Famous Ages Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Ages poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous ages poems. These examples illustrate what a famous ages poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...at this stream the fabling poets drank
And sang how heav'n and earth from chaos rose;
'Twas at this stream the wiser sages drank
And straightway knew the soul immortal lives
Beyond the grave and all the wrecks of time.
From Judah's sacred hills a partial ray
Extraneous, visited and cheer'd the gloom
Spread o'er the shaded earth; yet more than half
In superstition and the dreams of night
Each hoary sage by long experience wise,
And high philosopher of learning ...Read more of this...
by
Shakespeare, William
...rely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jea...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...ankind!
Hail Bards Triumphant! born in happier Days;
Immortal Heirs of Universal Praise!
Whose Honours with Increase of Ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow!
Nations unborn your mighty Names shall sound,
And Worlds applaud that must not yet be found!
Oh may some Spark of your Coelestial Fire
The last, the meanest of your Sons inspire,
(That on weak Wings, from far, pursues your Flights;
Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes)
To teach vain Wits a S...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ware the advancing mortal ripening of nature,
Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of states and men.
Ages, precedents, have long been accumulating undirected materials,
America brings builders, and brings its own styles.
The immortal poets of Asia and Europe have done their work, and pass’d to other
spheres,
A work remains, the work of surpassing all they have done.
America, curious toward foreign characters, stands by its own at all hazards,...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...hia, queen of light;
For the soothsayers old saw yesternight
Good visions in the air,--whence will befal,
As say these sages, health perpetual
To shepherds and their flocks; and furthermore,
In Dian's face they read the gentle lore:
Therefore for her these vesper-carols are.
Our friends will all be there from nigh and far.
Many upon thy death have ditties made;
And many, even now, their foreheads shade
With cypress, on a day of sacrifice.
New singing for our maids...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...and there, in his feathered seraglio,
Strutted the lordly turkey, and crowed the cock, with the selfsame
Voice that in ages of old had startled the penitent Peter.
Bursting with hay were the barns, themselves a village. In each one
Far o'er the gable projected a roof of thatch; and a staircase,
Under the sheltering eaves, led up to the odorous corn-loft.
There too the dove-cot stood, with its meek and innocent inmates
Murmuring ever of love; while above in the va...Read more of this...
by
Angelou, Maya
...
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no more hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face d...Read more of this...
by
Angelou, Maya
...sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in igno...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...er yon boiling ocean, wrapt in chains,
There to converse with everlasting groans,
Unrespited, unpitied, unreprieved,
Ages of hopeless end? This would be worse.
War, therefore, open or concealed, alike
My voice dissuades; for what can force or guile
With him, or who deceive his mind, whose eye
Views all things at one view? He from Heaven's height
All these our motions vain sees and derides,
Not more almighty to resist our might
Than wise to frustrate all our plot...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...l.)
O amazement of things! even the least particle!
O spirituality of things!
O strain musical, flowing through ages and continents—now reaching me and America!
I take your strong chords—I intersperse them, and cheerfully pass them forward.
I too carol the sun, usher’d, or at noon, or, as now, setting,
I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth, and of all the growths of the earth,
I too have felt the resistless call of myself.
As I sail’d down the...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...The palpable is in its place, and the impalpable is in its place.)
17
These are the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands—they are not
original with me;
If they are not yours as much as mine, they are nothing, or next to nothing;
If they are not the riddle, and the untying of the riddle, they are nothing;
If they are not just as close as they are distant, they are nothing.
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is, and the water is;
This ...Read more of this...
by
Cook, Eliza
...The charnel-grounds widen, to me they belong,
With the vaults of the sepulchre, sculptured and strong.
The tower of ages in fragments is laid,
Moss grows on the stones, and I lurk in its shade ;
And the hand of the giant and heart of the brave
Must turn weak and submit to the worm and the grave.
Daughters of earth, if I happen to meet
Your bloom-plucking fingers and sod-treading feet--
Oh ! turn not away with the shriek of disgust
From the thing you must mate with in...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...at of himself he knew,
1.58 Both good and bad, but yet no more then's true.
1.59 With heed now stood, three ages of frail man,
1.60 To hear the child, who crying, thus began.
Childhood.
2.1 Ah me! conceiv'd in sin, and born in sorrow,
2.2 A nothing, here to day, but gone to morrow,
2.3 Whose mean beginning, blushing can't reveal,
2.4 But night and darkness must with shame conceal.
2.5 My mother's breeding sickness, I will spa...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...eavenly plan
Is hid in life within the creature's heart,
And for perfection looketh unto man.
Ah me! those thousand ages: with what slow
Pains and persistence were his idols made,
Destroy'd and made, ere ever he could know
The mighty mother must be so obey'd.
For lack of knowledge and thro' little skill
His childish mimicry outwent his aim;
His effort shaped the genius of his will;
Till thro' distinction and revolt he came,
True to his simple terms of good and ill,
S...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...r the Jubjub's a desperate bird,
Since it lives in perpetual passion:
Its taste in costume is entirely absurd--
It is ages ahead of the fashion:
"But it knows any friend it has met once before:
It never will look at a bride:
And in charity-meetings it stands at the door,
And collects--though it does not subscribe.
"Its flavour when cooked is more exquisite far
Than mutton, or oysters, or eggs:
(Some think it keeps best in an ivory jar,
And some, in mahogany kegs:)...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...and drive
The just man into barren climes.
Now the sneaking serpent walks
In mild humility.
And the just man rages in the wilds
Where lions roam.
Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.
____________________________________________
PLATE 3
As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years
since its advent: the Eternal Hell revives. And lo! Swedenborg is
the Angel sitting at the tomb; his writings ar...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. ...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...te virtues (although a little expense to the nation) there can be no doubt.
With regard to the supernatural personages treated of, I can only say that I know as much about them, and (as an honest man) have a better right to talk of them than Robert Southey. I have also treated them more tolerantly. The way in which that poor insane creature, the Laureate, deals about his judgments in the next world, is like his own judgment in this. If it was not completely ...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...bells of the flocks in the fields that seem living,
And the shepherd's lone song wakens the echo again.
Joyous villages crown the stream, in the copse others vanish,
While from the back of the mount, others plunge wildly below.
Man still lives with the land in neighborly friendship united,
And round his sheltering roof calmly repose still his fields;
Trustingly climbs the vine high over the low-reaching window,
While round the cottage the tree circles its far-stretch...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...1
TO think of time—of all that retrospection!
To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward!
Have you guess’d you yourself would not continue?
Have you dreaded these earth-beetles?
Have you fear’d the future would be nothing to you?
Is to-day nothing? Is the beginningless past nothing?
If the future is nothing, they are just as surely nothing.
To think that the sun rose in the east! that men and women were fl...Read more of this...
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