Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Them Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Whitman, Walt
...write poems for America? 
For our victorious armies, and the offspring following the armies?)

Piety and conformity to them that like! 
Peace, obesity, allegiance, to them that like! 
I am he who tauntingly compels men, women, nations, 
Crying, Leap from your seats, and contend for your lives! 

I am he who walks the States with a barb’d tongue, questioning every one I meet;
Who are you, that wanted only to be told what you knew before? 
Who are you, that wanted only a book ...Read more of this...



by Ginsberg, Allen
...Carl Solomon 


 I 

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by 
 madness, starving hysterical naked, 
dragging themselves through the ***** streets at dawn 
 looking for an angry fix, 
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly 
 connection to the starry dynamo in the machin- 
 ery of night, 
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat 
 up smoking in the supernatural darkness of 
 cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities 
 contemplatin...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...the lingering rose hath shed

Red leaf by leaf its folded panoply,
And pansies closed their purple-lidded eyes,
Chrysanthemums from gilded argosy
Unload their gaudy scentless merchandise,
And violets getting overbold withdraw
From their shy nooks, and scarlet berries dot the leafless haw.

O happy field! and O thrice happy tree!
Soon will your queen in daisy-flowered smock
And crown of flower-de-luce trip down the lea,
Soon will the lazy shepherds drive their flock
Back ...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...en the throne, and where I sit
Here on this spot of earth. Search, Thea, search!
Open thine eyes eterne, and sphere them round
Upon all space: space starr'd, and lorn of light;
Space region'd with life-air; and barren void;
Spaces of fire, and all the yawn of hell.---
Search, Thea, search! and tell me, if thou seest
A certain shape or shadow, making way
With wings or chariot fierce to repossess
A heaven he lost erewhile: it must---it must
Be of ripe progress---Saturn ...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...serve your turn long after they are gone, 
And so hold on when there is nothing in you 
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!" 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, 
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch, 
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, 
If all men count with you, but none too much: 
If you can fill the unforgiving minute 
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, 
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, 
An...Read more of this...



by Alighieri, Dante
...Muses high! O Genius, first and last! 
 Memories intense! Your utmost powers combine 
 To meet this need. For never theme as mine 
 Strained vainly, where your loftiest nobleness 
 Must fail to be sufficient. 
 First
 I said, 
 Fearing, to him who through the darkness led, 
 "O poet, ere the arduous path ye press 
 Too far, look in me, if the worth there be 
 To make this transit. &Aelig;neas once, I know, 
 Went down in life, and crossed the infernal sea; 
 And i...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...p;Suck, little babe, oh suck again!  It cools my blood; it cools my brain;  Thy lips I feel them, baby! they  Draw from my heart the pain away.  Oh! press me with thy little hand;  It loosens something at my chest;  About that tight and deadly band  I feel thy little fingers press'd.  The breeze I see is in the tree;  It comes to cool my babe and me.Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ooks; 
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 any more heaven or hel...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...the constellations any nearer; 
I know they are very well where they are; 
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens; 
I carry them, men and women—I carry them with me wherever I go; 
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them; 
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.) 

2
You road I enter upon and look around! I believe you are not all that is here;
I believe that much unseen is also here.<...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...ass,
Hardened his heart with hope.

A sea-folk blinder than the sea
Broke all about his land,
But Alfred up against them bare
And gripped the ground and grasped the air,
Staggered, and strove to stand.

He bent them back with spear and spade,
With desperate dyke and wall,
With foemen leaning on his shield
And roaring on him when he reeled;
And no help came at all.

He broke them with a broken sword
A little towards the sea,
And for one hour of panting peace,
Ringe...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...sultriness,
Couched among fallen columns, in the shade
Of ruined walls that had survived the names
Of those who reared them; by his sleeping side
Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds
Were fastened near a fountain; and a man,
Glad in a flowing garb, did watch the while,
While many of his tribe slumbered around:
And they were canopied by the blue sky,
So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful,
That God alone was to be seen in heaven.

V

A change came o'er the spir...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...alk around and in the fields confer
Of love at large with tree and flower and stream,
And list the lark descant upon my theme,
Heaven's musical accepted worshipper. 
Thy smile outfaceth ill: and that old feud
'Twixt things and me is quash'd in our new truce;
And nature now dearly with thee endued
No more in shame ponders her old excuse,
But quite forgets her frowns and antics rude,
So kindly hath she grown to her new use. 

4
The very names of things belov'd are dear,...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...an about it--he would only refer to his Naval Code, and read out in pathetic tones Admiralty Instructions which none of them had ever been able to understand--so it generally ended in its being fastened on, anyhow, across the rudder. The helmsman* used to stand by with tears in his eyes; he knew it was all wrong, but alas! Rule 42 of the Code, "No one shall speak to the Man at the Helm," had been completed by the Bellman himself with the words "and the Man at the Helm sha...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...s 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 the twain,  For what she ails they cannot guess.   And Betty's husband's at the wood,  Where by the week he doth abide,  A woodman in the distant vale;  There's none to help poor Sus...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...es of the rock,
with cor[PL 7]roding fires he wrote the following sentence now
percieved by the minds of men, & read by them on earth. 

How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?


Proverbs of Hell.

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.

Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

Prudence is a rich ugl...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...ve no horror of a joke. 

"Such wretches live: they take their share
Of common earth and common air:
We come across them here and there: 

"We grant them - there is no escape -
A sort of semi-human shape
Suggestive of the man-like Ape." 

"In all such theories," said he,
"One fixed exception there must be.
That is, the Present Company." 

Baffled, she gave a wolfish bark:
He, aiming blindly in the dark,
With random shaft had pierced the mark. 

She felt th...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air,
And in succession due, did Continent,
Isle, Ocean, & all things that in them wear
The form & character of mortal mould
Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear
Their portion of the toil which he of old
Took as his own & then imposed on them;
But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold
Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
The cone of night, now they were laid asleep,
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem
Which ...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...can be no doubt. 

With regard to the supernatural personages treated of, I can only say that I know as much about them, and (as an honest man) have a better right to talk of them than Robert Southey. I have also treated them more tolerantly. The way in which that poor insane creature, the Laureate, deals about his judgments in the next world, is like his own judgment in this. If it was not completely ludicrous, it would be something worse. I don't think ...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ant to know what you done with that money he gave you
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you.
And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He's been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said. 
Then I'll know who to thank, she said...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...r 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 the sun's last ray.
And frequently into my room's window
The winds from northern seas begin to blow
And p...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Them poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things