Famous poems
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Youth
© Robert Laurence Binyon
When life begins anew,
And Youth, from gathering flowers,
From vague delights, rapt musings, twilight hours,
Turns restless, seeking some great deed to do,
Different Ways to Pray
© Naomi Shihab Nye
And occasionally there would be one
who did none of this,
the old man Fowzi, for example, Fowzi the fool,
who beat everyone at dominoes,
insisted he spoke with God as he spoke with goats,
and was famous for his laugh.
Hints to Cheese Makers
© James McIntyre
Grant has here a famous work
Devoted to the cause of pork.
For dairymen find that it doth pay
To fatten pigs upon the whey,
For there is money raising grease
As well as in the making cheese.
Julian and Maddalo
© Percy Bysshe Shelley
As thus I spoke
Servants announc'd the gondola, and we
Through the fast-falling rain and high-wrought sea
Sail'd to the island where the madhouse stands.
Paradise Regain'd: Book IV (1671)
© Patrick Kavanagh
PErplex'd and troubl'd at his bad success
The Tempter stood, nor had what to reply,
Untitled
© Henry Lawson
When his heart is growing bitter and his hair is growing grey,
And he hears the debt-collector knocking several times a day,
And the shrill voice of the Missus, blame, reiterate, accuse
Then the poet who was famous feels inclined to damn the muse .....
A Death in the Desert
© Robert Browning
Then Xanthus said a prayer, but still he slept:
It is the Xanthus that escaped to Rome,
Was burned, and could not write the chronicle.
The Waste Land
© Thomas Stearns Eliot
“My nerves are bad tonight. 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.”
Ode, Inscribed to William H. Channing
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
Though loath to grieve
The evil time's sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My honied thought
For the priest's cant,
Or statesman's rant.
Now He Knows All There Is To Know. Now He Is Acquainted With The Day And Night
© Delmore Schwartz
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.
Arrows
© Tony Hoagland
When a beautiful woman wakes up,
she checks to see if her beauty is still there.
When a sick person wakes up,
he checks to see if he continues to be sick.
Narcissus
© Delmore Schwartz
“Call us what you will: we are made such by love.”
We are such studs as dreams are made on, and
Our little lives are ruled by the gods, by Pan,
Piping of all, seeking to grasp or grasping
All of the grapes; and by the bow-and-arrow god,
Cupid, piercing the heart through, suddenly and forever.
The Unknown Eros. Book I.
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
Well dost thou, Love, thy solemn Feast to hold
In vestal February;
Not rather choosing out some rosy day
From the rich coronet of the coming May,
When all things meet to marry!
The Fair Youth Sonnets (18 - 77, 87 - 126)
© William Shakespeare
Comprising the largest grouping of poems, the Fair Youth sonnets are addressed to the same young man in the Procreation Sonnets. But their themes and subjects are more drastically varied.
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Lines in Reply to the Beautiful Poet Who Welcomed News of McGonagall's Departure from Dundee
© William Topaz McGonagall
Dear Johnny, I return my thanks to you;
But more than thanks is your due
For publishing the scurrilous poetry about me
Leaving the Ancient City of Dundee.
Paradise Lost: Book IV
© Patrick Kavanagh
"Which of those rebel Spirits adjudg'd to Hell
Com'st thou, escap'd thy prison? and, transform'd,
Why satt'st thou like an enemy in wait,
Here watching at the head of these that sleep?"
Phyllis
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
Sunshine or shadow, or gold day or gray day,
Life must be lived as our destinies rule;
Leisure or labor or work day or play day
Feasts for the famous and fun for the fool;
Phyllis, ah, Phyllis, my life is a gray day.
