Famous poems
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Discovered by Shirley Buettner: American Life in Poetry #19 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
At the beginning of the famous novel, "Remembrance of Things Past," the mere taste of a biscuit started Marcel Proust on a seven-volume remembrance. Here a bulldozer turns up an old doorknob, and look what happens in Shirley Buettner's imagination.
Discovered
While clearing the west
quarter for more cropland,
the Cat quarried
a porcelain doorknob
Don Juan: Canto The Eighth
© George Gordon Byron
Oh blood and thunder! and oh blood and wounds!
These are but vulgar oaths, as you may deem,
Evangeline: Part The Second. I.
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
MANY a weary year had passed since the burning of Grand-Pré,
When on the falling tide the freighted vessels departed,
The Ghost - Book IV
© Charles Churchill
Coxcombs, who vainly make pretence
To something of exalted sense
A Ioyfull medytacyon to all Englonde of the coronacyon of our moost naturall souerayne lorde kynge H
© Stephen Hawes
The prologue
The prudent problems/& the noble werkes
Of the gentyll poetes in olde antyquyte
Unto this day hath made famous clerkes
The Golden Age
© Alfred Austin
Nor this the worst! When ripened Shame would hide
Fruits of that hour when Passion conquered Pride,
There are not wanting in this Christian land
The breast remorseless and the Thuggish hand,
To advertise the dens where Death is sold,
And quench the breath of baby-life for gold!
Jerusalem Delivered - Book 01 - part 03
© Torquato Tasso
XXVI
"Turks, Persians conquered, Antiochia won,
The Rosciad
© Charles Churchill
Unknowing and unknown, the hardy Muse
Boldly defies all mean and partial views;
With honest freedom plays the critic's part,
And praises, as she censures, from the heart.
Concepcion De Arguello
© Francis Bret Harte
Looking seaward, o'er the sand-hills stands the fortress, old and
quaint,
By the San Francisco friars lifted to their patron saint,--
Two Hours In Reservoir
© Joseph Brodsky
I am an anti-fascist... anti-Faust
Ich liebe life and I admire chaos
Ich bin to wish, Genosse Offizieren,
Dem Zeit zum Faust for a while spazieren.
2
The Example of Vertu : Cantos I.-VII.
© Stephen Hawes
Here begynneth the boke called the example of vertu.
The prologe.
Whan I aduert in my remembraunce
The famous draughtes of poetes eloquent
A True Account of the Birth and Conception of a Late Famous Poem call'd The Female Nine
© Charles Sackville
When Monmouth the chaste read those impudent lines
Which ty'd her dear monkey so fast by the loins,
The four Monarchyes, the Assyrian being the first, beginning under Nimrod, 131. Years after the Floo
© Anne Bradstreet
When time was young, & World in Infancy,
Man did not proudly strive for Soveraignty:
Paracelsus: Part I: Paracelsus Aspires
© Robert Browning
Scene.- Würzburg; a garden in the environs. 1512.
Festus, Paracelsus, Michal.
The Mediterranean
© Allen Tate
Where we went in the boat was a long bay
A slingshot wide, walled in by towering stone
Peaked margin of antiquity's delay,
And we went there out of time's monotone:
Concert Party: Busseboom
© Edmund Blunden
The stage was set, the house was packed,
The famous troop began;
Our laughter thundered, act by act;
Time light as sunbeams ran.
