Famous Aching Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

The Adieu to Love

by Mary Darby Robinson
 LOVE, I renounce thy tyrant sway,
I mock thy fascinating art,
MINE, be the calm unruffled day,
That brings no torment to the heart; 
The tranquil mind, the noiseless scene, 
Where FANCY, with enchanting mien, 
Shall in her right-hand lead along 
The graceful patroness of Song;
Where HARMONY shall softly fling 
Her light tones o'er the dulcet string; 
And with her magic LYRE...Read more of this...

The September Gale

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 I'M not a chicken; I have seen 
Full many a chill September, 
And though I was a youngster then, 
That gale I well remember; 
The day before, my kite-string snapped, 
And I, my kite pursuing, 
The wind whisked off my palm-leaf hat; 
For me two storms were brewing!

It came as quarrels sometimes do, 
When married folks get clashing;
There was...Read more of this...

Ione

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Ah, yes, 't is sweet still to remember,
Though 'twere less painful to forget;
For while my heart glows like an ember,
Mine eyes with sorrow's drops are wet,
And, oh, my heart is aching yet.
[Pg 32]It is a law of mortal pain
That old wounds, long accounted well,
Beneath the memory's potent spell,
Will wake to life and bleed again.
So 't is with me;...Read more of this...

The Negro Girl

by Mary Darby Robinson
 I. 

Dark was the dawn, and o'er the deep
The boist'rous whirlwinds blew;
The Sea-bird wheel'd its circling sweep,
And all was drear to view--
When on the beach that binds the western shore
The love-lorn ZELMA stood, list'ning the tempest's roar.


II. 

Her eager Eyes beheld the main,
While on her DRACO dear
She madly call'd, but call'd in vain,
No sound could DRACO hear,
Save the shrill...Read more of this...

Sonnet VIII: Why Through Each Aching Vein

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Why, through each aching vein, with lazy pace
Thus steals the languid fountain of my heart, 
While, from its source, each wild convulsive start
Tears the scorch'd roses from my burning face?
In vain, O Lesbian Vales! your charms I trace;
Vain is the poet's theme, the sculptor's art;
No more the Lyre its magic can impart,
Though wak'd to sound, with more than mortal...Read more of this...

The City Bushman

by Henry Lawson
 It was pleasant up the country, City Bushman, where you went, 
For you sought the greener patches and you travelled like a gent; 
And you curse the trams and buses and the turmoil and the push, 
Though you know the squalid city needn't keep you from the bush; 
But we lately heard you singing of the `plains where shade...Read more of this...

Prelude To "the Songs Of Twilight."

by Victor Hugo
 ("De quel non te nommer?") 
 
 {PRELUDE, a, Oct. 20, 1835.} 


 How shall I note thee, line of troubled years, 
 Which mark existence in our little span? 
 One constant twilight in the heaven appears— 
 One constant twilight in the mind of man! 
 
 Creed, hope, anticipation and despair, 
 Are but a mingling,...Read more of this...

From Pent-up Aching Rivers

by Walt Whitman
 FROM pent-up, aching rivers; 
From that of myself, without which I were nothing; 
From what I am determin’d to make illustrious, even if I stand sole among men; 
From my own voice resonant—singing the phallus, 
Singing the song of procreation,
Singing the need of superb children, and therein superb grown people, 
Singing the muscular urge and the blending, 
Singing the...Read more of this...

Leftovers

by Barry Tebb
 Empty chocolate boxes, a pillowcase with an orange at the bottom,

Nuts and tinsel with its idiosyncratic rustle and brilliant sheen

And the reflection in it of paper-chains hand-made and stuck with

Flour-paste stretching from the light-bowl to every corner of the room.

Father Christmas himself was plastic and his vast stomach painted red

With a bulging sack behind his back and he was...Read more of this...

A Love Song

by D. H. Lawrence
 Reject me not if I should say to you 
I do forget the sounding of your voice, 
I do forget your eyes that searching through 
The mists perceive our marriage, and rejoice. 

Yet, when the apple-blossom opens wide 
Under the pallid moonlight's fingering, 
I see your blanched face at my breast, and hide 
My eyes from diligent work, malingering....Read more of this...

Liberty

by James Whitcomb Riley
 New Castle, July 4, 1878

or a hundred years the pulse of time
Has throbbed for Liberty;
For a hundred years the grand old clime
Columbia has been free;
For a hundred years our country's love,
The Stars and Stripes, has waved above.

Away far out on the gulf of years--
Misty and faint and white
Through the fogs of wrong--a sail appears,
And the Mayflower heaves in sight,
And...Read more of this...

Out Back

by Henry Lawson
 The old year went, and the new returned, in the withering weeks of drought, 
The cheque was spent that the shearer earned, 
and the sheds were all cut out; 
The publican's words were short and few, 
and the publican's looks were black -- 
And the time had come, as the shearer knew, to carry his swag Out Back. 

For...Read more of this...

