Famous Teach Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Madmen

by Billy Collins
 They say you can jinx a poem
if you talk about it before it is done.
If you let it out too early, they warn,
your poem will fly away,
and this time they are absolutely right.

Take the night I mentioned to you
I wanted to write about the madmen,
as the newspapers so blithely call them,
who attack art, not in reviews,
but with breadknives and...Read more of this...

Sonnet XLIII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XLIII. Quel rosignuol che sì soave piagne. THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE REMINDS HIM OF HIS UNHAPPY LOT.  Yon nightingale, whose bursts of thrilling tone,Pour'd in soft sorrow from her tuneful throat,Haply her mate or infant brood bemoan,Filling the fields and skies with pity's note;Here lingering till the long long...Read more of this...

Forbearance

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Hast thou named all the birds without a gun;
Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk;
At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse;
Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust;
And loved so well a high behavior
In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained,
Nobility more nobly to repay?—
O be my friend, and teach me to be thine!...Read more of this...

For a Naughty Little Girl

by Ann Taylor
 My sweet little girl should be cheerful and mild
She must not be fretful and cry! 
Oh! why is this passion? remember, my child, 
GOD sees you, who lives in the sky. 

That dear little face, that I like so to kiss, 
How alter'd and sad it appears!
Do you think I can love you so naughty as this, 
Or kiss...Read more of this...

Omar! of burning heart, perchance to burn

by Omar Khayyam
Omar! of burning heart, perchance to burn
In hell, and feed its bale-fires in thy turn,
Presume not to teach Allah clemency,
For who art thou to teach, or He to learn?...Read more of this...

Captain Teach alias Black Beard

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Edward Teach was a native of Bristol, and sailed from that port
On board a privateer, in search of sport,
As one of the crew, during the French War in that station,
And for personal courage he soon gained his Captain's approbation. 

'Twas in the spring of 1717, Captajn Harnigold and Teach sailed from Providence
For the continent of America, and no further...Read more of this...

Stalk Me

by Maggie Estep
 Liner Notes - (from Love Is A Dog From Hell)

My friend Jenny is really
worried that people are going to follow me around and send me dead animal
parts and doll heads as a result of this song but please, if you feel inclined
to send me dead animal parts, think it through. Thanks.


Stalk me
I once wrote a poem called **** ME
So...Read more of this...

What Is Life?

by John Clare
 And what is Life? An hour-glass on the run,
A mist retreating from the morning sun,
A busy, bustling, still-repeated dream.
Its length? A minute's pause, a moment's thought.
And Happiness? A bubble on the stream,
That in the act of seizing shrinks to nought.

And what is Hope? The puffing gale of morn,
That of its charms divests the dewy lawn,
And robs each flow'ret of...Read more of this...

On Opening a Place for Social Prayer

by William Cowper
 Jesus! where'er Thy people meet,
There they behold Thy mercy seat;
Where'er they seek Thee, Thou art found,
And every place is hallow'd ground.

For Thou, within no walls confined,
Inhabitest the humble mind;
Such ever bring Thee where they come
And going, take Thee to their home.

Dear Shepherd of Thy chosen few!
Thy former mercies here renew;
Her to our waiting hearts proclaim
The sweetness of Thy saving...Read more of this...

Friend And Foe

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Dearly I love a friend; yet a foe I may turn to my profit;
Friends show me that which I can; foes teach me that which I should....Read more of this...

Still I Love To Rhyme

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 STILL I love to rhyme, and still more, rhyming, to wander
Far from the commoner way;
Old-time trills and falls by the brook-side still do I ponder,
Dreaming to-morrow to-day.

Come here, come, revive me, Sun-God, teach me, Apollo,
Measures descanted before;
Since I ancient verses, I emulous follow,
Prints in the marbles of yore.

Still strange, strange, they sound in old-young raiment invested,
Songs for the brain...Read more of this...

To a Western Boy

by Walt Whitman
 O BOY of the West! 
To you many things to absorb, I teach, to help you become eleve of mine: 
Yet if blood like mine circle not in your veins; 
If you be not silently selected by lovers, and do not silently select lovers, 
Of what use is it that you seek to become eleve of mine? 5...Read more of this...

Send No Money

by Philip Larkin
 Standing under the fobbed
Impendent belly of Time
Tell me the truth, I said,
Teach me the way things go.
All the other lads there
Were itching to have a bash,
But I thought wanting unfair:
It and finding out clash.

So he patted my head, booming Boy,
There's no green in your eye:
Sit here and watch the hail
Of occurence clobber life out
To a shape no one sees...Read more of this...

Teach Us To Pray

by Anonymous
Teach us to prayOh, Father! we look up to Thee,And this our one request shall be,Teach us to pray.Teach us to pray.A form of words will not suffice,—The heart must bring its sacrifice:Teach us to pray.Teach us to pray.To whom shall we, Thy children, turn?Teach Thou the lesson we would learn:Teach us to pray.Teach us to pray.To Thee, alone, our...Read more of this...

Bards of Passion and of Mirth written on the Blank Page before Beaumont and Fletchers Tragi-Comedy The Fair Maid of the Inn

by John Keats
 BARDS of Passion and of Mirth, 
Ye have left your souls on earth! 
Have ye souls in heaven too, 
Doubled-lived in regions new? 
Yes, and those of heaven commune 
With the spheres of sun and moon; 
With the noise of fountains wondrous, 
And the parle of voices thund'rous; 
With the whisper of heaven's trees 
And one another, in soft...Read more of this...

To the Name above every Name the Name of Jesus

by Richard Crashaw
 I sing the Name which None can say
But touch’t with An interiour Ray:
The Name of our New Peace; our Good:
Our Blisse: and Supernaturall Blood:
The Name of All our Lives and Loves.
Hearken, And Help, ye holy Doves!
The high-born Brood of Day; you bright
Candidates of blissefull Light,
The Heirs Elect of Love; whose Names belong
Unto The everlasting life of Song;
All ye wise...Read more of this...

Elegy III: Change

by John Donne
 Although thy hand and faith, and good works too,
Have sealed thy love which nothing should undo,
Yea though thou fall back, that apostasy
Confirm thy love; yet much, much I fear thee.
Women are like the Arts, forced unto to none,
Open to all searchers, unprized if unknown.
If I have caught a bird, and let him fly,
Another fowler using these means, as I,
May...Read more of this...

Our Singing Strength

by Robert Frost
 It snowed in spring on earth so dry and warm
The flakes could find no landing place to form.
Hordes spent themselves to make it wet and cold,
And still they failed of any lasting hold.
They made no white impression on the black.
They disappeared as if earth sent them back.
Not till from separate flakes they changed at night
To almost strips and tapes...Read more of this...

To an Absent Lover

by Helen Hunt Jackson
 That so much change should come when thou dost go, 
Is mystery that I cannot ravel quite. 
The very house seems dark as when the light 
Of lamps goes out. Each wonted thing doth grow 
So altered, that I wander to and fro 
Bewildered by the most familiar sight, 
And feel like one who rouses in the night 
From...Read more of this...

The Eternal Goodness

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 O Friends! with whom my feet have trod
The quiet aisles of prayer,
Glad witness to your zeal for God
And love of man I bear.

I trace your lines of argument;
Your logic linked and strong
I weigh as one who dreads dissent,
And fears a doubt as wrong.

But still my human hands are weak
To hold your iron creeds:
Against the words ye bid me speak
My...Read more of this...

Ode for the Keats Centenary

by Duncan Campbell Scott
 The Muse is stern unto her favoured sons,
Giving to some the keys of all the joy
Of the green earth, but holding even that joy
Back from their life;
Bidding them feed on hope,
A plant of bitter growth,
Deep-rooted in the past;
Truth, 'tis a doubtful art
To make Hope sweeten
Time as it flows;
For no man knows
Until the very last,
Whether it be a sovereign herb...Read more of this...

Teach Him -- When He makes the names

by Emily Dickinson
 Teach Him -- When He makes the names --
Such an one -- to say --
On his babbling -- Berry -- lips --
As should sound -- to me --
Were my Ear -- as near his nest --
As my thought -- today --
As should sound --
"Forbid us not" --
Some like "Emily."...Read more of this...

A Song of Pitcairns Island

by William Cullen Bryant
 Come, take our boy, and we will go
Before our cabin door;
The winds shall bring us, as they blow,
The murmurs of the shore;
And we will kiss his young blue eyes, 
And I will sing him, as he lies,
Songs that were made of yore:
I'll sing, in his delighted ear,
The island lays thou lov'st to hear.

And thou, while stammering I repeat,
Thy country's...Read more of this...

Cripples And Other Stories

by Anne Sexton
 My doctor, the comedian
I called you every time
and made you laugh yourself
when I wrote this silly rhyme...


 Each time I give lectures
 or gather in the grants
 you send me off to boarding school
 in training pants.

God damn it, father-doctor,
I'm really thirty-six.
I see dead rats in the toilet.
I'm one of the lunatics.

Disgusted, mother put me
on the potty. She was...Read more of this...

God of the Open Air

by Henry Van Dyke
 I

Thou who hast made thy dwelling fair
With flowers beneath, above with starry lights,
And set thine altars everywhere,--
On mountain heights,
In woodlands dim with many a dream,
In valleys bright with springs,
And on the curving capes of every stream:
Thou who hast taken to thyself the wings
Of morning, to abide
Upon the secret places of the sea,
And on far islands, where the tide
Visits the...Read more of this...

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