Famous Aye Poems by Famous Poets

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

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An Ode in Time of Hesitation

...saw 
Mewing its mighty youth, 
Soon to possess the mountain winds of truth, 
And be a swift familiar of the sun 
Where aye before God's face his trumpets run? 
Or have we but the talons and the maw, 
And for the abject likeness of our heart 
Shall some less lordly bird be set apart? -- 
Some gross-billed wader where the swamps are fat? 
Some gorger in the sun? Some prowler with the bat? 


IX 

Ah no! 
We have not fallen so. 
We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us k...Read more of this...
by Moody, William Vaughn


Charmides

...horses smite the waves, and a wild blast
Divide the folded curtains of the night,
And knelt upon the little poop, and prayed in holy fright.

And guilty lovers in their venery
Forgat a little while their stolen sweets,
Deeming they heard dread Dian's bitter cry;
And the grim watchmen on their lofty seats
Ran to their shields in haste precipitate,
Or strained black-bearded throats across the dusky parapet.

For round the temple rolled the clang of arms,
And the twelve Gods lea...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Christabel

...rom her kennel beneath the rock
Maketh answer to the clock,
Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour;
Ever and aye, by shine and shower,
Sixteen short howls, not over loud;
Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.

Is the night chilly and dark?
The night is chilly, but not dark.
The thin gray cloud is spread on high,
It covers but not hides the sky.
The moon is behind, and at the full;
And yet she looks both small and dull.
The night is chill, the cloud is gray...Read more of this...
by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

Endymion: Book I

...d precious fruits.
And it had gloomy shades, sequestered deep,
Where no man went; and if from shepherd's keep
A lamb strayed far a-down those inmost glens,
Never again saw he the happy pens
Whither his brethren, bleating with content,
Over the hills at every nightfall went.
Among the shepherds, 'twas believed ever,
That not one fleecy lamb which thus did sever
From the white flock, but pass'd unworried
By angry wolf, or pard with prying head,
Until it came to some unfooted pl...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Endymion: Book II

...mbre wholly,
But mingled up; a gleaming melancholy;
A dusky empire and its diadems;
One faint eternal eventide of gems.
Aye, millions sparkled on a vein of gold,
Along whose track the prince quick footsteps told,
With all its lines abrupt and angular:
Out-shooting sometimes, like a meteor-star,
Through a vast antre; then the metal woof,
Like Vulcan's rainbow, with some monstrous roof
Curves hugely: now, far in the deep abyss,
It seems an angry lightning, and doth hiss
Fancy i...Read more of this...
by Keats, John


Endymion: Book IV

..., weary--so I took a whim
To stray away into these forests drear
 Alone, without a peer:
And I have told thee all thou mayest hear.

 "Young stranger!
 I've been a ranger
In search of pleasure throughout every clime:
 Alas! 'tis not for me!
 Bewitch'd I sure must be,
To lose in grieving all my maiden prime.

 "Come then, Sorrow!
 Sweetest Sorrow!
Like an own babe I nurse thee on my breast:
 I thought to leave thee
 And deceive thee,
But now of all the world I love thee best.
...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Love

...y father in the wood.  Now laugh and be gay, to the woods away!  And there, my babe; we'll live for aye....Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

Ode To Silence

...Aye, but she?
Your other sister and my other soul
Grave Silence, lovelier
Than the three loveliest maidens, what of her?
Clio, not you,
Not you, Calliope,
Nor all your wanton line,
Not Beauty's perfect self shall comfort me
For Silence once departed,
For her the cool-tongued, her the tranquil-hearted,
Whom evermore I follow wistfully,
Wandering Heaven and Ea...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

Song of the Exposition

...taly’s fountain;
Silent through time the broken-lipp’d Sphynx in Egypt—silent those century-baffling tombs;

Closed for aye the epics of Asia’s, Europe’s helmeted warriors; 
Calliope’s call for ever closed—Clio, Melpomene, Thalia closed and dead; 
Seal’d the stately rhythmus of Una and Oriana—ended the quest of the Holy Graal; 
Jerusalem a handful of ashes blown by the wind—extinct;
The Crusaders’ streams of shadowy, midnight troops, sped with the sunrise; 
Amadis, Tancred, u...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The General Prologue

