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Famous Twenty Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
..."Aug." 10, 1911.

Full moon to-night; and six and twenty years
Since my full moon first broke from angel spheres!
A year of infinite love unwearying ---
No circling seasons, but perennial spring!
A year of triumph trampling through defeat,
The first made holy and the last made sweet
By this same love; a year of wealth and woe,
Joy, poverty, health, sickness --- all one glow
In the pure light that filled our...Read more of this...
by Crowley, Aleister



...a made smile of acquiescence, 
Took up again the theme of his aversion, 
Which now had flown along with him alone 
For twenty years, like Io’s evil insect, 
To sting him when it would. The decencies
Forbade that I should look at him for ever, 
Yet many a time I found myself ashamed 
Of a long staring at him, and as often 
Essayed the dictionary on the table, 
Wondering if in its interior
There was an uncompanionable word 
To say just what was creeping in my hair, 
At whi...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...is forehead was high; and glasses with horn bows
Sat astride on his nose, with a look of wisdom supernal.
Father of twenty children was he, and more than a hundred
Children's children rode on his knee, and heard his great watch tick.
Four long years in the times of the war had he languished a captive,
Suffering much in an old French fort as the friend of the English.
Now, though warier grown, without all guile or suspicion,
Ripe in wisdom was he, but patient, and ...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...lesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.


V

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new begi...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...h to perfect a man. 

Anne: 
I watered and fed the plant. 

* 

My undertaker waits for me. 
he is probably twenty-three now, 
learning his trade. 
He'll stitch up the gren, 
he'll fasten the bones down 
lest they fly away. 
I am flying today. 
I am not tired today. 
I am a motor. 
I am cramming in the sugar. 
I am running up the hallways. 
I am squeezing out the milk. 
I am dissecting the dictionary. 
I am God, la de dah. 
...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne



...scoff 
And thought all safe, if they were so far off. 
Modern geographers, 'twas there, they thought, 
Where Venice twenty years the Turk had fought, 
While the first year our navy is but shown, 
The next divided, and the third we've none. 
They, by the name, mistook it for that isle 
Where Pilgrim Palmer travelled in exile 
With the bull's horn to measure his own head 
And on Pasipha?'s tomb to drop a bead. 
But Morice learn'd dem?nstrates, by the post, 
This Isl...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew
...foliage she'd worn
Laid scarlet and pale pink about her feet.
But its age kept them from considering this one.
Twenty-five years ago at Maple's naming
It hardly could have been a two-leaved seedling
The next cow might have licked up out at pasture.
Could it have been another maple like it?
They hovered for a moment near discovery,
Figurative enough to see the symbol,
But lacking faith in anything to mean
The same at different times to different people.
Perhap...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...thee returns my perfect love,
As to its forest-nest the evening dove.

O poet's city! one who scarce has seen
Some twenty summers cast their doublets green
For Autumn's livery, would seek in vain
To wake his lyre to sing a louder strain,
Or tell thy days of glory; - poor indeed
Is the low murmur of the shepherd's reed,
Where the loud clarion's blast should shake the sky,
And flame across the heavens! and to try
Such lofty themes were folly: yet I know
That never felt my ...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...
You let me there. I’ll ask her why she let him.
She didn’t dare to speak when he was here.

Their number’s—twenty-one? The thing won’t work.
Someone’s receiver’s down. The handle stumbles.

The stubborn thing, the way it jars your arm!
It’s theirs. She’s dropped it from her hand and gone.”

“Try speaking. Say ‘Hello’!”

“Hello. Hello.”

“What do you hear?”

“I hear an empty room—
You know—it sounds that way. And yes, I hear—
I ...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...e he was recuperated and pass’d north; 
(I had him sit next me at table—my fire-lock lean’d in the corner.)

11
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore; 
Twenty-eight young men, and all so friendly: 
Twenty-eight years of womanly life, and all so lonesome. 

She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank; 
She hides, handsome and richly drest, aft the blinds of the window.

Which of the young men does she like the best? 
Ah, the homeliest of them is...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...ps squashing our lives as they break
into two cans ready for recycling,
flattened tin humans
and a tin law,
even for my twenty-five years of hanging on
by my teeth as I once saw at Ringling Brothers.
The gray room:
Judge, lawyer, witness
and me and invisible Skeezix,
and all the other torn
enduring the bewilderments
of their division.

Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce.
They arrive like round yellow fish,
sucking with love at the coral of our love.Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne
...>  Yet, meet him where you will, you see  At once that he is poor.  Full five and twenty years he lived  A running huntsman merry;  And, though he has but one eye left,  His cheek is like a cherry.   No man like him the horn could sound,  And no man was so full of glee;  To say the least, four counties round.  Had heard of Simon Lee;Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William
...the tumblers followed, 
and then I seized the lamps and holloed, 
And down the stairs, and tore back bolts, 
As mad as twenty blooded colts; 
And out into the street I pass, 
As mad as two-year-olds at grass 
A naked madman saving grand 
A blazing lamp in either hand. 
I yelled like twenty drunken sailors, 
:The devil's come among the tailors." 
A blaze of flame behind me streamed, 
And then I clashed the lamps and screamed 
"I'm Satan, newly come from hell." 
An...Read more of this...
by Masefield, John
...ever find
Joy's language? There is neither speech nor word
Nought but itself to teach it to mankind.
Scarce in our twenty thousand painful days
We may touch something: but there lives--beyond
The best of art, or nature's kindest phase--
The hope whereof our spirit is fain and fond: 
The cause of beauty given to man's desires
Writ in the expectancy of starry skies,
The faith which gloweth in our fleeting fires,
The aim of all the good that here we prize;
Which but to love...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...full of stones bright,
Of fine rubies and clear diamants.
About his car there wente white alauns*, *greyhounds 
Twenty and more, as great as any steer,
To hunt the lion or the wilde bear,
And follow'd him, with muzzle fast y-bound,
Collars of gold, and torettes* filed round. *rings
An hundred lordes had he in his rout* *retinue
Armed full well, with heartes stern and stout.

With Arcita, in stories as men find,
The great Emetrius the king of Ind,
Upon a *steed...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...run
The fourthe part, and half an houre more;
And, though he were not deep expert in lore,
He wist it was the eight-and-twenty day
Of April, that is messenger to May;
And saw well that the shadow of every tree
Was in its length of the same quantity
That was the body erect that caused it;
And therefore by the shadow he took his wit*, *knowledge
That Phoebus, which that shone so clear and bright,
Degrees was five-and-forty clomb on height;
And for that day, as in that latitude,...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ran: a fire-balloon 
Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves 
And dropt a fairy parachute and past: 
And there through twenty posts of telegraph 
They flashed a saucy message to and fro 
Between the mimic stations; so that sport 
Went hand in hand with Science; otherwhere 
Pure sport; a herd of boys with clamour bowled 
And stumped the wicket; babies rolled about 
Like tumbled fruit in grass; and men and maids 
Arranged a country dance, and flew through light 
And shadow, wh...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...glish upper class 
That does not change and does not pass. 

ROSAMUND: Nonsense; it's come to an absolute stop.
Twenty years since we sat on top
Of the world, amusing ourselves and sneering
At other manners and customs, jeering
At other nations, living in clover—
Not any more. That's done and over.
No one nowadays cares a button
For the upper classes— they're dead as mutton.
Go home. SUSAN: I notice that you don't go.

ROSAMUND: My dear, that shows...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer
...a pair
Of legges and of feet so clean and fair,
That all my heart I gave unto his hold.* *keeping
He was, I trow, a twenty winter old,
And I was forty, if I shall say sooth,
But yet I had always a colte's tooth.
Gat-toothed* I was, and that became me well, *see note 26
I had the print of Sainte Venus' seal.
[As help me God, I was a lusty one,
And fair, and rich, and young, and *well begone:* *in a good way*
For certes I am all venerian* *under the influence of Ven...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...in wall
The guest arrived talks to me at all?



x x x

I see capital through the flurry
On this Monday night twenty-first.
Some do-nothing has made up the story
That love exists on the earth.

And from laziness or from boredom
All believed, and thus they live:
Wait for meeting, fear the parting,
And sing songs of love.

But to others opens a secret
And upon them descends a still..
I by accident came upon this
And since then am as if ...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry