Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Be Born Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Dunmore, Helen
...Pearmains
and Chanel No 5 — and then your being unable
to buy both washing-machine and computer
when your baby's due to be born,
and my voice saying, "I'll get you one"
and you frowning, frowning
at walls and surfaces which are not mine — 
all this, not yet. Give me your hand,

that small one without a mark of work on it,
the one that's strange to the washing-up bowl
and doesn't know Fairy Liquid for whiskey.
Not yet the moment of your arrival in taxis
at daring desti...Read more of this...



by Lawrence, D. H.
...You know what it is to be born alone,
Baby tortoise!
The first day to heave your feet little by little from the shell,
Not yet awake,
And remain lapsed on earth,
Not quite alive.

A tiny, fragile, half-animate bean.

To open your tiny beak-mouth, that looks as if it would never open,

Like some iron door;
To lift the upper hawk-beak from the lower base
And reach your skinn...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...
He cannot wed twice, nor twice lose his soul. 

Well now, there's one great form of Christian faith 
I happened to be born in--which to teach 
Was given me as I grew up, on all hands, 
As best and readiest means of living by; 
The same on examination being proved 
The most pronounced moreover, fixed, precise 
And absolute form of faith in the whole world-- 
Accordingly, most potent of all forms 
For working on the world. Observe, my friend! 
Such as you know me, I am...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...Till free consent the gods among
Make her his eternal bride,
And from her fair unspotted side
Two blissful twins are to be born,
Youth and Joy; so Jove hath sworn.
 But now my task is smoothly done:
I can fly, or I can run,
Quickly to the green earth's end,
Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend,
And from thence can soar as soon
To the corners of the moon.
Mortals, that would follow me,
Love virtue; she alone is free.
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the s...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...n his stedfast aim
A love immortal, an immortal too.
Look not so wilder'd; for these things are true,
And never can be born of atomies
That buzz about our slumbers, like brain-flies,
Leaving us fancy-sick. No, no, I'm sure,
My restless spirit never could endure
To brood so long upon one luxury,
Unless it did, though fearfully, espy
A hope beyond the shadow of a dream.
My sayings will the less obscured seem,
When I have told thee how my waking sight
Has made me scr...Read more of this...



by Corso, Gregory
...d celestial fire goes out
 Know that the earth will madonna the Bomb
 that in the hearts of men to come more bombs will be born
 magisterial bombs wrapped in ermine all beautiful
 and they'll sit plunk on earth's grumpy empires
 fierce with moustaches of gold...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...mary coffee toast 
and we Americans take juice, 
a liquid sun going down. 
Good morning life. 
To wake up is to be born. 
To brush your teeth is to be alive. 
To make a bowel movement is also desireable. 
La de dah, 
it's all routine. 
Often there are wars 
yet the shops keep open 
and sausages are still fried. 
People rub someone. 
People copulate 
entering each other's blood, 
tying each other's tendons in knots, 
transplanting their lives in...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...nd sad, yet tolerable, 
As in our evils, and of easier choice. 
If care of our descent perplex us most, 
Which must be born to certain woe, devoured 
By Death at last; and miserable it is 
To be to others cause of misery, 
Our own begotten, and of our loins to bring 
Into this cursed world a woeful race, 
That after wretched life must be at last 
Food for so foul a monster; in thy power 
It lies, yet ere conception to prevent 
The race unblest, to being yet unbegot. 
...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...eise 
The scepter, and regard not David's sons; 
Then lose it to a stranger, that the true 
Anointed King Messiah might be born 
Barred of his right; yet at his birth a star, 
Unseen before in Heaven, proclaims him come; 
And guides the eastern sages, who inquire 
His place, to offer incense, myrrh, and gold: 
His place of birth a solemn Angel tells 
To simple shepherds, keeping watch by night; 
They gladly thither haste, and by a quire 
Of squadroned Angels hear his carol su...Read more of this...

by Tzara, Tristan
...Art is going to sleep for a new world to be born
"ART"-parrot word-replaced by DADA,
PLESIOSAURUS, or handkerchief

The talent THAT CAN BE LEARNED makes the
poet a druggist TODAY the criticism
of balances no longer challenges with resemblances

Hypertrophic painters hyperaes-
theticized and hypnotized by the hyacinths
of the hypocritical-looking muezzins

CONSOLIDATE THE HARVEST OF EX-
ACT CALCULAT...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...llapses; 
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. 

