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Best Famous Confident Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Confident poems. This is a select list of the best famous Confident poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Confident poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of confident poems.

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Written by Robinson Jeffers | Create an image from this poem

The Broken Balance

 I.
Reference to a Passage in Plutarch's Life of Sulla The people buying and selling, consuming pleasures, talking in the archways, Were all suddenly struck quiet And ran from under stone to look up at the sky: so shrill and mournful, So fierce and final, a brazen Pealing of trumpets high up in the air, in the summer blue over Tuscany.
They marvelled; the soothsayers answered: "Although the Gods are little troubled toward men, at the end of each period A sign is declared in heaven Indicating new times, new customs, a changed people; the Romans Rule, and Etruria is finished; A wise mariner will trim the sails to the wind.
" I heard yesterday So shrill and mournful a trumpet-blast, It was hard to be wise.
.
.
.
You must eat change and endure; not be much troubled For the people; they will have their happiness.
When the republic grows too heavy to endure, then Caesar will carry It; When life grows hateful, there's power .
.
.
II.
To the Children Power's good; life is not always good but power's good.
So you must think when abundance Makes pawns of people and all the loaves are one dough.
The steep singleness of passion Dies; they will say, "What was that?" but the power triumphs.
Loveliness will live under glass And beauty will go savage in the secret mountains.
There is beauty in power also.
You children must widen your minds' eyes to take mountains Instead of faces, and millions Instead of persons; not to hate life; and massed power After the lone hawk's dead.
III That light blood-loving weasel, a tongue of yellow Fire licking the sides of the gray stones, Has a more passionate and more pure heart In the snake-slender flanks than man can imagine; But he is betrayed by his own courage, The man who kills him is like a cloud hiding a star.
Then praise the jewel-eyed hawk and the tall blue heron; The black cormorants that fatten their sea-rock With shining slime; even that ruiner of anthills The red-shafted woodpecker flying, A white star between blood-color wing-clouds, Across the glades of the wood and the green lakes of shade.
These live their felt natures; they know their norm And live it to the brim; they understand life.
While men moulding themselves to the anthill have choked Their natures until the souls the in them; They have sold themselves for toys and protection: No, but consider awhile: what else? Men sold for toys.
Uneasy and fractional people, having no center But in the eyes and mouths that surround them, Having no function but to serve and support Civilization, the enemy of man, No wonder they live insanely, and desire With their tongues, progress; with their eyes, pleasure; with their hearts, death.
Their ancestors were good hunters, good herdsmen and swordsman, But now the world is turned upside down; The good do evil, the hope's in criminals; in vice That dissolves the cities and war to destroy them.
Through wars and corruptions the house will fall.
Mourn whom it falls on.
Be glad: the house is mined, it will fall.
IV Rain, hail and brutal sun, the plow in the roots, The pitiless pruning-iron in the branches, Strengthen the vines, they are all feeding friends Or powerless foes until the grapes purple.
But when you have ripened your berries it is time to begin to perish.
The world sickens with change, rain becomes poison, The earth is a pit, it Is time to perish.
The vines are fey, the very kindness of nature Corrupts what her cruelty before strengthened.
When you stand on the peak of time it is time to begin to perish.
Reach down the long morbid roots that forget the plow, Discover the depths; let the long pale tendrils Spend all to discover the sky, now nothing is good But only the steel mirrors of discovery .
.
.
And the beautiful enormous dawns of time, after we perish.
V Mourning the broken balance, the hopeless prostration of the earth Under men's hands and their minds, The beautiful places killed like rabbits to make a city, The spreading fungus, the slime-threads And spores; my own coast's obscene future: I remember the farther Future, and the last man dying Without succession under the confident eyes of the stars.
It was only a moment's accident, The race that plagued us; the world resumes the old lonely immortal Splendor; from here I can even Perceive that that snuffed candle had something .
.
.
a fantastic virtue, A faint and unshapely pathos .
.
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So death will flatter them at last: what, even the bald ape's by-shot Was moderately admirable? VI.
Palinode All summer neither rain nor wave washes the cormorants' Perch, and their droppings have painted it shining white.
If the excrement of fish-eaters makes the brown rock a snow-mountain At noon, a rose in the morning, a beacon at moonrise On the black water: it is barely possible that even men's present Lives are something; their arts and sciences (by moonlight) Not wholly ridiculous, nor their cities merely an offense.
VII Under my windows, between the road and the sea-cliff, bitter wild grass Stands narrowed between the people and the storm.
The ocean winter after winter gnaws at its earth, the wheels and the feet Summer after summer encroach and destroy.
Stubborn green life, for the cliff-eater I cannot comfort you, ignorant which color, Gray-blue or pale-green, will please the late stars; But laugh at the other, your seed shall enjoy wonderful vengeances and suck The arteries and walk in triumph on the faces.


Written by Walt Whitman | Create an image from this poem

So Long

 1
TO conclude—I announce what comes after me; 
I announce mightier offspring, orators, days, and then, for the present, depart.
I remember I said, before my leaves sprang at all, I would raise my voice jocund and strong, with reference to consummations.
When America does what was promis’d, When there are plentiful athletic bards, inland and seaboard, When through These States walk a hundred millions of superb persons, When the rest part away for superb persons, and contribute to them, When breeds of the most perfect mothers denote America, Then to me and mine our due fruition.
I have press’d through in my own right, I have sung the Body and the Soul—War and Peace have I sung, And the songs of Life and of Birth—and shown that there are many births: I have offer’d my style to everyone—I have journey’d with confident step; While my pleasure is yet at the full, I whisper, So long! And take the young woman’s hand, and the young man’s hand, for the last time.
2 I announce natural persons to arise; I announce justice triumphant; I announce uncompromising liberty and equality; I announce the justification of candor, and the justification of pride.
I announce that the identity of These States is a single identity only; I announce the Union more and more compact, indissoluble; I announce splendors and majesties to make all the previous politics of the earth insignificant.
I announce adhesiveness—I say it shall be limitless, unloosen’d; I say you shall yet find the friend you were looking for.
I announce a man or woman coming—perhaps you are the one, (So long!) I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully armed.
I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold; I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation; I announce myriads of youths, beautiful, gigantic, sweet-blooded; I announce a race of splendid and savage old men.
3 O thicker and faster! (So long!) O crowding too close upon me; I foresee too much—it means more than I thought; It appears to me I am dying.
Hasten throat, and sound your last! Salute me—salute the days once more.
Peal the old cry once more.
Screaming electric, the atmosphere using, At random glancing, each as I notice absorbing, Swiftly on, but a little while alighting, Curious envelop’d messages delivering, Sparkles hot, seed ethereal, down in the dirt dropping, Myself unknowing, my commission obeying, to question it never daring, To ages, and ages yet, the growth of the seed leaving, To troops out of me, out of the army, the war arising—they the tasks I have set promulging, To women certain whispers of myself bequeathing—their affection me more clearly explaining, To young men my problems offering—no dallier I—I the muscle of their brains trying, So I pass—a little time vocal, visible, contrary; Afterward, a melodious echo, passionately bent for—(death making me really undying;) The best of me then when no longer visible—for toward that I have been incessantly preparing.
What is there more, that I lag and pause, and crouch extended with unshut mouth? Is there a single final farewell? 4 My songs cease—I abandon them; From behind the screen where I hid I advance personally, solely to you.
Camerado! This is no book; Who touches this, touches a man; (Is it night? Are we here alone?) It is I you hold, and who holds you; I spring from the pages into your arms—decease calls me forth.
O how your fingers drowse me! Your breath falls around me like dew—your pulse lulls the tympans of my ears; I feel immerged from head to foot; Delicious—enough.
Enough, O deed impromptu and secret! Enough, O gliding present! Enough, O summ’d-up past! 5 Dear friend, whoever you are, take this kiss, I give it especially to you—Do not forget me; I feel like one who has done work for the day, to retire awhile; I receive now again of my many translations—from my avataras ascending—while others doubtless await me; An unknown sphere, more real than I dream’d, more direct, darts awakening rays about me—So long! Remember my words—I may again return, I love you—I depart from materials; I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.
Written by Pam Ayres | Create an image from this poem

They Should Have Asked My Husband

You know this world is complicated, imperfect and oppressed
And it’s not hard to feel timid, apprehensive and depressed.
It seems that all around us tides of questions ebb and flow
And people want solutions but they don’t know where to go.

