Famous Two Way Poems by Famous Poets

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

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I drown my entire soul in your two eyes

by Emile Verhaeren
I drown my entire soul in your two eyes, and the mad rapture of that frenzied soul, so that, having been steeped in their gentleness and prayer, it may be returned to me brighter and of truer temper.
O for a union that refines the being, as two golden windows in the same apse cross their differently lucent fires and interpenetrate!
I...Read more of this...

Two Songs by Sitara, of Kashmir

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Beloved! your hair was golden
   As tender tints of sunrise,
   As corn beside the River
         In softly varying hues.
   I loved you for your slightness,
   Your melancholy sweetness,
   Your changeful eyes, that promised
      ...Read more of this...

Two Lengths has every Day --

by Emily Dickinson
 Two Lengths has every Day --
Its absolute extent
And Area superior
By Hope or Horror lent --

Eternity will be
Velocity or Pause
At Fundamental Signals
From Fundamental Laws.

To die is not to go --
On Doom's consummate Chart
No Territory new is staked --
Remain thou as thou art....Read more of this...

Do you see those two or three imbeciles who hold the

by Omar Khayyam
Do you see those two or three imbeciles who hold the
world in their hands, and who, in their candid ignorance,
believe themselves the wisest in the universe? Do not
disturb yourself for, in their high content, they deem
all heretics who are not asses [like themselves]....Read more of this...

Two Octaves

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I

Not by the grief that stuns and overwhelms 
All outward recognition of revealed 
And righteous omnipresence are the days 
Of most of us affrighted and diseased, 
But rather by the common snarls of life 
That come to test us and to strengthen us 
In this the prentice-age of discontent, 
Rebelliousness, faint-heartedness, and shame. 


II

When through hot fog the fulgid...Read more of this...

Two Songs

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
A bee that was searching for sweets one day
Through the gate of a rose garden happened to stray.
In the heart of a rose he hid away,
And forgot in his bliss the light of day,
As sipping his honey he buzzed in song;
Though day was waning, he lingered long,
For the rose was sweet, so sweet.
A robin sits pluming his ruddy breast,
And a...Read more of this...

Two Sisters Of Persephone

by Sylvia Plath
 Two girls there are : within the house
One sits; the other, without.
Daylong a duet of shade and light
Plays between these. 

In her dark wainscoted room
The first works problems on
A mathematical machine.
Dry ticks mark time 

As she calculates each sum.
At this barren enterprise
Rat-shrewd go her squint eyes,
Root-pale her meager frame. 

Bronzed as earth, the second lies,
Hearing ticks blown gold
Like pollen...Read more of this...

Two Quatrains

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I

As eons of incalculable strife 
Are in the vision of one moment caught, 
So are the common, concrete things of life 
Divinely shadowed on the walls of Thought. 


II

We shriek to live, but no man ever lives
Till he has rid the ghost of human breath; 
We dream to die, but no man ever dies 
Till he has quit the...Read more of this...

Sonnet 45: The other two slight air and purging fire

by William Shakespeare
 The other two, slight air and purging fire,
Are both with thee, wherever I abide;
The first my thought, the other my desire,
These present-absent with swift motion slide.
For when these quicker elements are gone
In tender embassy of love to thee,
My life, being made of four, with two alone
Sinks down to death, oppressed with melancholy;
Until life's composition be recured
By those swift messengers...Read more of this...

Two Sonnets

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I

Just as I wonder at the twofold screen 
Of twisted innocence that you would plait 
For eyes that uncourageously await 
The coming of a kingdom that has been, 
So do I wonder what God’s love can mean
To you that all so strangely estimate 
The purpose and the consequent estate 
Of one short shuddering step to the Unseen. 

No, I...Read more of this...

Two Rivers

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Thy summer voice, Musketaquit, 
Repeats the music of the rain; 
But sweeter rivers pulsing flit 
Through thee, as thou through the Concord Plain. 
Thou in thy narrow banks art pent: 
The stream I love unbounded goes 
Through flood and sea and firmament; 
Through light, through life, it forward flows. 

I see the inundation sweet, 
I hear the spending of...Read more of this...

Two Poems from the War

by Archibald MacLeish
 Oh, not the loss of the accomplished thing! 
Not dumb farewells, nor long relinquishment 
Of beauty had, and golden summer spent, 
And savage glory of the fluttering 
Torn banners of the rain, and frosty ring 
Of moon-white winters, and the imminent 
Long-lunging seas, and glowing students bent 
To race on some smooth beach the gull's wing:

Not these, nor all...Read more of this...

