Famous Vexes Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Instans Tyrannus

by Robert Browning
 I.

Of the million or two, more or less,
I rule and possess,
One man, for some cause undefined,
Was least to my mind.

II.

I struck him, he grovelled of course---
For, what was his force?
I pinned him to earth with my weight
And persistence of hate:
And he lay, would not moan, would not curse,
As his lot might be worse.

III.

``Were the object less mean, would he...Read more of this...

Fit the Fourth ( Hunting of the Snark )

by Lewis Carroll
 The Hunting 


The Bellman looked uffish, and wrinkled his brow.
"If only you'd spoken before!
It's excessively awkward to mention it now,
With the Snark, so to speak, at the door! 
"We should all of us grieve, as you well may believe,
If you never were met with again--
But surely, my man, when the voyage began,
You might have suggested it then? 

"It's excessively...Read more of this...

An American

by Rudyard Kipling
 If the Led Striker call it a strike,
 Or the papers call it a war,
They know not much what I am like,
 Nor what he is, My Avatar.

Throuh many roads, by me possessed,
 He shambles forth in cosmic guise;
He is the Jester and the Jest,
 And he the Text himself applies.

The Celt is in his heart and hand,
 The...Read more of this...

Meeting Among the Mountains

by D. H. Lawrence
 The little pansies by the road have turned 
Away their purple faces and their gold, 
And evening has taken all the bees from the thyme, 
And all the scent is shed away by the cold. 

Against the hard and pale blue evening sky 
The mountain's new-dropped summer snow is clear 
Glistening in steadfast stillness: like transcendent 
Clean pain sending...Read more of this...

The Fools Epilogue

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 MANY good works I've done and ended,
Ye take the praise--I'm not offended;
For in the world, I've always thought
Each thing its true position hath sought.
When praised for foolish deeds am I,
I set off laughing heartily;
When blamed for doing something good,
I take it in an easy mood.
If some one stronger gives me hard blows,
That it's a jest, I feign to suppose:
But...Read more of this...

Stanza

by Emily Brontë
 Often rebuked, yet always back returning
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things which cannot be:

Today, I will seek not the shadowy region;
Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;
And visions rising, legion after legion,
Bring the unreal world too strangely near.

I'll walk, but not in old heroic traces,
And not in...Read more of this...

My November Guest

by Robert Frost
 My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She's glad the birds are gone away,
She's glad her simple worsted grady
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate,...Read more of this...

Frost at Midnight

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
Came loud---and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
`Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This...Read more of this...

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