Famous Ageless Poems by Famous Poets

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

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To Thos. Floyd

by Robert Seymour Bridges
 How fares it, friend, since I by Fate annoy'd 
Left the old home in need of livelier play 
For body and mind? How fare, this many a day, 
The stubborn thews and ageless heart of Floyd? 
If not too well with country sport employ'd, 
Visit my flock, the breezy hill that they 
Choose for their fold; and see, for...Read more of this...

Prelude

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Between the green bud and the red
Youth sat and sang by Time, and shed
From eyes and tresses flowers and tears,
From heart and spirit hopes and fears,
Upon the hollow stream whose bed
Is channelled by the foamless years;
And with the white the gold-haired head
Mixed running locks, and in Time's ears
Youth's dreams hung singing, and Time's truth
Was half not harsh in the...Read more of this...

Alabama Landscape

by Mari Evans
Black man running
Thru the ageless sun and shadow
History repeated past all logic
Who is it bides the time and why?
And for how long?...Read more of this...

Approaching The Veil Scientifically

by Belinda Subraman
 Eyes like stars sparkle and die
and cycle into new stars, new eyes.

The answer is outside our window.
Astronomers look
for the beginning
and find there is no end.

Down to earth
there are frozen lines,
winter trees,
stalled cars in dirty snow,
sorrow over endings.

The real world is through the window,
infinite, ageless.
Though a clear veil
keeps us distant,
the soul of what 
we can never prove
keeps us close....Read more of this...

Dedication

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 for Moremi, 1963

Earth will not share the rafter's envy; dung floors
Break, not the gecko's slight skin, but its fall
Taste this soil for death and plumb her deep for life

As this yam, wholly earthed, yet a living tuber
To the warmth of waters, earthed as springs
As roots of baobab, as the hearth.

The air will not deny you. Like a top
Spin you...Read more of this...

Whales Weep Not!

by D. H. Lawrence
 They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains
the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.

All the whales in the wider deeps, hot are they, as they urge
on and on, and dive beneath the icebergs.
The right whales, the sperm-whales, the hammer-heads, the killers
there they blow, there they blow, hot wild white breath out of
 the...Read more of this...

Fragment

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Faint white pillars that seem to fade 
As you look from here are the first one sees 
Of his house where it hides and dies in a shade 
Of beeches and oaks and hickory trees. 
Now many a man, given woods like these, 
And a house like that, and the Briony gold, 
Would have said, "There are still some...Read more of this...

The Everlasting Battle

by George William Russell
 WHEN in my shadowy hours I pierce the hidden heart of hopes and fears,
They change into immortal joys or end in immemorial tears.
Moytura’s battle still endures and in this human heart of mine
The golden sun powers with the might of demon darkness intertwine.


I think that every teardrop shed still flows from Balor’s eye of doom,
And gazing on his ageless...Read more of this...

Baby Tortoise

by D. H. Lawrence
 You know what it is to be born alone,
Baby tortoise!
The first day to heave your feet little by little from the shell,
Not yet awake,
And remain lapsed on earth,
Not quite alive.

A tiny, fragile, half-animate bean.

To open your tiny beak-mouth, that looks as if it would never open,

Like some iron door;
To lift the upper hawk-beak from the lower base
And reach your...Read more of this...

Gwalior

by Amitabh Mitra
1
today
the evening has come back
in its finery
streets coil back in languor
i smell an aroma
like distant footsteps
lying on a divan
behind curtains
hiding shadows of
once
small talk
once
tiny kisses
i wait
i wait.

2
my nose had
touched you
as i uttered
i love you
lips that would never leave the crypt
of a season
strangely looking
for another reason
i let the kites wall the sky
threads slackened
pulling the sun far away
mosque windows
left a resolute
eyes closed down...Read more of this...

The Dragon and The Undying

by Siegfried Sassoon
 All night the flares go up; the Dragon sings 
And beats upon the dark with furious wings; 
And, stung to rage by his own darting fires, 
Reaches with grappling coils from town to town; 
He lusts to break the loveliness of spires, 
And hurls their martyred music toppling down. 
Yet, though the slain are homeless as the breeze, 

Vocal...Read more of this...

Refrain

by Allen Ginsberg
 The air is dark, the night is sad,
I lie sleepless and I groan.
Nobody cares when a man goes mad:
He is sorry, God is glad.
Shadow changes into bone.

