Famous Birth Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Birth poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous birth poems. These examples illustrate what a famous birth poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Omar Khayyam
Death finds us soiled, though we were pure at birth,
With grief we go, although we came with mirth;
Watered with tears, and burned with fires of woe,
And, casting life to winds, we rest in earth!...Read more of this...
by
Sara Teasdale
Here in the teeth of this triumphant wind
That shakes the naked shadows on the ground,
Making a key-board of the earth to strike
From clattering tree and hedge a separate sound,
Bear witness for me that I loved my life,
All things that hurt me and all things that healed,
And that I swore it...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
Ye, who in alleys green and leafy bow'rs,
Sport, the rude children of fantastic birth;
Where frolic nymphs, and shaggy tribes of mirth,
In clam'rous revels waste the midnight hours;
Who, link'd in flaunting bands of mountain flow'rs,
Weave your wild mazes o'er the dewy earth,
Ere the fierce Lord of Lustre rushes forth,
And o'er the world his beamy radiance pours!
Oft has your clanking cymbal's...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
Weep with me, all you that read
This little story;
And know, for whom a tear you shed
Death's self is sorry.
'Twas a child that so did thrive
In grace and feature,
As heaven and nature seemed to strive
Which owned the creature.
Years he numbered scarce thirteen
When fates turned cruel,
Yet three filled zodiacs had be been
The stage's jewel;
And did act what now we moan,
Old men...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
Where is heaven? you ask me, my child,-the sages tell us it is
beyond the limits of birth and death, unswayed by the rhythm of day
and night; it is not of the earth.
But your poet knows that its eternal hunger is for time and
space, and it strives evermore to be born in the fruitful dust.
Heaven is fulfilled in your sweet...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Birth and death, twin-sister and twin-brother,
Night and day, on all things that draw breath,
Reign, while time keeps friends with one another
Birth and death.
Each brow-bound with flowers diverse of wreath,
Heaven they hail as father, earth as mother,
Faithful found above them and beneath.
Smiles may lighten tears, and tears may smother
Smiles, for all that joy or sorrow saith:
Joy nor sorrow knows not...Read more of this...
by
Anne Bradstreet
All things within this fading world hath end,
Adversity doth still our joys attend;
No ties so strong, no friends so dear and sweet,
But with death's parting blow are sure to meet.
The sentence past is most irrevocable,
A common thing, yet oh, inevitable.
How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend,
How soon't may be thy lot to lose thy friend,
We both are...Read more of this...
by
Robert Southey
Small is the new-born plant scarce seen
Amid the soft encircling green,
Where yonder budding acorn rears,
Just o'er the waving grass, its tender head:
Slow pass along the train of years,
And on the growing plant, their dews and showers they shed.
Anon it rears aloft its giant form,
And spreads its broad-brown arms to meet the storm.
Beneath its boughs far shadowing o'er the plain,
From...Read more of this...
by
William Cullen Bryant
Oh! could I hope the wise and pure in heart
Might hear my song without a frown, nor deem
My voice unworthy of the theme it tries,--
I would take up the hymn to Death, and say
To the grim power, The world hath slandered thee
And mocked thee. On thy dim and shadowy brow
They place an iron crown, and call thee king
Of terrors,...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Not in this chamber only at my birth—
When the long hours of that mysterious night
Were over, and the morning was in sight—
I cried, but in strange places, steppe and firth
I have not seen, through alien grief and mirth;
And never shall one room contain me quite
Who in so many rooms first saw the light,
Child of all...Read more of this...
by
Anne Killigrew
WHile yet it was the Empire of the Night,
And Stars still check'r'd Darkness with their Light,
From Temples round the cheerful Bells did ring,
But with the Peales a churlish Storm did sing.
I slumbr'd; and the Heavens like things did show,
Like things which I had seen and heard below.
Playing on Harps Angels did singing fly,...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
SWEET flow’ret, pledge o’ meikle love,
And ward o’ mony a prayer,
What heart o’ stane wad thou na move,
Sae helpless, sweet, and fair?
November hirples o’er the lea,
Chill, on thy lovely form:
And gane, alas! the shelt’ring tree,
Should shield thee frae the storm.
May He who gives the rain to pour,
And wings the blast to blaw,
Protect thee frae...Read more of this...
by
Jonathan Swift
Stella this Day is thirty four,
(We shan't dispute a Year or more)
However Stella, be not troubled,
Although thy Size and Years are doubled,
Since first I saw Thee at Sixteen
The brightest Virgin on the Green,
So little is thy Form declin'd
Made up so largely in thy Mind.
