Famous Women Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Scorn the words of coquettish women, but accept limpid

by Omar Khayyam
Scorn the words of coquettish women, but accept limpid
wine from the hand of those whose mien is irreproachable.
You know that all those who have made their appearance
in this world are partly of one kind and partly
of the other, and it is not given to any to see a single
one that may come back....Read more of this...

386. The Rights of Women—Spoken by Miss Fontenelle

by Robert Burns
 WHILE Europe’s eye is fix’d on mighty things,
The fate of Empires and the fall of Kings;
While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.


First, in the Sexes’ intermix’d connection,
One sacred Right of Woman is, protection.—
The tender flower that lifts...Read more of this...

Spanish Women

by Robert William Service
 The Spanish women don't wear slacks
Because their hips are too enormous.
'Tis true each bulbous bosom lacks
No inspiration that should warm us;
But how our ardor seems to freeze
When we behold their bulgy knees!

Their starry eyes and dusky hair,
Their dazzling teeth in smile so gracious,
I love, but oh I wish they were
Not so confoundedly curvacious.
I'm sure I would prefer them willowy,
Instead...Read more of this...

Lines on Hearing it Declared that No Women Were So Handsome as the English

by Mary Darby Robinson
 BEAUTY, the attribute of Heaven! 
In various forms to mortals given, 
With magic skill enslaves mankind, 
As sportive fancy sways the mind. 
Search the wide world, go where you will, 
VARIETY pursues you still; 
Capricious Nature knows no bound, 
Her unexhausted gifts are found 
In ev'ry clime, in ev'ry face, 
Each has its own peculiar grace. 

To GALLIA's frolic...Read more of this...

Harp Song of the Dane Women

by Rudyard Kipling
 What is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

She has no house to lay a guest in--
But one chill bed for all to rest in,
That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.

She has no strong white arms to fold you,
But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you--
Out on...Read more of this...

Women And Roses

by Robert Browning
 I.

I dream of a red-rose tree.
And which of its roses three
Is the dearest rose to me?

II.

Round and round, like a dance of snow
In a dazzling drift, as its guardians, go
Floating the women faded for ages,
Sculptured in stone, on the poet's pages.
Then follow women fresh and gay,
Living and loving and loved to-day.
Last, in the rear, flee the multitude of maidens,
Beauties...Read more of this...

...And the Old Women Gathered (The Gospel Singers)

by Mari Evans
and the old women gathered 
and sang His praises 
standing 
resolutely together 
like supply sergeants who 
have seen 
everything 
and are still 
Regular Army: It 
was fierce and 
not melodic and 
although we ran 
the sound of it 
stayed in our ears . . ....Read more of this...

To Women As Far As Im Concerned

by D. H. Lawrence
 The feelings I don't have I don't have.
The feeling I don't have, I won't say I have.
The feelings you say you have, you don't have.
The feelings you would like us both to have, we neither of us have.
The feelings people ought to have, they never have.
If people say they've got feelings, you may be pretty sure they haven't got...Read more of this...

Glory Of Women

by Siegfried Sassoon
 You love us when we're heroes, home on leave, 
Or wounded in a mentionable place. 
You worship decorations; you believe 
That chivalry redeems the war's disgrace. 
You make us shells. You listen with delight, 
By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled. 
You crown our distant ardours while we fight, 
And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed. 
You...Read more of this...

That Women Are But Mens Shadows

by Ben Jonson
 Follow a shadow, it still flies you;
Seem to fly it, it will pursue:
So court a mistress, she denies you;
Let her alone, she will court you.
Say, are not women truly then
Styled but the shadows of us men?

At morn and even shades are longest,
At noon they are or short or none;
So men at weakest, they are strongest,
But grant us perfect, they're...Read more of this...

Theres Wisdom In Women

by Rupert Brooke
 "Oh love is fair, and love is rare;" my dear one she said,
"But love goes lightly over." I bowed her foolish head,
And kissed her hair and laughed at her. Such a child was she;
So new to love, so true to love, and she spoke so bitterly.

But there's wisdom in women, of more than they have known,
And thoughts go blowing...Read more of this...

All Women in One

by Dejan Stojanovic
You shall not stop or hesitate and sway 
Until you pass through the forest, 
And compare the beauty of the summer's day and night— 
Until you arrive in your own Ithaca. 

There is always Venus; 
New Elissa to build new Carthage, 
The new Kingdom of Light. 

You shall not stop until you find Venus: 
One woman in all, 
And all...Read more of this...

Like Men and Women Shadows walk

by Emily Dickinson
 Like Men and Women Shadows walk
Upon the Hills Today --
With here and there a mighty Bow
Or trailing Courtesy
To Neighbors doubtless of their own
Not quickened to perceive
Minuter landscape as Ourselves
And Boroughs where we live --...Read more of this...

Sonnet (Women Have Loved Before As I Love Now)

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Women have loved before as I love now;
At least, in lively chronicles of the past—
Of Irish waters by a Cornish prow
Or Trojan waters by a Spartan mast
Much to their cost invaded—here and there,
Hunting the amorous line, skimming the rest,
I find some woman bearing as I bear
Love like a burning city in the breast.
I think however that of all alive
I...Read more of this...

The Laughter Of Women

by Lisel Mueller
 The laughter of women sets fire
to the Halls of Injustice
and the false evidence burns
to a beautiful white lightness

It rattles the Chambers of Congress
and forces the windows wide open
so the fatuous speeches can fly out

The laughter of women wipes the mist
from the spectacles of the old;
it infects them with a happy flu
and they laugh as if they were young again

Prisoners...Read more of this...

Beautiful Women

by Walt Whitman
 WOMEN sit, or move to and fro—some old, some young; 
The young are beautiful—but the old are more beautiful than the young....Read more of this...

Women Washing Their Hair

by Carl Sandburg
 THEY have painted and sung
the women washing their hair,
and the plaits and strands in the sun,
and the golden combs
and the combs of elephant tusks
and the combs of buffalo horn and hoof.

The sun has been good to women,
drying their heads of hair
as they stooped and shook their shoulders
and framed their faces with copper
and framed their eyes with dusk or chestnut.

The...Read more of this...

Ballad of women i love

by Eugene Field
 Prudence Mears hath an old blue plate
Hid away in an oaken chest,
And a Franklin platter of ancient date
Beareth Amandy Baker's crest;
What times soever I've been their guest,
Says I to myself in an undertone:
"Of womenfolk, it must be confessed,
These do I love, and these alone."

Well, again, in the Nutmeg State,
Dorothy Pratt is richly blest
With a relic of art and a...Read more of this...

Song. That Women Are But Men's Shadows

by Ben Jonson
  VII. — SONG. — THAT WOMEN ARE BUT MEN'SSHADOWS.      Let her alone, she will court you. Say are not women truly, then,                     5 Styl'd but the shadows of us men ?  At morn and even shades are longest ;     At noon they are or short, or none : So men at weakest, they are strongest,...Read more of this...

Cigarettes And Whiskey And Wild Wild Women

by Anne Sexton
 (from a song)

Perhaps I was born kneeling,
born coughing on the long winter,
born expecting the kiss of mercy,
born with a passion for quickness
and yet, as things progressed,
I learned early about the stockade
or taken out, the fume of the enema.
By two or three I learned not to kneel,
not to expect, to plant my fires underground
where none but the dolls, perfect and...Read more of this...

A Form Of Women

by Robert Creeley
 I have come far enough
from where I was not before
to have seen the things
looking in at me from through the open door

and have walked tonight
by myself
to see the moonlight
and see it as trees

and shapes more fearful
because I feared
what I did not know
but have wanted to know.

My facd is my own, I thought.
But you have seen it
turn into a thousand...Read more of this...

Mary Pity Women!

by Rudyard Kipling
 You call yourself a man,
 For all you used to swear,
An' Leave me, as you can,
 My certain shame to bear?
 I'ear! You do not care --
You done the worst you know.
 I 'ate you, grinnin' there....
Ah, Gawd, I love you so!

Nice while it lasted, an' now it is over --
Tear out your 'eart an' good-bye to you lover!
What's...Read more of this...

Poem For South African Women

by June Jordan
Our own shadows disappear as the feet of thousands
by the tens of thousands pound the fallow land
into new dust that
rising like a marvelous pollen will be
fertile
even as the first woman whispering
imagination to the trees around her made
for righteous fruit
from such deliberate defense of life
as no other still
will claim inferior to any other safety
in the world

The whispers too they
intimate to the...Read more of this...

The Leaves like Women interchange

by Emily Dickinson
 The Leaves like Women interchange
Exclusive Confidence --
Somewhat of nods and somewhat
Portentous inference.

The Parties in both cases
Enjoining secrecy --
Inviolable compact
To notoriety....Read more of this...

Remembered Women

by Carl Sandburg
 FOR a woman’s face remembered as a spot of quick light on the flat land of dark night,
For this memory of one mouth and a forehead they go on in the gray rain and the mud, they go on among the boots and guns.
The horizon ahead is a thousand fang flashes, it is a row of teeth that bite...Read more of this...

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