7
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? 
I hasten to inform him or her, it is just as lucky to die, and I know it. 

I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-wash’d babe, and am not
 contain’d between my hat and boots;
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every one good; 
The earth good, and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good. 

I am not an ea...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...ls 
dropping their blood; 
better somehow 
to drop myself quickly 
into an old room. 
Better (someone said) 
not to be born 
and far better 
not to be born twice 
at thirteen 
where the boardinghouse, 
each year a bedroom, 
caught fire. 

Dear friend, 
I will have to sink with hundreds of others 
on a dumbwaiter into hell. 
I will be a light thing. 
I will enter death 
like someone's lost optical lens. 
Life is half enlarged. 
The fish and owls are fie...Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...>
Not yet thine hand released
Refreshing the faint east,
Thine hand reconquering heaven, to seat man there?
Come forth, be born and live,
Thou that hast help to give
And light to make man's day of manhood fair:
With flight outflying the sphered sun,
Hasten thine hour and halt not, till thy work be done....Read more of this...

by Blake, William
...s.’ 
When the rich learn?d Pharisee 
Came to consult Him secretly, 
Upon his heart with iron pen 
He wrote ‘Ye must be born again.’ 
He was too proud to take a bribe; 
He spoke with authority, not like a Scribe. 
He says with most consummate art 
‘Follow Me, I am meek and lowly of heart, 
As that is the only way to escape 
The miser’s net and the glutton’s trap.’ 
What can be done with such desperate fools 
Who follow after the heathen schools? 
I was standing...Read more of this...

by Eluard, Paul
...Organ of the sluggish night 
Bow down 
Concealing all of heaven 
And its favor 
Prepare for vengeance 
A bed where I'll be born 

V. First march, the voice of another 

Laughing at sky and planets 
Drunk with their confidence 
The wise men wish for sons 
And for sons from their sons 

Until they all perish in vain 
Time burdens only fools 
While Hell alone prospers 
And the wise men are absurd 

VI. A wolf 

Day surprises me and night scares me 
haunts me and winter f...Read more of this...

by Du Bois, W. E. B.
...be shorn,
Till some dim, darker David, a-hoeing of his corn,
And married maiden, mother of God,
Bid the black Christ be born!
Then shall our burden be manhood,
Be it yellow or black or white;
And poverty and justice and sorrow,
The humble, and simple and strong
Shall sing with the sons of morning
And daughters of even-song:
Black mother of the iron hills that ward the blazing sea,
Wild spirit of a storm-swept soul, a-struggling to be free,
Where 'neath the bloody ...Read more of this...

by Crowley, Aleister
....
Now Set and Horus kiss, to call
The Soul of the Unnatural
Forth from the dusk ; then nature slain
Lets the Beyond be born again.

This weird is of the tongue of Khem,
The Conjuration used of them.
Whoso shall speak it, let him die,
His bowels rotting inwardly,
Save he uncover and caress
The God that lighteth his liesse....Read more of this...

by Philips, Katherine
...t.
Happy are they to whom god gives a Grave,
And from themselves as from his wrath doeth save.
'Tis good not to be born; but if we must,
The next good is, soone to return to Dust:
When th'uncag'd soule, fled to Eternity,
Shall rest and live, and sing, and love, and See.
Here we but crawle and grope, and play and cry;
Are first our own, then others Enemy:
But there shall be defac'd both stain and score,
For time, and Death, and sin shall be no more....Read more of this...

by Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...rivers, stop him from quenching his thirst! Scorn him!
Don’t waste your rays, sun! Glare!
Let thousands of my disciples be born
to trumpet anathemas on the squares!
And when at last there comes,
stepping onto the peaks of the ages,
chillingly,
the last of their days,
in the black souls of anarchists and killers
I, a gory vision, will blaze!

It’s dawning,
The sky’s mouth stretches out more and more,
it drinks up the night
sip by sip, thirstily.
The windows send off a glow...Read more of this...

by Darwish, Mahmoud
...ose:
Free I am so close to my liberty. My future lies in my own hand. 
Soon I shall penetrate my life, 
I shall be born free and parentless, 
And as my name I shall choose azure letters... 

*** 
You who stand in the doorway, come in, 
Drink Arabic coffee with us 
And you will sense that you are men like us 
You who stand in the doorways of houses 
Come out of our morningtimes, 
We shall feel reassured to be 
Men like you! 

*** 
When the planes disappear,...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Be Born poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs