Famous Wear Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Whilst thou dost wear this fleshy livery,

by Omar Khayyam
Whilst thou dost wear this fleshy livery,
Step not beyond the bounds of destiny;
Bear up, though very Rustums be thy foes,
And crave no boon from friends like Hatim Tai!...Read more of this...

We Wear the Mask

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
          We wear the...Read more of this...

The Nurse

by Katharine Tynan
 Such innocent companionship 
Is hers, whether she wake or sleep, 
'Tis scarcely strange her face should wear 
The young child's grave and innocent air. 

All the night long she hath by her 
The quiet breathing, the soft stir, 
Nor knows how in that tender place 
The children's angels veil the face. 

She wakes at dawn with bird and child
To...Read more of this...

Finery

by Jane Taylor
 In an elegant frock, trimm'd with beautiful lace,
And hair nicely curl'd, hanging over her face,
Young Fanny went out to the house of a friend, 
With a large little party the evening to spend. 

"Ah! how they will all be delighted, I guess,
And stare with surprise at my handsome new dress!" 
Thus said the vain girl, and her little heart...Read more of this...

All Souls Night

by William Butler Yeats
 Epilogue to "A Vision'

MIDNIGHT has come, and the great Christ Church Bell
And may a lesser bell sound through the room;
And it is All Souls' Night,
And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel
Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come;
For it is a ghost's right,
His element is so fine
Being sharpened by his death,
To drink from the wine-breath
While our gross palates drink...Read more of this...

We wear our sober Dresses when we die

by Emily Dickinson
 We wear our sober Dresses when we die,
But Summer, frilled as for a Holiday
Adjourns her sigh --...Read more of this...

Sonnet 15 - Accuse me not beseech thee that I wear

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 Accuse me not, beseech thee, that I wear
Too calm and sad a face in front of thine;
For we two look two ways, and cannot shine
With the same sunlight on our brow and hair.
On me thou lookest with no doubting care,
As on a bee shut in a crystalline;
Since sorrow hath shut me safe in love's divine,
And to spread wing and...Read more of this...

How many masks wear we, and undermasks,

by Fernando Pessoa
How many masks wear we, and undermasks,

Upon our countenance of soul, and when,

If for self-sport the soul itself unmasks,

Knows it the last mask off and the face plain?

The true mask feels no inside to the mask

But looks out of the mask by co-masked eyes.

Whatever consciousness begins the task

The task's accepted use to sleepness ties.

Like a child frighted by its mirrored...Read more of this...

The Young that Died in Beauty

by Ingeborg Bachmann
 If souls should only sheen so bright
In heaven as in e’thly light,
An’ nothen better wer the cease,
How comely still, in sheape an’ feace,
Would many reach thik happy pleace, -
The hopevul souls that in their prime
Ha’ seem’d a-took avore their time, -
The young that died in beauty.

But when woone’s lim’s ha’ lost their strangth
A-tweilen drough a lifetime’s langth,
An’ over cheaks...Read more of this...

At A Solemn Musick

by John Milton
 Blest pair of Sirens, pledges of Heav'ns joy,
Sphear-born harmonious Sisters, Voice, and Vers,
Wed your divine sounds, and mixt power employ
Dead things with inbreath'd sense able to pierce,
And to our high-rais'd phantasie present,
That undisturbed Song of pure content,
Ay sung before the saphire-colour'd throne
To him that sits theron
With Saintly shout, and solemn Jubily,
Where the bright Seraphim in burning row 
Their loud...Read more of this...

To Groves

by Robert Herrick
 Ye silent shades, whose each tree here
Some relique of a saint doth wear;
Who for some sweet-heart's sake, did prove
The fire and martyrdom of Love:--
Here is the legend of those saints
That died for love, and their complaints;
Their wounded hearts, and names we find
Encarved upon the leaves and rind.
Give way, give way to me, who come
Scorch'd with the self-same martyrdom!
And have...Read more of this...

October

by Hilaire Belloc
 Ay, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath! 
When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf, 
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief 
And the year smiles as it draws near its death. 
Wind of the sunny south! oh, still delay 
In the gay woods and in the golden air, 
Like to a good old age released...Read more of this...

The Men Who Wear My Clothes

by Vernon Scannell
 Sleepless I lay last night and watched the slow 
Procession of the men who wear my clothes: 
First, the grey man with bloodshot eyes and sly 
Gestures miming what he loves and loathes. 