Life and Art

by Emma Lazarus
 Not while the fever of the blood is strong, 
The heart throbs loud, the eyes are veiled, no less 
With passion than with tears, the Muse shall bless 
The poet-sould to help and soothe with song. 
Not then she bids his trembling lips express 
The aching gladness, the voluptuous pain. 
Life is his poem then; flesh, sense, and brain...Read more of this...

Weary

by Robert William Service
 Some praise the Lord for Light,
 The living spark;
I thank God for the Night
 The healing dark.
When wearily I lie,
 With aching sight,
With what thanksgiving I
 Turn out the light!

When to night's drowsy deep
 Serene I sink,
How glad am I to sleep,
 To cease to think!
From care and fret set free,
 In sweet respite,
With joy I peacefully
 Turn out...Read more of this...

On Woman

by William Butler Yeats
 May God be praised for woman
That gives up all her mind,
A man may find in no man
A friendship of her kind
That covers all he has brought
As with her flesh and bone,
Nor quarrels with a thought
Because it is not her own.

Though pedantry denies,
It's plain the Bible means
That Solomon grew wise
While talking with his queens.
Yet never could, although
They say he counted...Read more of this...

The Coastwise Lights

by Rudyard Kipling
 Our brows are bound with spindrift and the weed is on our knees;
Our loins are battered 'neath us by the swinging, smoking seas.
From reef and rock and skerry -- over headland, ness, and voe --
The Coastwise Lights of England watch the ships of England go!

Through the endless summer evenings, on the lineless, level floors;
Through the yelling Channel tempest when...Read more of this...

Self-Congratulation

by Anne Bronte
 Ellen, you were thoughtless once
Of beauty or of grace,
Simple and homely in attire,
Careless of form and face;
Then whence this change? and wherefore now
So often smooth your hair?
And wherefore deck your youthful form 
With such unwearied care? 
Tell us -­ and cease to tire our ears
With that familiar strain -­
Why will you play those simple tunes
So often, o'er again?
'Indeed, dear...Read more of this...

Searcy Foote

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I wanted to go away to college
But rich Aunt Persis wouldn't help me.
So I made gardens and raked the lawns
And bought John Alden's books with my earnings
And toiled for the very means of life.
I wanted to marry Delia Prickett,
But how could I do it with what I earned?
And there was Aunt Persis more than seventy,
Who sat in a wheel-chair...Read more of this...

Lepanto

by G K Chesterton
 White founts falling in the Courts of the sun, 
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run; 
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared, 
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard; 
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips; 
For the inmost sea of all the...Read more of this...

Ode to Reflection

by Mary Darby Robinson
 O THOU, whose sober precepts can controul 
The wild impatience of the troubled soul, 
Sweet Nymph serene ! whose all-consoling pow'r 
Awakes to calm delight the ling'ring hour; 
O hear thy suppliant's ardent pray'r ! 
Chase from my pensive mind corroding care, 
Steal thro' the heated pulses of the brain, 
Charm sorrow to repose­and lull the throb of pain....Read more of this...

At An Inn

by Thomas Hardy
 WHEN we as strangers sought
Their catering care,
Veiled smiles bespoke their thought
Of what we were.
They warmed as they opined
Us more than friends--
That we had all resigned
For love's dear ends.

And that swift sympathy
With living love
Which quicks the world--maybe
The spheres above,
Made them our ministers,
Moved them to say,
"Ah, God, that bliss like theirs
Would flush our day!"

And we were left alone
As Love's own pair;
Yet...Read more of this...

Gregory Corso

by Gregory Corso
 Budger of history Brake of time You Bomb
 Toy of universe Grandest of all snatched sky I cannot hate you
 Do I hate the mischievous thunderbolt the jawbone of an ass
 The bumpy club of One Million B.C. the mace the flail the axe
 Catapult Da Vinci tomahawk Cochise flintlock Kidd dagger Rathbone
 Ah and the sad desparate gun...Read more of this...

Ode for the Keats Centenary

by Duncan Campbell Scott
 The Muse is stern unto her favoured sons,
Giving to some the keys of all the joy
Of the green earth, but holding even that joy
Back from their life;
Bidding them feed on hope,
A plant of bitter growth,
Deep-rooted in the past;
Truth, 'tis a doubtful art
To make Hope sweeten
Time as it flows;
For no man knows
Until the very last,
Whether it be a sovereign herb...Read more of this...

Excursion

by D. H. Lawrence
 I wonder, can the night go by; 
Can this shot arrow of travel fly 
Shaft-golden with light, sheer into the sky 
Of a dawned to-morrow, 
Without ever sleep delivering us
From each other, or loosing the dolorous 
Unfruitful sorrow! 

What is it then that you can see 
That at the window endlessly 
You watch the red sparks whirl and flee
And...Read more of this...

Europe the 72d and 73d years of These States

by Walt Whitman
 1
SUDDENLY, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves, 
Like lightning it le’pt forth, half startled at itself, 
Its feet upon the ashes and the rags—its hands tight to the throats of kings. 

O hope and faith! 
O aching close of exiled patriots’ lives!
O many a sicken’d heart! 
Turn back unto this day, and make yourselves...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Aching poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace