10 Best Famous Fainter Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Fainter poems. This is a select list of the best famous Fainter poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Fainter poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of fainter poems.

• All Famous Fainter Poems

 We were a tribe, a family, a people.
Wallace and Bruce guard now a painted field,
And all may read the folio of our fable,
Peruse the sword, the sceptre and the shield.
A simple sky roofed in that rustic day,
The busy corn-fields and the haunted holms,
The green road winding up the ferny brae.
But Knox and Melville clapped their preaching palms
And bundled all the harvesters away,
Hoodicrow Peden in the blighted corn
Hacked with his rusty beak the starving haulms.
Out of that desolation we were born.

Courage beyond the point and obdurate pride
Made us a nation, robbed us of a nation.
Defiance absolute and myriad-eyed
That could not pluck the palm plucked our damnation.
We with such courage and the bitter wit
To fell the ancient oak of loyalty,
And strip the peopled hill and altar bare,
And crush the poet with an iron text,
How could we read our souls and learn to be?
Here a dull drove of faces harsh and vexed,
We watch our cities burning in their pit,
To salve our souls grinding dull lucre out,
We, fanatics of the frustrate and the half,
Who once set Purgatory Hill in doubt.

Now smoke and dearth and money everywhere,
Mean heirlooms of each fainter generation,
And mummied housegods in their musty niches,
Burns and Scott, sham bards of a sham nation,
And spiritual defeat wrapped warm in riches,
No pride but pride of pelf. Long since the young
Fought in great bloody battles to carve out
This towering pulpit of the Golden Calf,
Montrose, Mackail, Argyle, perverse and brave,
Twisted the stream, unhooped the ancestral hill.
Never had Dee or Don or Yarrow or Till
Huddled such thriftless honour in a grave.
Such wasted bravery idle as a song,
Such hard-won ill might prove Time's verdict wrong,
And melt to pity the annalist's iron tongue.

 A village Chorus is supposed to be assembled, and about to
commence its festive procession.

[Written for the birthday of the Duchess Louisa of Weimar.]

CHORUS.

THE festal day hail ye

With garlands of pleasure,

And dances' soft measure,
With rapture commingled
And sweet choral song.

DAMON.

Oh, how I yearn from out the crowd to flee!
What joy a secret glade would give to me!
Amid the throng, the turmoil here,
Confined the plain, the breezes e'en appear.

CHORUS.

Now order it truly,
That ev'ry one duly
May roam and may wander,
Now here, and now yonder,

The meadows along.

[The Chorus retreats gradually, and the song becomes fainter and
fainter, till it dies away in the distance.]

DAMON.

In vain ye call, in vain would lure me on;
True my heart speaks,--but with itself alone.

And if I may view

 A blessing-fraught land,

The heaven's clear blue,

And the plain's verdant hue,

Alone I'll rejoice,

Undisturbed by man's voice.


And there I'll pay homage

 To womanly merit,

 Observe it in spirit,

In spirit pay homage;

To echo alone

Shall my secret be known.


CHORUS.

[Faintly mingling with Damon's song in the distance.]

To echo--alone--

Shall my secret--be known.--

MENALCAS.

My friend, why meet I here with thee?

Thou hast'nest not to join the festal throng?
No longer stay, but come with me,

And mingle in the dance and song.

DAMON.

Thou'rt welcome, friend! but suffer me to roam

Where these old beeches hide me from man's view:
Love seeks in solitude a home,

And homage may retreat there too.

MENALCAS.

Thou seekest here a spurious fame,

And hast a mind to-day to grieve me.
Love as thy portion thou mayst claim

But homage thou must share with all, believe me!

When their voices thousands raise,
And the dawn of morning praise,

 Rapture bringing,

 Blithely singing

 On before us,
Heart and ear in pleasure vie;


 And when thousands join in chorus,

With the feelings brightly glowing,

And the wishes overflowing,
Forcibly they'll bear thee high.

[The Chorus gradually approaches, from the distance.]

DAMON.

Distant strains are hither wending,

And I'm gladden'd by the throng;
Yes, they're coming,--yes, descending

To the valley from the height,

MENALCAS.

Let us haste, our footsteps blending

With the rhythm of the song!
Yes, they come; their course they're bending

Tow'rd the wood's green sward so bright.

CHORUS.
[Gradually becoming louder.]

Yes, we hither come, attending

With the harmony of song,
As the hours their race are ending

On this day of blest delight.

ALL.

Let none reveal
The thoughts we feel,
The aims we own!
Let joy alone

Disclose the story!
She'll prove it right
And her delight

Includes the glory,
Includes the bliss
Of days like this!

 1813.

 A loss of something ever felt I --
The first that I could recollect
Bereft I was -- of what I knew not
Too young that any should suspect

A Mourner walked among the children
I notwithstanding went about
As one bemoaning a Dominion
Itself the only Prince cast out --

Elder, Today, a session wiser
And fainter, too, as Wiseness is --
I find myself still softly searching
For my Delinguent Palaces --

And a Suspicion, like a Finger
Touches my Forehead now and then
That I am looking oppositely
For the site of the Kingdom of Heaven --

 The autumn-time has come; 
On woods that dream of bloom, 
And over purpling vines, 
The low sun fainter shines. 

The aster-flower is failing, 
The hazel's gold is paling; 
Yet overhead more near 
The eternal stars appear! 

And present gratitude 
Insures the future's good, 
And for the things I see 
I trust the things to be; 

That in the paths untrod, 
And the long days of God, 
My feet shall still be led, 
My heart be comforted. 

O living friends who love me! 
O dear ones gone above me! 
Careless of other fame, 
I leave to you my name. 

Hide it from idle praises, 
Save it from evil phrases: 
Why, when dear lips that spake it 
Are dumb, should strangers wake it? 

Let the thick curtain fall; 
I better know than all 
How little I have gained, 
How vast the unattained. 

Not by the page word-painted 
Let life be banned or sainted: 
Deeper than written scroll 
The colors of the soul. 

Sweeter than any sung 
My songs that found no tongue; 
Nobler than any fact 
My wish that failed of act. 

Others shall sing the song, 
Others shall right the wrong, -- 
Finish what I begin, 
And all I fail of win. 

What matter, I or they? 
Mine or another's day, 
So the right word be said 
And life the sweeter made? 

Hail to the coming singers! 
Hail to the brave light-bringers! 
Forward I reach and share 
All that they sing and dare. 

The airs of heaven blow o'er me; 
A glory shines before me 
Of what mankind shall be, -- 
Pure, generous, brave, and free. 

A dream of man and woman 
Diviner but still human, 
Solving the riddle old, 
Shaping the Age of Gold! 

The love of God and neighbor; 
An equal-handed labor; 
The richer life, where beauty 
Walks hand in hand with duty. 

Ring, bells in unreared steeples, 
The joy of unborn peoples! 
Sound, trumpets far off blown, 
Your triumph is my own! 

Parcel and part of all, 
I keep the festival, 
Fore-reach the good to be, 
And share the victory. 

I feel the earth move sunward, 
I join the great march onward, 
And take, by faith, while living, 
My freehold of thanksgiving.

 Passer-by, these are words. But instead of reading
 I want you to listen: to this frail
 Voice like that of letters eaten by grass.

Lend an ear, hear first of all the happy bee
Foraging in our almost rubbed-out names.
 It flits between two sprays of leaves,
Carrying the sound of branches that are real
 To those that filigree the still unseen.

Then know an even fainter sound, and let it be
 The endless murmuring of all our shades.
Their whisper rises from beneath the stones
 To fuse into a single heat with that blind
 Light you are as yet, who can still gaze.

 May your listening be good! Silence
Is a threshold where a twig breaks in your hand,
 Imperceptibly, as you attempt to disengage
 A name upon a stone:

And so our absent names untangle your alarms.
 And for you who move away, pensively,
 Here becomes there without ceasing to be.

 With short, sharp violent lights made vivid,
To the southward far as the sight can roam,
Only the swirl of the surges livid,
The seas that climb and the surfs that comb,
Only the crag and the cliff to nor'ward,
And rocks receding, and reefs flung forward,
And waifs wreck'd seaward and wasted shoreward
On shallows sheeted with flaming foam.

A grim grey coast and a seaboard ghastly,
And shores trod seldom by feet of men --
Where the batter'd hull and the broken mast lie
They have lain embedded these long years ten.
Love! when we wander'd here together,
Hand in hand through the sparkling weather,
From the heights and hollows of fern and heather,
God surely loved us a little then.

Then skies were fairer and shores were firmer --
The blue sea over the bright sand roll'd;
Babble and prattle, and ripple and murmur,
Sheen of silver and glamour of gold --
And the sunset bath'd in the gulf to lend her
A garland of pinks and of purples tender,
A tinge of the sun-god's rosy splendour,
A tithe of his glories manifold.

Man's works are craven, cunning, and skillful
On earth where his tabernacles are;
But the sea is wanton, the sea is wilful,
And who shall mend her and who shall mar?
Shall we carve success or record disaster
On her bosom of heaving alabaster?
Will her purple pulse beat fainter or faster
For fallen sparrow or fallen star?

I would that with sleepy soft embraces
The sea would fold me -- would find me rest
In luminous shades of her secret places,
In depths where her marvels are manifest,
So the earth beneath her should not discover
My hidden couch -- nor the heaven above her --
As a strong love shielding a weary lover,
I would have her shield me with shining breast.

When light in the realms of space lay hidden,
When life was yet in the womb of time,
Ere flesh was fettered to fruits forbidden,
And souls were wedded to care and crime,
Was the course foreshaped for the future spirit --
A burden of folly, a void of merit --
That would fain the wisdom of stars inherit,
And cannot fathom the seas sublime?

Under the sea or the soil (what matter?
The sea and the soil are under the sun),
As in the former days in the latter
The sleeping or waking is known of none,
Surely the sleeper shall not awaken
To griefs forgotten or joys forsaken,
For the price of all things given and taken,
The sum of all things done and undone.

Shall we count offences or coin excuses,
Or weigh with scales the soul of a man,
Whom a strong hand binds and a sure hand looses,
Whose light is a spark and his life a span?
The seed he sowed or the soil he cumber'd,
The time he served or the space he slumber'd,
Will it profit a man when his days are number'd,
Or his deeds since the days of his life began?

One, glad because of the light, saith, "Shall not
The righteous judges of all the earth do right,
For behold the sparrows on the house-tops fall not
Save as seemeth to Him good in His sight?"
And this man's joy shall have no abiding
Through lights departing and lives dividing,
He is soon as one in the darkness hiding,
One loving darkness rather than light.

A little season of love and laughter,
Of light and life, and pleasure and pain,
And a horror of outer darkness after,
And dust returneth to dust again;
Then the lesser life shall be as the greater,
And the lover of light shall join the hater,
And the one thing cometh sooner or later,
And no one knoweth the loss or gain.

Love of my life! we had lights in season --
Hard to part with, harder to keep --
We had strength to labour and souls to reason,
And seed to scatter and fruits to reap.
Though time estranges and fate disperses,
We have had our loves and loving mercies.
Though the gifts of the light in the end are curses,
Yet bides the gift of darkness -- sleep!

See! girt with tempest and wing'd with thunder,
And clad with lightning and shod with sleet,
The strong winds treading the swift waves sunder
The flying rollers with frothy feet.
One gleam like a bloodshot swordblade swims on
The skyline, staining the green gulf crimson
A death stroke fiercely dealt by a dim sun
That strikes through his stormy winding sheet.

Oh, brave white horses! you gather and gallop,
The storm sprite loosens the gusty reins;
Now the stoutest ship were the frailest shallop
In your hollow backs, or your high arch'd manes.
I would ride as never a man has ridden
In your sleepy swirling surges hidden,
To gulfs foreshadow'd, through straits forbidden,
Where no light wearies and no love wanes.

 Harp of the North, farewell! The hills grow dark, 
On purple peaks a deeper shade descending; 
In twilight copse the glow-worm lights her spark, 
The deer, half-seen, are to the covert wending. 
Resume thy wizard elm! the fountain lending, 
And the wild breeze, thy wilder minstrelsy; 
Thy numbers sweet with nature’s vespers blending, 
With distant echo from the fold and lea, 
And herd-boy’s evening pipe, and hum of housing bee. 

Yet, once again, farewell, thou Minstrel Harp! 
Yet, once again, forgive my feeble sway, 
And little reck I of the censure sharp 
May idly cavil at an idle lay. 
Much have I owed thy strains on life’s long way, 
Through secret woes the world has never known, 
When on the weary night dawned wearier day, 
And bitterer was the grief devoured alone.— 
That I o’erlive such woes, Enchantress! is thine own. 

Hark! as my lingering footsteps slow retire, 
Some spirit of the Air has waked thy string! 
’Tis now a seraph bold, with touch of fire, 
’Tis now the brush of Fairy’s frolic wing. 
Receding now, the dying numbers ring 
Fainter and fainter down the rugged dell; 
And now the mountain breezes scarcely bring 
A wandering witch-note of the distant spell— 
And now, ’tis silent all!—Enchantress, fare thee well!

 In what torn ship soever I embark,
That ship shall be my emblem of thy Ark;
What sea soever swallow me, that flood
Shall be to me an emblem of thy blood;
Though thou with clouds of anger do disguise
Thy face, yet through that mask I know those eyes,
Which, though they turn away sometimes,
They never will despise.

I sacrifice this Island unto thee,
And all whom I loved there, and who loved me;
When I have put our seas 'twixt them and me,
Put thou thy sea betwixt my sins and thee.
As the tree's sap doth seek the root below
In winter, in my winter now I go,
Where none but thee, th' Eternal root
Of true Love, I may know.

Nor thou nor thy religion dost control
The amorousness of an harmonious Soul,
But thou wouldst have that love thyself: as thou
Art jealous, Lord, so I am jealous now,
Thou lov'st not, till from loving more, Thou free
My soul: who ever gives, takes liberty:
O, if thou car'st not whom I love
Alas, thou lov'st not me.

Seal then this bill of my Divorce to All,
On whom those fainter beams of love did fall;
Marry those loves, which in youth scattered be
On Fame, Wit, Hopes (false mistresses) to thee.
Churches are best for Prayer, that have least light:
To see God only, I go out of sight:
And to 'scape stormy days, I choose
An Everlasting night.

Every angel is terrifying. And yet alas
I invoked you almost deadly birds of the soul
knowing about you. Where are the days of Tobias
when one of you veiling his radiance stood at the front door  
slightly disguised for the journey no longer appalling;
(a young man like the one who curiously peeked through the window).
But if the archangel now perilous from behind the stars
took even one step down toward us: our own heart beating
higher and higher would bear us to death. Who are you?

Early successes Creation's pampered favorites
mountain-ranges peaks growing red in the dawn
of all Beginning -pollen of the flowering godhead
joints of pure light corridors stairways thrones
space formed from essence shields made of ecstasy storms
of emotion whirled into rapture and suddenly alone:
mirrors which scoop up the beauty that has streamed from their face
and gather it back into themselves entire.

