Famous Truly Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Lord of Burleigh

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 IN her ear he whispers gaily, 
'If my heart by signs can tell, 
Maiden, I have watch'd thee daily, 
And I think thou lov'st me well.' 
She replies, in accents fainter, 
'There is none I love like thee.' 
He is but a landscape-painter, 
And a village maiden she. 
He to lips, that fondly falter, 
Presses his without reproof: 
Leads...Read more of this...

The Ballad of the Calliope

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 By the far Samoan shore, 
Where the league-long rollers pour 
All the wash of the Pacific on the coral-guarded bay, 
Riding lightly at their ease, 
In the calm of tropic seas, 
The three great nations' warships at their anchors proudly lay. 
Riding lightly, head to wind, 
With the coral reefs behind, 
Three German and three Yankee ships were mirrored...Read more of this...

Giving chapter V

by Kahlil Gibran
 Then said a rich man, "Speak to us of Giving." 

And he answered: 

You give but little when you give of your possessions. 

It is when you give of yourself that you truly give. 

For what are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear you may need them tomorrow? 

And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow bring to...Read more of this...

At Bessemer

by Philip Levine
 19 years old and going nowhere, 
I got a ride to Bessemer and walked 
the night road toward Birmingham 
passing dark groups of men cursing 
the end of a week like every week. 
Out of town I found a small grove 
of trees, high narrow pines, and I 
sat back against the trunk of one 
as the first rains...Read more of this...

To a Mouse

by Robert Burns
Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
          Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
          Wi' murd'ring pattle!

I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill...Read more of this...

Robin Hoods Flight

by James Henry Leigh Hunt
 Robin Hood's mother, these twelve years now,
Has been gone from her earthly home;
And Robin has paid, he scarce knew how,
A sum for a noble tomb.

The church-yard lies on a woody hill,
But open to sun and air:
It seems as if the heaven still
Were looking and smiling there.

Often when Robin looked that way,
He looked through a sweet thin tear;
But he looked...Read more of this...

The Vanity of All Worldly Things

by Anne Bradstreet
 As he said vanity, so vain say I,
Oh! Vanity, O vain all under sky;
Where is the man can say, "Lo, I have found
On brittle earth a consolation sound"?
What isn't in honor to be set on high?
No, they like beasts and sons of men shall die,
And whilst they live, how oft doth turn their fate;
He's now a captive that was...Read more of this...

Death XXVII

by Kahlil Gibran
 Then Almitra spoke, saying, "We would ask now of Death." 

And he said: 

You would know the secret of death. 

But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life? 

The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light. 

If you would indeed behold the spirit of...Read more of this...

The Birds

by William Blake
 He. Where thou dwellest, in what grove,
Tell me Fair One, tell me Love;
Where thou thy charming nest dost build,
O thou pride of every field!
She. Yonder stands a lonely tree,
There I live and mourn for thee;
Morning drinks my silent tear,
And evening winds my sorrow bear.

He. O thou summer's harmony,
I have liv'd and mourn'd for thee;
Each day I mourn along the...Read more of this...

The Drunken Fisherman

by Robert Lowell
 Wallowing in this bloody sty,
I cast for fish that pleased my eye
(Truly Jehovah's bow suspends
No pots of gold to weight its ends);
Only the blood-mouthed rainbow trout
Rose to my bait. They flopped about
My canvas creel until the moth
Corrupted its unstable cloth.

A calendar to tell the day;
A handkerchief to wave away
The gnats; a couch unstuffed with storm
Pouching a bottle in one...Read more of this...

The Glove and The Lions

by James Henry Leigh Hunt
 King Francis was a hearty king, and loved a royal sport,
And one day as his lions fought, sat looking on the court;
The nobles filled the benches, and the ladies in their pride,
And 'mongst them sat the Count de Lorge, with one for whom he sighed:
And truly 'twas a gallant thing to see that crowning show,
Valour and love, and a...Read more of this...

The Battle of Shina in Africa Fought in 1800

by William Topaz McGonagall
 King Shuac, the Giant of Mizra, war did declare
Against Ulva, King of Shina, telling him to prepare
And be ready for to meet him in the fight,
Which would commence the next morning before daylight. 

When King Ulva heard the news, he told his warriors to prepare,
Then suddenly the clatter of arms sounded in the night air;
And the pale beams of...Read more of this...

To Bessie Drennan

by Mark Doty
 Because she could find no one else to paint a picture of the old family place where she and her sisters lived. . .she attended an adult education class in Montpelier. In one evening Bessie Drennan learned everything she would need to accomplish her goals. . .
The Vermont Folklife Center Newsletter


Bessie, you've made space dizzy
with your perfected technique for...Read more of this...

