Famous Would Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Would poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous would poems. These examples illustrate what a famous would poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...h pangs and cries, as thine own, O bearer of many children!
These clamors wild, to a race of pride I give.)
O lands! would you be freer than all that has ever been before?
If you would be freer than all that has been before, come listen to me.
Fear grace—Fear elegance, civilization, delicatesse,
Fear the mellow sweet, the sucking of honey-juice;
Beware the advancing mortal ripening of nature,
Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and men.
Ages, p...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...y, thou art the same: 'tis I who seek
To vex with sighs thy simple solitude,
And because fruitless tears bedew my cheek
Would have thee weep with me in brotherhood;
Fool! shall each wronged and restless spirit dare
To taint such wine with the salt poison of own despair!
Thou art the same: 'tis I whose wretched soul
Takes discontent to be its paramour,
And gives its kingdom to the rude control
Of what should be its servitor, - for sure
Wisdom is somewhere, though the stormy s...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...o knew it not.
She was a Goddess of the infant world;
By her in stature the tall Amazon
Had stood a pigmy's height: she would have ta'en
Achilles by the hair and bent his neck;
Or with a finger stay'd Ixion's wheel.
Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx,
Pedestal'd haply in a palace court,
When sages look'd to Egypt for their lore.
But oh! how unlike marble was that face:
How beautiful, if sorrow had not made
Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty's self.
There was a liste...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...I had no time to hate, because
The grave would hinder me,
And life was not so ample I
Could finish enmity.
Nor had I time to love, but since
Some industry must be,
The little toil of love, I thought,
Was large enough for me....Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...
That yawning rose, and stretched, and purred and leapt
So closely round my feet, that scarce I kept
The course I would.
That sleek and lovely thing,
The broadening light, the breath of morn and spring,
The sun, that with his stars in Aries lay,
As when Divine Love on Creation's day
First gave these fair things motion, all at one
Made lightsome hope; but lightsome hope was none
When down the slope there came with lifted head
And back-blown mane and caver...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...Life through my bloodshot eyes
would scare a square 2 death
poverty,murder,violence
and never a moment 2 rest
Fun and games are few
but treasured like gold 2 me
cuz I realize that I must return
2 my spot in poverty
But mock my words when I say
my heart will not exist
unless my destiny comes through
and puts an end 2 all of this ...Read more of this...
by
Shakur, Tupac
...; He saves for me my precious soul; Then happy lie, for blest am I; Without me my sweet babe would die. Then do not fear, my boy! for thee Bold as a lion I will be; And I will always be thy guide, Through hollow snows and rivers wide. I'll build an Indian bower; I know The leaves that make the softest bed: And if from me thou wilt not go. But still be tru...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...—the shelves are crowded with
perfumes;
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it;
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume—it has no taste of the distillation—it
is odorless;
It is for my mouth forever—I am in love with it;
I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked;
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
2
The smoke of my own breath;
Echoes, ripples, b...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...e pavements! you trodden crossings!
From all that has been near you, I believe you have imparted to yourselves, and now would
impart the
same secretly to me;
From the living and the dead I think you have peopled your impassive surfaces, and the
spirits
thereof would be evident and amicable with me.
4
The earth expanding right hand and left hand,
The picture alive, every part in its best light,
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not want...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...
He broke them with a broken sword
A little towards the sea,
And for one hour of panting peace,
Ringed with a roar that would not cease,
With golden crown and girded fleece
Made laws under a tree.
The Northmen came about our land
A Christless chivalry:
Who knew not of the arch or pen,
Great, beautiful half-witted men
From the sunrise and the sea.
Misshapen ships stood on the deep
Full of strange gold and fire,
And hairy men, as huge as sin
With horned heads, came wading in...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...eople planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
I would recall a vision which I dreamed
Perchance in sleep—for in itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years,
And curdles a long life into one hour.
II
I saw two beings in the hues of youth
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill,
Green and of mild declivity, the last
As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such,
Save that there was no sea to lave...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...1
They that in play can do the thing they would,
Having an instinct throned in reason's place,
--And every perfect action hath the grace
Of indolence or thoughtless hardihood--
These are the best: yet be there workmen good
Who lose in earnestness control of face,
Or reckon means, and rapt in effort base
Reach to their end by steps well understood.
Me whom thou sawest of late strive with the pains
O...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...ly possible--the charge of writing nonsense were ever brought against the author of this brief but instructive poem, it would be based, I feel convinced, on the line (in p.18)
"Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes."
In view of this painful possibility, I will not (as I might) appeal indignantly to my other writings as a proof that I am incapable of such a deed: I will not (as I might) point to the strong moral purpose of this poem itself, to the arithmeti...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...bsp; Old Susan, she who dwells alone, Is sick, and makes a piteous moan, As if her very life would fail. There's not a house within a mile, No hand to help them in distress; Old Susan lies a bed in pain, And sorely puzzled are the twain, For what she ails they cannot guess. And Betty's husband's at the wood, Where by the week he doth abide, A wood...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...h his own wings.
A dead body. revenges not injuries.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise
Folly is the cloke of knavery.
Shame is Prides cloke.
PLATE 8
Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of
Religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of Go...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...oice
THEY walked beside the wave-worn beach;
Her tongue was very apt to teach,
And now and then he did beseech
She would abate her dulcet tone,
Because the talk was all her own,
And he was dull as any drone.
She urged "No cheese is made of chalk":
And ceaseless flowed her dreary talk,
Tuned to the footfall of a walk.
Her voice was very full and rich,
And, when at length she asked him "Which?"
It mounted to its highest pitch.
He a bewildered answer gave,
Drowned in ...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...he heart by this sad pageantry,
Half to myself I said, "And what is this?
Whose shape is that within the car? & why"-
I would have added--"is all here amiss?"
But a voice answered . . "Life" . . . I turned & knew
(O Heaven have mercy on such wretchedness!)
That what I thought was an old root which grew
To strange distortion out of the hill side
Was indeed one of that deluded crew,
And that the grass which methought hung so wide
And white, was but his thin discoloured hair,
An...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...had not rushed in where he had no business, and where he never was before, and never will be again, the following poem would not have been written. It is not impossible that it may be as good as his own, seeing that it cannot, by any species of stupidity, natural or acquired, be worse. The gross flattery, the dull impudence, the renegado intolerance, and impious cant, of the poem by the author if 'Wat Tyler,' are something so stupendous as to form the sublime of himself — co...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...huffled on the stair.
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.
"My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
"Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
"What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
"I never know what you are thinking. Think."
I think we are in rats' alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.
"What is that noise?"
The
wind under the door.
"What is that noise now?...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...e me, laugh and write poetry!"
And I buried the joyous songbird
Behind a round well near a tree.
I promised that I would not mourn her.
But my heart turned to stone without choice,
And it seems to me that everywhere
And always I'll hear her sweet voice.
x x x
True love's memory, You are heavy!
In your smoke I sing and burn,
And the rest -- is only fire
To keep the chilled soul warm.
To keep warm the sated body,
They need my tears for this
Did I for...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
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