10 Best Famous Outlived Poems

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

• All Famous Outlived Poems

The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned 
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, 
And spread the roof above them,---ere he framed 
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back 
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, 
Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down, 
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks 
And supplication. For his simple heart 
Might not resist the sacred influences, 
Which, from the stilly twilight of the place, 
And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven 
Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound 
Of the invisible breath that swayed at once 
All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed 
His spirit with the thought of boundless power 
And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why 
Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect 
God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore 
Only among the crowd, and under roofs, 
That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least, 
Here, in the shadow of this aged wood, 
Offer one hymn---thrice happy, if it find 
Acceptance in His ear. 
Father, thy hand 
Hath reared these venerable columns, thou 
Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down 
Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose 
All these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun, 
Budded, and shook their green leaves in the breeze, 
And shot towards heaven. The century-living crow, 
Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died 
Among their branches, till, at last, they stood, 
As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark, 
Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold 
Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults, 
These winding aisles, of human pomp and pride 
Report not. No fantastic carvings show 
The boast of our vain race to change the form 
Of thy fair works. But thou art here---thou fill'st 
The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds 
That run along the summit of these trees 
In music; thou art in the cooler breath 
That from the inmost darkness of the place 
Comes, scarcely felt; the barky trunks, the ground, 
The fresh moist ground, are all instinct with thee. 
Here is continual worship;---Nature, here, 
In the tranquility that thou dost love, 
Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly, around, 
From perch to perch, the solitary bird 
Passes; and yon clear spring, that, midst its herbs, 
Wells softly forth and wandering steeps the roots 
Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale 
Of all the good it does. Thou hast not left 
Thyself without a witness, in these shades, 
Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength, and grace 
Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak--- 
By whose immovable stem I stand and seem 
Almost annihilated---not a prince, 
In all that proud old world beyond the deep, 
E'er wore his crown as lofty as he 
Wears the green coronal of leaves with which 
Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root 
Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare 
Of the broad sun. That delicate forest flower 
With scented breath, and look so like a smile, 
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould, 
An emanation of the indwelling Life, 
A visible token of the upholding Love, 
That are the soul of this wide universe. 

My heart is awed within me when I think 
Of the great miracle that still goes on, 
In silence, round me---the perpetual work 
Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed 
Forever. Written on thy works I read 
The lesson of thy own eternity. 
Lo! all grow old and die---but see again, 
How on the faltering footsteps of decay 
Youth presses----ever gay and beautiful youth 
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees 
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors 
Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost 
One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet, 
After the flight of untold centuries, 
The freshness of her far beginning lies 
And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate 
Of his arch enemy Death---yea, seats himself 
Upon the tyrant's throne---the sepulchre, 
And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe 
Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth 
From thine own bosom, and shall have no end. 

There have been holy men who hid themselves 
Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave 
Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived 
The generation born with them, nor seemed 
Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks 
Around them;---and there have been holy men 
Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus. 
But let me often to these solitudes 
Retire, and in thy presence reassure 
My feeble virtue. Here its enemies, 
The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink 
And tremble and are still. Oh, God! when thou 
Dost scare the world with falling thunderbolts, or fill, 
With all the waters of the firmament, 
The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods 
And drowns the village; when, at thy call, 
Uprises the great deep and throws himself 
Upon the continent, and overwhelms 
Its cities---who forgets not, at the sight 
Of these tremendous tokens of thy power, 
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by? 
Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face 
Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath 
Of the mad unchained elements to teach 
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate, 
In these calm shades, thy milder majesty, 
And to the beautiful order of the works 
Learn to conform the order of our lives. 

THE GROVES were God's first temples. Ere man learned 
To hew the shaft and lay the architrave  
And spread the roof above them¡ªere he framed 
The lofty vault to gather and roll back 
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood 5 
Amidst the cool and silence he knelt down  
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks 
And supplication. For his simple heart 
Might not resist the sacred influences 
Which from the stilly twilight of the place 10 
And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven 
Mingled their mossy boughs and from the sound 
Of the invisible breath that swayed at once 
All their green tops stole over him and bowed 
His spirit with the thought of boundless power 15 
And inaccessible majesty. Ah why 
Should we in the world's riper years neglect 
God's ancient sanctuaries and adore 
Only among the crowd and under roofs 
That our frail hands have raised? Let me at least 20 
Here in the shadow of this aged wood  
Offer one hymn¡ªthrice happy if it find 
Acceptance in His ear. 

Father thy hand 
Hath reared these venerable columns thou 25 
Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down 
Upon the naked earth and forthwith rose 
All these fair ranks of trees. They in thy sun  
Budded and shook their green leaves in thy breeze  
And shot towards heaven. The century-living crow 30 
Whose birth was in their tops grew old and died 
Among their branches till at last they stood  
As now they stand massy and tall and dark  
Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold 
Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults 35 
These winding aisles of human pomp or pride 
Report not. No fantastic carvings show 
The boast of our vain race to change the form 
Of thy fair works. But thou art here¡ªthou fill'st 
The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds 40 
That run along the summit of these trees 
In music; thou art in the cooler breath 
That from the inmost darkness of the place 
Comes scarcely felt; the barky trunks the ground  
The fresh moist ground are all instinct with thee. 45 
Here is continual worship;¡ªNature here  
In the tranquillity that thou dost love  
Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly around  
From perch to perch the solitary bird 
Passes; and yon clear spring that midst its herbs 50 
Wells softly forth and wandering steeps the roots 
Of half the mighty forest tells no tale 
Of all the good it does. Thou hast not left 
Thyself without a witness in these shades  
Of thy perfections. Grandeur strength and grace 55 
Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak ¡ª 
By whose immovable stem I stand and seem 
Almost annihilated¡ªnot a prince  
In all that proud old world beyond the deep  
E'er wore his crown as loftily as he 60 
Wears the green coronal of leaves with which 
Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root 
Is beauty such as blooms not in the glare 
Of the broad sun. That delicate forest flower  
With scented breath and look so like a smile 65 
Seems as it issues from the shapeless mould  
An emanation of the indwelling Life  
A visible token of the upholding Love  
That are the soul of this great universe. 

My heart is awed within me when I think 70 
Of the great miracle that still goes on  
In silence round me¡ªthe perpetual work 
Of thy creation finished yet renewed 
Forever. Written on thy works I read 
The lesson of thy own eternity. 75 
Lo! all grow old and die¡ªbut see again  
How on the faltering footsteps of decay 
Youth presses ¡ªever-gay and beautiful youth 
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees 
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors 80 
Moulder beneath them. O there is not lost 
One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet  
After the flight of untold centuries  
The freshness of her far beginning lies 
And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate 85 
Of his arch-enemy Death¡ªyea seats himself 
Upon the tyrant's throne¡ªthe sepulchre  
And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe 
Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth 
From thine own bosom and shall have no end. 90 

There have been holy men who hid themselves 
Deep in the woody wilderness and gave 
Their lives to thought and prayer till they outlived 
The generation born with them nor seemed 
Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks 95 
Around them;¡ªand there have been holy men 
Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus. 
But let me often to these solitudes 
Retire and in thy presence reassure 
My feeble virtue. Here its enemies 100 
The passions at thy plainer footsteps shrink 
And tremble and are still. O God! when thou 
Dost scare the world with tempests set on fire 
The heavens with falling thunderbolts or fill  
With all the waters of the firmament 105 
The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods 
And drowns the villages; when at thy call  
Uprises the great deep and throws himself 
Upon the continent and overwhelms 
Its cities¡ªwho forgets not at the sight 110 
Of these tremendous tokens of thy power  
His pride and lays his strifes and follies by? 
O from these sterner aspects of thy face 
Spare me and mine nor let us need the wrath 
Of the mad unchain¨¨d elements to teach 115 
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate  
In these calm shades thy milder majesty  
And to the beautiful order of thy works 
Learn to conform the order of our lives. 

 We being so hidden from those who
Have quietly borne and fed us,
How can we answer civilly
Their innocent invitations?

