Famous Teaches Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Deborahs Parrot a Village Tale

by Mary Darby Robinson
 'Twas in a little western town
An ancient Maiden dwelt:
Her name was MISS, or MISTRESS, Brown,
Or DEBORAH, or DEBBY: She
Was doom'd a Spinster pure to be,
For soft delights her breast ne'er felt:
Yet, she had watchful Ears and Eyes
For ev'ry youthful neighbour,
And never did she cease to labour
A tripping female to surprize.

And why was she so wond'rous pure,
So stiff, so solemn--so...Read more of this...

A Poets Voice XV

by Kahlil Gibran
 Part One


The power of charity sows deep in my heart, and I reap and gather the wheat in bundles and give them to the hungry. 

My soul gives life to the grapevine and I press its bunches and give the juice to the thirsty. 

Heaven fills my lamp with oil and I place it at my window to direct...Read more of this...

The German Parnassus

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 in the wares before you spread,
Types of all things may be read.

'NEATH the shadow

Of these bushes,
On the meadow

Where the cooling water gushes.
Phoebus gave me, when a boy,
All life's fullness to enjoy.
So, in silence, as the God
Bade them with his sov'reign nod,
Sacred Muses train'd my days
To his praise.--
With the bright and silv'ry flood
Of Parnassus stirr'd my blood,
And the seal so...Read more of this...

Sabbaths 2001

by Wendell Berry
 I

He wakes in darkness. All around
are sounds of stones shifting, locks
unlocking. As if some one had lifted
away a great weight, light
falls on him. He has been asleep or simply
gone. He has known a long suffering
of himself, himself sharpen by the pain
of his wound of separation he now
no longer minds, for the pain is only himself
now, grown small, become a...Read more of this...

Wyther Park School Leeds Five

by Barry Tebb
 I stood there in front of forty-five faces

The first day of term, not especially fancying

"Exercises in Mechanical Arithmetic" and so instead

I read a poem from Kirkup in Japan, about Nijinsky,

Hand-written on a fan of rice-paper.

Thirty years later, taking a Sri Lankan girl

In search of her first job around London schools,

A Head-of-English announced "You wouldn’t get away

With that now!" as...Read more of this...

Conjugal

by Russell Edson
 A man is bending his wife. He is bending her 
around something that she has bent herself 
around. She is around it, bent as he has bent 
her. 

 He is convincing her. It is all so private.

 He is bending her around the bedpost. No, he 
is bending her around the tripod of his camera.
 It is as...Read more of this...

Amphion

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 MY father left a park to me, 
But it is wild and barren, 
A garden too with scarce a tree, 
And waster than a warren: 
Yet say the neighbours when they call, 
It is not bad but good land, 
And in it is the germ of all 
That grows within the woodland. 

O had I lived when song was...Read more of this...

Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 I
The everlasting universe of things 
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark--now glittering--now reflecting gloom--
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters--with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume,
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods...Read more of this...

The Lark

by Anonymous
Ah! little lark, I see you there,So very, very high;Just like a little, tiny speckUp in the clear blue sky.How good is He, who strengthens thusYour slight and tender wing,And teaches such a little throatSo sweet a song to sing....Read more of this...

At Pleasure Bay

by Robert Pinsky
 In the willows along the river at Pleasure Bay
A catbird singing, never the same phrase twice.
Here under the pines a little off the road
In 1927 the Chief of Police
And Mrs. W. killed themselves together,
Sitting in a roadster. Ancient unshaken pilings
And underwater chunks of still-mortared brick
In shapes like bits of puzzle strew the bottom
Where the landing was for Price's Hotel...Read more of this...

The Old Bark School

by Henry Lawson
 It was built of bark and poles, and the floor was full of holes 
Where each leak in rainy weather made a pool; 
And the walls were mostly cracks lined with calico and sacks – 
There was little need for windows in the school. 

Then we rode to school and back by the rugged gully-track, 
On the old grey...Read more of this...

Stoves and sunshine

by Eugene Field
 Prate, ye who will, of so-called charms you find across the sea--
The land of stoves and sunshine is good enough for me!
I've done the grand for fourteen months in every foreign clime,
And I've learned a heap of learning, but I've shivered all the time;
And the biggest bit of wisdom I've acquired--as I can see--
Is that which teaches that this...Read more of this...

Yesterday and Today XII

by Kahlil Gibran
 The gold-hoarder walked in his palace park and with him walked his troubles. And over his head hovered worries as a vulture hovers over a carcass, until he reached a beautiful lake surrounded by magnificent marble statuary. 

He sat there pondering the water which poured from the mouths of the statues like thoughts flowing freely from a lover's imagination,...Read more of this...

A Performance Of Henry V At Stratford-Upon-Avon

by Elizabeth Jennings
 Nature teaches us our tongue again
And the swift sentences came pat. I came
Into cool night rescued from rainy dawn.
And I seethed with language - Henry at
Harfleur and Agincourt came apt for war
In Ireland and the Middle East. Here was
The riddling and right tongue, the feeling words
Solid and dutiful. Aspiring hope
Met purpose in "advantages" and "He
That fights with me today...Read more of this...

Australia Today 1916

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 They came from the lower levels 
Deep down in the Brilliant mine; 
From the wastes where the whirlwind revels, 
Whirling the leaves of pine. 
On the western plains, where the Darling flows, 
And the dust storms wheel and shift, 
The teamster loosened his yokes and bows, 
And turned his team adrift. 

On the western stations, far and wide, 
There's...Read more of this...

Wounded

by Robert William Service
 Is it not strange? A year ago to-day,
 With scarce a thought beyond the hum-drum round,
I did my decent job and earned my pay;
 Was averagely happy, I'll be bound.
Ay, in my little groove I was content,
 Seeing my life run smoothly to the end,
With prosy days in stolid labour spent,
 And jolly nights, a pipe, a glass, a...Read more of this...

A Letter Home

by Siegfried Sassoon
 (To Robert Graves) 

I 

Here I'm sitting in the gloom 
Of my quiet attic room. 
France goes rolling all around, 
Fledged with forest May has crowned. 
And I puff my pipe, calm-hearted, 
Thinking how the fighting started, 
Wondering when we'll ever end it, 
Back to hell with Kaiser sent it, 
Gag the noise, pack up and go, 
Clockwork soldiers...Read more of this...

M. Degas Teaches Art and Science At Durfee Intermediate School--Detroit 1942

by Philip Levine
 He made a line on the blackboard,
one bold stroke from right to left
diagonally downward and stood back
to ask, looking as always at no one
in particular, "What have I done?"
From the back of the room Freddie
shouted, "You've broken a piece
of chalk." M. Degas did not smile.
"What have I done?" he repeated.
The most intellectual students
looked down to study their desks
except for...Read more of this...

Genius

by Friedrich von Schiller
 "Do I believe," sayest thou, "what the masters of wisdom would teach me,
And what their followers' band boldly and readily swear?
Cannot I ever attain to true peace, excepting through knowledge,
Or is the system upheld only by fortune and law?
Must I distrust the gently-warning impulse, the precept
That thou, Nature, thyself hast in my bosom impressed,
Till the schools have affixed to...Read more of this...

To a Waterfowl

by William Cullen Bryant
WHITHER midst falling dew  
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day  
Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue 
Thy solitary way? 

Vainly the fowler's eye 5 
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong  
As darkly seen against the crimson sky  
Thy figure floats along. 

Seek'st thou the plashy brink 
Of...Read more of this...

Ere Sleep Comes Down To Soothe The Weary Eyes

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes,Which all the day with ceaseless care have sought
The magic gold which from the seeker flies;
Ere dreams put on the gown and cap of thought,
And make the waking world a world of lies,—
Of lies most palpable, uncouth, forlorn,
That say life's full of aches and tears and sighs,—
Oh, how with more than dreams...Read more of this...

Fantasie -- To Laura

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Name, my Laura, name the whirl-compelling
Bodies to unite in one blest whole--
Name, my Laura, name the wondrous magic
By which soul rejoins its kindred soul!

See! it teaches yonder roving planets
Round the sun to fly in endless race;
And as children play around their mother,
Checkered circles round the orb to trace.

Every rolling star, by thirst tormented,
Drinks with joy its bright and golden...Read more of this...

Sonnet XII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XII. Quando fra l' altre donne ad ora ad ora. THE BEAUTY OF LAURA LEADS HIM TO THE CONTEMPLATION OF THE SUPREME GOOD.  Throned on her angel brow, when Love displaysHis radiant form among all other fair,Far as eclipsed their choicest charms appear,I feel beyond its wont my passion blaze.And...Read more of this...

The Sprig of Moss

by William Topaz McGonagall
 There lived in Munich a poor, weakly youth,
But for the exact date, I cannot vouch for the truth,
And of seven of a family he was the elder,
Who was named, by his parents, Alois Senefelder. 

But, poor fellow, at home his father was lying dead,
And his little brothers and sisters were depending upon him for bread,
And one evening he was...Read more of this...

To a Republican Friend

by Matthew Arnold
 God knows it, I am with you. If to prize
Those virtues, priz'd and practis'd by too few,
But priz'd, but lov'd, but eminent in you,
Man's fundamental life: if to despise
The barren optimistic sophistries
Of comfortable moles, whom what they do
Teaches the limit of the just and true--
And for such doing have no need of eyes:
If sadness at teh long heart-wasting show
Wherein...Read more of this...

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