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Famous Themselves Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Shakespeare, William
...real habitude gave life and grace
To appertainings and to ornament,
Accomplish'd in himself, not in his case:
All aids, themselves made fairer by their place,
Came for additions; yet their purposed trim
Pieced not his grace, but were all graced by him.

'So on the tip of his subduing tongue
All kinds of arguments and question deep,
All replication prompt, and reason strong,
For his advantage still did wake and sleep:
To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep,
He had the ...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...s, bays, embouchure in him, 
Mississippi with yearly freshets and changing chutes—Columbia, Niagara, Hudson,
 spending
 themselves lovingly in him,
If the Atlantic coast stretch, or the Pacific coast stretch, he stretching with them north
 or
 south, 
Spanning between them, east and west, and touching whatever is between them, 
Growths growing from him to offset the growth of pine, cedar, hemlock, live-oak, locust,
 chestnut, hickory, cottonwood, orange, magnolia, 
Tangles as...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...shut me up in Prose—
As when a little Girl
They put me in the Closet—
Because they liked me "still"—

Still! Could themselves have peeped—
And seen my Brain—go round—
They might as wise have lodged a Bird
For Treason—in the Pound—

Himself has but to will
And easy as a Star
Abolish his Captivity—
And laugh—No more have I—

652

A Prison gets to be a friend—
Between its Ponderous face
And Ours—a Kinsmanship express—
And in its narrow Eyes—

We come to loo...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ock, with the selfsame
Voice that in ages of old had startled the penitent Peter.
Bursting with hay were the barns, themselves a village. In each one
Far o'er the gable projected a roof of thatch; and a staircase,
Under the sheltering eaves, led up to the odorous corn-loft.
There too the dove-cot stood, with its meek and innocent inmates
Murmuring ever of love; while above in the variant breezes
Numberless noisy weathercocks rattled and sang of mutation.

Thus...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 Keats, John
...theatres of crowded men
Hubbub increases more they call out "Hush!"
So at Hyperion's words the phantoms pale
Bestirr'd themselves, thrice horrible and cold;
And from the mirror'd level where he stood
A mist arose, as from a scummy marsh.
At this, through all his bulk an agony
Crept gradual, from the feet unto the crown,
Like a lithe serpent vast and muscular
Making slow way, with head and neck convuls'd
From over-strained might. Releas'd, he fled
To the eastern gates...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...flower 
 Eternal first were all things fixed as they. 
 Of Increate Power infinite formed am I 
 That deathless as themselves I do not die. 
 Justice divine has weighed: the doom is clear. 
 All hope renounce, ye lost, who enter here. 
 This scroll in gloom above the gate I read, 
 And found it fearful. "Master, hard," I said, 
 "This saying to me." And he, as one that long 
 Was customed, answered, "No distrust must wrong 
 Its Maker, nor thy cowarde...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...t round: 
They seem'd even then — that twain — unto the last 
To half forget the present in the past; 
To share between themselves some separate fate, 
Whose darkness none beside should penetrate. 

XIX. 

Their words though faint were many — from the tone 
Their import those who heard could judge alone; 
From this, you might have deem'd young Kaled's death 
More near than Lara's by his voice and breath, 
So sad, so deep, and hesitating broke 
The accents his scarce-m...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ayest for them. 

Vivas to those who have fail’d! 
And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!
And to those themselves who sank in the sea! 
And to all generals that lost engagements! and all overcome heroes! 
And the numberless unknown heroes, equal to the greatest heroes known. 

19
This is the meal equally set—this is the meat for natural hunger; 
It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous—I make appointments
 with all;
I will not have a si...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...and sweetness of man and woman;
(The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day out of the roots of
 themselves,
 than it sprouts fresh and sweet continually out of itself.) 

Toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the love of young and old; 
From it falls distill’d the charm that mocks beauty and attainments; 
Toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact. 

9
Allons! whoever you are, come travel with me!
Traveling w...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...unshine, and the shade,
All things pertaining to that place and hour,
And her who was his destiny, came back
And thrust themselves between him and the light;
What business had they there at such a time?

