Famous Alone Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Drinkers alone know how to appreciate the language

by Omar Khayyam
Drinkers alone know how to appreciate the language
of the roses and of wine, and not the feeble in heart or
the poor in spirit. Those who have no idea of what is
occult, to them ignorance is pardonable, for drunkards
alone can understand what belongs to such an order of
of things....Read more of this...

Gentleman Alone

by Pablo Neruda
 The young maricones and the horny muchachas,
The big fat widows delirious from insomnia,
The young wives thirty hours' pregnant,
And the hoarse tomcats that cross my garden at night,
Like a collar of palpitating sexual oysters
Surround my solitary home,
Enemies of my soul,
Conspirators in pajamas
Who exchange deep kisses for passwords.
Radiant summer brings out the lovers
In melancholy regiments,
Fat and thin and happy and sad...Read more of this...

Sonnet XI: You Not Alone

by Michael Drayton
 You not alone, when you are still alone, 
O God, from you that I could private be. 
Since you one were, I never since was one; 
Since you in me, my self since out of me, 
Transported from my self into your being; 
Though either distant, present yet to either, 
Senseless with too much joy, each other seeing, 
And...Read more of this...

Troll Sat Alone on His Seat of Stone

by J R R Tolkien
 Troll sat alone on his seat of stone,
And munched and mumbled a bare old bone;
For many a year he had gnawed it near,
For meat was hard to come by.
Done by! Gum by!
In a cave in the hills he dwelt alone,
And meat was hard to come by.

Up came Tom with his big boots on.
Said he to Troll: 'Pray, what is...Read more of this...

O thou who hast done ill, and ill alone,

by Omar Khayyam
O thou who hast done ill, and ill alone,
And thinkest to find mercy at the throne,
Hope not for mercy! for good left undone
Cannot be done, nor evil done undone!...Read more of this...

Alone

by Sara Teasdale
 I am alone, in spite of love,
In spite of all I take and give—
In spite of all your tenderness,
Sometimes I am not glad to live.

I am alone, as though I stood
On the highest peak of the tired gray world,
About me only swirling snow,
Above me, endless space unfurled;

With earth hidden and heaven hidden,
And only my own spirit's pride
To keep me...Read more of this...

Alone And Drinking Under The Moon

by Li Po
 Amongst the flowers I
am alone with my pot of wine
drinking by myself; then lifting
my cup I asked the moon
to drink with me, its reflection
and mine in the wine cup, just
the three of us; then I sigh
for the moon cannot drink,
and my shadow goes emptily along
with me never saying a word;
with no other friends here, I can
but use these two...Read more of this...

Alone Looking at the Mountain

by Li Bai
All the birds have flown up and gone;
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.
We never tire of looking at each other -
Only the mountain and I.
-----------------------------------------------
The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.
...Read more of this...

Alone and in a Circumstance

by Emily Dickinson
 Alone and in a Circumstance
Reluctant to be told
A spider on my reticence
Assiduously crawled

And so much more at Home than I
Immediately grew
I felt myself a visitor
And hurriedly withdrew

Revisiting my late abode
With articles of claim
I found it quietly assumed
As a Gymnasium
Where Tax asleep and Title off
The inmates of the Air
Perpetual presumption took
As each were special Heir --
If any strike me on...Read more of this...

Alone

by Walter de la Mare
 Over the fence, the dead settle in
for a journey. Nine o'clock.
You are alone for the first time
today. Boys asleep. Husband out.

A beer bottle sweats in your hand,
and sea lavender clogs the air
with perfume. Think of yourself.
Your arms rest with nothing to do

after weeks spent attending to others.
Your thoughts turn to whether
butter will last the week, how much
longer the car...Read more of this...

Sonnet 79: Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid

by William Shakespeare
 Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid,
My verse alone had all thy gentle grace,
But now my gracious numbers are decayed,
And my sick Muse doth give an other place.
I grant, sweet love, thy lovely argument
Deserves the travail of a worthier pen,
Yet what of thee thy poet doth invent
He robs thee of, and pays it thee again.
He lends thee virtue,...Read more of this...

Alone

by Maya Angelou
 Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the...Read more of this...

Alone

by Edgar Allan Poe
 From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life-...Read more of this...

Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone

by Walt Whitman
 ROOTS and leaves themselves alone are these; 
Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods, and from the pond-side, 
Breast-sorrel and pinks of love—fingers that wind around tighter than vines, 
Gushes from the throats of birds, hid in the foliage of trees, as the sun is risen; 
Breezes of land and love—breezes set from living shores out...Read more of this...

We rest our hopes on Thy free grace alone,

by Omar Khayyam
We rest our hopes on Thy free grace alone,
Nor seek by merits for our sins to atone;
Mercy drops where it lists, and estimates
Ill done as undone, good undone as done....Read more of this...

Love reckons by itself -- alone --

by Emily Dickinson
 Love reckons by itself -- alone --
"As large as I" -- relate the Sun
To One who never felt it blaze --
Itself is all the like it has --...Read more of this...

Eating Alone

by Li-Young Lee
 I've pulled the last of the year's young onions. 
The garden is bare now. The ground is cold, 
brown and old. What is left of the day flames 
in the maples at the corner of my 
eye. I turn, a cardinal vanishes. 
By the cellar door, I wash the onions, 
then drink from the icy metal spigot. 

Once, years...Read more of this...

Let Them Alone

by Robinson Jeffers
 If God has been good enough to give you a poet
Then listen to him. But for God's sake let him alone until he is dead; 
no prizes, no ceremony,
They kill the man. A poet is one who listens
To nature and his own heart; and if the noise of the world grows up 
around him, and if he is tough...Read more of this...

Alone With Everybody

by Charles Bukowski
 the flesh covers the bone 
and they put a mind 
in there and 
sometimes a soul, 
and the women break 
vases against the walls 
and the men drink too 
much 
and nobody finds the 
one 
but keep 
looking 
crawling in and out 
of beds. 
flesh covers 
the bone and the 
flesh searches 
for more than 
flesh. 

there's no chance...Read more of this...

One Wish Alone Have I

by Mihai Eminescu
One wish alone have I: 
In some calm land 
Beside the sea to die; 
Upon its strand 
That I forever sleep, 
The forest near, 
A heaven clear 
Stretched o'er the peaceful deep. 
No candles shine, 
Nor tomb I need, instead 
Let them for me a bed 
Of twigs entwine. 

That no one weeps my end, 
Nor for me grieves, 
But...Read more of this...

Jueju (Enjoying Flowers Walking Alone on a Riverbank, No. 5 of 7)

by Du Fu
 Huang abbot pagoda before river water east Spring bright lazy sleepy rely on light wind Peach blossom one clump open without owner Lovely deep red love light red Before Abbot Huang's pagoda, east of the river water, Spring is bright and delicate in the gentle breeze. One clump of peach blossom's opened, no-one to own it,...Read more of this...

Alone in the Wind on the Prairie

by Vachel Lindsay
 I know a seraph who has golden eyes,
And hair of gold, and body like the snow.
Here in the wind I dream her unbound hair
Is blowing round me, that desire's sweet glow
Has touched her pale keen face, and willful mien.
And though she steps as one in manner born
To tread the forests of fair Paradise,
Dark memory's wood she chooses to adorn.
Here...Read more of this...

Alone In The Woods

by Stevie Smith
 Alone in the woods I felt
The bitter hostility of the sky and the trees
Nature has taught her creatures to hate
Man that fusses and fumes
Unquiet man
As the sap rises in the trees
As the sap paints the trees a violent green
So rises the wrath of Nature's creatures
At man
So paints the face of Nature a violent green.
Nature is sick at man
Sick at...Read more of this...

Love walked alone

by Stephen Crane
 Love walked alone.
The rocks cut her tender feet,
And the brambles tore her fair limbs.
There came a companion to her,
But, alas, he was no help,
For his name was heart's pain....Read more of this...

Alone in Crowds to Wander On

by Thomas Moore
 Alone in crowds to wander on, 
And feel that all the charm is gone 
Which voices dear and eyes beloved 
Shed round us once, where'er we roved -- 
This, this the doom must be 
Of all who've loved, and loved to see 
The few bright things they thought would stay 
For ever near them, die away. 

Though fairer forms...Read more of this...

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