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Best Famous Forswear Poems

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

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Written by Andrew Marvell | Create an image from this poem

Daphnis And Chloe

 Daphnis must from Chloe part:
Now is come the dismal Hour
That must all his Hopes devour,
All his Labour, all his Art.

Nature, her own Sexes foe,
Long had taught her to be coy:
But she neither knew t' enjoy,
Nor yet let her Lover go.

But, with this sad News surpriz'd,
Soon she let that Niceness fall;
And would gladly yield to all,
So it had his stay compriz'd.

Nature so her self does use
To lay by her wonted State,
Left the World should separate;
Sudden Parting closer glews.

He, well read in all the wayes
By which men their Siege maintain,
Knew not that the Fort to gain
Better 'twas the siege to raise.

But he came so full possest
With the Grief of Parting thence,
That he had not so much Sence
As to see he might be blest.

Till Love in her Language breath'd
Words she never spake before;
But then Legacies no more
To a dying Man bequeath'd.

For, Alas, the time was spent,
Now the latest minut's run
When poor Daphnis is undone,
Between Joy and Sorrow rent.

At that Why, that Stay my Dear,
His disorder'd Locks he tare;
And with rouling Eyes did glare,
And his cruel Fate forswear.

As the Soul of one scarce dead,
With the shrieks of Friends aghast,
Looks distracted back in hast,
And then streight again is fled.

So did wretched Daphnis look,
Frighting her he loved most.
At the last, this Lovers Ghost
Thus his Leave resolved took.

Are my Hell and Heaven Joyn'd
More to torture him that dies?
Could departure not suffice,
But that you must then grow kind?

Ah my Chloe how have I
Such a wretched minute found,
When thy Favours should me wound
More than all thy Cruelty?

So to the condemned Wight
The delicious Cup we fill;
And allow him all he will,
For his last and short Delight.

But I will not now begin
Such a Debt unto my Foe;
Nor to my Departure owe
What my Presence could not win.

Absence is too much alone:
Better 'tis to go in peace,
Than my Losses to increase
By a late Fruition.

Why should I enrich my Fate?
'Tis a Vanity to wear,
For my Executioner,
Jewels of so high a rate.

Rather I away will pine
In a manly stubborness
Than be fatted up express
For the Canibal to dine.

Whilst this grief does thee disarm,
All th' Enjoyment of our Love
But the ravishment would prove
Of a Body dead while warm.

And I parting should appear
Like the Gourmand Hebrew dead,
While he Quailes and Manna fed,
And does through the Desert err.

Or the Witch that midnight wakes
For the Fern, whose magick Weed
In one minute casts the Seed.
And invisible him makes.

Gentler times for Love are ment:
Who for parting pleasure strain
Gather Roses in the rain,
Wet themselves and spoil their Sent.

Farewel therefore all the fruit
Which I could from Love receive:
Joy will not with Sorrow weave,
Nor will I this Grief pollute.

Fate I come, as dark, as sad,
As thy Malice could desire;
Yet bring with me all the Fire
That Love in his Torches had.

At these words away he broke;
As who long has praying ly'n,
To his Heads-man makes the Sign,
And receives the parting stroke.

But hence Virgins all beware.
Last night he with Phlogis slept;
This night for Dorinda kept;
And but rid to take the Air.

Yet he does himself excuse;
Nor indeed without a Cause.
For, according to the Lawes,
Why did Chloe once refuse?


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!
Written by Thomas Hardy | Create an image from this poem

The Respectable Burgher on The Higher Criticism

 Since Reverend Doctors now declare 
That clerks and people must prepare 
To doubt if Adam ever were; 
To hold the flood a local scare; 
To argue, though the stolid stare, 
That everything had happened ere 
The prophets to its happening sware; 
That David was no giant-slayer, 
Nor one to call a God-obeyer 
In certain details we could spare, 
But rather was a debonair 
Shrewd bandit, skilled as banjo-player: 
That Solomon sang the fleshly Fair, 
And gave the Church no thought whate'er; 
That Esther with her royal wear, 
And Mordecai, the son of Jair, 
And Joshua's triumphs, Job's despair, 
And Balaam's ass's bitter blare; 
Nebuchadnezzar's furnace-flare, 
And Daniel and the den affair, 
And other stories rich and rare, 
Were writ to make old doctrine wear 
Something of a romantic air: 
That the Nain widow's only heir, 
And Lazarus with cadaverous glare 
(As done in oils by Piombo's care) 
Did not return from Sheol's lair: 
That Jael set a fiendish snare, 
That Pontius Pilate acted square, 
That never a sword cut Malchus' ear 
And (but for shame I must forbear) 
That -- -- did not reappear! . . . 
- Since thus they hint, nor turn a hair, 
All churchgoing will I forswear, 
And sit on Sundays in my chair, 
And read that moderate man Voltaire.
Written by Edwin Arlington Robinson | Create an image from this poem

Veteran Sirens

 The ghost of Ninon would be sorry now 
To laugh at them, were she to see them here, 
So brave and so alert for learning how 
To fence with reason for another year. 

Age offers a far comelier diadem
Than theirs; but anguish has no eye for grace, 
When time’s malicious mercy cautions them 
To think a while of number and of space. 

The burning hope, the worn expectancy, 
The martyred humor, and the maimed allure,
Cry out for time to end his levity, 
And age to soften its investiture; 

But they, though others fade and are still fair, 
Defy their fairness and are unsubdued; 
Although they suffer, they may not forswear
The patient ardor of the unpursued. 

Poor flesh, to fight the calendar so long; 
Poor vanity, so quaint and yet so brave; 
Poor folly, so deceived and yet so strong, 
So far from Ninon and so near the grave.
Written by John Donne | Create an image from this poem

Womans Constancy

 Now thou hast loved me one whole day,
Tomorrow when thou leav'st, what wilt thou say?
Wilt thou then antedate some new made vow?
 Or say that now
We are not just those persons, which we were?
Or, that oaths made in reverential fear
Of Love, and his wrath, any may forswear?
Or, as true deaths, true marriages untie,
So lovers' contracts, images of those,
Bind but till sleep, death's image, them unloose?
 Or, your own end to justify,
For having purposed change, and falsehood, you
Can have no way but falsehood to be true?
Vain lunatic, against these 'scapes I could
 Dispute, and conquer, if I would,
 Which I abstain to do,
For by tomorrow, I may think so too.


Written by Edwin Arlington Robinson | Create an image from this poem

The Whip

 The doubt you fought so long 
The cynic net you cast, 
The tyranny, the wrong, 
The ruin, they are past; 
And here you are at last,
Your blood no longer vexed. 
The coffin has you fast, 
The clod will have you next. 

But fear you not the clod, 
Nor ever doubt the grave:
The roses and the sod 
Will not forswear the wave. 
The gift the river gave 
Is now but theirs to cover: 
The mistress and the slave
Are gone now, and the lover. 

You left the two to find 
Their own way to the brink 
Then—shall I call you blind?— 
You chose to plunge and sink.
God knows the gall we drink 
Is not the mead we cry for, 
Nor was it, I should think— 
For you—a thing to die for. 

Could we have done the same,
Had we been in your place?— 
This funeral of your name 
Throws no light on the case. 
Could we have made the chase, 
And felt then as you felt?—
But what’s this on your face, 
Blue, curious, like a welt? 

There were some ropes of sand 
Recorded long ago, 
But none, I understand,
Of water. Is it so? 
And she—she struck the blow, 
You but a neck behind … 
You saw the river flow— 
Still, shall I call you blind?
Written by Omar Khayyam | Create an image from this poem

Drink wine to root up metaphysic weeds,

Drink wine to root up metaphysic weeds,
And tangle of the two-and-seventy creeds;
Do not forswear that wondrous alchemy,
'Twill turn to gold, and cure a thousand needs.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things