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Famous Ten Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...run:

And fare thee well, my only luve!
And fare thee weel, a while!
And I will come again, my luve,
Tho' it ware ten thousand mile....Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert



...Prologue

Listen! We have gathered the glory in days of yore
of the Spear-Danes, kings among men:
how these warriors performed deeds of courage. (ll. 1-3)

Often Scyld Scefing seized the mead-seats
from hordes of harmers, from how many people,
terrifying noble men, after he was found
so needy at the start. He wrangled his remedy after,
growing hale under the heav...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,
...ps of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to t...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen
...e stars that shine 
And twinkle on the milky way, 
They stretched in never-ending line 
Along the margin of a bay: 
Ten thousand saw I at a glance, 
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 

The waves beside them danced; but they 
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: 
A poet could not but be gay, 
In such a jocund company: 
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought 
What wealth the show to me had brought: 

For oft, when on my couch I lie 
In vacant or in pensiv...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William
...  She lean'd against the Armed Man,  The Statue of the Armed Knight:  She stood and listen'd to my Harp    Amid the ling'ring Light.   Few Sorrows hath she of her own,  My Hope, my Joy, my Genevieve!  She loves me best, whene'er I sing    The Songs, that make her grieve.   I play'd a soft and doleful Air,  I sang an old and moving Story—&nbs...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William



...ever new delight! 
Awake: The morning shines, and the fresh field 
Calls us; we lose the prime, to mark how spring 
Our tender plants, how blows the citron grove, 
What drops the myrrh, and what the balmy reed, 
How nature paints her colours, how the bee 
Sits on the bloom extracting liquid sweet. 
Such whispering waked her, but with startled eye 
On Adam, whom embracing, thus she spake. 
O sole in whom my thoughts find all repose, 
My glory, my perfection! glad I see 
Thy fa...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...The three stood listening to a fresh access
Of wind that caught against the house a moment,
Gulped snow, and then blew free again—the Coles
Dressed, but dishevelled from some hours of sleep,
Meserve belittled in the great skin coat he wore.

Meserve was first to speak. He pointed backward
Over his shoulder with his pipe-stem, saying,
“You can just see it glancing off the roof
...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...nor feed on the spectres in books; 
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me: 
You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from yourself. 

3
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the
 end;
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. 

There was never any more inception than there is now, 
Nor any more youth or age than there is now; 
And will never be any more perfection than there is now, 
Nor a...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...fame,
But the men that drink the blood of God
Go singing to their shame.

"The wise men know what wicked things
Are written on the sky,
They trim sad lamps, they touch sad strings,
Hearing the heavy purple wings,
Where the forgotten seraph kings
Still plot how God shall die.

"The wise men know all evil things
Under the twisted trees,
Where the perverse in pleasure pine
And men are weary of green wine
And sick of crimson seas.

"But you and all the kind of Christ
Are ignorant...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K
...p; Of years he has upon his back,  No doubt, a burthen weighty;  He says he is three score and ten,  But others say he's eighty.   A long blue livery-coat has he,  That's fair behind, and fair before;  Yet, meet him where you will, you see  At once that he is poor.  Full five and twenty years he lived  A running huntsman merry;  And, though he has but one eye left,&...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William
...a.


Girt with a boyish garb for boyish task,
 Eager she wields her spade; yet loves as well
Rest on a friendly knee, intent to ask
 The tale he loves to tell.

Rude spirits of the seething outer strife,
 Unmeet to read her pure and simple spright,
Deem, if you list, such hours a waste of life,
 Empty of all delight!

Chat on, sweet Maid, and rescue from annoy
 Hearts that by wiser talk are unbeguiled.
Ah, happy he who owns that tenderest joy,
 The heart-love of a child!

Awa...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis
...she hears what you have done,  Oh! Betty she'll be in a fright.   But Betty's bent on her intent,  For her good neighbour, Susan Gale,  Old Susan, she who dwells alone,  Is sick, and makes a piteous moan,  As if her very life would fail.   There's not a house within a mile,  No hand to help them in distress;  Old Susan lies a bed in pain,  And sorely puzzled are ...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William
...according pause was heard aloud
        Thine ardent symphony sublime and high!
     Fair dames and crested chiefs attention bowed;
        For still the burden of thy minstrelsy
     Was Knighthood's dauntless deed, and Beauty's matchless eye.

     O, wake once more! how rude soe'er the hand
        That ventures o'er thy magic maze to stray;
     O, wake once more! though scarce my skill command
        Some feeble echoing of thine earlier lay:
     Though harsh...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...ut Contraries is no progression. Attraction and
Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to
Human existence.
From these contraries spring what the religious call Good &
Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason[.] Evil is the active
springing from Energy.
Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.

PLATE 4
The voice of the Devil


All Bibles or sacred codes. have been the causes of the
following Errors.

That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a
Soul.
T...Read more of this...
by Blake, William
...u think now, man?" I pulled
the hatpin out and held my handkerchief over the bleeding. Several people, including the
bartender, had seen the act. The bartender came down: 
"Look," he said to Cass, "you act up again and you're out. We don't need
your dramatics here." 
"Oh, **** you, man!" she said. 
"Better keep her straight," the bartender said to me. 
"She'll be all right," I said. 
"It's my nose, I can do what I want with my nose."
"No," I said, "it hurts me."
"You mean it ...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles
...he had no business, and where he never was before, and never will be again, the following poem would not have been written. It is not impossible that it may be as good as his own, seeing that it cannot, by any species of stupidity, natural or acquired, be worse. The gross flattery, the dull impudence, the renegado intolerance, and impious cant, of the poem by the author if 'Wat Tyler,' are something so stupendous as to form the sublime of himself — containing the quintessenc...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...ing over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...English faces-all 
Part of the pattern of English life—
General Sir Charles, and his pretty wife, 
Admirals, Lords-Lieutenant of Shires, 
Men who were served by these footmen's sires 
At their great parties-none of them knowing 
How soon or late they would all be going 
In plainer dress to a sterner strife- 
Another pattern of English life.

I went up the stairs between them all,
Strange and frightened and shy and small,
And as I entered the ballroom door,
Saw something I ha...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer
...FIRST VOICE:
I am slow as the world. I am very patient,
Turning through my time, the suns and stars
Regarding me with attention.
The moon's concern is more personal:
She passes and repasses, luminous as a nurse.
Is she sorry for what will happen? I do not think so.
She is simply astonished at fertility.

When I walk out, I am a great event.
I do not have to think, or even rehearse.
What happens in me will happen without attention.
The pheasant stands on the hill;
He is arrang...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia
...ear girlfriend you remember
In heaven you created for her sight,
I'm trading product that is very rare -
I sell your tenderness and loving light.



Song about Song

So many stones have been thrown at me
That I don't fear them any longer
Like elegant tower the westerner stands free
Among tall towers, the taller.
I'm grateful to their builders -- so be gone
Their sadness and their worry, go away,
Early from here I can see the dawn
And here triumphant lives th...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry