Famous Yourself Poems by Famous Poets

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

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To A. L. Persuasions to Love

by Thomas Carew
 THINK not, 'cause men flattering say
You're fresh as April, sweet as May,
Bright as is the morning star,
That you are so ; or, though you are,
Be not therefore proud, and deem
All men unworthy your esteem :
For, being so, you lose the pleasure
Of being fair, since that rich treasure
Of rare beauty and sweet feature
Was bestow'd on you by nature
To be enjoy'd...Read more of this...

Just Walking Around

by John Ashbery
 What name do I have for you? 
Certainly there is not name for you
In the sense that the stars have names
That somehow fit them. Just walking around, 

An object of curiosity to some, 
But you are too preoccupied
By the secret smudge in the back of your soul
To say much and wander around, 

Smiling to yourself and others.
It gets to...Read more of this...

The Gardener XXIV: Do Not Keep to Yourself

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Do not keep to yourself the secret of
your heart, my friend!
Say it to me, only to me, in secret.
You who smile so gently, softly
whisper, my heart will hear it, not my
ears.
The night is deep, the house is
silent, the birds' nests are shrouded
with sleep.
Speak to me through hesitating
tears, through faltering smiles, through
sweet shame and pain, the secret of
your heart!...Read more of this...

To Lucasta on Going to the War - For the Fourth Time

by Robert Graves
 It doesn’t matter what’s the cause, 
What wrong they say we’re righting, 
A curse for treaties, bonds and laws, 
When we’re to do the fighting! 
And since we lads are proud and true,
What else remains to do? 
Lucasta, when to France your man 
Returns his fourth time, hating war, 
Yet laughs as calmly as he can 
And flings an...Read more of this...

Shes All My Fancy Painted Him

by Lewis Carroll
 She's all my fancy painted him 
(I make no idle boast); 
If he or you had lost a limb, 
Which would have suffered most? 

He said that you had been to her, 
And seen me here before; 
But, in another character, 
She was the same of yore. 

There was not one that spoke to us, 
Of all that thronged...Read more of this...

Leeds 2002

by Barry Tebb
 What ghosts haunt

These streets of perpetual night?

Riverbanks fractured with splinters of glass condominiums

For nouveam riche merchant bankers

Black-tied bouncers man clubland glitz casinos

Novotel, Valley Park Motel, the Hilton:

Hot tubs, saunas, swim spas, en suite 

Satellite TV, conference rooms, disco dinners.

I knew Len, the tubby taxi man

With his retirement dreams of visiting

The world’s great galleries:

‘Titian, Leonardo, Goya,

I’ve lived all my life...Read more of this...

Friend! trouble not yourself about your lot,

by Omar Khayyam
Friend! trouble not yourself about your lot,
Let futile care and sorrow be forgot;
Since this life's vesture crumbles into dust,
What matters stain of word or deed, or blot?...Read more of this...

The Old Australian Ways

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The London lights are far abeam 
Behind a bank of cloud, 
Along the shore the gaslights gleam, 
The gale is piping loud; 
And down the Channel, groping blind, 
We drive her through the haze 
Towards the land we left behind -- 
The good old land of `never mind', 
And old Australian ways. 

The narrow ways of English folk 
Are...Read more of this...

Have You Nothing To Say For Yourself?

by Victor Hugo
 ("Si vous n'avez rien à me dire.") 
 
 {Bk. II. iv., May, 18—.} 


 Speak, if you love me, gentle maiden! 
 Or haunt no more my lone retreat. 
 If not for me thy heart be laden, 
 Why trouble mine with smiles so sweet? 
 
 Ah! tell me why so mute, fair maiden, 
 Whene'er...Read more of this...

The gift of yourself

by Emile Verhaeren
The gift of yourself no longer satisfies you; you are prodigal of yourself: the rapture that bears you on to ever greater love springs up in you ceaselessly and untiringly, and carries you ever higher towards the wide heaven of perfect love.
A clasp of the hands, a gentle look impassions you; and your heart appears to me so suddenly lovely...Read more of this...

Die in shame!

by John Matthew
 You hide your face in shame,
But I can see your private parts,
Have you no contrition,
To expose yourself, shamelessly, thus?