Every shadow has a name;
When I think of mine I moan,
I hear rumors of such fame.
Not for pride, but only shame,
Shadow changes into bone.

When I blush I weep for joy,
And laughter drops from...Read more of this...

The First Month Of The Year

by Barry Tebb
 A page of the ‘Kelmscott’ Chaucer

Seen through out cottage window

When the Pennines were blind with snow

Flurrying round the stones.

The fire was low when I began to blow

That single flicker to a flame,

Was I too late, I wondered, the ‘poet in name’

Whose mind runs endlessly

As fingers through an old man’s hair?

(Either way I thought of you and your being there)

A...Read more of this...

The Ladder

by Aleister Crowley
 [Dedicated to K.M.Ward]


"I will arise and go unto my father"

MALKUTH

Dark, dark all dark! I cower, I cringe.
Only ablove me is a citron tinge
As if some echo of red, gold and lue
Chimed on the night and let its shadow through.
Yet I who am thus prisoned and exiled
Am the right heir of glory, the crowned child.

I match my might against my...Read more of this...

Lui Et Elle

by D. H. Lawrence
 She is large and matronly
And rather dirty,
A little sardonic-looking, as if domesticity had driven her to it.
Though what she does, except lay four eggs at random in the garden once a year
And put up with her husband,
I don't know.

She likes to eat.
She hurries up, striding reared on long uncanny legs
When food is going.
Oh yes, she can make haste when...Read more of this...

Wind in the Beechwood

by Siegfried Sassoon
 The glorying forest shakes and swings with glancing 
Of boughs that dip and strain; young, slanting sprays 
Beckon and shift like lissom creatures dancing, 
While the blown beechwood streams with drifting rays. 
Rooted in steadfast calm, grey stems are seen
Like weather-beaten masts; the wood, unfurled, 
Seems as a ship with crowding sails of green 
That sweeps across the lonely...Read more of this...

To-Day This Insect

by Dylan Thomas
 To-day, this insect, and the world I breathe,
Now that my symbols have outelbowed space,
Time at the city spectacles, and half
The dear, daft time I take to nudge the sentence,
In trust and tale I have divided sense,
Slapped down the guillotine, the blood-red double
Of head and tail made witnesses to this
Murder of Eden and green genesis.

The insect certain is the plague...Read more of this...

Dedication

by Wole Soyinka
Dedication

for Moremi, 1963

Earth will not share the rafter's envy; dung floors
Break, not the gecko's slight skin, but its fall
Taste this soil for death and plumb her deep for life

As this yam, wholly earthed, yet a living tuber
To the warmth of waters, earthed as springs
As roots of baobab, as the hearth.

The air will not deny you. Like a top
Spin you on...Read more of this...

Octaves

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I 

We thrill too strangely at the master's touch;
We shrink too sadly from the larger self
Which for its own completeness agitates
And undetermines us; we do not feel -- 
We dare not feel it yet -- the splendid shame
Of uncreated failure; we forget,
The while we groan, that God's accomplishment
Is always and unfailingly at hand. 

II 

Tumultuously void of a clean...Read more of this...

Merlin

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 “Gawaine, Gawaine, what look ye for to see, 
So far beyond the faint edge of the world? 
D’ye look to see the lady Vivian, 
Pursued by divers ominous vile demons 
That have another king more fierce than ours?
Or think ye that if ye look far enough 
And hard enough into the feathery west 
Ye’ll have a glimmer of the...Read more of this...

Burning Drift-Wood

by John Greenleaf Whittier
Before my drift-wood fire I sit, 
And see, with every waif I burn, 
Old dreams and fancies coloring it, 
And folly's unlaid ghosts return. 

O ships of mine, whose swift keels cleft 
The enchanted sea on which they sailed, 
Are these poor fragments only left 
Of vain desires and hopes that failed? 

Did I not watch from them the light...Read more of this...

To India

by Sarojini Naidu
 O YOUNG through all thy immemorial years! 
Rise, Mother, rise, regenerate from thy gloom, 
And, like a bride high-mated with the spheres, 
Beget new glories from thine ageless womb!


The nations that in fettered darkness weep 
Crave thee to lead them where great mornings break . . . . 
Mother, O Mother, wherefore dost thou sleep? 
Arise and answer for...Read more of this...

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