A Word For It
'Scorn not the sonnet.' Well, I reckon not,
I would not scorn a rondeau, villanelle,
Ballade, sestina, triolet, rondel,
Or e'en a quatrain, humble and forgot,
An so it made my Pegasus to trot
His morning lap what time he heard the bell;
An so it made the poem stuff to jell-
To mix a met.-an so it boil'd the pot.
Oh, sweet set form that varies not a bit!
I taste thy joy, not quite unknown to Keats.
'Scorn? ' Nay, I love thy fine symmetric
grace.
In sonnets one knows always where to quit,
Unlike in other poems where one cheats
And strings it out to fill the yawning
space.
poem by Franklin P. Adams
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Related quotes
This Is Not A Confessionam Poem
This is not a confessional poem
I confess that I have written this
Not a romantic poem
Under the watch of the archangel of Blake’s vision
A l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e= p=o=e=m=
A loaf Of poem a gallon Of words a pint Of letters
A so-so go for broke poem
So so son and so said
An acrostic poem
None near Aim to be called
Mindfully toward the Eternity of the thing
An epitaph poem
He lays David E. Patton
Never one to believe in heaven
So when he dies he did spy
A free verse poem
A sonnet poem
A know it all poem for the masses
This is not a minute poem
A didactic poem
A tongue poem
A villanelle poem
A sestina poem
An epic poem
A quinzaine poem
A rondelet poem
This is not a rondel poem
A cascade poem
A trijan refrain poem
A tanka poem
A taridet poem
A quatrain poem
If I lie this is not a list poem
To pin upon the sky
Set before the poet’s eye
I confess that I have written this
But this is not written to deceived anything but what is desired by the greediness of the eyes
This is not the growth of breath focused on the words with their mindful meaning stalled by the stack of sounds held in the syllables
This is not a sijo poem from the land of the morning calm
I confess that I know not what this is but all that it is not of what it would be forgot in the mispronounced want of the bony wants of the skin bag of my self
This is not the not of a poem trying to be born from the keyboard’s click and the memory of my hands
This is not an every man poem to understand it dose not caters to the common man
This is not a poem about Gods caught up in my mentioning of them they have taken their holy toys and gone home till the kingdom will come only the prelists priests are left to protest their secret order for getting into a heaven where nothing changes nothing like the rot of earth that feed upon the rotting of the living
This is not a this is not poem all that I have said can be washed away with the rain of your brain this poem can not save can not heal can not trill you into action
This is not a solitary crowed poem a cut-up poem feeding off itself
I have written it but it will not tell me what kind of poem it seem to be
This is not a poem to make you rough or pure or proud or increate your intellect to beguile the world with its new found wisdom
This is not a poem to set you free from the common drudgery of your day to day life it can not fend or feed you with the not of its substance can not set you to dance naked beneath the full moon can not fill you up with the pleasure of the pen
This is not a poem that seeks to befriend it has no mouth to consume you no hands to caress you no tongue to lick the words from your tears
This is not a haiku poem
A testimonial poem
A neither Ballard nor ballade
A limerick an ode nor sonnet
A terza rima
A villanelle a terzanelle or pantoum
This poem can not go on forever it finds its not end in your mind the time is spent and I believe that this is not the end of this poem
poem by David E. Patton
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Undesired Revenge
Sorrow and sin have worked their will
For years upon your sovereign face,
And yet it keeps a faded trace
Of its unequalled beauty still,
As ruined sanctuaries hold
A crumbled trace of perfect mould
In shrines which saints no longer fill.
I knew you in your splendid morn,
Oh, how imperiously sweet!
I bowed and worshipped at your feet,
And you received my love with scorn.
Now I scorn you. It is a change,
When I consider it, how strange
That you, not I, should be forlorn.
Do you suppose I have no pain
To see you play this sorry part,
With faded face and broken heart,
And life lived utterly in vain?
Oh would to God that you once more
Might scorn me as you did of yore,
And I might worship you again!
poem by Robert Fuller Murray
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Villanelle of His Lady’s Treasures
I took her dainty eyes, as well
As silken tendrils of her hair:
And so I made a Villanelle!
I took her voice, a silver bell,
As clear as song, as soft as prayer;
I took her dainty eyes as well.
It may be, said I, who can tell,
These things shall be my less despair?
And so I made a Villanelle!
I took her whiteness virginal
And from her cheek two roses rare:
I took her dainty eyes as well.
I said: “It may be possible
Her image from my heart to tear!”
And so I made a Villanelle.
I stole her laugh, most musical:
I wrought it in with artful care;
I took her dainty eyes as well;
And so I made a Villanelle.
poem by Ernest Christopher Dowson
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Sonnet Minus One: A Jest [Acrostic on THIRTEEN LINES]
This is not a sonnet, can’t you tell? It
Has a line less than it should, for, hell, if
I am to be printed in this broadside,
Rules require the lines to number oddly.
This allows me eight lines at the first, but
Even though my rhyming is well-versed, as
Every critic knows the issue’s passed, that
Never will this poem be a classic.
Literati want their sonnets catholic
In the best King’s English Shakespeare hath, and
Not the three-legged race this thirteen-liner
Eggs the couplet-craving crowd unraveled:
So, I scorn to tread the road more traveled.
poem by Richard St. Clair
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Splattered
Pay for [Me] to go
Live to die city grave
Found that life wont pay
With...
What's wrong with your mind
Kill thoughts set Me...
I dont care to go
Just leave Me to die
Face scorn live for dying
Face scorn to be as one
We fall and set for discard
Do what the numbers say
To see the ways and forces
They like to see Me die
... like riches for
Step forth to be my lord
To be my lord
... reach his fall
Set for to be My...
Even need time to spill
...
We found the killing bone
...
Found to expose the waste
Disrespecting future change
Face scorn live for dying
Face scorn to be as one
We fall and set for discard
Do what the numbers say
song performed by by Obituary
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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This Day What Future Will It Bring (Kyrielle Sonnet)
This day what future will it bring.
What songs will we finally sing?
Snow quietly gracing the ground.
There will then come a silent sound.
We will be skating on the pond
And ev'ry one will form a bond.
By crackling fire we'll gather round.
There will then be a silent sound.
No recipe will we follow
Flitting the night with the swallows.
We'll form a ring around, around.
There will then come a silent sound.
This day what future will it bring.
There will then come a silent sound.
- Ben Gieske, March 5,2008
*
A Kyrielle Sonnet consists of 14 lines (three rhyming quatrain stanzas and a non-rhyming couplet) . Just like the traditional Kyrielle poem, the Kyrielle Sonnet also has a repeating line or phrase as a refrain (usually appearing as the last line of each stanza) . Each line within the Kyrielle Sonnet consists of only eight syllables. French poetry forms have a tendency to link back to the beginning of the poem, so common practice is to use the first and last line of the first quatrain as the ending couplet. This would also re-enforce the refrain within the poem. Therefore, a good rhyming scheme for a Kyrielle Sonnet would be: AabB, ccbB, ddbB, AB -or- AbaB, cbcB, dbdB, AB.
poem by Ben Gieske
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War at Home
Ever since they took him away,
to fight that God forsaken war.
I daydream in our fields all day.
They took the man that I adore.
Gazing across the windswept grass
and waiting for the time to pass.
The memory of times before,
they took the man that I adore.
I know he’ll walk across that field
with battle wounds yet still unhealed.
My broken heart can take no more,
they took the man that I adore.
Ever since they took him away,
they took the man that I adore.
Author Notes:
Kyrielle Sonnet
A Kyrielle Sonnet consists of 14 lines (three rhyming quatrain stanzas and a non-rhyming couplet) . Just like the traditional Kyrielle poem, the Kyrielle Sonnet also has a repeating line or phrase as a refrain (usually appearing as the last line of each stanza) . Each line within the Kyrielle Sonnet consists of only eight syllables. French poetry forms have a tendency to link back to the beginning of the poem, so common practice is to use the first and last line of the first quatrain as the ending couplet. This would also re-enforce the refrain within the poem. Therefore, a good rhyming scheme
for a Kyrielle Sonnet would be: AabB, ccbB, ddbB, AB -or- AbaB, cbcB, dbdB, AB.