Tell me what does it feel,
To be watched while you strain?
Is that why you hang your head in shame;
Has all embarrassment left you?

I know it’s hard; you need your money,
But couldn’t you put the money —
You spend on spirits and tobacco,
To...Read more of this...

To Think of Time

by Walt Whitman
 1
TO think of time—of all that retrospection! 
To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward! 

Have you guess’d you yourself would not continue? 
Have you dreaded these earth-beetles? 
Have you fear’d the future would be nothing to you?

Is to-day nothing? Is the beginningless past nothing? 
If the future is nothing, they are just as surely nothing. 

To think...Read more of this...

Famine Song

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Third Song, written during Fever

   To-night the clouds hang very low,
       They take the Hill-tops to their breast,
       And lay their arms about the fields.
   The wind that fans me lying low,
       Restless with great...Read more of this...

Lines For Winter

by Mark Strand
 Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself --
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And...Read more of this...

In The Secular Night

by Margaret Atwood
 In the secular night you wander around
alone in your house. It's two-thirty.
Everyone has deserted you,
or this is your story;
you remember it from being sixteen,
when the others were out somewhere, having a good time,
or so you suspected,
and you had to baby-sit.
You took a large scoop of vanilla ice-cream
and filled up the glass with grapejuice
and ginger ale, and put on Glenn...Read more of this...

If

by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you   
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
  ...Read more of this...

To Be In Love

by Gwendolyn Brooks
 To be in love 
Is to touch with a lighter hand. 
In yourself you stretch, you are well. 
You look at things 
Through his eyes. 
A cardinal is red. 
A sky is blue. 
Suddenly you know he knows too. 
He is not there but 
You know you are tasting together 
The winter, or a light spring weather. 
His hand...Read more of this...

Because that you are going

by Emily Dickinson
 Because that you are going
And never coming back
And I, however absolute,
May overlook your Track --

Because that Death is final,
However first it be,
This instant be suspended
Above Mortality --

Significance that each has lived
The other to detect
Discovery not God himself
Could now annihilate

Eternity, Presumption
The instant I perceive
That you, who were Existence
Yourself forgot to live --

The "Life that is" will then have been
A thing...Read more of this...

Sonnet II: My Heart Was Slain

by Michael Drayton
 My heart was slain, and none but you and I; 
Who should I think the murther should commit, 
Since but yourself there was no creature by, 
But only I, guiltless of murth'ring it? 
It slew itself; the verdict on the view 
Doth quit the dead, and me not accessary. 
Well, well, I fear it will be prov'd by you,...Read more of this...

A Sad Child

by Margaret Atwood
 You're sad because you're sad.
It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.
Go see a shrink or take a pill,
or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll
you need to sleep.

Well, all children are sad
but some get over it.
Count your blessings. Better than that,
buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.
Take up dancing to forget.

Forget what?
Your sadness, your shadow,
whatever it was that...Read more of this...

Ode of Ricardo Reis

by Fernando Pessoa
To be great, be whole: nothing
Yours exaggerate nor delete.

Be whole  at everything. Be yourself
at the little things you do.

So that in each lake the whole moon
Shines because high it lives....Read more of this...

Audit yourself, your truce account to frame,

by Omar Khayyam
Audit yourself, your truce account to frame,
See! you go empty, as you empty came;
You say, «I will not drink and peril life,»
But, drink or no, you must die all the same!...Read more of this...

Resign yourself to grief if you would find a remedy,

by Omar Khayyam
Resign yourself to grief if you would find a remedy,
and do not complain of your suffering if you would cure
it. In poverty, be thankful to Providence, if you wish
some day to have riches for your portion....Read more of this...

Bestir yourself, since you are under this tyrannic vault;

by Omar Khayyam
Bestir yourself, since you are under this tyrannic vault;
drink wine, since you are in this world, a seat of woe.
And, from beginning to the end, being only earth, act
like a man who is upon the earth, and not as if thou
wert beneath the earth....Read more of this...

Inaugural Poem

by Maya Angelou
A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon.

The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven...Read more of this...

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