Famous Twentieth Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Twentieth poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous twentieth poems. These examples illustrate what a famous twentieth poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...een hunder year
O’ grace, and ninety-five,
That year I was the wae’est man
Of ony man alive.
In March the three-an’-twentieth morn,
The sun raise clear an’ bright;
But oh! I was a waefu’ man,
Ere to-fa’ o’ the night.
Yerl Galloway lang did rule this land,
Wi’ equal right and fame,
And thereto was his kinsmen join’d,
The Murray’s noble name.
Yerl Galloway’s man o’ men was I,
And chief o’ Broughton’s host;
So twa blind beggars, on a string,
The faithfu’ tyke will ...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...ug off
all spirits then succumb to fear
depression takes the gloss off wonder
and people (lost) tell god to bug off
the twentieth century drowns in sheer
excuse that life is comic blunder
temporality dons its gear
forbidden thought soon rips its gag off
stained glass (you think) must be bystander
its leaded eyes seek far not near
the day's bleak dirt it learns to shrug off
(ii)
the history of the race confuses
heady spirit with bloody need
nothing can stop the sky from ting...Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...e
From the dread sweep of the down-streaming seas:
And all me look'd upon him favorably:
And ere he touch'd his one-and-twentieth May
He purchased his own boat, and made a home
For Annie, neat and nestlike, halfway up
The narrow street that clamber'd toward the mill.
Then, on a golden autumn eventide,
The younger people making holiday,
With bag and sack and basket, great and small,
Went nutting to the hazels. Philip stay'd
(His father lying sick and needing him)
An hour beh...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...The last Campbell's tomato soup can
of the twentieth century is going to
the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh
That is an example of a sentence
Another is this from a CEO in Fortune
"You die in either case, but this way you get
to do it proactively," where the adverb
makes the sentence I'm walking amid
the tourists on Bleecker Street the riffraff
the students with backpacks the bums and
a goo...Read more of this...
by
Lehman, David
...some ways
to kill a man. Simpler, direct, and much more neat
is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle
of the twentieth century, and leave him there....Read more of this...
by
Breton, Andre
...some ways
to kill a man. Simpler, direct, and much more neat
is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle
of the twentieth century, and leave him there....Read more of this...
by
Brock, Edwin
...How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stoln on his wing my three and twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on wtih full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
That I to manhood am arrived so near,
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measu...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...eat Dick Painter leapt, the poet wept,
And Mary slept with happy drops a-gleam
Upon long lashes of her serene eyes
From twentieth reading of her poet's news
Quick-sent, "O sweet my Sweet, to dream is power,
And I can dream thee bread and dream thee wine,
And I will dream thee robes and gems, dear Love,
To clothe thy holy loveliness withal,
And I will dream thee here to live by me,
Thee and my little man thou hold'st at breast,
-- Come, Name, come, Fame, and kiss my Sweetheart...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...y dear--
my memory will vanish like black smoke in the wind.
Of course you'll live, red-haired lady of my heart:
in the twentieth century
grief lasts
at most a year.
Death--
a body swinging from a rope.
My heart
can't accept such a death.
But
you can bet
if some poor gypsy's hairy black
spidery hand
slips a noose
around my neck,
they'll look in vain for fear
in Nazim's
blue eyes!
In the twilight of my last morning
I
will see my friends and you,
and I'll go
to my gra...Read more of this...
by
Hikmet, Nazim
...present slumber flies.'
'Well, sire, with such a hope, I'll track
My seventy years of memory back:
I think 'twas in my twentieth spring, -
Ay, 'twas, - when Casimir was king -
John Casimir, - I was his page
Six summers, in my earlier age:
A learned monarch, faith! was he,
And most unlike your majesty:
He made no wars, and did not gain
New realms to lose them back again;
And (save debates in Warsaw's diet)
He reigned in most unseemly quiet;
Not that he had no cares to vex,
He...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...rses
through wrong choices
has brought us to nightmare
where what seems,
is, to the dreamer,
the collective mind
of the twentieth century —
this world of wonders
not divine creation
but a big bang
of blind chance,
purposeless accident,
mother earth’s children,
their living and loving,
their delight in being
not joy but chemistry,
stimulus, reflex,
valueless, meaningless,
while to our machines
we impute intelligence,
in computers and robots
we store information
and call it kno...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
..."