poem by Amera Andersen
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Mary
Sweet Mary the first time she ever was there
Came into the Ball room among the Fair
The young Men and Maidens around her throng
And these are the words upon every tongue
An Angel is here from the heavenly Climes
Or again does return the Golden times
Her eyes outshine every brilliant ray
She opens her lips tis the Month of May
Mary moves in soft beauty and conscious delight
To augment with sweet smiles all the joys of the Night
Nor once blushes to own to the rest of the Fair
That sweet Love and Beauty are worthy our care
In the Morning the Villagers rose with delight
And repeated with pleasure the joys of the night
And Mary arose among Friends to be free
But no Friend from henceforward thou Mary shalt see
Some said she was proud some calld her a whore
And some when she passed by shut to the door
A damp cold came oer her her blushes all fled
Her lillies and roses are blighted and shed
O why was I born with a different Face
Why was I not born like this Envious Racet
Why did Heaven adorn me with bountiful hand
And then set me down in an envious Land
To be weak as a Lamb and smooth as a Dove
And not to raise Envy is calld Christian Love
But if you raise Envy your Merits to blame
For planting such spite in the weak and the tame
I will humble my Beauty I will not dress fine
I will keep from the Ball and my Eyes shall not shine
And if any Girls Lover forsakes her for me
I'll refuse him my hand and from Envy be freet
She went out in Morning attird plain and neat
Proud Marys gone Mad said the Child in the Street
She went out in Morning in plain neat attire
And came home in Evening bespatterd with mire
She trembled and wept sitting on the Bed side
She forgot it was Night & she trembled and cried
She forgot it was Night she forgot it was Morn
Her soft Memory imprinted with Faces of Scorn
With Faces of Scorn and with Eyes of disdain
Like foul Fiends inhabiting Marys mild Brain
She remembers no Face like the Human Divine
All Faces have Envy sweet Mary but thine
And thine is a Face of sweet Love in Despair
And thine is a Face of mild sorrow and care
And thine is a Face of wild terror and fear
That shall never be quiet till laid on its bier
poem by William Blake from Songs and Ballads (1794)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The History Poems Have Not Been Written
The history poems have not been written
The poems after Milosz
The Wallace Stevens poems will never be written
I can’t come close
I have tried the Blake poems
But of course I am not near them either
I would like to the ironic intellectual poems
I might be able to do them
I could do a kind of surrealistic association mind poem a prose poem
But I don’t like that very much
The poems of Jerusalem have not been good enough
Poems of propaganda are awkward and unacceptable
The small poems that tell of my life
They are for me the chance at real poetry
And I will continue as best I can with them
The American poems I have not yet found the idiom for
I can be epigrammatic in Emerson Thoreau fashion
But not with the hard New England observing eye
Borges poems I love
And the stories of mind and literature
Making the drama of a life of a storyteller
Interest me
But I doubt I could truly do them well
Imitation can only take one so far
And through it one may lose one’s way entirely
I can really do only what I am
Not the Dickinson poems nor the Hopkins poems nor the Wordsworth poems nor the Keats poems nor the Amichai poems nor the poems of many others whose poetry I love
The Biblical poems have been tried
The poems of cosmic and scientific reflection
I could try to improve them
There are too many different kinds of poems to write
And I cannot write almost all of them
This is another poem about poems and poetry
I have written many for a long time now
Perhaps I need to go elsewhere and write in a new way
A way I have not dreamed or even remotely understood possible before.
The poems of the unknown poetry await me
I will go on but I am not sure now I know in which wa
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Two Sonnets On Fame
I.
Fame, like a wayward girl, will still be coy
To those who woo her with too slavish knees,
But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy,
And dotes the more upon a heart at ease;
She is a Gypsy,-will not speak to those
Who have not learnt to be content without her;
A Jilt, whose ear was never whisper'd close,
Who thinks they scandal her who talk about her;
A very Gypsy is she, Nilus-born,
Sister-in-law to jealous Potiphar;
Ye love-sick Bards! repay her scorn for scorn;
Ye Artists lovelorn! madmen that ye are!
Make your best bow to her and bid adieu,
Then, if she likes it, she will follow you.
II.
'You cannot eat your cake and have it too.'~Proverb.
How fever'd is the man, who cannot look
Upon his mortal days with temperate blood,
Who vexes all the leaves of his life's book,
And robs his fair name of its maidenhood;
It is as if the rose should pluck herself,
On the ripe plum finger its misty bloom,
As if a Naiad, like a meddling elf,
Should darken her pure grot with muddy gloom:
But the rose leaves herself upon the briar,
For winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed,
And the ripe plum still wears its dim attire,
The undisturbed lake has crystal space;
Why then should man, teasing the world for grace,
Spoil his salvation for a fierce miscreed?
poem by John Keats
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The Poem That Comes From Hearing The Poem Of Another
The poem that comes from hearing the poem of another
And tries to ride on its rhythm
Like the sea on its own waves-
A forced music finding nowhere in itself a music of its own
Because all the poems are melodies made light by more light
As all the poems are dreams made dreamlike by more dreaming-
And we in our poetic fervor hearing that lyric sound
Go round and round again and again
As if we were the music of the stars
When the universe empirically spherical –
But now in this more deeply instrumented time,
When what we see with our eyes is always less than what we measure
Time and Time again tells us that Space and Space again tell us
That all we are in this long distance darkness
Is one small point of light which in its own sad way will fade out before its music endures-
For the stars have only our imagined music
and not more than the light
of their own violent dying –
So here having heard the poem of another
And open to my own inner voice,
I cry and cry again for another sky and another music
That only God Who is Beyond these earthly hapless sounds
Can Dream and Feel and Know
In the Lyric Ending that justifies our home.
poem by Shalom Freedman
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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On Fame
I.
Fame, like a wayward girl, will still be coy
To those who woo her with too slavish knees,
But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy,
And dotes the more upon a heart at ease;
She is a Gipsey,--will not speak to those
Who have not learnt to be content without her;
A Jilt, whose ear was never whisper'd close,
Who thinks they scandal her who talk about her;
A very Gipsey is she, Nilus-born,
Sister-in-law to jealous Potiphar;
Ye love-sick Bards! repay her scorn for scorn;
Ye Artists lovelorn! madmen that ye are!
Make your best bow to her and bid adieu,
Then, if she likes it, she will follow you.
II.
"You cannot eat your cake and have it too."--Proverb.
How fever'd is the man, who cannot look
Upon his mortal days with temperate blood,
Who vexes all the leaves of his life's book,
And robs his fair name of its maidenhood;
It is as if the rose should pluck herself,
On the ripe plum finger its misty bloom,
As if a Naiad, like a meddling elf,
Should darken her pure grot with muddy gloom:
But the rose leaves herself upon the briar,
For winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed,
And the ripe plum still wears its dim attire,
The undisturbed lake has crystal space;
Why then should man, teasing the world for grace,
Spoil his salvation for a fierce miscreed?
poem by John Keats
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Sonnet- Thousand’th Sonnet Of Doctor John Celes
A Doctor-Bard of India, at last writ,
A thousand sonnets in a record time;
And soon his face will be on earth limelit!
God’s Muse’s gift will make his life sublime.
Serendipitously, God gave this gift!
The humble Bard took up the challenge great;
He wrote two thousand poems very swift;
A world-record in Poetry till date.
The Bard was very sad when he began;
His sadness has not quit his life as yet;
With God beside, there’s no worry for man;
The Sonnet-King has world placed in his debt!
Great things have humble beginnings in life;
But, man must never give up ev’n in strife.
31-5-2001
poem by John Celes
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This poem
This poem
is friendly:
see, it’s wagging its tail,
it will follow you anywhere,
run off and come back,
a perfect companion;
this poem
loves fun:
you want to play dressing up,
it’ll laugh and rush off to the attic,
the basement, the dressing-up basket;
this poem
is serious:
you want to be silent awhile,
rest your head on its shoulder,
it will wait for you in
sympathetic stillness;
this poem
is humble:
turn it over, write
a love poem on
the other side,
it will glow with your love;
this poem
is disposable:
write a few lines, be angry
with yourself, scrumple it up,
throw it on the pavement,
someone may pick it up,
someone may tutt and place it
carefully for recycling;
this poem
is an origami:
you can make any shape you like:
a paper boat on
the waves of destiny;
a ladder to reach to where
you always wanted that fruit;
a crown; a dunce’s hat; a witch’s conic;
this poem
is elastic:
a tablecloth for a picnic,
a sheet to cover two lovers,
a ground plan for a new world;
this poem
knows where
nothing meets something,
nowhere meets everywhere,
no time meets all time,
anyone meets everyone,
this poem
has a bright eye
whether you read it or not;
this poem
likes you though it
hasn’t met you;
this poem
is impervious to scorn;
it knows who it is,
and where things begin and end.