But we when moved by deep feeling evaporate; we
breathe ourselves out and away; from moment to moment
our emotion grows fainter like a perfume. Though someone may tell us:
Yes, you've entered my bloodstream, the room, the whole springtime
is filled with you¡­ -what does it matter? he can't contain us
we vanish inside him and around him. And those who are beautiful
oh who can retain them? Appearance ceaselessly rises
in their face and is gone. Like dew from the morning grass
what is ours floats into the air like steam from a dish
of hot food. O smile where are you going? O upturned glance:
new warm receding wave on the sea of the heart¡­
alas but that is what we are. Does the infinite space
we dissolve into taste of us then? Do the angels really
reabsorb only the radiance that streamed out from themselves or
sometimes as if by an oversight is there a trace
of our essence in it as well? Are we mixed in with their
features even as slightly as that vague look
in the faces of pregnant women? They do not notice it
(how could they notice) in their swirling return to themselves.

Lovers if they knew how might utter strange marvelous
Words in the night air. For it seems that everything
hides us. Look: trees do exist; the houses
that we live in still stand. We alone
fly past all things as fugitive as the wind.
And all things conspire to keep silent about us half
out of shame perhaps half as unutterable hope.

Lovers gratified in each other I am asking you
about us. You hold each other. Where is your proof?
Look sometimes I find that my hands have become aware
of each other or that my time-worn face
shelters itself inside them. That gives me a slight
sensation. But who would dare to exist just for that?
You though who in the other's passion
grow until overwhelmed he begs you:
No more¡­ ; you who beneath his hands
swell with abundance like autumn grapes;
you who may disappear because the other has wholly
emerged: I am asking you about us. I know
you touch so blissfully because the caress preserves
because the place you so tenderly cover
does not vanish; because underneath it 
you feel pure duration. So you promise eternity almost
from the embrace. And yet when you have survived
the terror of the first glances the longing at the window
and the first walk together once only through the garden:
lovers are you the same? When you lift yourselves up
to each other's mouth and your lips join drink against drink:
oh how strangely each drinker seeps away from his action.

Weren't you astonished by the caution of human gestures
on Attic gravestones? Wasn't love and departure
placed so gently on shoulders that is seemed to be made
of a different substance than in our world? Remember the hands
how weightlessly they rest though there is power in the torsos.
These self-mastered figures know: "We can go this far
This is ours to touch one another this lightly; the gods
Can press down harder upon us. But that is the gods' affair."

If only we too could discover a pure contained
human place our own strip of fruit-bearing soil
between river and rock. For our own heart always exceeds us
as theirs did. And we can no longer follow it gazing
into images that soothe it into the godlike bodies
where measured more greatly if achieves a greater repose.

 From the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn through a notable nimbus of nebulous noonshine,
Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with fear of the flies as they float,
Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of mystic miraculous moonshine,
These that we feel in the blood of our blushes that thicken and threaten with throbs through the throat?
Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an actor's appalled agitation,
Fainter with fear of the fires of the future than pale with the promise of pride in the past;
Flushed with the famishing fullness of fever that reddens with radiance of rathe recreation,
Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast?
Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch on the temples of terror,
Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of the dead who is dumb as the dust-heaps of death:
Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm of erotic emotional exquisite error,
Bathed in the balms of beatified bliss, beatific itself by beatitude's breath.
Surely no spirit or sense of a soul that was soft to the spirit and soul of our senses
Sweetens the stress of suspiring suspicion that sobs in the semblance and sound of a sigh;
Only this oracle opens Olympian, in mystical moods and triangular tenses--
"Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day when we die."
Mild is the mirk and monotonous music of memory, melodiously mute as it may be,
While the hope in the heart of a hero is bruised by the breach of men's rapiers, resigned to the rod;
Made meek as a mother whose bosom-beats bound with the bliss-bringing bulk of a balm-breathing baby,
As they grope through the grave-yard of creeds, under skies growing green at a groan for the grimness of God.
Blank is the book of his bounty beholden of old, and its binding is blacker than bluer:
Out of blue into black is the scheme of the skies, and their dews are the wine of the bloodshed of things;
Till the darkling desire of delight shall be free as a fawn that is freed from the fangs that pursue her,
Till the heart-beats of hell shall be hushed by a hymn from the hunt that has harried the kennel of kings.