Famous Before Long Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Sonnet: Oh! Death will find me long before I tire

by Rupert Brooke
 Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire
Of watching you; and swing me suddenly
Into the shade and loneliness and mire
Of the last land! There, waiting patiently,

One day, I think, I'll feel a cool wind blowing,
See a slow light across the Stygian tide,
And hear the Dead about me stir, unknowing,
And tremble. And I shall know that you have died,

And...Read more of this...

In My Lodge at Wang Chuan(After a Long Rain.)

by Wang Wei
 The woods have stored the rain, and slow comes the smoke 
As rice is cooked on faggots and carried to the fields; 
Over the quiet marsh-land flies a white egret, 
And mango-birds are singing in the full summer trees.... 
I have learned to watch in peace the mountain morningglories, 
To eat split dewy sunflower-seeds under a bough of pine,...Read more of this...

In Love For Long

by Edwin Muir
 I've been in love for long
With what I cannot tell
And will contrive a song
For the intangible
That has no mould or shape,
From which there's no escape.

It is not even a name,
Yet is all constancy;
Tried or untried, the same,
It cannot part from me;
A breath, yet as still
As the established hill.

It is not any thing,
And yet all being is;
Being, being, being,
Its burden...Read more of this...

Long Guns

by Carl Sandburg
 THEN came, Oscar, the time of the guns.
And there was no land for a man, no land for a country,
 Unless guns sprang up
 And spoke their language.
The how of running the world was all in guns.

The law of a God keeping sea and land apart,
The law of a child sucking milk,
The law of stars held together,
 They slept...Read more of this...

Long too Long O Land!

by Walt Whitman
 LONG, too long, O land, 
Traveling roads all even and peaceful, you learn’d from joys and prosperity only; 
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish—advancing, grappling with direst
 fate,
 and
 recoiling not; 
And now to conceive, and show to the world, what your children en-masse really are; 
(For who except myself has yet conceiv’d what your...Read more of this...

Long Ago

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...

White in the Moon the Long Road Lies

by A E Housman
 White in the moon the long road lies, 
The moon stands blank above; 
White in the moon the long road lies 
That leads me from my love. 

Still hangs the hedge without a gust, 
Still, still the shadows stay: 
My feet upon the moonlit dust 
Pursue the ceaseless way. 

The world is round, so travellers tell, 
And straight though...Read more of this...

All Day Long

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...

All my life long from drink I have not ceased,

by Omar Khayyam
All my life long from drink I have not ceased,
And drink I will to-night on Kadr's feast;
And throw my arms about the wine-jar's neck,
And kiss its lip, and clasp it to my breast!...Read more of this...

I was Looking a Long While

by Walt Whitman
 I WAS looking a long while for a clue to the history of the past for myself, and for these
 chants—and now I have found it; 
It is not in those paged fables in the libraries, (them I neither accept nor reject;) 
It is no more in the legends than in all else; 
It is in the present—it is...Read more of this...

O Do Not Love Too Long

by William Butler Yeats
 Sweetheart, do not love too long:
I loved long and long,
And grew to be out of fashion
Like an old song.

All through the years of our youth
Neither could have known
Their own thought from the other's,
We were so much at one.

But O, in a minute she changed -
O do not love too long,
Or you will grow out of fashion
Like an old song....Read more of this...

The Long Small Room

by Edward Thomas
 THE long small room that showed willows in the west 
Narrowed up to the end the fireplace filled, 
Although not wide. I liked it. No one guessed 
What need or accident made them so build. 

Only the moon, the mouse, and the sparrow peeped 
In from the ivy round the casement thick. 
Of all they saw and heard there...Read more of this...

The Long Trail

by Rudyard Kipling
 There's a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield,
 And the ricks stand grey to the sun,
Singing: "Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the dover,
 "And your English summer's done."
 You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind,
 And the thresh of the deep-sea rain;
 You have heard the song --...Read more of this...

My well-beloved (would that her life might last as long

by Omar Khayyam
My well-beloved [would that her life might last as long
as my sorrows!] has commenced to be amiable to me
again. She cast in my eyes a sweet and furtive look
and disappeared, saying without doubt to herself: Do
good and cast it on the waters....Read more of this...

Long time have I delved in this inconstant world, this

by Omar Khayyam
Long time have I delved in this inconstant world, this
momentary shelter; and in my searches have employed
all faculties with which I am endowed. Ah, well! and I
have found the moon to pale before the light of Thy
visage, that the cypress is deformed beside Thy beauteous
form....Read more of this...

I Loved Thee Atthis in the Long Ago

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...

Presentiment -- is that long Shadow -- on the Lawn --

by Emily Dickinson
 Presentiment -- is that long Shadow -- on the Lawn --
Indicatives that Suns go down --

The Notice to the startled Grass
That Darkness -- is about to pass --...Read more of this...

How long shall we blush at the injustice of others?

by Omar Khayyam
How long shall we blush at the injustice of others?
How long shall we burn in the fire of this insipid world?
Arise, banish from thee the sorrow of the world, if thou
art a man; to-day is a feast; come, drink rose-colored
wine....Read more of this...

Long Odds

by Aleister Crowley
 How many million galaxies there are
Who knows? and each has countless stars in it,
And each rolls through eternities afar
Beneath the threshold of the Infinite.

How is it that will all that space to roam
I should have found this mote that spins and leaps
In what unutterable sunlight, foam
Of what unfathomable starry deeps

Who knows!? And how this thousand million souls
And half a...Read more of this...

Sonnet 100: Where art thou Muse that thou forgetst so long

by William Shakespeare
 Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long
To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?
Spend'st thou thy fury on some worthless song,
Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light?
Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem
In gentle numbers time so idly spent;
Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem,
And gives thy pen both skill and argument.
Rise, resty...Read more of this...

How long wilt thou pass thy life in adoring thyself, and

by Omar Khayyam
How long wilt thou pass thy life in adoring thyself, and
seeking the cause of annihilation of thy being? Drink
wine, for a life that is followed by death is better spent
in sleep or drunkenness....Read more of this...

How long shall I trouble myself with the care of knowing

by Omar Khayyam
How long shall I trouble myself with the care of knowing
whether I possess or do not possess—if I ought or
ought not to pass life gaily? Fill ever the cup of wine,
O cupbearer! for I do not know whether I shall breathe
out this breath that I am actually breathing or not....Read more of this...

So long as I possess two maunds of wine,

by Omar Khayyam
So long as I possess two maunds of wine,
Bread of the flower of wheat, and mutton chine,
And you, O Tulip cheek, to share my hut,
Not every Sultan's lot can vie with mine....Read more of this...

Hours Continuing Long

by Walt Whitman
 HOURS continuing long, sore and heavy-hearted, 
Hours of the dusk, when I withdraw to a lonesome and unfrequented spot, seating myself,
 leaning
 my face in my hands; 
Hours sleepless, deep in the night, when I go forth, speeding swiftly the country roads,
 or
 through the city streets, or pacing miles and miles, stifling plaintive cries; 
Hours discouraged, distracted—for the...Read more of this...

After Long Drought

by Mark Van Doren
 After long drought, commotion in the sky; 
After dead silence, thunder. Then it comes, 
The rain. It slashes leaves, and doubly drums 
On tin and shingle; beats and bends awry 
The flower heads; puddles dust, and with a sigh 
Like love sinks into grasses, where it hums 
As bees did once, among chrysanthemums 
And asters when the summer thought...Read more of this...

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