Famous Well Matched Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Well Matched poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous well matched poems. These examples illustrate what a famous well matched poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
George Meredith
They say, that Pity in Love's service dwells,
A porter at the rosy temple's gate.
I missed him going: but it is my fate
To come upon him now beside his wells;
Whereby I know that I Love's temple leave,
And that the purple doors have closed behind.
Poor soul! if in those early days unkind,
Thy power to...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Mary and I were twenty-two
When we were wed;
A well-matched pair, right smart to view
The town's folk said.
For twenty years I have been true
To nuptial bed.
But oh alas! The march of time,
Life's wear and tear!
Now I am in my lusty prime
With pep to spare,
While she looks ten more years than I'm,
With greying hair.
'Twas on...Read more of this...
by
Sir Walter Scott
Oh! young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
And save his good broadsword he weapons had none.
He rode all unarmed and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love and so dauntless in war,
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.
He stayed not for brake and he stopped not for stone,
He...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I could bring You Jewels -- had I a mind to --
But You have enough -- of those --
I could bring You Odors from St. Domingo --
Colors -- from Vera Cruz --
Berries of the Bahamas -- have I --
But this little Blaze
Flickering to itself -- in the Meadow --
Suits Me -- more than those --
Never a Fellow matched this...Read more of this...
by
Hilda Doolittle
Over and back,
the long waves crawl
and track the sand with foam;
night darkens, and the sea
takes on that desperate tone
of dark that wives put on
when all their love is done.
Over and back,
the tangled thread falls slack,
over and up and on;
over and all is sewn;
now while I bind the end,
I...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
A baby shines as bright
If winter or if May be
On eyes that keep in sight
A baby.
Though dark the skies or grey be,
It fills our eyes with light,
If midnight or midday be.
Love hails it, day and night,
The sweetest thing that may be
Yet cannot praise aright
A baby.
II.
All heaven, in every baby born,
All absolute of earthly leaven,
Reveals itself, though man may scorn
All...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
In ruck and quibble of courtfolk
This giant hulked, I tell you, on her scene
With hands like derricks,
Looks fierce and black as rooks;
Why, all the windows broke when he stalked in.
Her dainty acres he ramped through
And used her gentle doves with manners rude;
I do not know
What fury urged him slay
Her antelope who meant him naught but good.
She spoke most chiding...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
Half the people in the world love the other half,
half the people hate the other half.
Must I because of this half and that half go wandering
and changing ceaselessly like rain in its cycle,
must I sleep among rocks, and grow rugged like
the trunks of olive trees,
and hear the moon barking at me,
and...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("N'ai-je pas pour toi, belle juive.")
{XII., Oct. 27, 1828.}
To please you, Jewess, jewel!
I have thinned my harem out!
Must every flirting of your fan
Presage a dying shout?
Grace for the damsels tender
Who have fear to hear your laugh,
For seldom gladness gilds your lips...Read more of this...
by
Oliver Wendell Holmes
YES, write, if you want to, there's nothing like trying;
Who knows what a treasure your casket may hold?
I'll show you that rhyming's as easy as lying,
If you'll listen to me while the art I unfold.
Here's a book full of words; one can choose as he fancies,
As a painter his tint, as a workman his tool;
Just think! all the poems...Read more of this...
by
Rupert Brooke
Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the...Read more of this...
by
Ted Hughes
Russia and America circle each other;
Threats nudge an act that were without doubt
A melting of the mould in the mother,
Stones melting about the root.
The quick of the earth burned out:
The toil of all our ages a loss
With leaf and insect. Yet flitting thought
(Not to be thought ridiculous)
Shies from the world-cancelling black
Of its playing shadow: it has learned
That...Read more of this...
by
Rupert Brooke
Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The south-wind brings
Life, sunshine, and desire,
And on every mount and meadow
Breathes aromatic fire,
But over the dead he has no power,
The lost, the lost he cannot restore,
And, looking over the hills, I mourn
The darling who shall not return.
I see my empty house,
I see my trees repair their boughs,
And he, —the wondrous child,
Whose silver warble wild
Outvalued every pulsing sound
Within the air's...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
A born salesman,
my father made all his dough
by selling wool to Fieldcrest, Woolrich and Faribo.
A born talker,
he could sell one hundred wet-down bales
of that white stuff. He could clock the miles and the sales
and make it pay.
At home each sentence he would utter
had first pleased the buyer who'd paid him off in butter.
Each word
had been tried over and over,...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,
Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,
Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed
Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,
Man, brute, reptile, fly,--alien of end and of aim,
Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,--
Should rush into sight at...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
"OLD Norbert with the flat blue cap--
A German said to be--
Why let your pipe die on your lap,
Your eyes blink absently?"--
--"Ah!... Well, I had thought till my cheek was wet
Of my mother--her voice and mien
When she used to sing and pirouette,
And touse the tambourine
"To the march that yon street-fiddler plies;
She told me 'twas the same
She'd heard from the trumpets,...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Three score and ten, the psalmist saith,
And half my course is well-nigh run;
I've had my flout at dusty death,
I've had my whack of feast and fun.
I've mocked at those who prate and preach;
I've laughed with any man alive;
But now with sobered heart I reach
The Great Divide of Thirty-five.
And looking back I must confess
I've little cause to feel elate.
I've played...Read more of this...
by
Sir Walter Raleigh
Now what is Love, I pray thee, tell?
It is that fountain and that well
Where pleasure and repentance dwell;
It is, perhaps, the sauncing bell
That tolls all into heaven or hell;
And this is Love, as I hear tell.
Yet what is Love, I prithee, say?
It is a work on holiday,
It is December matched with May,
When lusty bloods in fresh array
Hear ten months...Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me,...Read more of this...
by
Coventry Patmore
I walk, I trust, with open eyes;
I've travelled half my worldly course;
And in the way behind me lies
Much vanity and some remorse;
I've lived to feel how pride may part
Spirits, tho' matched like hand and glove;
I've blushed for love's abode, the heart;
But have not disbelieved in love;
Nor unto love, sole mortal thing...Read more of this...
by
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Awhirl with events,
packed with jobs one too many,
the day slowly sinks
as the night shadows fall.
There are two in the room:
I
and Lenin-
a photograph
on the whiteness of wall.
The stubble slides upward
above his lip
as his mouth
jerks open in speech.
The tense
creases of brow
hold thought
in their grip,
immense brow
matched by thought immense.
A forest of...Read more of this...
by
George Meredith
Full faith I have she holds that rarest gift
To beauty, Common Sense. To see her lie
With her fair visage an inverted sky
Bloom-covered, while the underlids uplift,
Would almost wreck the faith; but when her mouth
(Can it kiss sweetly? sweetly!) would address
The inner me that thirsts for her no less,
And has so long been...Read more of this...
by
Aleister Crowley
I
The cloud my bed is tinged with blood and foam.
The vault yet blazes with the sun
Writhing above the West, brave hippodrome
Whose gladiators shock and shun
As the blue night devours them, crested comb
Of sleep's dead sea
That eats the shores of life, rings round eternity!
II
So, he is gone whose giant sword shed flame
Into my bowels; my blood's bewitched;
My brain's afloat with...Read more of this...
by
Gary Fincke
When magpies die, each of the living swoops down
and pecks, one by one, in an accepted order.
He coaxed my car to start, the boy who’s killed himself.
He twisted a cable, performed CPR on
The carburetor while my...Read more of this...
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