Opinions abound but who is wrong and who is right.
People need a prophet, a diffuser of the light.
Someone they can turn to as the crises rage and swirl.
Someone with the remedy, the wisdom, and the pearl.

Well . . . they should have asked my ‘usband, he’d have told’em then and there.
His thoughts on immigration, teenage mothers, Tony Blair,
The future of the monarchy, house prices in the south
The wait for hip replacements, BSE and foot and mouth.

Yes . . . they should have asked my husband he can sort out any mess
He can rejuvenate the railways he can cure the NHS
So any little niggle, anything you want to know
Just run it past my husband, wind him up and let him go.

Congestion on the motorways, free holidays for thugs
The damage to the ozone layer, refugees and drugs.
These may defeat the brain of any politician bloke
But present it to my husband and he’ll solve it at a stroke.

He’ll clarify the situation; he will make it crystal clear
You’ll feel the glazing of your eyeballs, and the bending of your ear.
Corruption at the top, he’s an authority on that
And the Mafia, Gadafia and Yasser Arafat.

Upon these areas he brings his intellect to shine
In a great compelling voice that’s twice as loud as yours or mine.
I often wonder what it must be like to be so strong,
Infallible, articulate, self-confident …… and wrong.

When it comes to tolerance – he hasn’t got a lot
Joyriders should be guillotined and muggers should be shot.
The sound of his own voice becomes like music to his ears
And he hasn’t got an inkling that he’s boring us to tears.

My friends don’t call so often, they have busy lives I know
But its not everyday you want to hear a windbag suck and blow.
Encyclopaedias, on them we never have to call
Why clutter up the bookshelf when my husband knows it all!

© Pam Ayres 2012
Official Website
http://pamayres.com/
Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

Last Words

 If the shoe fell from the other foot 
who would hear? If the door 
opened onto a pure darkness 
and it was no dream? If your life 
ended the way a book ends 
with half a blank page and the survivors 
gone off to Africa or madness? 
If my life ended in late spring 
of 1964 while I walked alone 
back down the mountain road? 
I sing an old song to myself.
I study the way the snow remains, gray and damp, in the deep shadows of the firs.
I wonder if the bike is safe hidden just off the highway.
Up ahead the road, black and winding, falls away, and there is the valley where I lived half of my life, spectral and calm.
I sigh with gratitude, and then I feel an odd pain rising through the back of my head, and my eyes go dark.
I bend forward and place my palms on something rough, the black asphalt or a field of stubble, and the movement is that of the penitent just before he stands to his full height with the knowledge of his enormity.
For that moment which will survive the burning of all the small pockets of fat and oil that are the soul, I am the soul stretching into the furthest reaches of my fingers and beyond, glowing like ten candles in the vault of night for anyone who could see, even though it is 12:40 in the afternoon and I have passed from darkness into sunlight so fierce the sweat streams down into my eyes.
I did not rise.
A wind or a stray animal or a group of kids dragged me to the side of the road and turned me over so that my open eyes could flood heaven.
My clothes went skittering down the road without me, ballooning out into any shape, giddy with release.
My coins, my rings, the keys to my house shattered like ice and fell into the mountain thorns and grasses, little bright points that make you think there is magic in everything you see.
No, it can't be, you say, for someone is speaking calmly to you in a voice you know.
Someone alive and confident has put each of these words down exactly as he wants them on the page.
You have lived through years of denial, of public lies, of death falling like snow on any head it chooses.
You're not a child.
You know the real thing.
I am here, as I always was, faithful to a need to speak even when all you hear is a light current of air tickling your ear.
Perhaps.
But what if that dried bundle of leaves and dirt were not dirt and leaves but the spent wafer of a desire to be human? Stop the car, turn off the engine, and stand in the silence above your life.
See how the grass mirrors fire, how a wind rides up the hillside steadily toward you until it surges into your ears like breath coming and going, released from its bondage to blood or speech and denying nothing.
Written by Norman Dubie | Create an image from this poem

Of Politics and Art

 for Allen


Here, on the farthest point of the peninsula
The winter storm
Off the Atlantic shook the schoolhouse.
Mrs.
Whitimore, dying Of tuberculosis, said it would be after dark Before the snowplow and bus would reach us.
She read to us from Melville.
How in an almost calamitous moment Of sea hunting Some men in an open boat suddenly found themselves At the still and protected center Of a great herd of whales Where all the females floated on their sides While their young nursed there.
The cold frightened whalers Just stared into what they allowed Was the ecstatic lapidary pond of a nursing cow's One visible eyeball.
And they were at peace with themselves.
Today I listened to a woman say That Melville might Be taught in the next decade.
Another woman asked, "And why not?" The first responded, "Because there are No women in his one novel.
" And Mrs.
Whitimore was now reading from the Psalms.
Coughing into her handkerchief.
Snow above the windows.
There was a blue light on her face, breasts, and arms.
Sometimes a whole civilization can be dying Peacefully in one young woman, in a small heated room With thirty children Rapt, confident and listening to the pure God-rendering voice of a storm.


Written by Thomas Hardy | Create an image from this poem

De Profundis

 I 

"Percussus sum sicut foenum, et aruit cor meum.
" - Ps.
ci Wintertime nighs; But my bereavement-pain It cannot bring again: Twice no one dies.
Flower-petals flee; But, since it once hath been, No more that severing scene Can harrow me.
Birds faint in dread: I shall not lose old strength In the lone frost's black length: Strength long since fled! Leaves freeze to dun; But friends can not turn cold This season as of old For him with none.
Tempests may scath; But love can not make smart Again this year his heart Who no heart hath.
Black is night's cope; But death will not appal One who, past doubtings all, Waits in unhope.
De Profundis II "Considerabam ad dexteram, et videbam; et non erat qui cognosceret me When the clouds' swoln bosoms echo back the shouts of the many and strong That things are all as they best may be, save a few to be right ere long, And my eyes have not the vision in them to discern what to these is so clear, The blot seems straightway in me alone; one better he were not here.
The stout upstanders say, All's well with us: ruers have nought to rue! And what the potent say so oft, can it fail to be somewhat true? Breezily go they, breezily come; their dust smokes around their career, Till I think I am one horn out of due time, who has no calling here.
Their dawns bring lusty joys, it seems; their eves exultance sweet; Our times are blessed times, they cry: Life shapes it as is most meet, And nothing is much the matter; there are many smiles to a tear; Then what is the matter is I, I say.
Why should such an one be here? Let him to whose ears the low-voiced Best seems stilled by the clash of the First, Who holds that if way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst, Who feels that delight is a delicate growth cramped by crookedness, custom, and fear, Get him up and be gone as one shaped awry; he disturbs the order here.
De Profundis III "Heu mihi, quia incolatus meus prolongatus est! Habitavi cum habitantibus Cedar; multum incola fuit aninia mea.
"--Ps.
cxix.
There have been times when I well might have passed and the ending have come - Points in my path when the dark might have stolen on me, artless, unrueing - Ere I had learnt that the world was a welter of futile doing: Such had been times when I well might have passed, and the ending have come! Say, on the noon when the half-sunny hours told that April was nigh, And I upgathered and cast forth the snow from the crocus-border, Fashioned and furbished the soil into a summer-seeming order, Glowing in gladsome faith that I quickened the year thereby.
Or on that loneliest of eves when afar and benighted we stood, She who upheld me and I, in the midmost of Egdon together, Confident I in her watching and ward through the blackening heather, Deeming her matchless in might and with measureless scope endued.
Or on that winter-wild night when, reclined by the chimney-nook quoin, Slowly a drowse overgat me, the smallest and feeblest of folk there, Weak from my baptism of pain; when at times and anon I awoke there - Heard of a world wheeling on, with no listing or longing to join.
Even then! while unweeting that vision could vex or that knowledge could numb, That sweets to the mouth in the belly are bitter, and tart, and untoward, Then, on some dim-coloured scene should my briefly raised curtain have lowered, Then might the Voice that is law have said "Cease!" and the ending have come.
Written by Alan Seeger | Create an image from this poem

