Famous Unit Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Unit poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous unit poems. These examples illustrate what a famous unit poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Robert Browning
SHORTLY AFTER THE REVIVAL OF
LEARNING IN EUROPE.
Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
Singing together.
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes
Each in its tether
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain,
Cared-for till cock-crow:
Look out if yonder be not day again
Rimming the rock-row!
That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought,
Rarer, intenser,
Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,
Chafes in the censer.
Leave...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
Arriving for a reading an hour too early:
Ruefully, the general manager stopped putting out the chairs.
“You don’t get any help these days. I have
To sort out everything from furniture to faxes.
Why not wander round the park? There are ducks
And benches where you can sit and watch.”
I realized it was going to be a hungry evening
With not even a packet...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
Quarter to three: I wake again at the hour of his birth
Thirty years ago and now he paces corridors of dark
In nightmares of self-condemnation where random thoughts
Besiege his fevered imagination – England’s
Imminent destruction, his own, the world’s…
Sixty to eighty cigarettes a day, unavailing depot injections,
Failed abscondings, failed everything: Eton and Balliol
Hold no sway on ward one, nor even...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Un lion avait pris un enfant.")
{XIII.}
A Lion in his jaws caught up a child—
Not harming it—and to the woodland, wild
With secret streams and lairs, bore off his prey—
The beast, as one might cull a bud in May.
It was a rosy boy, a king's own pride,
...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
IT fell in the ancient periods
Which the brooding soul surveys
Or ever the wild Time coin'd itself
Into calendar months and days.
This was the lapse of Uriel 5
Which in Paradise befell.
Once among the Pleiads walking
Sayd overheard the young gods talking;
And the treason too long pent
To his ears was evident. 10...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
THIS love puts all humanity from me;
I can but maledict her, pray her dead,
For giving love and getting love of thee--
Feeding a heart that else mine own had fed!
How much I love I know not, life not known,
Save as some unit I would add love by;
But this I know, my being is but thine own--
Fused from its separateness by...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
The day is turning ghost,
And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively,
To join the anonymous host
Of those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe,
To one of like degree.
I part the fire-gnawed logs,
Rake forth the embers, spoil the busy flames, and lay the ends
Upon the shining dogs;
Further...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
There's many a schoolboy's bat and ball that are gathering dust at home,
For he hears a voice in the future call, and he trains for the war to come;
A serious light in his eyes is seen as he comes from the schoolhouse gate;
He keeps his kit and his rifle clean, and he sees that his back...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Unit, like Death, for Whom?
True, like the Tomb,
Who tells no secret
Told to Him --
The Grave is strict --
Tickets admit
Just two -- the Bearer --
And the Borne --
And seat -- just One --
The Living -- tell --
The Dying -- but a Syllable --
The Coy Dead -- None --
No Chatter -- here -- no tea --
So Babbler, and Bohea -- stay...Read more of this...
by
Kahlil Gibran
The gold-hoarder walked in his palace park and with him walked his troubles. And over his head hovered worries as a vulture hovers over a carcass, until he reached a beautiful lake surrounded by magnificent marble statuary.
He sat there pondering the water which poured from the mouths of the statues like thoughts flowing freely from a lover's imagination,...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
It's thoughts -- and just One Heart --
And Old Sunshine -- about --
Make frugal -- Ones -- Content --
And two or three -- for Company --
Upon a Holiday --
Crowded -- as Sacrament --
Books -- when the Unit --
Spare the Tenant -- long eno' --
A Picture -- if it Care --
Itself -- a Gallery too rare --
For needing more --
Flowers...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
He had offices in Sydney, not so many years ago,
And his shingle bore the legend `Peter Anderson and Co.',
But his real name was Careless, as the fellows understood --
And his relatives decided that he wasn't any good.
'Twas their gentle tongues that blasted any `character' he had --
He was fond of beer and leisure --...Read more of this...
by
David Lehman
Some people find out they are Jews.
They can't believe it.
Thy had always hated Jews.
As children they had roamed in gangs on winter nights in the old
neighborhood, looking for Jews.
They were not Jewish, they were Irish.
They brandished broken bottles, tough guys with blood on their
lips, looking for Jews.
They intercepted Jewish boys walking alone and beat them up.
Sometimes they...Read more of this...
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