...army had he be.
At mortal battles had he been fifteen,
And foughten for our faith at Tramissene.
In listes thries, and aye slain his foe.
This ilke* worthy knight had been also *same 
Some time with the lord of Palatie,
Against another heathen in Turkie:
And evermore *he had a sovereign price*. *He was held in very
And though that he was worthy he was wise, high esteem.*
And of his port as meek as is a maid.
He never yet no villainy ne said
In all his life, unto no manner...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Growth of Love

...y's ladder it is, reaching from home to home,
The best of all the work that all was good;
Whereof 'twas writ the angels aye upclomb,
Down sped, and at the top the Lord God stood. 
But I my time abuse, my eyes by day
Center'd on thee, by night my heart on fire--
Letting my number'd moments run away--
Nor e'en 'twixt night and day to heaven aspire:
So true it is that what the eye seeth not
But slow is loved, and loved is soon forgot. 

36
O my life's mischief, once my love's de...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour

The Idiot Boy

...etty, go! good Betty, go!  There's nothing that can ease my pain."  Then off she hies, but with a prayer  That God poor Susan's life would spare,  Till she comes back again.   So, through the moonlight lane she goes,  And far into the moonlight dale;  And how she ran, and how she walked,  And all that to herself she talked,  Would surely be a tedious tale.   In hi...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

The Knights Tale

...therefore at the kinge's court, my brother,
Each man for himselfe, there is no other.
Love if thee list; for I love and aye shall
And soothly, leve brother, this is all.
Here in this prison musten we endure,
And each of us take his Aventure."

Great was the strife and long between these tway,
If that I hadde leisure for to say;
But to the effect: it happen'd on a day
(To tell it you as shortly as I may),
A worthy duke that hight Perithous
That fellow was to the Duke These...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Man of Laws Tale

...er, Dame Constance. *prepared
Well may men know that so great ordinance
May no man tellen in a little clause,
As was arrayed for so high a cause.

Bishops be shapen with her for to wend,
Lordes, ladies, and knightes of renown,
And other folk enough, this is the end.
And notified is throughout all the town,
That every wight with great devotioun
Should pray to Christ, that he this marriage
Receive *in gree*, and speede this voyage. *with good will, favour*

The day is comen of ...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Millers Tale

.... *valerian
His Almagest, and bookes great and small,
His astrolabe, belonging to his art,
His augrim stones, layed fair apart
On shelves couched* at his bedde's head, *laid, set
His press y-cover'd with a falding* red. *coarse cloth
And all above there lay a gay psalt'ry
On which he made at nightes melody,
So sweetely, that all the chamber rang:
And Angelus ad virginem he sang.
And after that he sung the kinge's note;
Full often blessed was his merry throat.
And ...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

...treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
And southward aye we fled.

And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.

And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken--
The ice was all between.

The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and g...Read more of this...
by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

The Seafarer

...agle screamed
With spray on his pinion.
Not any protector
May make merry man faring needy.
This he little believes, who aye in winsome life
Abides 'mid burghers some heavy business,
Wealthy and wine-flushed, how I weary oft
Must bide above brine.
Neareth nightshade, snoweth from north,
Frost froze the land, hail fell on earth then
Corn of the coldest. Nathless there knocketh now
The heart's thought that I on high streams
The salt-wavy tumult traverse alone.
Moaneth alway my m...Read more of this...
by Pound, Ezra

The Triumph Of Death

...who had not beenFreed from their earthy burden there were seen,To try if prayers could appease the wrath,Or stay th' inexorable hand, of Death.That beauteous crowd convened to see the endWhich all must taste; each neighbour, every friendStood by, when grim Death with her hand took hold,And pull'd away one only hair of gold,...Read more of this...
by Petrarch, Francesco

The Wife of Baths Tale

...hy should men elles in their bookes set,
That man shall yield unto his wife her debt?
Now wherewith should he make his payement,
If he us'd not his silly instrument?
Then were they made upon a creature
To purge urine, and eke for engendrure.
But I say not that every wight is hold,* *obliged
That hath such harness* as I to you told, *equipment
To go and use them in engendrure;
Then should men take of chastity no cure.* *care
Christ was a maid, and shapen* as a man, *fashioned
...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey

To Jennie

...bend

And though it be decreed by Fate
That we ne'er meet again,
Your image, graven on my heart,
Forever shall remain.

Aye, in my heart thoult have a place,
Among the friends held dear,-
Nor shall the hand of Time efface
The memories written there.
Goodbye,
S.L.C....Read more of this...
by Twain, Mark

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