Famous Who Knows Poems by Famous Poets

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

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What Almost Every Woman Knows Sooner Or Later

by Ogden Nash
 Husbands are things that wives have to get used to putting up with.
And with whom they breakfast with and sup with.
They interfere with the discipline of nurseries,
And forget anniversaries,
And when they have been particularly remiss
They think they can cure everything with a great big kiss,
And when you tell them about something awful they have done they just
look unbearably patient...Read more of this...

Thought was born blind, but Thought knows what is seeing

by Fernando Pessoa
Thought was born blind, but Thought knows what is seeing.

Its careful touch, deciphering forms from shapes,

Still suggests form as aught whose proper being

Mere finding touch with erring darkness drapes.

Yet whence, except from guessed sight, does touch teach

That touch is but a close and empty sense?

How does mere touch, self-uncontented, reach

For some truer sense's whole intelligence?

The thing once touched, if touch...Read more of this...

Who Knows?

by Vachel Lindsay
 They say one king is mad. Perhaps. Who knows?
They say one king is doddering and grey.
They say one king is slack and sick of mind,
A puppet for hid strings that twitch and play.

Is Europe then to be their sprawling-place?
Their mad-house, till it turns the wide world's bane?
Their place of maudlin, slavering conference
Till every far-off farmstead goes insane?...Read more of this...

Age and Youth

by George William Russell
 WE have left our youth behind:
 Earth is in its baby years:
Void of wisdom cries the wind,
 And the sunlight knows no tears.


When shall twilight feel the awe,
 All the rapt thought of the sage,
And the lips of wind give law
 Drawn from out their lore of age?


When shall earth begin to burn
 With such love as thrills my...Read more of this...

Until the Desert knows

by Emily Dickinson
 Until the Desert knows
That Water grows
His Sands suffice
But let him once suspect
That Caspian Fact
Sahara dies

Utmost is relative --
Have not or Have
Adjacent sums
Enough -- the first Abode
On the familiar Road
Galloped in Dreams --...Read more of this...

Lui Et Elle

by D. H. Lawrence
 She is large and matronly
And rather dirty,
A little sardonic-looking, as if domesticity had driven her to it.
Though what she does, except lay four eggs at random in the garden once a year
And put up with her husband,
I don't know.

She likes to eat.
She hurries up, striding reared on long uncanny legs
When food is going.
Oh yes, she can make haste when...Read more of this...

Mortal Limit

by Robert Penn Warren
 I saw the hawk ride updraft in the sunset over Wyoming.
It rose from coniferous darkness, past gray jags
Of mercilessness, past whiteness, into the gloaming
Of dream-spectral light above the lazy purity of snow-snags.

There--west--were the Tetons.Snow-peaks would soon be
In dark profile to break constellations.Beyond what height
Hangs now the black speck?Beyond what range will gold eyes see
New ranges rise to mark a...Read more of this...

Everybody Knows

by Leonard Cohen
 (co-written by Sharon Robinson)
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded 
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed 
Everybody knows that the war is over 
Everybody knows the good guys lost 
Everybody knows the fight was fixed 
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich 
That's how it goes 
Everybody knows 
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking 
Everybody knows the...Read more of this...

Nobody knows this little Rose

by Emily Dickinson
 Nobody knows this little Rose --
It might a pilgrim be
Did I not take it from the ways
And lift it up to thee.
Only a Bee will miss it --
Only a Butterfly,
Hastening from far journey --
On its breast to lie --
Only a Bird will wonder --
Only a Breeze will sigh --
Ah Little Rose -- how easy
For such as thee to die!...Read more of this...

The Windows

by Constantine P Cavafy
 In these darkened rooms, where I spend
oppresive days, I pace to and fro
to find the windows. -- When a window
opens, it will be a consolation. --
But the windows cannot be found, or I cannot
find them. And maybe it is best that I do not find them.
Maybe the light will be a new tyranny.
Who knows what new things it will...Read more of this...

Autobiography

by Nazim Hikmet
 I was born in 1902
I never once went back to my birthplace
I 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...Read more of this...

The devotee knows not how to appreciate as well as

by Omar Khayyam
The devotee knows not how to appreciate as well as
we Thy divine pity. A stranger can never know Thee
as perfectly as a friend. [They pretend] that Thou hast
said: If you commit sin, I will send you into Hell. Go
now—tell that to one who knows Thee not....Read more of this...

Who dares to take this life from me Knows no better

by T Wignesan
for Eric Mottram

"Nur wenn das Herz erschlossen,

Dann ist die Erde schön."

Goethe.

I

An important thing in living
Is to know when to go;
He who does not know this
Has not far to go,
Though death may come and go
When you do not know.


Come, give me your hand,
Together shoulder and cheek to shoulder
We'll go, sour kana in cheeks
And in the mornings cherry sticks
To gum: the infectious...Read more of this...

The Saki knows my genus properly ,

by Omar Khayyam
The Saki knows my genus properly,
To all woe's species he holds a key,
Whene'er my mood is sad, he brings me wine,
And that makes all the difference to me!...Read more of this...

The Vain King

by Henry Van Dyke
 In robes of Tyrian blue the King was drest,
A jewelled collar shone upon his breast,
A giant ruby glittered in his crown -----
Lord of rich lands and many a splendid town.
In him the glories of an ancient line
Of sober kings, who ruled by right divine,
Were centred; and to him with loyal awe
The people looked for leadership and law.
Ten thousand knights,...Read more of this...

A Passing Bell

by D. H. Lawrence
 Mournfully to and fro, to and fro the trees are waving; 
What did you say, my dear?
The rain-bruised leaves are suddenly shaken, as a child
Asleep still shakes in the clutch of a sob— 
Yes, my love, I hear.

One lonely bell, one only, the storm-tossed afternoon is braving,
Why not let it ring?
The roses lean down when they hear it, the...Read more of this...

A worldly love knows not how to produce reflection

by Omar Khayyam
A worldly love knows not how to produce reflection.
It is like a fire half extinguished which no longer gives
heat. A true love should know neither tranquillity, nor
repose, nor nourishment, nor sleep for months and years,
day nor night.
320...Read more of this...

Psalm 01

by John Milton
 Done into Verse, 1653.


Bless'd is the man who hath not walk'd astray
In counsel of the wicked, and ith'way
Of sinners hath not stood, and in the seat
Of scorners hath not sate. But in the great
Jehovahs Law is ever his delight,
And in his law he studies day and night.
He shall be as a tree which planted grows
By watry streams, and in...Read more of this...

Fate Knows no Tears

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Just as the dawn of Love was breaking
          Across the weary world of grey,
   Just as my life once more was waking
          As roses waken late in May,
   Fate, blindly cruel and havoc-making,
  ...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXXVI

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 302] SONNET LXXVI. Donna che lieta col Principio nostro. HE CONJURES LAURA, BY THE PURE LOVE HE EVER BORE HER, TO OBTAIN FOR HIM A SPEEDY ADMISSION TO HER IN HEAVEN.  Lady, in bliss who, by our Maker's feet,As suited for thine excellent life alone,Art now enthroned in high...Read more of this...

Poem

by Louise Gluck
 This poem is not addressed to you.
You may come into it briefly,
But no one will find you here, no one.
You will have changed before the poem will.

Even while you sit there, unmovable,
You have begun to vanish. And it does no matter.
The poem will go on without you.
It has the spurious glamor of certain voids.

It is not sad, really, only...Read more of this...

Knows how to forget!

by Emily Dickinson
 Knows how to forget!
But could It teach it?
Easiest of Arts, they say
When one learn how

Dull Hearts have died
In the Acquisition
Sacrificed for Science
Is common, though, now --

I went to School
But was not wiser
Globe did not teach it
Nor Logarithm Show

"How to forget"!
Say -- some -- Philosopher!
Ah, to be erudite
Enough to know!

Is it in a Book?
So, I could buy it --
Is it...Read more of this...

The Oven Bird

by Robert Frost
 There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
he says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall...Read more of this...

He Knows All There Is To Know. Now He Is Acquainted With The Day And Night

by Delmore Schwartz
 (Robert Frost, 1875-1963) 


Whose wood this is I think I know:
He made it sacred long ago:
He will expect me, far or near
To watch that wood immense with snow.

That famous horse must feel great fear
Now that his noble rider's no longer here:
He gives his harness bells to rhyme
--Perhaps he will be back, in time?

All woulds were promises he kept
Throughout the...Read more of this...

Wine, which the wise man knows how to appreciate,

by Omar Khayyam
Wine, which the wise man knows how to appreciate,
is for me the water of life and I its prophet am. It is
balm for the heart, an elixir which fortifies the soul.
Has God Himself not said: The benefits of the human
race are found in wine....Read more of this...

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