Famous University Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous University poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous university poems. These examples illustrate what a famous university poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Dryden, John
...flights appear;
The spirit caught him up, the Lord knows where:
And gave him his rabbinical degree,
Unknown to foreign university.
His judgment yet his mem'ry did excel:
Which piec'd his wondrous evidence so well:
And suited to the temper of the times;
Then groaning under Jebusitic crimes.
Let Israel's foes suspect his Heav'nly call,
And rashly judge his writ apocryphal;
Our laws for such affronts have forfeits made:
He takes his life, who takes away his trade.
W...Read more of this...
by
Hikmet, Nazim
...don't like to turn back
at three I served as a pasha's grandson in Aleppo
at nineteen as a student at Moscow Communist University
at forty-nine I was back in Moscow as the Tcheka Party's guest
and I've been a poet since I was fourteen
some people know all about plants some about fish
I know separation
some people know the names of the stars by heart
I recite absences
I've slept in prisons and in grand hotels
I've known hunger even a hunger strike and there's almost no food...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...porting desk;
When I can touch the body of books, by night or by day, and when they touch my body back
again;
When a university course convinces, like a slumbering woman and child convince;
When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the night-watchman’s daughter;
When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite, and are my friendly companions;
I intend to reach them my hand, and make as much of them as I do of men and women like
you.
The sum of all known reverence...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...r is nigh
Israel! a cradle shall redeem thy worth—
A Cradle yet shall save the widespread earth!"
Dublin University Magazine, 1839
...Read more of this...
by
Kramberger, Taja
...what?
I have also become a social scientist
and an editor and an organiser
and a translator and an activist
and a university teacher.
Unbearable - all these things -
all trespasses of the old parcel borders
that were drawn by the dirty
fingers of fraternities.
I air all the rooms,
I ignore all the ratings,
I open all the valvelets.
And they have put me out in the cold –
like the dead.
But every dead one has a name.
© Taja Kramberger,...Read more of this...
by
Homer,
.... This text has been scanned and proof-read by Edward A. Beach, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.]
I begin to sing of rich-haired Demeter, awful goddess -- of her and her trim-ankled daughter whom Aidoneus [Hades] rapt away, given to him by all-seeing Zeus the loud-thunderer. Apart from Demeter, lady of the golden sword and glorious fruits, she was playing with the deep-bosomed daughters of Oceanus and gathe...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
..., surpassing in beauty, from whom I take occasion to bless Almighty God.
For I pray God for the professors of the University of Cambridge to attend and to amend.
For the Fatherless Children and widows are never deserted of the Lord.
For I pray God be gracious to the house of Stuart and consider their afflictions.
For I pray God be gracious to the seed of Virgil to Mr GOODMAN SMITH of King's and Joseph STUD.
For I give God the glory that I am a so...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...of Fig rejoice with Fleawort. The Lord magnify the idea of Smart singing hymns on this day in the eyes of the whole University of Cambridge. Novr 5th 1762. N.S.
Let Codrington, house of Codrington rejoice with Thelyphonon an herb whose root kills scorpions.
Let Butler, house of Butler rejoice with Theombrotios a Persian herb. God be gracious to the immortal Soul of the Duke of Ormond.
Let Bodley, house of Bodley rejoice with Tetragnathius...Read more of this...
by
Herbert, George
...the yellow legged plovers live at the university and stare down
pale students who dare to walk near them
we like them
they are the smartest things around with their brown caps and stiffish know-it-all walk
god, don't they look like the newly arrived so proud to be here,
and busy,
the plovers should have keys and a whistle on a lanyard each
like brisk brutish phys ed teachers they probably...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...How tall among her sisters, and how fair, --
How grave beyond her youth, yet debonair
As dawn, 'mid wrinkled Matres of old lands
Our youngest Alma Mater modest stands!
In four brief cycles round the punctual sun
Has she, old Learning's latest daughter, won
This grace, this stature, and this fruitful fame.
Howbeit she was born
Unnoised as any stealing s...Read more of this...
by
Kaufman, Bob
...intless discussion & historical hangovers.
On television corners of cornflakes & rockwells impotent America.
On university corners of tailored intellect & greek letter openers.
On military corners of megathon deaths & universal anesthesia.
On religious corners of theological limericks and
On radio corners of century-long records & static events.
On advertising corners of filter-tipped ice-cream & instant instants
On teen-age corners of comic book seduction...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...AMERICA
How the Cobra Lily traps insects is a ballet for Trout Fishing
in America, a ballet to be performed at the University of
California at Los Angeles.
The plant is beside me here on the back porch.
It died a few days after I bought it at Woolworth's. That
was months ago, during the presidential election of nineteen
hundred and sixty.
I buried the plant in an empty Metrecal can.
The side of the can says, "Metrecal Dietary for Weight
Co...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...se to shore, like children they believed in their own im-
mortality .
A third-year student in engineering at the University of
Montana attempted to catch some of the minnows but he went
about it all wrong. So did the children who came on the
Fourth of July weekend.
The children waded out into the lake and tried to catch the
minnows with their hands. They also used milk cartons and
plastic bags. They presented the lake with hours of human
effort....Read more of this...
by
Rumi, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad
...;">Translated by A.J.Arberry ‘Mystical Poems of Rumi’ The University of Chicago Press 1991 Links poetseers.org/the-poetseers/rumi">Rumi Homepage ...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...before we part,
The poet's blessing take,
Ere bleeds that aged heart,
Or child the woman make.
Dublin University Magazine.
...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...brother mariners, we will not wander more.Credits and CopyrightTogether with the editors, the Department ofEnglish (University of Toronto), and the University of Toronto Press,the following individuals share copyright for the work that wentinto this edition:Screen Design (Electronic Edition): Sian Meikle (University ofToronto Library)Scanning: Sharine Leung (Centre for Computing in the Humanities)
Added: Mar 11 2005 | Viewed: 581 times | Comments (0)
Information...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...ch I have
Hard by your father's frontier: I said no,
Yet being an easy man, gave it: and there,
All wild to found an University
For maidens, on the spur she fled; and more
We know not,--only this: they see no men,
Not even her brother Arac, nor the twins
Her brethren, though they love her, look upon her
As on a kind of paragon; and I
(Pardon me saying it) were much loth to breed
Dispute betwixt myself and mine: but since
(And I confess with right) you think me boun...Read more of this...
by
Rumi, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad
...dragged me; how shall I
tell the manner of that dragging?” “Mystical Poems of Rumi 1?, A.J. Arberry
The University of Chicago Press, 1968 Links poetseers.org/the-poetseers/rumi">Rumi Homepage ...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...hours a day, her libellous verse scorching
The academic groves of Leeds in sheets by the thousand,
Mailed through the university's internal post. She called
The VC 'a mouse from the mountain'; Bishop of Durham to-be
David Jenkins a wimp and worse and all in colourful verse
And 'Guntrip's Ghost' went to every VC in England in a
Single day. When she sat on the English lawn Park Honan
Flew paper aeroplanes with messages down and
And when she was in Classics they ...Read more of this...
by
Wheatley, Phillis
...WHILE an intrinsic ardor prompts to write,
The muses promise to assist my pen;
'Twas not long since I left my native shore
The land of errors, and Egyptain gloom:
Father of mercy, 'twas thy gracious hand
Brought me in safety from those dark abodes.
Students, to you 'tis giv'n to scan the heights
Above, to traverse the ethereal space,
And mark the syste...Read more of this...
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