The Rendezvous

 He faints with hope and fear.
It is the hour.
Distant, across the thundering organ-swell, In sweet discord from the cathedral-tower, Fall the faint chimes and the thrice-sequent bell.
Over the crowd his eye uneasy roves.
He sees a plume, a fur; his heart dilates -- Soars .
.
.
and then sinks again.
It is not hers he loves.
She will not come, the woman that he waits.
Braided with streams of silver incense rise The antique prayers and ponderous antiphones.
`Gloria Patri' echoes to the skies; `Nunc et in saecula' the choir intones.
He marks not the monotonous refrain, The priest that serves nor him that celebrates, But ever scans the aisle for his blonde head.
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.
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In vain! She will not come, the woman that he waits.
How like a flower seemed the perfumed place Where the sweet flesh lay loveliest to kiss; And her white hands in what delicious ways, With what unfeigned caresses, answered his! Each tender charm intolerable to lose, Each happy scene his fancy recreates.
And he calls out her name and spreads his arms .
.
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No use! She will not come, the woman that he waits.
But the long vespers close.
The priest on high Raises the thing that Christ's own flesh enforms; And down the Gothic nave the crowd flows by And through the portal's carven entry swarms.
Maddened he peers upon each passing face Till the long drab procession terminates.
No princess passes out with proud majestic pace.
She has not come, the woman that he waits.
Back in the empty silent church alone He walks with aching heart.
A white-robed boy Puts out the altar-candles one by one, Even as by inches darkens all his joy.
He dreams of the sweet night their lips first met, And groans -- and turns to leave -- and hesitates .
.
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Poor stricken heart, he will, he can not fancy yet She will not come, the woman that he waits.
But in an arch where deepest shadows fall He sits and studies the old, storied panes, And the calm crucifix that from the wall Looks on a world that quavers and complains.
Hopeless, abandoned, desolate, aghast, On modes of violent death he meditates.
And the tower-clock tolls five, and he admits at last, She will not come, the woman that he waits.
Through the stained rose the winter daylight dies, And all the tide of anguish unrepressed Swells in his throat and gathers in his eyes; He kneels and bows his head upon his breast, And feigns a prayer to hide his burning tears, While the satanic voice reiterates `Tonight, tomorrow, nay, nor all the impending years, She will not come,' the woman that he waits.
Fond, fervent heart of life's enamored spring, So true, so confident, so passing fair, That thought of Love as some sweet, tender thing, And not as war, red tooth and nail laid bare, How in that hour its innocence was slain, How from that hour our disillusion dates, When first we learned thy sense, ironical refrain, She will not come, the woman that he waits.
Written by Paul Muldoon | Create an image from this poem

Aisling

 I was making my way home late one night
this summer, when I staggered
into a snow drift.
Her eyes spoke of a sloe-year, her mouth a year of haws.
Was she Aurora, or the goddess Flora, Artemidora, or Venus bright, or Anorexia, who left a lemon stain on my flannel sheet? It's all much of a muchness.
In Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital a kidney machine supports the latest hunger-striker to have called off his fast, a saline drip into his bag of brine.
A lick and a promise.
Cuckoo spittle.
I hand my sample to Doctor Maw.
She gives me back a confident All Clear.
Written by Robinson Jeffers | Create an image from this poem

Carmel Point

 The extraordinary patience of things! 
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of surburban houses-
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads-
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly.
It has all time.
It knows the people are a tide That swells and in time will ebb, and all Their works dissolve.
Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty Lives in the very grain of the granite, Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.
-As for us: We must uncenter our minds from ourselves; We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident As the rock and ocean that we were made from.
Written by Sidney Lanier | Create an image from this poem

June Dreams In January

 "So pulse, and pulse, thou rhythmic-hearted Noon
That liest, large-limbed, curved along the hills,
In languid palpitation, half a-swoon
With ardors and sun-loves and subtle thrills;

"Throb, Beautiful! while the fervent hours exhale
As kisses faint-blown from thy finger-tips
Up to the sun, that turn him passion-pale
And then as red as any virgin's lips.
"O tender Darkness, when June-day hath ceased, -- Faint Odor from the day-flower's crushing born, -- Dim, visible Sigh out of the mournful East That cannot see her lord again till morn: "And many leaves, broad-palmed towards the sky To catch the sacred raining of star-light: And pallid petals, fain, all fain to die, Soul-stung by too keen passion of the night: "And short-breath'd winds, under yon gracious moon Doing mild errands for mild violets, Or carrying sighs from the red lips of June What aimless way the odor-current sets: "And stars, ringed glittering in whorls and bells, Or bent along the sky in looped star-sprays, Or vine-wound, with bright grapes in panicles, Or bramble-tangled in a sweetest maze, "Or lying like young lilies in a lake About the great white Lotus of the moon, Or blown and drifted, as if winds should shake Star blossoms down from silver stems too soon, "Or budding thick about full open stars, Or clambering shyly up cloud-lattices, Or trampled pale in the red path of Mars, Or trim-set in quaint gardener's fantasies: "And long June night-sounds crooned among the leaves, And whispered confidence of dark and green, And murmurs in old moss about old eaves, And tinklings floating over water-sheen!" Then he that wrote laid down his pen and sighed; And straightway came old Scorn and Bitterness, Like Hunnish kings out of the barbarous land, And camped upon the transient Italy That he had dreamed to blossom in his soul.
"I'll date this dream," he said; "so: `Given, these, On this, the coldest night in all the year, From this, the meanest garret in the world, In this, the greatest city in the land, To you, the richest folk this side of death, By one, the hungriest poet under heaven, -- Writ while his candle sputtered in the gust, And while his last, last ember died of cold, And while the mortal ice i' the air made free Of all his bones and bit and shrunk his heart, And while soft Luxury made show to strike Her gloved hands together and to smile What time her weary feet unconsciously Trode wheels that lifted Avarice to power, -- And while, moreover, -- O thou God, thou God -- His worshipful sweet wife sat still, afar, Within the village whence she sent him forth Into the town to make his name and fame, Waiting, all confident and proud and calm, Till he should make for her his name and fame, Waiting -- O Christ, how keen this cuts! -- large-eyed, With Baby Charley till her husband make For her and him a poet's name and fame.
' -- Read me," he cried, and rose, and stamped his foot Impatiently at Heaven, "read me this," (Putting th' inquiry full in the face of God) "Why can we poets dream us beauty, so, But cannot dream us bread? Why, now, can I Make, aye, create this fervid throbbing June Out of the chill, chill matter of my soul, Yet cannot make a poorest penny-loaf Out of this same chill matter, no, not one For Mary though she starved upon my breast?" And then he fell upon his couch, and sobbed, And, late, just when his heart leaned o'er The very edge of breaking, fain to fall, God sent him sleep.
There came his room-fellow, Stout Dick, the painter, saw the written dream, Read, scratched his curly pate, smiled, winked, fell on The poem in big-hearted comic rage, Quick folded, thrust in envelope, addressed To him, the critic-god, that sitteth grim And giant-grisly on the stone causeway That leadeth to his magazine and fame.
Him, by due mail, the little Dream of June Encountered growling, and at unawares Stole in upon his poem-battered soul So that he smiled, -- then shook his head upon 't -- Then growled, then smiled again, till at the last, As one that deadly sinned against his will, He writ upon the margin of the Dream A wondrous, wondrous word that in a day Did turn the fleeting song to very bread, -- Whereat Dick Painter leapt, the poet wept, And Mary slept with happy drops a-gleam Upon long lashes of her serene eyes From twentieth reading of her poet's news Quick-sent, "O sweet my Sweet, to dream is power, And I can dream thee bread and dream thee wine, And I will dream thee robes and gems, dear Love, To clothe thy holy loveliness withal, And I will dream thee here to live by me, Thee and my little man thou hold'st at breast, -- Come, Name, come, Fame, and kiss my Sweetheart's feet!"

Book: Shattered Sighs