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Famous Attainment Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...flowering by expansion in the loves of his life.
And in the nobility of our earthly friendships
we hav al grades of attainment, and the best may claim
perfection of kind; and so, since ther be many bonds
other than breed (friendships of lesser motiv, found
even in the brutes) and since our politick is based
on actual association of living men, 'twil come
that the spiritual idea of Friendship, the huge
vastidity of its essence, is fritter'd away
in observation of the usual...Read more of this...



by Lanier, Sidney
...back to me.

When Labor faints, and Glory fails,
And coy Reward in sighs exhales,
I gaze in my two springs and see
Attainment full and heavenly.

O Love, O Wife, thine eyes are they,
-- My springs from out whose shining gray
Issue the sweet celestial streams
That feed my life's bright Lake of Dreams.

Oval and large and passion-pure
And gray and wise and honor-sure;
Soft as a dying violet-breath
Yet calmly unafraid of death;

Thronged, like two dove-cotes of gray...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...flowers, 


You cannot fail to think, as I have done, 
Some of life's ends attained, so you be one 
Who measures life's attainment by the hours 
That Joy has rescued from oblivion. 

II 


Come out into the evening streets. The green light lessens in the west. 
The city laughs and liveliest her fervid pulse of pleasure beats. 


The belfry on Saint Severin strikes eight across the smoking eaves: 
Come out under the lights and leaves 
to the Reine Blanche on Sa...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
..., need weary not yourselves 
With jealous aches of others. If the world
Were not a world of aches and innovations, 
Attainment would have no more joy of it. 
There will be creeds and schisms, creeds in creeds, 
And schisms in schisms; myriads will be done 
To death because a farthing has two sides,
And is at last a farthing. Telling you this, 
I, who bid men to live, appeal to Cæsar. 
Once I had said the ways of God were dark, 
Meaning by that the dark ways of...Read more of this...

by Brooke, Rupert
...a word, 
And their lips meet, and they do kiss, 
—So I have heard. 

They queerly find some healing so,
And strange attainment in the touch; 
There is a secret lovers know, 
—I have read as much. 

And theirs no longer joy nor smart, 
Changing or ending, night or day;
But mouth to mouth, and heart on heart, 
—So lovers say....Read more of this...



by Stevenson, Robert Louis
...Footfalls in Utah or Pamere:

Though long the way, though hard to bear
The sun and rain, the dust and dew;
Though still attainment and despair
Inter the old, despoil the new;
There shall at length, be sure, O friends,
Howe'er ye steer, whate'er ye do -
At length, and at the end of ends,
The golden city come in view....Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs