10 Best Famous Lifetimes Poems

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

• All Famous Lifetimes Poems

 (For Eleanor Rogers Cox)

For blows on the fort of evil
That never shows a breach,
For terrible life-long races
To a goal no foot can reach,
For reckless leaps into darkness
With hands outstretched to a star,
There is jubilation in Heaven
Where the great dead poets are.
There is joy over disappointment
And delight in hopes that were vain.
Each poet is glad there was no cure
To stop his lonely pain.
For nothing keeps a poet
In his high singing mood
Like unappeasable hunger
For unattainable food.
So fools are glad of the folly
That made them weep and sing,
And Keats is thankful for Fanny Brawne
And Drummond for his king.
They know that on flinty sorrow
And failure and desire
The steel of their souls was hammered
To bring forth the lyric fire.
Lord Byron and Shelley and Plunkett,
McDonough and Hunt and Pearse
See now why their hatred of tyrants
Was so insistently fierce.
Is Freedom only a Will-o'-the-wisp
To cheat a poet's eye?
Be it phantom or fact, it's a noble cause
In which to sing and to die!
So not for the Rainbow taken
And the magical White Bird snared
The poets sing grateful carols
In the place to which they have fared;
But for their lifetime's passion,
The quest that was fruitless and long,
They chorus their loud thanksgiving
To the thorn-crowned Master of Song.

 for Ken Kesey and his merry pranksters in a bus called ‘Further...’





Dear _______ and here’s where the problem begins

For who shall I address this letter to?

Friends are few and very special, muses in the main

I must confess, the first I lost just fifty years ago.

Perhaps the best.



I searched for years and wrote en route

‘Bridge Over the Aire’ after that vision and that voice

“I am here. I am waiting”. I followed every lead

Margaret Gardiner last heard of in the Falmouth’s

Of Leeds 9, early fifties. Barry Tebb your friend from then

Would love to hear from you.”



The sole reply

A mis-directed estimate for papering a bungalow

In Penge. I nearly came unhinged as weeks

Ran into months of silence. Was it. I wondered.

A voice from the beyond?



The vision was given

Complete with backcloth of resplendent stars

The bridge’s grey transmuted to a sheen of pearl

The chipped steps became transparent stairs to heaven

Our worn clothes, like Cinders’ at the ball, cloaks and gowns

Of infinite splendour but only for the night, remember!

I passed the muse’s diadem to Sheila Pritchard,

My genius-child-poet of whom Redgrove said

“Of course, you are in love” and wrote for her

‘My Perfect Rose!’



Last year a poet saw it

In the British Council Reading Room in distant Kazakstan

And sent his poems to me on paper diaphanous

As angels’ wings and delicate as ash

And tinted with a splash of lemon

And a dash of mignonette.



I last saw Sheila circa nineteen sixty seven

Expelled from grammar school wearing a poncho

Hand-made from an army blanket

Working a stall in Kirkgate Market.



Brenda Williams, po?te maudit if ever,

By then installed as muse number three

Grew sadly jealous for the only time

In thirty-seven years: muse number two

Passed into the blue



There is another muse, who makes me chronologically confused.

Barbara, who overlaps both two and three

And still is there, somewhere in Leeds.

Who does remember me and who, almost alone.

Inspired my six novellas: we write and

Talk sometimes and in a crisis she is there for me,



Muse number four, though absent for a month in Indonesia.

Remains. I doubt if there will be a fifth.



There is a poet, too, who is a friend and writes to me

From Hampstead, from a caf? in South End Green.

His cursive script on rose pink paper symptomatic

Of his gift for eloquent prose and poetry sublime

His elegy on David Gascoyne’s death quite takes my breath

And the title of his novel ‘Lipstick Boys’ I'll envy always,



There are some few I talk and write to

And occasionally meet. David Lambert, poet and teacher

Of creative writing, doing it ‘my way’ in the nineties,

UEA found his services superfluous to their needs.



? ? you may **** like hell,

But I abhor your jealous narcissistic smell

And as for your much vaunted pc prose

I’d rather stick my prick inside the thorniest rose.



Jeanne Conn of ‘Connections’ your letters

are even longer than my own and Maggie Allen

Sent me the only Valentine I’ve had in sixty years

These two do know my longings and my fears,



Dear Simon Jenner, Eratica’s erratic editor, your speech

So like the staccato of a bren, yet loaded

With a lifetime’s hard-won ken of poetry’s obscurest corners.

I salute David Wright, that ‘difficult deaf son’

Of the sixties, acknowledged my own youthful spasm of enthusiasm

But Simon you must share the honour with Jimmy Keery,

Of whom I will admit I’m somewhat leery,

His critical acuity so absolute and steely.



I ask you all to stay with me

Through time into infinity

Not even death can undo

The love I have for you.

 When Mother died
I thought: now I'll have a death poem.
That was unforgivable.

Yet I've since forgiven myself
as sons are able to do
who've been loved by their mothers.

I stared into the coffin
knowing how long she'd live,
how many lifetimes there are

in the sweet revisions of memory.
It's hard to know exactly
how we ease ourselves back from sadness,

but I remembered when I was twelve, 
1951, before the world
unbuttoned its blouse.

I had asked my mother (I was trembling)
If I could see her breasts
and she took me into her room

without embarrassment or coyness
and I stared at them,
afraid to ask for more.

Now, years later, someone tells me
Cancers who've never had mother love
are doomed and I, a Cancer

feel blessed again. What luck
to have had a mother
who showed me her breasts

when girls my age were developing
their separate countries,
what luck

she didn't doom me
with too much or too little.
Had I asked to touch,

Perhaps to suck them,
What would she have done?
Mother, dead woman

Who I think permits me
to love women easily
this poem

is dedicated to where
we stopped, to the incompleteness
that was sufficient

and to how you buttoned up,
began doing the routine things
around the house.

 There can be certain potions 
needled in the clock 
for the body's fall from grace, 
to untorture and to plead for. 
These I have known 
and would sell all my furniture 
and books and assorted goods 
to avoid, and more, more. 

But the other pain
I would sell my life to avoid 
the pain that begins in the crib 
with its bars or perhaps 
with your first breath 
when the planets drill 
your future into you 
for better of worse 
as you marry life 
and the love that gets doled out 
or doesn't. 

I find now, swallowing one teaspoon 
of pain, that it drops downward 
to the past where it mixes 
with last year's cupful 
and downward into a decade's quart 
and downward into a lifetime's ocean. 
I alternate treading water 
and deadman's float. 

The teaspoon ought to be hearable 
if it didn't mix into the reruns 
and thus enlarge into what it is not, 
a sea pest's sting turning promptly 
into the shark's neat biting off 
of a leg because the soul 
wears a magnifying glass. 
Kicking the heart 
with pain's big boots running up and down 
the intestines like a motorcycle racer. 

Yet one does get out of bed 
and start over, plunge into the day 
and put on a hopeful look 
and does not allow fear to build a wall 
between you and an old friend 
or a new friend and reach out your hand, 
shutting down the thought that 
an axe may cut it off unexpectedly. 
One learns not to blab about all this 
except to yourself or the typewriter keys 
who tell no one until they get brave 
and crawl off onto the printed page. 

I'm getting bored with it, 
I tell the typewriter, 
this constantly walking around 
in wet shoes and then, surprise! 
Somehow DECEASED keeps getting 
stamped in red over the word HOPE. 
And I who keep falling thankfully 
into each new pillow of belief, 
finding my Mercy Street, 
kissing it and tenderly gift-wrapping my love, 
am beginning to wonder just what 
the planets had in mind on November 9th, 1928. 
The pillows are ripped away, 
the hand guillotined, 
dog **** thrown into the middle of a laugh, 
a hornets' nest building into the hi-fi speaker 
and leaving me in silence, 
where, without music, 
I become a cracked orphan. 

Well, 
one gets out of bed 
and the planets don't always hiss 
or muck up the day, each day. 
As for the pain and its multiplying teaspoon, 
perhaps it is a medicine 
that will cure the soul 
of its greed for love 
next Thursday.

 Since I have set my lips to your full cup, my sweet, 
Since I my pallid face between your hands have laid, 
Since I have known your soul, and all the bloom of it, 
And all the perfume rare, now buried in the shade; 

Since it was given to me to hear on happy while, 
The words wherein your heart spoke all its mysteries, 
Since I have seen you weep, and since I have seen you smile, 
Your lips upon my lips, and your eyes upon my eyes; 

Since I have known above my forehead glance and gleam, 
A ray, a single ray, of your star, veiled always, 
Since I have felt the fall, upon my lifetime's stream, 
Of one rose petal plucked from the roses of your days; 

I now am bold to say to the swift changing hours, 
Pass, pass upon your way, for I grow never old, 
Fleet to the dark abysm with all your fading flowers, 
One rose that none may pluck, within my heart I hold. 

Your flying wings may smite, but they can never spill 
The cup fulfilled of love, from which my lips are wet; 
My heart has far more fire than you can frost to chill, 
My soul more love than you can make my soul forget

 By the Laws of the Family Circle 'tis written in letters of brass
That only a Colonel from Chatham can manage the Railways of State,
Because of the gold on his breeks, and the subjects wherein he must pass;
Because in all matters that deal not with Railways his knowledge is great.

Now Exeter Battleby Tring had laboured from boyhood to eld
On the Lines of the East and the West, and eke of the North and South;
Many Lines had he built and surveyed -- important the posts which he held;
And the Lords of the Iron Horse were dumb when he opened his mouth.

Black as the raven his garb, and his heresies jettier still --
Hinting that Railways required lifetimes of study and knowledge --
Never clanked sword by his side -- Vauban he knew not nor drill --
Nor was his name on the list of the men who had passed through the "College."

Wherefore the Little Tin Gods harried their little tin souls,
Seeing he came not from Chatham, jingled no spurs at his heels,
Knowing that, nevertheless, was he first on the Government rolls
For the billet of "Railway Instructor to Little Tin Gods on Wheels."

Letters not seldom they wrote him, "having the honour to state,"
It would be better for all men if he were laid on the shelf.
Much would accrue to his bank-book, an he consented to wait
Until the Little Tin Gods built him a berth for himself,

"Special, well paid, and exempt from the Law of the Fifty and Five,
Even to Ninety and Nine" -- these were the terms of the pact:
Thus did the Little Tin Gods (lon may Their Highnesses thrive!)
Silence his mouth with rupees, keeping their Circle intact;

Appointing a Colonel from Chatham who managed the Bhamo State Line
(The wich was on mile and one furlong -- a guaranteed twenty-inch gauge),
So Exeter Battleby Tring consented his claims to resign,
And died, on four thousand a month, in the ninetieth year of his age!

 If souls should only sheen so bright
In heaven as in e’thly light,
An’ nothen better wer the cease,
How comely still, in sheape an’ feace,
Would many reach thik happy pleace, -
The hopevul souls that in their prime
Ha’ seem’d a-took avore their time, -
The young that died in beauty.

But when woone’s lim’s ha’ lost their strangth
A-tweilen drough a lifetime’s langth,
An’ over cheaks a-growen wold
The slowly-weasten years ha’ roll’d
The deep’nen wrinkle’s hollow vwold;
When life is ripe, then death do call
Vor less ov thought, than when do vall
On young vo’ks in their beauty.

But pinen souls, wi’ heads a-hung
In heavy sorrow vor the young,
The sister ov the brother dead,
The father wi’ a child a-vled,
The husband when his bride ha’ laid
Her head at rest, noo mwore to turn,
Have all a-vound the time to murn
Vor youth that died in beauty.

An’ yeet the church, where prayer do rise
Vrom thoughtvul souls, wi’ downcast eyes,
An’ village greens, a-beat half beare
By dancers that do meet, an’ wear
Such merry looks at feast an’ feair,
Do gather under leatest skies,
Their bloomen cheaks an’ sparklen eyes,
Though young ha’ died in beauty.

But still the dead shall mwore than keep
The beauty ov their early sleep;
Where comely looks shall never wear
Uncomely, under tweil an' ceare.
The feair at death be always feair,
Still feair to livers’ thought an’ love,
An’ feairer still to God above,
Than when they died in beauty.

 If you should look for this place after a handful 
 of lifetimes:
Perhaps of my planted forest a few
May stand yet, dark-leaved Australians or the coast 
 cypress, haggard
With storm-drift; but fire and the axe are devils.
Look for foundations of sea-worn granite, my fingers 
 had the art
To make stone love stone, you will find some remnant.
But if you should look in your idleness after ten 
 thousand years:
It is the granite knoll on the granite
And lava tongue in the midst of the bay, by the mouth 
 of the Carmel
River-valley, these four will remain
In the change of names. You will know it by the wild 
 sea-fragrance of wind
Though the ocean may have climbed or retired a little;
You will know it by the valley inland that our sun 
 and our moon were born from
Before the poles changed; and Orion in December
Evenings was strung in the throat of the valley like 
 a lamp-lighted bridge.
Come in the morning you will see white gulls
Weaving a dance over blue water, the wane of the moon
Their dance-companion, a ghost walking
By daylight, but wider and whiter than any bird in 
 the world.
My ghost you needn't look for; it is probably
Here, but a dark one, deep in the granite, not 
 dancing on wind
With the mad wings and the day moon.

 If souls should only sheen so bright
In heaven as in e’thly light,
An’ nothen better wer the cease,
How comely still, in sheape an’ feace,
Would many reach thik happy pleace, -
The hopevul souls that in their prime
Ha’ seem’d a-took avore their time, -
The young that died in beauty.

But when woone’s lim’s ha’ lost their strangth
A-tweilen drough a lifetime’s langth,
An’ over cheaks a-growen wold
The slowly-weasten years ha’ roll’d
The deep’nen wrinkle’s hollow vwold;
When life is ripe, then death do call
Vor less ov thought, than when do vall
On young vo’ks in their beauty.

But pinen souls, wi’ heads a-hung
In heavy sorrow vor the young,
The sister ov the brother dead,
The father wi’ a child a-vled,
The husband when his bride ha’ laid
Her head at rest, noo mwore to turn,
Have all a-vound the time to murn
Vor youth that died in beauty.

An’ yeet the church, where prayer do rise
Vrom thoughtvul souls, wi’ downcast eyes,
An’ village greens, a-beat half beare
By dancers that do meet, an’ wear
Such merry looks at feast an’ feair,
Do gather under leatest skies,
Their bloomen cheaks an’ sparklen eyes,
Though young ha’ died in beauty.

But still the dead shall mwore than keep
The beauty ov their early sleep;
Where comely looks shall never wear
Uncomely, under tweil an' ceare.
The feair at death be always feair,
Still feair to livers’ thought an’ love,
An’ feairer still to God above,
Than when they died in beauty.

 ("Puisque j'ai mis ma lèvre à ta coupe.") 
 
 {XXV., Jan. 1, 1835.} 


 Since I have set my lips to your full cup, my sweet, 
 Since I my pallid face between your hands have laid, 
 Since I have known your soul, and all the bloom of it, 
 And all the perfume rare, now buried in the shade; 
 
 Since it was given to me to hear one happy while, 
 The words wherein your heart spoke all its mysteries, 
 Since I have seen you weep, and since I have seen you smile, 
 Your lips upon my lips, and your gaze upon my eyes; 
 
 Since I have known upon my forehead glance and gleam, 
 A ray, a single ray, of your star, veiled always, 
 Since I have felt the fall upon my lifetime's stream, 
 Of one rose-petal plucked from the roses of your days; 
 
 I now am bold to say to the swift-changing hours, 
 Pass—pass upon your way, for I grow never old. 
 Flee to the dark abysm with all your fading flowers, 
 One rose that none may pluck, within my heart I hold. 
 
 Your flying wings may smite, but they can never spill 
 The cup fulfilled of love, from which my lips are wet. 
 My heart has far more fire than you have frost to chill, 
 My soul more love than you can make my love forget. 
 
 A. LANG.