A Pastoral Dialogue Between Two Shepherdesses

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 [Silvia] Pretty Nymph! within this Shade, 
Whilst the Flocks to rest are laid,
Whilst the World dissolves in Heat,
Take this cool, and flow'ry Seat: 
And with pleasing Talk awhile
Let us two the Time beguile; 
Tho' thou here no Shepherd see, 
To encline his humble Knee, 
Or with melancholy Lays 
Sing thy dangerous Beauty's Praise. 


[Dorinda] Nymph! with thee I here...Read more of this...

Two -- were immortal twice --

by Emily Dickinson
 Two -- were immortal twice --
The privilege of few --
Eternity -- obtained -- in Time --
Reversed Divinity --

That our ignoble Eyes
The quality conceive
Of Paradise superlative --
Through their Comparative....Read more of this...

Two Went up into the Temple to Pray

by Richard Crashaw
 Two went to pray? O rather say
One went to brag, th' other to pray:

One stands up close and treads on high,
Where th' other dares not send his eye.

One nearer to God's altar trod,
The other to the altar's God....Read more of this...

Two Fusiliers

by Robert Graves
 And have we done with War at last? 
Well, we’ve been lucky devils both, 
And there’s no need of pledge or oath 
To bind our lovely friendship fast, 
By firmer stuff
Close bound enough. 

By wire and wood and stake we’re bound, 
By Fricourt and by Festubert, 
By whipping rain, by the sun’s glare, 
By all the misery and loud...Read more of this...

On a Picture Painted by her self representing two Nimphs of DIANAs one in a posture to Hunt the other Batheing

by Anne Killigrew
 WE are Diana's Virgin-Train, 
Descended of no Mortal Strain; 
Our Bows and Arrows are our Goods, 
Our Pallaces, the lofty Woods, 
The Hills and Dales, at early Morn, 
Resound and Eccho with our Horn; 
We chase the Hinde and Fallow-Deer, 
The Wolf and Boar both dread our Spear; 

In Swiftness we out-strip the Wind, 
An Eye and Thought we...Read more of this...

A Tale of Two Cities

by Rudyard Kipling
 Where the sober-colored cultivator smiles
 On his byles;
Where the cholera, the cyclone, and the crow
 Come and go;
Where the merchant deals in indigo and tea,
 Hides and ghi;
Where the Babu drops inflammatory hints
 In his prints;
Stands a City -- Charnock chose it -- packed away
 Near a Bay --
By the Sewage rendered fetid, by the sewer
 Made impure,
By the...Read more of this...

Two Pictures

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
A beautiful form and a beautiful face,
A winsome bride and a woman's grace,
So fair and sweet it were heaven indeed
For man to follow where she would lead.
A web of lace and a jeweled hand,
And life is changed by a golden band;
A dream of love and a wealth of gold—
The old new story once more is told.
A wealth of flowers and...Read more of this...

Two Wishes XI

by Kahlil Gibran
 In the silence of the night Death descended from God toward the earth. He hovered above a city and pierced the dwellings with his eyes. He say the spirits floating on wings of dreams, and the people who were surrendered to the Slumber. 

When the moon fell below the horizon and the city became black, Death walked silently among...Read more of this...

On Two Ministers of State

by Hilaire Belloc
 Lump says that Caliban's of gutter breed,
And Caliban says Lump's a fool indeed,
And Caliban and Lump and I are all agreed....Read more of this...

Two Lyrics From Kilroys Carnival: A Masque

by Delmore Schwartz
 I Aria

"--Kiss me there where pride is glittering
Kiss me where I am ripened and round fruit
Kiss me wherever, however, I am supple, bare and flare
(Let the bell be rung as long as I am young:
 let ring and fly like a great bronze wing!)

"--I'll kiss you wherever you think you are poor, 
Wherever you shudder, feeling striped or barred,...Read more of this...

30 Cents Two Transfers Love

by Richard Brautigan
 Thinking hard about you 
I got on the bus 
and paid 30 cents car fare 
and asked the driver for two transfers 
before discovering 
that I was 
alone....Read more of this...

Two Men

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 There be two men of all mankind 
That I should like to know about; 
But search and question where I will, 
I cannot ever find them out. 

Melchizedek he praised the Lord, 
And gave some wine to Abraham; 
But who can tell what else he did 
Must be more learned than I am. 

Ucalegon he lost his house 
When...Read more of this...

The Two Spirits: An Allegory

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 FIRST SPIRIT
O thou, who plum'd with strong desire 
Wouldst float above the earth, beware!
A Shadow tracks thy flight of fire--
Night is coming!
Bright are the regions of the air,
And among the winds and beams
It were delight to wander there--
Night is coming!SECOND SPIRIT
The deathless stars are bright above;
If I would cross the shade of night,
Within my heart is the lamp of...Read more of this...

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