Famous Treated Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Pauls Wife

by Robert Frost
 To drive Paul out of any lumber camp
All that was needed was to say to him,
"How is the wife, Paul?"--and he'd disappear.
Some said it was because be bad no wife,
And hated to be twitted on the subject;
Others because he'd come within a day
Or so of having one, and then been Jilted;
Others because he'd had one once, a good one,
Who'd...Read more of this...

And do you think that love itself

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 And do you think that love itself,
Living in such an ugly house,
Can prosper long?
  We meet and part;
Our talk is all of heres and nows,
Our conduct likewise; in no act
Is any future, any past;
Under our sly, unspoken pact,
I KNOW with whom I saw you last,
But I say nothing; and you know
At six-fifteen to whom I go— 
Can even...Read more of this...

Dirge

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Knows he who tills this lonely field
To reap its scanty corn,
What mystic fruit his acres yield
At midnight and at morn?

In the long sunny afternoon,
The plain was full of ghosts,
I wandered up, I wandered down,
Beset by pensive hosts.

The winding Concord gleamed below,
Pouring as wide a flood
As when my brothers long ago,
Came with me to the wood.

But they are gone,— the...Read more of this...

Winter Complaint

by Ogden Nash
 Now when I have a cold
I am careful with my cold, 
I consult a physician 
And I do as I am told. 
I muffle up my torso 
In woolly woolly garb, 
And I quaff great flagons 
Of sodium bicarb. 
I munch on aspirin, 
I lunch on water, 
And I wouldn’t dream of osculating
Anybody’s daughter, 
And to anybody’s son 
I...Read more of this...

Im In Love

by Charles Bukowski
 she's young, she said,
but look at me,
I have pretty ankles,
and look at my wrists, I have pretty
wrists
o my god,
I thought it was all working,
and now it's her again,
every time she phones you go crazy,
you told me it was over
you told me it was finished,
listen, I've lived long enough to become a 
good woman,
why do you need a bad woman?
you...Read more of this...

Paula Becker to Clara Westhoff

by Adrienne Rich
 The autumn feels slowed down,
summer still holds on here, even the light
seems to last longer than it should
or maybe I'm using it to the thin edge.
The moon rolls in the air. I didn't want this child.
You're the only one I've told.
I want a child maybe, someday, but not now.
Otto has a calm, complacent way
of following me with his eyes,...Read more of this...

Smoke

by Erica Jong
 Can you imagine the air filled with smoke?
It was. The city was vanishing before noon
or was it earlier than that? I can't say because
the light came from nowhere and went nowhere. 
This was years ago, before you were born, before
your parents met in a bus station downtown.
She'd come on Friday after work all the way
from Toledo, and he'd dressed...Read more of this...

One Last Poem For Richard

by Sandra Cisneros
December 24th and we’re through again.
This time for good I know because I didn’t
throw you out — and anyway we waved.
No shoes. No angry doors.
We folded clothes and went
our separate ways.
You left behind that flannel shirt
of yours I liked but remembered to take
your toothbrush. Where are you tonight?

Richard, it’s Christmas Eve again
and old ghosts come back home.
I’m sitting by the...Read more of this...

Buddha at Kamakura

by Rudyard Kipling
 1892
"And there is a Japanese idol at Kamakura"

Oye who treated the Narrow Way
By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day,
Be gentle when "the heathen" pray
 To Buddha at Kamakura!

To him the Way, the Law, apart,
Whom Maya held beneath her heart,
Ananda's Lord, the Bodhisat,
 The Buddha of Kamakura.

For though he neither burns nor sees,
Nor hears ye thank your Deities,
Ye have not sinned with...Read more of this...

My First Affair With That Older Woman

by Charles Bukowski
 when I look back now

at the abuse I took from

her

I feel shame that I was so

innocent,

but I must say

she did match me drink for

drink,

and I realized that her life

her feelings for things

had been ruined

along the way

and that I was no mare than a

temporary

companion;

she was ten years older

and mortally hurt by the past

and the present;

she treated me badly:

desertion, other

men;

she brought...Read more of this...

Lines in Praise of the Lyric Club Banquet

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Which was Held in the Queens Hotel, Perth, on the Evening of 5th September 1894


'Twas in the year of 1894, and on the 5th of September,
Which for a long time I will remember,
And the gentlemen I entertained in the city of Perth,
Which is one of the grandest cities upon the earth. 

At the Banquet there were gentlemen of high...Read more of this...

Dream Song 46: I am outside. Incredible

by John Berryman
 I am, outside. Incredible panic rules.
People are blowing and beating each other without mercy.
Drinks are boiling. Iced
drinks are boiling. The worse anyone feels, the worse
treated he is. Fools elect fools.
A harmless man at an intersection said, under his breath, "Christ!"

That word, so spoken, affected the vision
of, when they trod to work next day, shopkeepers
who went and were fitted for...Read more of this...

Lord Roberts Triumphal Entry into Pretoria

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1900, and on the 5th of June,
Lord Roberts entered Pretoria in the afternoon;
His triumphal entry was magnificent to see,
The British Army marching behind him fearlessly. 

With their beautiful banners unfurled to the breeze,
But the scene didn't the Boers please;
And they immediately made some show of fight,
But at the charge of the bayonet they were...Read more of this...

A Satyre Against Mankind

by John Wilmot
 Were I - who to my cost already am
One of those strange, prodigious creatures, man -
A spirit free to choose for my own share
What sort of flesh and blood I pleased to wear,
I'd be a dog, a monkey, or a bear,
Or anything but that vain animal,
Who is so proud of being rational.

His senses are too gross; and he'll contrive
A...Read more of this...

Hymn 141

by Isaac Watts
 The Humiliation and exaltation of Christ.

Isa. 53:1-5,10-12. 

Who has believed thy word,
Or thy salvation known?
Reveal thine arm, Almighty Lord,
And glorify thy Son.

The Jews esteemed him here
Too mean for their belief;
Sorrows his chief acquaintance were,
And his companion, grief.

They turned their eyes away,
And treated him with scorn;
But 'twas their grief upon him lay,
Their sorrows he has borne.

'Twas for the stubborn Jews,
And...Read more of this...

The Wreck of the Columbine

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Kind Christians, all pay attention to me,
And Miss Mouat's sufferings I'll relate to ye;
While on board the Columbine, on the merciless sea,
Tossing about in the darkness of night in the storm helplessly. 

She left her home (Scatness), on Saturday morning, bound for Lerwick,
Thinking to get cured by a man she knew, as she was very sick;
But for eight days...Read more of this...

The Fortune-Teller a Gypsy Tale

by Mary Darby Robinson
 LUBIN and KATE, as gossips tell,
Were Lovers many a day;
LUBIN the damsel lov'd so well,
That folks pretend to say
The silly, simple, doting Lad,
Was little less than loving mad:
A malady not known of late--
Among the little-loving Great!

KATE liked the youth; but woman-kind
Are sometimes giv'n to range.
And oft, the giddy Sex, we find,
(They know not why)
When most they promise, soonest change,
And...Read more of this...

The Sky is low -- the Clouds are mean

by Emily Dickinson
 The Sky is low -- the Clouds are mean.
A Travelling Flake of Snow
Across a Barn or through a Rut
Debates if it will go --

A Narrow Wind complains all Day
How some one treated him
Nature, like Us is sometimes caught
Without her Diadem....Read more of this...

Modern Love V: A Message from Her

by George Meredith
 A message from her set his brain aflame. 
A world of household matters filled her mind, 
Wherein he saw hypocrisy designed: 
She treated him as something that is tame, 
And but at other provocation bites. 
Familiar was her shoulder in the glass, 
Through that dark rain: yet it may come to pass 
That a changed eye finds such familiar...Read more of this...

The Dance Of Death

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 THE warder looks down at the mid hour of night,

On the tombs that lie scatter'd below:
The moon fills the place with her silvery light,

And the churchyard like day seems to glow.
When see! first one grave, then another opes wide,
And women and men stepping forth are descried,

In cerements snow-white and trailing.

In haste for the sport soon their ankles they twitch,

And...Read more of this...

The Heatherblend Club Banquet

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas on the 16th of October, in the year 1894,
I was invited to Inverness, not far from the sea shore,
To partake of a banquet prepared by the Heatherblend Club,
Gentlemen who honoured me without any hubbub. 

The banquet was held in the Gellion Hotel,
And the landlord, Mr Macpherson, treated me right well;
Also the servant maids were very kind to me,
Especially...Read more of this...

My Prisoner

by Robert William Service
 We was in a crump-'ole, 'im and me;
Fightin' wiv our bayonets was we;
Fightin' 'ard as 'ell we was,
Fightin' fierce as fire because
 It was 'im or me as must be downed;
'E was twice as big as me;
I was 'arf the weight of 'e;
 We was like a terryer and a 'ound.

'Struth! But 'e was sich a 'andsome bloke.
Me, I'm...Read more of this...

Little Popeet - the Lost Child

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Near by the silent waters of the Mediterranean,
And at the door of an old hut stood a coloured man,
Whose dress was oriental in style and poor with wear,
While adown his furrowed cheeks ran many a tear. 

And the poor coloured man seemed very discontent,
And his grief overcame him at this moment;
And he wrung his hands in agony wild,
And he...Read more of this...

Her Death And After

by Thomas Hardy
 'TWAS a death-bed summons, and forth I went
By the way of the Western Wall, so drear
On that winter night, and sought a gate--
The home, by Fate,
Of one I had long held dear.

And there, as I paused by her tenement,
And the trees shed on me their rime and hoar,
I thought of the man who had left her lone--
Him who made...Read more of this...

You, who both day and night the world pursue,

by Omar Khayyam
You, who both day and night the world pursue,
And thoughts of that dread day of doom eschew,
Bethink you of your latter end; be sure
As time has treated others, so 'twill you!...Read more of this...

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