How can we say "we see you
As but-for-God's-grace-ourselves, as
Our caricatures (we yours), with
Time's telescope between us"?

How can we say "you presumed on
The accident of kinship,
Assumed our friendship coatlike,
Not as a badge one fights for"?

How say "and you remembered
The sins of our outlived selves and
Your own forgiveness, buried
The hatchet to slow music;

Shared money but not your secrets;
Will leave as your final legacy
A box double-locked by the spider
Packed with your unsolved problems"?

How say all this without capitals,
Italics, anger or pathos,
To those who have seen from the womb come
Enemies? How not say it?

 It's not for laws I've broken
That bitter tears I've wept,
But solemn vows I've spoken
And promises unkept;
It's not for sins committed
My heart is full of rue,
but gentle acts omitted,
Kind deeds I did not do.

I have outlived the blindness,
The selfishness of youth;
The canker of unkindness,
The cruelty of truth;
The searing hurt of rudeness . . .
By mercies great and small,
I've come to reckon goodness
The greatest gift of all.

Let us be helpful ever
to those who are in need,
And each new day endeavour
To do some gentle deed;
For faults beyond our grieving,
What kindliness atone;
On earth by love achieving
A Heaven of our own.

 My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine;
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:
Go where I will, to me thou art the same— 
A loved regret which I would not resign.
There yet are two things in my destiny,— 
A world to roam through, and a home with thee.

The first were nothing—had I still the last,
It were the haven of my happiness;
But other claims and other ties thou hast,
And mine is not the wish to make them less.
A strange doom is thy father's sons's, and past
Recalling, as it lies beyond redress;
Reversed for him our grandsire's fate of yore,— 
He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore.

If my inheritance of storms hath been
In other elements, and on the rocks
Of perils, overlooked or unforeseen,
I have sustained my share of worldly shocks,
The fault was mine; nor do I seek to screen
My errors with defensive paradox;
I have been cunning in mine overthrow,
The careful pilot of my proper woe.

Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward,
My whole life was a contest, since the day
That gave me being, gave me that which marred
The gift,—a fate, or will, that walked astray;
And I at times have found the struggle hard,
And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay:
But now I fain would for a time survive,
If but to see what next can well arrive.

Kingdoms and empires in my little day
I have outlived, and yet I am not old;
And when I look on this, the petty spray
Of my own years of trouble, which have rolled
Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away:
Something—I know not what—does still uphold
A spirit of slight patience;—not in vain,
Even for its own sake, do we purchase pain.

Perhaps the workings of defiance stir
Within me,—or perhaps of cold despair,
Brought on when ills habitually recur,— 
Perhaps a kinder clime, or purer air,
(For even to this may change of soul refer,
And with light armour we may learn to bear,)
Have taught me a strange quiet, which was not
The chief companion of a calmer lot.

I feel almost at times as I have felt
In happy childhood; trees, and flowers, and brooks,
Which do remember me of where I dwelt,
Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books,
Come as of yore upon me, and can melt
My heart with recognition of their looks;
And even at moments I could think I see
Some living thing to love—but none like thee.

Here are the Alpine landscapes which create
A fund for contemplation;—to admire
Is a brief feeling of a trivial date;
But something worthier do such scenes inspire.
Here to be lonely is not desolate,
For much I view which I could most desire,
And, above all, a lake I can behold
Lovelier, not dearer, than our own of old.

Oh that thou wert but with me!—but I grow
The fool of my own wishes, and forget
The solitude which I have vaunted so
Has lost its praise is this but one regret;
There may be others which I less may show,— 
I am not of the plaintive mood, and yet
I feel an ebb in my philosophy,
And the tide rising in my altered eye.

I did remind thee of our own dear Lake,
By the old Hall which may be mine no more.
Leman's is fair; but think not I forsake
The sweet remembrance of a dearer shore;
Sad havoc Time must with my memory make,
Ere that or thou can fade these eyes before;
Though, like all things which I have loved, they are
Resigned for ever, or divided far.