Then he went about waking up his bosses.
In a matter of months that trout fishing lure was the sen-
sation of the twentieth century, far outstripping such shallow
accomplishments as Hiroshima or Mahatma Gandhi. Millions
of "The Last Supper" were sold in America. The Vatican or-
dered ten thousand and they didn't even have any trout there.
Testimonials poured in. Thirty-four ex-presidents of the
United States all said, ''I caught my limit on 'The Last Supper.'''
...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...n the stone:
Trout Fishing in America Shorty
20 cent Wash
10 cent Dry
Forever
THE MAYOR
OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
London. On December 1, 1887; July 7, August 8, September
30, one day in the month of October and on the 9th of Novem-
ber, 1888; on the Ist of June, the 17th of July and the IOth
of September 1889
The disguise was perfect.
Nobody ever saw him, except, of course, the victims.
They saw him.
Who would have expected?
He wore a ...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...is time he got married and had a kid.
The wife and kid are gone now, blown away like apples by the
fickle wind of the Twentieth Century. I guess the fickle wind
of alltime. The family that fell in the autumn.
After he split up with his wife, he went to Arizona and was
a reporter and editor of newspapers. He honky-tonked in
Naco, a Mexican border town, drank illescal Mescal Triunfo, played
cards and shot the roof of his house full of bullet holes.
Pard tells a story ...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...ave
From the first hour of my most wretched birth;
Therefore my life had known but little mirth
When I had come unto my twentieth year
And the last time of hallowing drew anear.
"So in her temple had I lived and died
And all would long ago have passed away,
But ere that time came, did strange things betide,
Whereby I am alive unto this day;
Alas, the bitter words that I must say!
Ah! can I bring my wretched tongue to tell
How I was brought unto this fearful hell.
"A queen...Read more of this...
by
Morris, William
...OH for one hour of youthful joy!
Give back my twentieth spring!
I'd rather laugh, a bright-haired boy,
Than reign, a gray-beard king.
Off with the spoils of wrinkled age!
Away with Learning's crown!
Tear out life's Wisdom-written page,
And dash its trophies down!
One moment let my life-blood stream
From boyhood's fount of flame!
Give me one giddy, reeling dream
Of life all love and fame!
. . . . .
...Read more of this...
by
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
...
In shavings curled and feathered;
I thought how silver it would shine
By cruel winters weathered.
But he was in his twentieth year,
Ths time I'm speaking of;
We were head over heels in love with fear
And half a-feared of love.
My hair was piled in a copper crown --
A devilish living thing --
And the tortise-shell pins fell down, fell down,
When that snake uncoiled to spring.
His feet were used to treading a gale
And balancing thereon;
His face was as brown as a ...Read more of this...
by
Wylie, Elinor
...
"The Keeper of the Field of Tombs
Dwells by its gateway-pier;
He celebrates with feast and dance
His daughter's twentieth year:
He celebrates with wine of France
The birthday of his dear." -
IV
"The gates are shut when evening glooms:
Lay down your wreath, sad wight;
To-morrow is a time more fit
For placing flowers aright:
The morning is the time for it;
Come, wake with us to-night!" -
V
He grounds his wreath, and enters in,
And sits, and shares t...Read more of this...
by
Hardy, Thomas
...very object in my sight
in these loved timber rooms at the threshold of grass.
The depth in this marriage will heal the twentieth century....Read more of this...
by
Murray, Les
...complex plumbing of the soul,
Sophisticated instruments of feeling and a system
Of controlled memory at the end of the twentieth century,
But with an old body from ancient times
And with a God even older than my body.
I'm a person for the surface of the earth.
Low places, caves and wells
Frighten me. Mountain peaks
And tall buildings scare me.
I'm not like an inserted fork,
Not a cutting knife, not a stuck spoon.
I'm not flat and sly
Like a spatula creeping up from below.
A...Read more of this...
by
Amichai, Yehuda
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