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Best Famous Foregoing Poems

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

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Written by Kahlil Gibran | Create an image from this poem

Pleasure XXIV

 Then a hermit, who visited the city once a year, came forth and said, "Speak to us of Pleasure." 

And he answered, saying: 

Pleasure is a freedom song, 

But it is not freedom. 

It is the blossoming of your desires, 

But it is not their fruit. 

It is a depth calling unto a height, 

But it is not the deep nor the high. 

It is the caged taking wing, 

But it is not space encompassed. 

Ay, in very truth, pleasure is a freedom-song. 

And I fain would have you sing it with fullness of heart; yet I would not have you lose your hearts in the singing. 

Some of your youth seek pleasure as if it were all, and they are judged and rebuked. 

I would not judge nor rebuke them. I would have them seek. 

For they shall find pleasure, but not her alone: 

Seven are her sisters, and the least of them is more beautiful than pleasure. 

Have you not heard of the man who was digging in the earth for roots and found a treasure? 

And some of your elders remember pleasures with regret like wrongs committed in drunkenness. 

But regret is the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement. 

They should remember their pleasures with gratitude, as they would the harvest of a summer. 

Yet if it comforts them to regret, let them be comforted. 

And there are among you those who are neither young to seek nor old to remember; 

And in their fear of seeking and remembering they shun all pleasures, lest they neglect the spirit or offend against it. 

But even in their foregoing is their pleasure. 

And thus they too find a treasure though they dig for roots with quivering hands. 

But tell me, who is he that can offend the spirit? 

Shall the nightingale offend the stillness of the night, or the firefly the stars? 

And shall your flame or your smoke burden the wind? 

Think you the spirit is a still pool which you can trouble with a staff? 

Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being. 

Who knows but that which seems omitted today, waits for tomorrow? 

Even your body knows its heritage and its rightful need and will not be deceived. 

And your body is the harp of your soul, 

And it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds. 

And now you ask in your heart, "How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?" 

Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower, 

But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee. 

For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life, 

And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love, 

And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy. 

People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees.


Written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning | Create an image from this poem

Chorus of Eden Spirits

 HEARKEN, oh hearken! let your souls behind you 
Turn, gently moved! 
Our voices feel along the Dread to find you, 
O lost, beloved! 
Through the thick-shielded and strong-marshalled angels, 
They press and pierce: 
Our requiems follow fast on our evangels,— 
Voice throbs in verse. 
We are but orphaned spirits left in Eden 
A time ago: 
God gave us golden cups, and we were bidden 
To feed you so. 
But now our right hand hath no cup remaining, 
No work to do, 
The mystic hydromel is spilt, and staining 
The whole earth through. 
Most ineradicable stains, for showing 
(Not interfused!) 
That brighter colours were the world’s foregoing, 
Than shall be used. 
Hearken, oh hearken! ye shall hearken surely 
For years and years, 
The noise beside you, dripping coldly, purely, 
Of spirits’ tears. 
The yearning to a beautiful denied you, 
Shall strain your powers. 
Ideal sweetnesses shall over-glide you, 
Resumed from ours. 
In all your music, our pathetic minor 
Your ears shall cross; 
And all good gifts shall mind you of diviner, 
With sense of loss. 
We shall be near you in your poet-languors 
And wild extremes, 
What time ye vex the desert with vain angers, 
Or mock with dreams. 
And when upon you, weary after roaming, 
Death’s seal is put, 
By the foregone ye shall discern the coming, 
Through eyelids shut.
Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

The Reformers

 1901

Not in the camp his victory lies
 Or triumph in the market-place,
Who is his Nation's sacrifice
To turn the judgement from his race.

Happy is he who, bred and taught
 By sleek, sufficing Circumstance --
Whose Gospel was the apparelled thought,
 Whose Gods were Luxury and Chance --

Seese, on the threshold of his days,
 The old life shrivel like a scroll,
And to unheralded dismays
 Submits his body and his soul;

The fatted shows wherein he stood
 Foregoing, and the idiot pride,
That he may prove with his own blood
 All that his easy sires denied --

Ultimate issues, primal springs,
 Demands, abasements, penalties --
The imperishable plinth of things
 Seen and unseen, that touch our peace.

For, though ensnaring ritual dim
 His vision through the after-years,
Yet virtue shall go out of him --
Example profiting his peers.

With great things charged he shall not hold
 Aloof till great occasion rise,
But serve, full-harnessed, as of old,
 The Days that are the Destinies.

He shall forswear and put away
 The idols of his sheltered house;
And to Necessity shall pay
 Unflinching tribute of his vows.

He shall not plead another's act,
 Nor bind him in another's oath
To weigh the Word above the Fact,
 Or make or take excuse for sloth.

The yoke he bore shall press him still,
 And, long-ingrained effort goad
To find, to fasion, and fulfil
 The cleaner life, the sterner code.

Not in the camp his victory lies --
 The world (unheeding his return)
Shall see it in his children's eyes
 And from his grandson's lips shall learn!

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry