Famous Ago Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Ago poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous ago poems. These examples illustrate what a famous ago poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Oscar Wilde
There was a time in Europe long ago
When no man died for freedom anywhere,
But England's lion leaping from its lair
Laid hands on the oppressor! it was so
While England could a great Republic show.
Witness the men of Piedmont, chiefest care
Of Cromwell, when with impotent despair
The Pontiff in his painted portico
Trembled before our stern ambassadors.
How comes it then that from such...Read more of this...
by
Lewis Carroll
'Haddock's Eyes' or 'The Aged Aged Man' or
'Ways and Means' or 'A-Sitting On A Gate'
I'll tell thee everything I can;
There's little to relate.
I saw an aged, aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.
'Who are you, aged man?' I said.
'And how is it you live?'
And his answer trickled through my head
Like water through a sieve.
He said 'I look for butterflies
That sleep among...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Surely the flowers of a hundred springs
Are simply the souls of beautiful things!
The poppies aflame with gold and red
Were the kisses of lovers in days that are fled.
The purple pansies with dew-drops pearled
Were the rainbow dreams of a youngling world.
The lily, white as a star apart,
Was the first pure prayer of a...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I'm sitting by the fire tonight,
The cat purrs on the rug;
The room's abrim with rosy light,
Suavely soft and snug;
And safe and warm from dark and storm
It's cosiness I hug.
Then petulant the window pane
Quakes in the tempest moan,
And cries: "Forlornly in the rain
There starkly streams a stone,
Where one so dear who shared your cheer
Now...Read more of this...
by
Charles Baudelaire
I love the naked ages long ago
When statues were gilded by Apollo,
When men and women of agility
Could play without lies and anxiety,
And the sky lovingly caressed their spines,
As it exercised its noble machine.
Fertile Cybele, mother of nature, then,
Would not place on her daughters a burden,
But, she-wolf sharing her heart with the...Read more of this...
by
Robert Desnos
Long long ago I went through the castle of leaves
Yellowing slowly in the moss
And far away barnacles clung desperately to rocks in the sea
Your memory better still your tender presence was there too
Transparent and mine
Nothing had changed but everything had aged at the same rate as my temples and
my eyes
Don't you just love that platitude? Let me go it's...Read more of this...
by
Ellis Parker Butler
Well, eight months ago one clear cold day,
I took a ramble up Broadway,
And with my hands behind my back
I strolled along on the streetcar track—
(I walked on the track, for walking there
Gives one, I think, a distinguished air.)
“Well, all of a sudden I felt a jar
And I said, “I’ll bet that’s a trolley car,”
And, sure enough, when I looked...Read more of this...
by
Bliss Carman
The sun goes down, and over all
These barren reaches by the tide
Such unelusive glories fall,
I almost dream they yet will bide
Until the coming of the tide.
And yet I know that not for us,
By any ecstasy of dream,
He lingers to keep luminous
A little while the grievous stream,
Which frets, uncomforted of dream--
A grievous stream, that to and fro
Athrough the fields of...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
A certain poet in outlandish clothes
Gathered a crowd in some Byzantine lane,
Talked1 of his country and its people, sang
To some stringed instrument none there had seen,
A wall behind his back, over his head
A latticed window. His glance went up at time
As though one listened there, and his voice sank
Or let its meaning mix into the strings.
Maeve the great queen...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
I once knew all the birds that came
And nested in our orchard trees;
For every flower I had a name--
My friends were woodchucks, toads, and bees;
I knew where thrived in yonder glen
What plants would soothe a stone-bruised toe--
Oh, I was very learned then;
But that was very long ago!
I knew the spot upon the hill
Where checkerberries could be found,
I knew the...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
In one of fhe States of America, some years ago,
There suddenly came on a violent storm of snow,
Which was nearly the death of a party of workmen,
Who had finished their day's work - nine or ten of them.
The distance was nearly twenty miles to their camp,
And with the thick falling snow their clothes felt damp,
As they set out...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
Let us suppose, valleys & such ago,
one pal unwinding from his labours in
one bar of Chicago
and this did actually happen. This was so.
And many graces are slipped, & many a sin
even that laid man low
but this will be remembered & told over,
that she was heard at last, haughtful & greasy,
to brawl in that low bar:
'You can biff me, you...Read more of this...
by
Fernando Pessoa
How yesterday is long ago! The past
Is a fixed infinite distance from to-day,
And bygone things, the first-lived as the last,
In irreparable sameness far away.
How the to-be is infinitely ever
Out of the place wherein it will be Now,
Like the seen wave yet far up in the river,
Which reaches not us, but the new-waved flow!
This thing Time is, whose being is having...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
High up above the open, welcoming door
It hangs, a piece of wood with colours dim.
Once, long ago, it was a waving tree
And knew the sun and shadow through the leaves
Of forest trees, in a thick eastern wood.
The winter snows had bent its branches down,
The spring had swelled its buds with coming flowers,
Summer had run like fire through its veins,
While...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
SINCE years ago for evermore
My cedar ship I drew to shore;
And to the road and riverbed
And the green, nodding reeds, I said
Mine ignorant and last farewell:
Now with content at home I dwell,
And now divide my sluggish life
Betwixt my verses and my wife:
In vain; for when the lamp is lit
And by the laughing fire I sit,
Still with the tattered atlas...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
June 22, 1611
THE SHALLOP ON HUDSON BAY
One sail in sight upon the lonely sea
And only one, God knows! For never ship
But mine broke through the icy gates that guard
These waters, greater grown than any since
We left the shores of England. We were first,
My men, to battle in between the bergs
And floes to these wide...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
ALL day long in fog and wind,
The waves have flung their beating crests
Against the palisades of adamant.
My boy, he went to sea, long and long ago,
Curls of brown were slipping underneath his cap,
He looked at me from blue and steely eyes;
Natty, straight and true, he stepped away,
My boy, he went to sea.
All day long in fog and wind,
The waves...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
One Year ago -- jots what?
God -- spell the word! I -- can't --
Was't Grace? Not that --
Was't Glory? That -- will do --
Spell slower -- Glory --
Such Anniversary shall be --...Read more of this...
by
Bliss Carman
(Sappho XXIII)
I loved thee, Atthis, in the long ago,
When the great oleanders were in flower
In the broad herded meadows full of sun.
And we would often at the fall of dusk
Wander together by the silver stream,
When the soft grass-heads were all wet with dew
And purple-misted in the fading light.
And joy I knew and sorrow at thy voice,
And the superb magnificence...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
This that would greet -- an hour ago --
Is quaintest Distance -- now --
Had it a Guest from Paradise --
Nor glow, would it, nor bow --
Had it a notice from the Noon
Nor beam would it nor warm --
Match me the Silver Reticence --
Match me the Solid Calm --...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
I studied with the masters long ago,
And long ago did master all they know;
Here now the end and issue of it all,
From earth I came, and like the wind I go!...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
When I was young my heart and head were light,
And I was gay and feckless as a colt
Out in the fields, with morning in the may,
Wind on the grass, wings in the orchard bloom.
O thrilling sweet, my joy, when life was free
And all the paths led on from hawthorn-time
Across the carolling meadows into June....Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
I say 'e isn't Remorse!
'Ow do I know?
Saw 'im on Riccarton course
Two year ago!
Think I'd forget any 'orse?
Course 'e's The Crow!
Bumper Maginnis and I
After a "go",
Walkin' our 'orses to dry,
I says "Hello!
What's that old black goin' by?"
Bumper says "Oh!
That's an old cuddy of Flanagan's --
Runs as...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
De ol' time's gone, de new time's hyeah
[Pg 193]Wid all hits fuss an' feddahs;
I done fu'got de joy an' cheah
We knowed all kin's o' weddahs,
I done fu'got each ol'-time hymn
We ust to sing in meetin';
I 's leahned de prah's, so neat an' trim,
De preachah keeps us 'peatin'.
Hang a vine by de chimney side,
An' one by de cabin do';
An'...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Ah, Douglass, we have fall'n on evil days,
Such days as thou, not even thou didst know,
When thee, the eyes of that harsh long ago
Saw, salient, at the cross of devious ways,
And all the country heard thee with amaze.
Not ended then, the passionate ebb and flow,
The awful tide that battled to and fro;
We ride amid a tempest of dispraise.
Now, when the...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Ago poems.