Famous Worth Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Worth poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous worth poems. These examples illustrate what a famous worth poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Omar Khayyam
A cup of wine is worth a hundred hearts, a hundred
creeds, a mouthful of this juice divine is worth the Empire
of China. What is there, truly, on the earth preferable
to wine? It is a bitter that is a hundred times
sweeter than life....Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
"Tuberculosis should not be,"
The old professor said.
"If folks would hearken unto me
'Twould save a million dead.
Nay, no consumptive needs to die,
--A cure have I.
"From blood of turtle I've distilled
An elixir of worth;
Let every sufferer be thrilled
And sing for joy of earth;
Yet every doctor turns his back
And calls me quack.
"Alas! They do not want...Read more of this...
by
Rupert Brooke
When love has changed to kindliness --
Oh, love, our hungry lips, that press
So tight that Time's an old god's dream
Nodding in heaven, and whisper stuff
Seven million years were not enough
To think on after, make it seem
Less than the breath of children playing,
A blasphemy scarce worth the saying,
A sorry jest, "When love has grown
To kindliness -- to kindliness!" . ....Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
A cup of wine is worth the empire of the universe;
the brick which covers the jar is worth a thousand lives.
The napkin with which one wipes lips moistened with
wine is indeed worth a thousand turbans....Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Except Thy absence there is nothing of worth that can
bruise to the quick; he cannot be acute who is not taken
with Thy subtle charms, and, although there exist in
Thy mind no care for any one, there is none who may
not be preoccupied with Thee.
288...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
Not that it was beautiful,
but that, in the end, there was
a certain sense of order there;
something worth learning
in that narrow diary of my mind,
in the commonplaces of the asylum
where the cracked mirror
or my own selfish death
outstared me . . .
I tapped my own head;
it was glass, an inverted bowl.
It's small thing
to rage inside your own bowl.
At first it was...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
There was movement at the station, for the word has passed around
That the colt from old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horses—he was worth a thousand pound,
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.
All the tried and noted riders from the stations near and far
Had mustered at the homestead overnight,
For the bushmen love hard...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
If you had a friend strong, simple, true,
Who knew your faults and who understood;
Who believed in the very best of you,
And who cared for you as a father would;
Who would stick by you to the very end,
Who would smile however the world might frown:
I'm sure you would try to please your friend,
You never would think to throw him down.
And...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
CHORUS
If with voice of words or prayers thy sons may reach thee,
We thy latter sons, the men thine after-birth,
We the children of thy grey-grown age, O Earth,
O our mother everlasting, we beseech thee,
By the sealed and secret ages of thy life;
By the darkness wherein grew thy sacred forces;
By the songs of stars thy sisters in their courses;
By thine own...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I will not fight: though proud of pith
I hold no one worth striving with;
And should resentment burn my breast
I deem that silence serves me best:
So having not a word to say,
Contemptuous I turn away.
I will not fret: my rest of life
Free I will keep from hate and strife;
Let lust and sin and anger sleep,
I will not delve the subsoil...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
So am I as the rich, whose blessed key
Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
The which he will not every hour survey,
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,
Since, seldom coming, in the long year set,
Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,
Or captain jewels in the carcanet.
So is the time...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
Close on the margin of a brawling brook
That bathes the low dell's bosom, stands a Cot;
O'ershadow'd by broad Alders. At its door
A rude seat, with an ozier canopy
Invites the weary traveller to rest.
'Tis a poor humble dwelling; yet within,
The sweets of joy domestic, oft have made
The long hour not unchearly, while the Moor
Was covered with deep snow, and the...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
A mouthful of old wine is of more worth than a new
empire. The wise man will reject all that is not wine.
A cup of this nectar is a hundred times preferable to
the kingdom of Feridoun. The lid which covers the wine-jar
is more precious than the diadem of Kai-Khosrou....Read more of this...
by
Charles Bukowski
at the track today,
Father's Day,
each paid admission was
entitled to a wallet
and each contained a
little surprise.
most of the men seemed
between 30 and 55,
going to fat,
many of them in walking
shorts,
they had gone stale in
life,
flattened out....
in fact, damn it, they
aren't even worth writing
about!
why am I doing
this?
these don't even
deserve a death bed,
these little walking
whales,
only there are so
many of
them,
in the urinals,
in...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
I. Ancestral Houses
Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
Life overflows without ambitious pains;
And rains down life until the basin spills,
And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills
And never stoop to a mechanical
Or servile shape, at others' beck and call.
Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Against death's arrows what are buckles worth?
What all the pomps and riches of the earth?
When I survey the world, I see no good
But goodness, all beside is nothing worth....Read more of this...
by
Sir Philip Sidney
Not at first sight, nor with a dribbed shot
Love gave the wound, which while I breathe will bleed;
But known worth did in mine of time proceed,
Till by degrees it had full conquest got:
I saw and liked, I liked but loved not;
I lov'd, but straight did not what Love decreed.
At length to love's decrees...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Of course you've heard of the Nancy Lee, and how she sailed away
On her famous quest of the Arctic flea, to the wilds of Hudson's Bay?
For it was a foreign Prince's whim to collect this tiny cuss,
And a golden quid was no more to him than a copper to coves like us.
So we sailed away and our hearts were...Read more of this...
by
Aleister Crowley
When the chill of earth black-breasted is uplifted at the
glance
Of the red sun million-crested, and the forest blossoms
dance
With the light that stirs and lustres of the dawn, and with
the bloom
Of the wind’s cheek as it clusters from the hidden valley’s
gloom :
Then I walk in woodland spaces, musing on the solemn
ways
Of the immemorial places shut behind the starry rays
Of the...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know'st thy estimate:
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
The mountain held the town as in a shadow
I saw so much before I slept there once:
I noticed that I missed stars in the west,
Where its black body cut into the sky.
Near me it seemed: I felt it like a wall
Behind which I was sheltered from a wind.
And yet between the town and...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Send but a song oversea for us,
Heart of their hearts who are free,
Heart of their singer, to be for us
More than our singing can be;
Ours, in the tempest at error,
With no light but the twilight of terror;
Send us a song oversea!
Sweet-smelling of pine-leaves and grasses,
And blown as a tree through and through
With the winds of the keen mountain-passes,
And tender...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
The time we pass in this world has no worth without
the wine-cup and the wine. It also needs the swelling
sound of Irak's flute. Incessant watching of things here
below has told me that in pleasure and in joy alone are
worth: the rest is naught.
300...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
O, how thy worth with manners may I sing,
When thou art all the better part of me?
What can mine own praise to mine own self bring?
And what is't but mine own when I praise thee?
Even for this let us divided live,
And our dear love lose name of single one,
That by this separation I may give
That due to thee which...Read more of this...
by
William Strode
Is Death so cunning now that all her blowe
Aymes at the heade? Doth now her wary Bowe
Make surer worke than heertofore? The steele
Slew warlike heroes onely in the heele.
New found out slights, when men themselves begin
To be theyr proper Fates by new found sinne.
Tis cowardize to make a wound so sure;
No Art in killing where no Art can cure.
Was...Read more of this...
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