Oh, woud it please the Gods to split
Thy Beauty, Size, and Years, and Wit,
No Age could...Read more of this...
by
Robert Southey
O my faithful Friend!
O early chosen, ever found the same,
And trusted and beloved! once more the verse
Long destin'd, always obvious to thine ear,
Attend indulgent....Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
I MET a Seer,
Passing the hues and objects of the world,
The fields of art and learning, pleasure, sense, To glean Eidólons.
Put in thy chants, said he,
No more the puzzling hour, nor day—nor segments, parts, put in,
Put first before the rest, as light for all, and entrance-song of all, That of
Eidólons.
Ever the...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
In numbers, and but these few,
I sing thy birth, oh JESU!
Thou pretty Baby, born here,
With sup'rabundant scorn here;
Who for thy princely port here,
Hadst for thy place
Of birth, a base
Out-stable for thy court here.
Instead of neat enclosures
Of interwoven osiers;
Instead of fragrant posies
Of daffadils and roses,
Thy cradle, kingly stranger,
As gospel tells,
Was nothing else,
But, here, a homely manger.
But we with silks, not...Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
Joy is a trick in the air; pleasure is merely
contemptible, the dangled
Carrot the ass follows to market or precipice;
But limitary pain -- the rock under the tower
and the hewn coping
That takes thunder at the head of the turret-
Terrible and real. Therefore a mindless dervish
carving himself
With knives will seem to have conquered the world.
The...Read more of this...
by
Christopher Smart
'Tis Nancy's birth-day--raise your strains,
Ye nymphs of the Parnassian plains,
And sing with more than usual glee
To Nancy, who was born for me.
Tell the blythe Graces as they bound,
Luxuriant in the buxom round;
They're not more elegantly free,
Than Nancy, who was born for me.
Tell royal Venus, tho' she rove,
The queen of the...Read more of this...
by
Paul Muldoon
Seven o'clock. The seventh day of the seventh month of the year.
No sooner have I got myself up in lime-green scrubs,
a sterile cap and mask,
and taken my place at the head of the table
than the windlass-woman ply their shears
and gralloch-grub
for a footling foot, then, warming to their task,
haul into the inestimable
realm of apple-blossoms and chanterelles and damsons and eel-spears
and...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Death and birth should dwell not near together:
Wealth keeps house not, even for shame, with dearth:
Fate doth ill to link in one brief tether
Death and birth.
Harsh the yoke that binds them, strange the girth
Seems that girds them each with each: yet whether
Death be best, who knows, or life on earth?
Ill the rose-red and the sable feather
Blend in one crown's...Read more of this...
by
Robert Southey
And wouldst thou seek the low abode
Where PEACE delights to dwell?
Pause Traveller on thy way of life!
With many a snare and peril rife
Is that long labyrinth of road:
Dark is the vale of years before
Pause Traveller on thy way!
Nor dare the dangerous path explore
Till old EXPERIENCE comes to lend his leading ray.
Not he who comes with lanthorn light
Shall guide thy...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
A PASTORAL UPON THE BIRTH OF PRINCE CHARLES:
PRESENTED TO THE KING, AND SET BY MR NIC. LANIERE
THE SPEAKERS: MIRTILLO, AMINTAS, AND AMARILLIS
AMIN. Good day, Mirtillo. MIRT. And to you no less;
And all fair signs lead on our shepherdess.
AMAR. With all white luck to you. MIRT. But say,
What news
Stirs in our sheep-walk? AMIN. None, save that my
ewes,
My wethers, lambs, and...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
Some glory in their birth, some in their skill,
Some in their wealth, some in their body's force,
Some in their garments though new-fangled ill,
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse;
And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure,
Wherein it finds a joy above the rest,
But these particulars are not my measure;
All these I better in one general best.
Thy love...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXLI. Fera stella (se 'l cielo ha forza in noi). TO PINE FOR HER IS BETTER THAN TO ENJOY HAPPINESS WITH ANY OTHER. Ill-omen'd was that star's malignant gleamThat ruled my hapless birth; and dim the mornThat darted on my infant eyes the beam;And harsh the wail, that told a man...Read more of this...
by
Phillis Wheatley
SAMUEL, Chap. xvii.
YE martial pow'rs, and all ye tuneful nine,
Inspire my song, and aid my high design.
The dreadful scenes and toils of war I write,
The ardent warriors, and the fields of fight:
You best remember, and you best can sing
The acts of heroes to the vocal string:
Resume the lays with which your sacred lyre,
Did then the poet and the sage...Read more of this...
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