mind;
O let me suffer and not sin,
Be tortured yet resigned. 

Through all this world of whelming mist
Still let me look to Thee,
And give me courage to resist
The Tempter till he flee.

Weary I am -- O give me strength
And leave me not to faint;
Say Thou wilt comfort me at length
And pity my...Read more of this...

To My Own Minature Picture Taken At Two Years Of Age

by Robert Southey
 And I was once like this! that glowing cheek
Was mine, those pleasure-sparkling eyes, that brow
Smooth as the level lake, when not a breeze
Dies o'er the sleeping surface! twenty years
Have wrought strange alteration! Of the friends
Who once so dearly prized this miniature,
And loved it for its likeness, some are gone
To their last home; and some, estranged in heart,
Beholding me with...Read more of this...

Sonnets CXVI: Let me not to the marriage of true minds

by William Shakespeare
 Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and...Read more of this...

Aztec Mask

by Carl Sandburg
 I wanted a man's face looking into the jaws and throat
of life
With something proud on his face, so proud no smash
of the jaws,
No gulp of the throat leaves the face in the end
With anything else than the old proud look:
Even to the finish, dumped in the dust,
Lost among the used-up cinders,
This face, men would say, is a flash,
Is laid...Read more of this...

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