The world is all before me; I but ask
Of Nature that with which she will comply— 
It is but in her summer's sun to bask,
To mingle with the quiet of her sky,
To see her gentle face without a mask
And never gaze on it with apathy.
She was my early friend, and now shall be
My sister—till I look again on thee.

I can reduce all feelings but this one;
And that I would not;—for at length I see
Such scenes as those wherein my life begun.
The earliest—even the only paths for me— 
Had I but sooner learnt the crowd to shun,
I had been better than I now can be;
The passions which have torn me would have slept:
I had not suffered, and thou hadst not wept.

With false Ambition what had I to do?
Little with Love, and least of all with Fame!
And yet they came unsought, and with me grew,
And made me all which they can make—a name.
Yet this was not the end I did pursue;
Surely I once beheld a nobler aim.
But all is over—I am one the more
To baffled millions which have gone before.

And for the future, this world's future may
From me demand but little of my care;
I have outlived myself by many a day:
Having survived so many things that were;
My years have been no slumber, but the prey
Of ceaseless vigils; for I had the share
Of life which might have filled a century,
Before its fourth in time had passed me by.

And for the remnant which may be to come,
I am content; and for the past I feel
Not thankless,—for within the crowded sum
Of struggles, happiness at times would steal,
And for the present, I would not benumb
My feelings farther.—Nor shall I conceal
That with all this I still can look around,
And worship Nature with a thought profound.

For thee, my own sweet sister, in thy heart
I know myself secure, as thou in mine;
We were and are—I am, even as thou art— 
Beings who ne'er each other can resign;
It is the same, together or apart,
From life's commencement to its slow decline
We are entwined—let death come slow or fast,
The tie which bound the first endures the last!

 And I grew up in patterned tranquillity, 
In the cool nursery of the young century. 
And the voice of man was not dear to me, 
But the voice of the wind I could understand. 
But best of all the silver willow. 
And obligingly, it lived 
With me all my life; it's weeping branches 
Fanned my insomnia with dreams. 
And strange!--I outlived it. 
There the stump stands; with strange voices 
Other willows are conversing 
Under our, under those skies. 
And I am silent...As if a brother had died.

 The gates are chained, the barbed-wire fencing stands, 
An iron authority against the snow, 
And this grey monument to common sense 
Resists the weather. Fears of idle hands, 
Of protest, men in league, and of the slow 
Corrosion of their minds, still charge this fence. 

Beyond, through broken windows one can see 
Where the great presses paused between their strokes 
And thus remain, in air suspended, caught 
In the sure margin of eternity. 
The cast-iron wheels have stopped; one counts the spokes 
Which movement blurred, the struts inertia fought, 

And estimates the loss of human power, 
Experienced and slow, the loss of years, 
The gradual decay of dignity. 
Men lived within these foundries, hour by hour; 
Nothing they forged outlived the rusted gears 
Which might have served to grind their eulogy.

 After great pain, a formal feeling comes --
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs --
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round --
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought --
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone --

This is the Hour of Lead --
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow --
First -- Chill -- then Stupor -- then the letting go --

Elves lived here, once, 
where today the blanched shells lie
of snails
who have outlived their selves; 

I would, if I could, 
bring back elves
but I feel they would, too, like snails, 
who have outlived their time, 
lose themselves where once they lived. 






(from A Sad Piper, 1994) 

 Because life's passing show
 Is little to his mind,
There is a man I know
 Indrawn from human kind.
His dearest friends are books;
 Yet oh how glad he talks
To birds and trees and brooks
 On lonely walks.
He takes the same still way
 By grove and hill and sea;
He lives that each new day
 May like the last one be.
He hates all kinds of change;
 His step is sure and slow:
Though life has little range
 He loves it so.

He makes it his one aim
 His pleasure to repeat;
To always do the same,
 Since sameness is so sweet;
In simple things to find
 The dearest to his mood.
His true life in his mind
 Is oh so good!

Please leave him to his dream,
 This old, unweary man,
Who shuns the busy stream
 And has outlived his span.
Just leave him on his shelf
 To watch the world go by . . .
Because he is--myself:
 Yea, such be I.