Poem Examples

"If Those I Loved Were Lost," written by one of America's greatest poets of the XIX century, Emily Dickinson, explores the possibility of eternal life. The speaker reflects on the fact that news of a death travels quickly and widely. Likewise, if people she loved were to rise from the dead, church bells would toll to tell the news. If...

Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote his classical poem "Frost at Midnight" in 1798. This poem discusses Coleridge's early years in a negative way and highlights the need for growing up in the countryside. Coleridge hopes that his son will not have the same city life like him and that he will be raised in the countryside. Frost at Midnight...

“Two in the Campagna” portrays the dilemma of love. Robert Browning, revered amongst Victorian period poets, depicts his thoughts on love and what it means to transcend love. Catching a thought, living in the moment and the feeling of the moment fleeting away is all to show that words are not enough to express love. Two In The Campagna BY...

"The Tyger" is a poem taken from William Blake’s Songs of Experience. The poem is organized in the form of a series of rhetorical questions regarding the main character, the tiger, itself. Here, the poet is equally amazed and intimidated by the presence of the creature, which he constantly compares to the domestic lamb. The Tyger BY WILLIAM BLAKE Tyger Tyger,...

The great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova gave a picturesque description of the simplicity of life, and how we can attain it in the easiest of ways. “I Taught Myself to Live Simply” is Akhmatova’s guide to finding happiness in the little things in life, instead of always being unhappy yearning for something. I Taught Myself To Live Simply BY ANNA...

"Those Winter Sundays" is a story of a father’s unending love for his son and the son’s regret of not being able to understand and appreciate that love before time had run up for this. Here, Robert Hayden uses the coldness of the winter mornings to put further emphasis on the warmth of the father’s love. Those Winter Sundays BY...

American contemporary poet Charles Bukowski is known for being brutally honest with his use of words. In "And the Moon and the Stars and the World" he uses his signature graphic language to give us an insight into the private lives of the bored American housewifes and their drunken husbands. And The Moon And The Stars And The World BY...

"The Road Not Taken" is one of Robert Frost’s most popular and memorable works published in 1916. The poem puts forward the point that no matter what choice one may make, even a good choice, one will still look back and wonder what would have happened with a different decision. Frost has illustrated this with beautiful imagery of paths, a...

"I Cannot Live With You" was published in 1890. Dickinson tries to communicate with her lover through this poem, and she reaches the conclusion that they should be apart because she sees him as this great being who is capable of anything and is to move onto Heaven once it’s the right time. I Cannot Live With You BY EMILY...

"Epithalamion," is a marriage ode written by the English Renaissance poet Edmund Spenser. This poem was published originally with his sonnet sequence Amoretti in 1595. It us dedicated to Spenser's marriage to Elizabeth Boyle, his second wife, in 1594 and is generally deemed as one of Spenser's most well-liked minor poems. The tone of the poem is very hopeful, thankful,...