Famous Things Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Things poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous things poems. These examples illustrate what a famous things poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Michael Drayton
How many paltry foolish painted things,
That now in coaches trouble every street,
Shall be forgotten, whom no poet sings,
Ere they be well wrapped in their winding-sheet!
Where I to thee eternity shall give,
When nothing else remaineth of these days,
And queens hereafter shall be glad to live
Upon the alms of thy superfluous praise.
Virgins and matrons, reading these my rhymes,
Shall be so much...Read more of this...
by
Charles Bukowski
these things that we support most well
have nothing to do with up,
and we do with them
out of boredom or fear or money
or cracked intelligence;
our circle and our candle of light
being small,
so small we cannot bear it,
we heave out with Idea
and lose the Center:
all wax without the wick,
and we...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
O heart! act as if all the good things of this world
belonged to you; imagine that this house is provided
with everything, that it is richly furnished, and live joyously
in this domain of disorder. Realize that thou restest
here for two or three days, and that thereafter thou
shalt rise and go away....Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
It's good the great green earth to roam,
Where sights of awe the soul inspire;
But oh, it's best, the coming home,
The crackle of one's own hearth-fire!
You've hob-nobbed with the solemn Past;
You've seen the pageantry of kings;
Yet oh, how sweet to gain at last
The peace and rest of Little Things!
Perhaps you're counted with the Great;
You strain and strive with mighty men;
Your...Read more of this...
by
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
What will
our children do in the morning? Will they wake with their hearts wanting to play,
the way wings
should? Will they have dreamed the needed flights and gathered
the strength from the planets that all
men and women need...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
All things can tempt me from this craft of verse:
One time it was a woman's face, or worse -
The seeming needs of my fool-driven land;
Now nothing but comes readier to the hand
Than this accustomed toil. When I was young,
I had not given a penny for a song
Did not the poet Sing it with such airs
That one believed he had...Read more of this...
by
Mark Strand
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole....Read more of this...
by
A E Housman
Say, lad, have you things to do?
Quick then, while your day's at prime.
Quick, and if 'tis work for two,
Here am I man: now's your time.
Send me now, and I shall go;
Call me, I shall hear you call;
Use me ere they lay me low
Where a man's no use at all;
Ere the wholesome...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Let not the fear of future things yellow thy cheeks; let
not present affairs make thee tremble with fright; rejoice,
in this world of annihilation, at the portion of pleasure
which comes to you, and wait not for that which the
kindness of heaven may withhold....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
We outgrow love, like other things
And put it in the Drawer --
Till it an Antique fashion shows --
Like Costumes Grandsires wore....Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Last night I looked across the hills
And through an arch of darkling pine
Low-swung against a limpid west
I saw a young moon shine.
And as I gazed there blew a wind,
Loosed where the sylvan shadows stir,
Bringing delight to soul and sense
The breath of dying fir.
This morn I saw a dancing host
Of poppies in a garden way,
And straight my heart...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
You ask me what is this phantasmagoria of things here
below. To tell you the whole truth regarding it would
be too long: it is a fantastic image which comes out of
a vast sea, and which re-enters, later, the same vast sea.
337...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Of nearness to her sundered Things
The Soul has special times --
When Dimness -- looks the Oddity --
Distinctness -- easy -- seems --
The Shapes we buried, dwell about,
Familiar, in the Rooms --
Untarnished by the Sepulchre,
The Mouldering Playmate comes --
In just the Jacket that he wore --
Long buttoned in the Mold
Since we -- old mornings, Children -- played --
Divided -- by...Read more of this...
by
William Blake
A Robin Redbreast in a cage,
Puts all Heaven in a rage.
A skylark wounded on the wing
Doth make a cherub cease to sing.
He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be beloved by men....Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Existing things were already predestined upon the
tablet of creation. The brush [of the universe] did not
paint good and bad. With destiny God imprinted whatever
should be so imprinted, and the efforts that we
make in these directions are wholly lost....Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
When I examine closely the things of this world, what
I see is that human beings in general appropriate to themselves,
without merit on their part, the good it contains.
As for me, O God All-Powerful! I meet only
the reverse of my desires in all that falls under my eyes!...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
Beautiful lofty things: O'Leary's noble head;
My father upon the Abbey stage, before him a raging crowd:
'This Land of Saints,' and then as the applause died out,
'Of plaster Saints'; his beautiful mischievous head thrown back.
Standish O'Grady supporting himself between the tables
Speaking to a drunken audience high nonsensical words;
Augusta Gregory seated at her great ormolu table,
Her eightieth winter approaching: 'Yesterday he...Read more of this...
by
Judith Viorst
My mom says I'm her sugarplum.My mom says I'm her lamb.My mom says I'm completely perfectJust the way I am.My mom says I'm a super-special wonderful terrific little guy.My mom just had another baby.Why?...Read more of this...
by
William Ernest Henley
The big teetotum twirls,
And epochs wax and wane
As chance subsides or swirls;
But of the loss and gain
The sum is always plain.
Read on the mighty pall,
The weed of funeral
That covers praise and blame,
The -isms and the -anities,
Magnificence and shame:--
"O Vanity of Vanities!"
The Fates are subtle girls!
They give us chaff for grain.
And Time, the Thunderer, hurls,
Like bolted death, disdain
At all that...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous
"He saith to the snow, Be thou on the earth."
God's works are very great, but still
His hands do not ap-pear:
Though hea-ven and earth o-bey His will,
His voice we can-not hear.
And yet we know that it is He
Who moves and governs all,
Who stills the rag-ing of the sea,
And makes the showers to...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
O my heart! since the foundation, even, of the things
of this world is only a fiction, why do you venture thus
in an infinite gulf of sorrow? Trust yourself to destiny,
endure the evil, for the lot which the heavenly brush
has traced for you will not be effaced.
333...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Dunn
When Mother died
I thought: now I'll have a death poem.
That was unforgivable.
Yet I've since forgiven myself
as sons are able to do
who've been loved by their mothers.
I stared into the coffin
knowing how long she'd live,
how many lifetimes there are
in the sweet revisions of memory.
It's hard to know exactly
how we ease ourselves back from sadness,
but I remembered when I was twelve,...Read more of this...
by
Helen Dunmore
for tess
Tonight there's a crowd in my head:
all the things you are not yet.
You are words without paper, pages
sighing in summer forests, gardens
where builders stub out their rubble
and plastic oozes its sweat.
All the things you are, you are not yet.
Not yet the lonely window in midwinter
with the whine of tea on an empty stomach,
not yet the heating you...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Vexed by this wheel of things, that pets the base,
My sorrow-laden life drags on apace;
Like rosebud, from the storm I wrap me close,
And blood-spots on my heart, like tulip, trace....Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
Health is the first good lent to men;
A gentle disposition then:
Next, to be rich by no by-ways;
Lastly, with friends t' enjoy our days....Read more of this...
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