My Garden

by Robert William Service
 The world is sadly sick, they say,
And plagued by woe and pain.
But look! How looms my garden gay,
With blooms in golden reign!
With lyric music in the air,
Of joy fulfilled in song,
I can't believe that anywhere
 Is hate and harm and wrong.

A paradise my garden is,
And there my day is spent;
A steep myself in sunny bliss,
Incredibly content.
Feeling that I am...Read more of this...

Snake

by D. H. Lawrence
 A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat,
To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before
me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the...Read more of this...

Wednesday

by Marvin Bell
 Gray rainwater lay on the grass in the late afternoon.
The carp lay on the bottom, resting, while dusk took shape
in the form of the first stirrings of his hunger,
and the trees, shorter and heavier, breathed heavily upward.
Into this sodden, nourishing afternoon I emerged,
partway toward a paycheck, halfway toward the weekend,
carrying the last mail and holding above still puddles
the books...Read more of this...

Question And Answer

by Charles Bukowski
 he sat naked and drunk in a room of summer
 night, running the blade of the knife
 under his fingernails, smiling, thinking
 of all the letters he had received
 telling him that
 the way he lived and wrote about
 that--
 it had kept them going when
 all seemed
 truly
 hopeless.



 putting the blade on the table, he
 flicked it...Read more of this...

Suicide Note

by Anne Sexton
 "You speak to me of narcissism but I reply that it is 
a matter of my life" - Artaud

"At this time let me somehow bequeath all the leftovers 
to my daughters and their daughters" - Anonymous

Better, 
despite the worms talking to 
the mare's hoof in the field; 
better, 
despite the season of young girls 
dropping their blood; 
better somehow...Read more of this...

Truly Great

by William Henry Davies
 My walls outside must have some flowers, 
My walls within must have some books; 
A house that's small; a garden large, 
And in it leafy nooks. 

A little gold that's sure each week; 
That comes not from my living kind, 
But from a dead man in his grave, 
Who cannot change his mind. 

A lovely wife, and gentle too;...Read more of this...

The Sons of Martha

by Rudyard Kipling
 The Sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the careful soul and the troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once, and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest,
Her Sons must wait upon Mary's Sons, world without end, reprieve, or rest.

It is their care...Read more of this...

There Is No God the Wicked Sayeth

by Arthur Hugh Clough
 "There is no God," the wicked saith,
"And truly it's a blessing,
For what He might have done with us
It's better only guessing."

"There is no God," a youngster thinks,
"or really, if there may be,
He surely did not mean a man
Always to be a baby."

"There is no God, or if there is,"
The tradesman thinks, "'twere funny
If He should take it ill in...Read more of this...

Olympic Granny

by Kenn Nesbitt
When Grandma goes for gold in
The Olympic games this year,
She’ll laugh at her competitors
And make them quake with fear.
She’s ninety-nine years old
But, in athletics, she’s been blessed.
The trouble is she can’t decide
Which sport she plays the best.
She’s such an ace at archery.
She’s queen of the canoe.
She’s tough to top at taekwondo
And table tennis too.
She dominates the diving board.
She tromps the...Read more of this...

Ruins

by Robert William Service
 Ruins in Rome are four a penny,
And here along the Appian Way
I see the monuments of many
Esteemed almighty in their day. . . .
Or so he makes me understand -
My glib guide of the rubber bus,
And tells me with a gesture grand:
"Behold! the tomb of Romulus."

Whereat I stared with eyes of awe,
And yet a whit dismayed was I,
When on...Read more of this...

A Panegyric To Sir Lewis Pemberton

by Robert Herrick
 Till I shall come again, let this suffice,
I send my salt, my sacrifice
To thee, thy lady, younglings, and as far
As to thy Genius and thy Lar;
To the worn threshold, porch, hall, parlour, kitchen,
The fat-fed smoking temple, which in
The wholesome savour of thy mighty chines,
Invites to supper him who dines:
Where laden spits, warp'd with large ribs of beef,
Not represent, but...Read more of this...

Philadelphia

by Rudyard Kipling
 "Brother Square-Toes"--Rewards and Fairies.
If you're off to Philadelphia in the morning,
 You mustn't take my stories for a guide.
There's little left, indeed, of the city you will read of,
 And all the folk I write about have died.
Now few will understand if you mention Talleyrand,
 Or remember what his cunning and his skill did;
And the cabmen at the wharf...Read more of this...

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