VII

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The Lady of his love;—Oh! she was changed,
As by the sickness of the soul; her mind
Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes,
They had not their own lustre, but the look
Which is not of the earth; she was become
The quee...Read more of this...

by Bradstreet, Anne
...it was rul'd by that Celestial she,
5.31 And like a Cedar others so surmount
5.32 That but for shrubs they did themselves account.
5.33 Then saw I France, and Holland sav'd, Calais won,
5.34 And Philip and Albertus half undone.
5.35 I saw all peace at home, terror to foes,
5.36 But ah, I saw at last those eyes to close,
5.37 And then, me thought, the world at noon grew dark
5.38 When it had lost that radiant Sun-like spark.
5.3...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...sion came 
My greatest hardly will believe he saw; 
Another hath beheld it afar off, 
And leaving human wrongs to right themselves, 
Cares but to pass into the silent life. 
And one hath had the vision face to face, 
And now his chair desires him here in vain, 
However they may crown him otherwhere. 

`"And some among you held, that if the King 
Had seen the sight he would have sworn the vow: 
Not easily, seeing that the King must guard 
That which he rules, and is bu...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...yance of God*, or of Fortune, of God's providence?*
That giveth them full oft in many a guise
Well better than they can themselves devise?
Some man desireth for to have richess,
That cause is of his murder or great sickness.
And some man would out of his prison fain,
That in his house is of his meinie* slain. *servants 
Infinite harmes be in this mattere.
We wot never what thing we pray for here.
We fare as he that drunk is as a mouse.
A drunken man wo...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...d the Border-side,
     Where chiefs, with hound and trawl; who came
     To share their monarch's sylvan game,
     Themselves in bloody toils were snared,
     And when the banquet they prepared,
     And wide their loyal portals flung,
     O'er their own gateway struggling hung.
     Loud cries their blood from Meggat's mead,
     From Yarrow braes and banks of Tweed,
     Where the lone streams of Ettrick glide,
     And from the silver Teviot's side;
     The...Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...alytics.

Opposition is true Friendship.

PLATE 21

I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of
themselves as the only wise; this they do with a confident
insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning:
Thus Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new; tho' it
is only the Contents or Index of already publish'd books
A man carried a monkey about for a shew, & because he was a
little wiser than the monkey, grew vain, and conciev'd himself as
much wiser t...Read more of this...

by Thomson, James
...ed the Sun,
With temper'd Influence down. Then is the Time,
For those, whom Wisdom, and whom Nature charm,
To steal themselves from the degenerate Croud, 
And soar above this little Scene of Things:
To tread low-thoughted Vice beneath their Feet:
To lay their Passions in a gentle Calm,
And woo lone Quiet, in her silent Walks.

NOW, solitary, and in pensive Guise, 
Oft, let me wander o'er the russet Mead,
Or thro' the pining Grove; where scarce is heard
One dying Strai...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...helms & crowns, or wreathes of light,
Signs of thought's empire over thought; their lore
"Taught them not this--to know themselves; their might
Could not repress the mutiny within,
And for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night
"Caught them ere evening." "Who is he with chin
Upon his breast and hands crost on his chain?"
"The Child of a fierce hour; he sought to win
"The world, and lost all it did contain
Of greatness, in its hope destroyed; & more
Of fame & peace tha...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...re (as you 
Well know) superfluous; they are grown so bad, 
That hell has nothing better left to do 
Than leave them to themselves: so much more mad 
And evil by their own internal curse, 
Heaven cannot make them better, nor I worse. 

XLII 

'Look to the earth, I said, and say again: 
When this old, blind, mad, helpless, weak, poor worm 
Began in youth's first bloom and flush to reign, 
The world and he both wore a different form, 
And must of earth and all the watery pl...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...to blame for what I am, and they know it.
They hug their flatness like a kind of health.
And what if they found themselves surprised, as I did?
They would go mad with it.

And what if two lives leaked between my thighs?
I have seen the white clean chamber with its instruments.
It is a place of shrieks. It is not happy.
'This is where you will come when you are ready.'
The night lights are flat red moons. They are dull with blood.
I am not r...Read more of this...

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