Next came the cheery knocker-back of pints, 
The beery joker, never far from tears, 
Whose loud and public vanity acquaints 
The careful watcher with his private...Read more of this...

One Inch Tall

by Shel Silverstein
 If you were only one inch tall, you'd ride a worm to school.
The teardrop of a crying ant would be your swimming pool.
A crumb of cake would be a feast
And last you seven days at least,
A flea would be a frightening beast
If you were one inch tall.

If you were only one inch tall, you'd walk beneath the door,
And it...Read more of this...

Sonnet 77: Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear

by William Shakespeare
 Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,
Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste;
These vacant leaves thy mind's imprint will bear,
And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste.
The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show
Of mouthèd graves will give thee memory,
Thou by thy dial's shady stealth mayst know
Time's thievish progress to eternity.
Look what thy memory cannot contain,
Commit...Read more of this...

Precious to Me -- She still shall be --

by Emily Dickinson
 Precious to Me -- She still shall be --
Though She forget the name I bear --
The fashion of the Gown I wear --
The very Color of My Hair --

So like the Meadows -- now --
I dared to show a Tress of Theirs
If haply -- She might not despise
A Buttercup's Array --

I know the Whole -- obscures the Part --
The...Read more of this...

Taedium Vitae

by Oscar Wilde
 To stab my youth with desperate knives, to wear
This paltry age's gaudy livery,
To let each base hand filch my treasury,
To mesh my soul within a woman's hair,
And be mere Fortune's lackeyed groom, - I swear
I love it not! these things are less to me
Than the thin foam that frets upon the sea,
Less than the thistledown of summer air
Which hath...Read more of this...

The Respectable Burgher on The Higher Criticism

by Thomas Hardy
 Since Reverend Doctors now declare 
That clerks and people must prepare 
To doubt if Adam ever were; 
To hold the flood a local scare; 
To argue, though the stolid stare, 
That everything had happened ere 
The prophets to its happening sware; 
That David was no giant-slayer, 
Nor one to call a God-obeyer 
In certain details we could spare, 
But...Read more of this...

Urbs Coronata

by Henry Van Dyke
 (Song for the City College of New York) 

O youngest of the giant brood 
Of cities far-renowned;
In wealth and power thou hast passed
Thy rivals at a bound;
And now thou art a queen, New York;
And how wilt thou be crowned? 

"Weave me no palace-wreath of pride,"
The royal city said;
"Nor forge an iron fortress-wall
To frown upon my head;
But let me wear...Read more of this...

Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte

by George (Lord) Byron
 I 
'Tis done -- but yesterday a King! 
And arm'd with Kings to strive -- 
And now thou art a nameless thing: 
So abject -- yet alive! 
Is this the man of thousand thrones, 
Who strew'd our earth with hostile bones, 
And can he thus survive? 
Since he, miscall'd the Morning Star, 
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so...Read more of this...

The Shroud

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Death, I say, my heart is bowed
 Unto thine,—O mother!
This red gown will make a shroud
 Good as any other!

(I, that would not wait to wear
 My own bridal things,
In a dress dark as my hair
 Made my answerings.

I, to-night, that till he came
 Could not, could not wait,
In a gown as bright as flame
 Held for them the...Read more of this...

Sometimes you wear the kindly grace

by Emile Verhaeren
Sometimes you wear the kindly grace of the garden in early morning that, quiet and winding, unfolds in the blue distances its pleasant paths, curved like the necks of swans.
And, at other times, you are for me the bright thrill of the swift, exalting wind that passes with its lightning fingers through the watery mane of the white pond.
At the...Read more of this...

The Merchants Of London

by Mother Goose
Hey diddle dinkety poppety pet,
The merchants of London they wear scarlet,
Silk in the collar and gold in the hem,
So merrily march the merchant men....Read more of this...

Between Us Now

by Thomas Hardy
 Between us now and here-- 
Two thrown together 
Who are not wont to wear 
Life's flushest feather--

Who see the scenes slide past, 
The daytimes dimming fast, 
Let there be truth at last, 
Even if despair.

So thoroughly and long 
Have you now known me, 
So real in faith and strong 
Have I now shown me, 
That nothing needs disguise 
Further...Read more of this...

What Curious Dresses All Men Wear

by Delmore Schwartz
 What curious dresses all men wear!
The walker you met in a brown study,
The President smug in rotogravure,
The mannequin, the bathing beauty.

The bubble-dancer, the deep-sea diver,
The bureaucrat, the adulterer,
Hide private parts which I disclose
To those who know what a poem knows....Read more of this...

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