poem by Michael Shepherd
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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This poem (says)
This poem
is friendly:
see, it’s wagging its tail,
it will follow you anywhere,
run off and come back,
a perfect companion;
this poem
loves fun:
you want to play dressing up,
it’ll laugh and rush off to the attic,
the basement, the dressing-up basket;
this poem
is serious:
you want to be silent awhile,
rest your head on its shoulder,
it will wait for you in
sympathetic stillness;
this poem
is humble:
turn it over, write
a love poem on
the other side,
it will glow with your love;
this poem
is disposable:
write a few lines, be angry
with yourself, scrumple it up,
throw it on the pavement,
someone may pick it up,
someone may tutt and place it
carefully for recycling;
this poem
is an origami:
you can make any shape you like:
a paper boat on
the waves of destiny;
a ladder to reach to where
you always wanted that fruit;
a crown; a dunce’s hat; a witch’s conic;
this poem
is elastic:
a tablecloth for a picnic,
a sheet to cover two lovers,
a ground plan for a new world;
this poem
knows where
nothing meets something,
nowhere meets everywhere,
no time meets all time,
anyone meets everyone,
this poem
has a bright eye
whether you read it or not;
this poem
likes you though it
hasn’t met you;
this poem
is impervious to scorn;
it knows who it is,
and where things begin and end.
poem by Michael Shepherd
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Night Poetry 2
Oh! no! I would not love again
E'en had I still the power given;
I would not risk its pain and fears
E'en though its joys were taste of heaven.
A breath may blight the heart we prize;
A whisper weave deceit around it;
And then our heart's most tender chord
Is wounded by the chain that bound it.
'Tis hard to see death's chilling hand
The life-strings of our treasure sever:
But harder still when loving hearts
Are rudely rent apart for ever.
But ah! such griefs are naught to those
That fill the heart where passion burned
Till falsehood burst the mask and showed
That love by heartless scorn returned
poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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Sit Smiling
I boasted among men that I had known you.
They see your pictures in all works of mine.
They come and ask me, `Who is he?'
I know not how to answer them. I say, `Indeed, I cannot tell.'
They blame me and they go away in scorn.
And you sit there smiling.
I put my tales of you into lasting songs.
The secret gushes out from my heart.
They come and ask me, `Tell me all your meanings.'
I know not how to answer them.
I say, `Ah, who knows what they mean!'
They smile and go away in utter scorn.
And you sit there smiling.
poem by Rabindranath Tagore
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A Dainty Thing's The Villanelle
A DAINTY thing's the Villanelle,
Sly, musical, a jewel in rhyme,
It serves its purpose passing well.
A double-clappered silver bell
That must be made to clink in chime,
A dainty thing's the Villanelle;
And if you wish to flute a spell,
Or ask a meeting 'neath the lime,
It serves its purpose passing well.
You must not ask of it the swell
Of organs grandiose and sublime--
A dainty thing's the Villanelle;
And, filled with sweetness, as a shell
Is filled with sound, and launched in time,
It serves its purpose passing well.
Still fair to see and good to smell
As in the quaintness of its prime,
A dainty thing's the Villanelle,
It serves its purpose passing well.
poem by William Ernest Henley
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Villanelle
A dainty thing's the Villanelle.
Sly, musical, a jewel in rhyme,
It serves its purpose passing well.
A doublc-clappered silver bell
That must be made to clink in chime,
A dainty thing's the Villanelle;
And if you wish to flute a spell,
Or ask a meeting 'neath the lime,
It serves its purpose passing well.
You must not ask of it the swell
Of organs grandiose and sublime-
A dainty thing's the Villanelle;
And, filled with sweetness, as a shell
Is filled with sound, and launched in time,
It serves its purpose passing well.
Still fair to see and good to smell
As in the quaintness of its prime,
A dainty thing's the Villanelle,
It serves its purpose passing well.
poem by William Ernest Henley
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The Vanity of Wealth
No more thus brooding o'er yon heap,
With avarice painful vigils keep:
Still unenjoy'd the present store,
Still endless sighs are breathed for more.
O! quit the shadow, catch the prize,
Which not all India's treasure buys!
To purchase with heaven has gold the power?
Can gold remove the mortal hour?
In life can love be bought with gold?
Are friendship's pleasures to be sold?
No! - all that's worth a wish - a thought,
Fair virtue gives unbribed, unbought,
Cease then on trash thy hopes to bind,
Let noble views engage thy mind.
With science tread the wondrous way,
Or learn the Muses' moral lay;
In social hours indulge thy soul,
Where mirth and temperance mix the bowl;
To virtuous love resign thy breast,
And be, by blessing beauty, - bless'd.
Thus taste the feast by Nature spread,
Ere youth and all its joys are fled;
Come taste with me the balm of life,
Secure from pomp, and wealth, and strife.
I boast whate'er for man was meant,
In health, and Stella, and content;
And scorn! (oh! let that scorn be thine!)
Mere things of clay, that dig the mine.
poem by Samuel Johnson
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