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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 flood of waters. Abram and that swain 
Who erst exil'd in Midian did sing 
The world from chaos rising, and the birth 
Of various nature in the earth, or sea, 
Or element of air, or heav'n above. 


This is that light which on fair Zion hill 
Descending gradual, in full radiance beam'd 
O'er Canaan's happy land. Her fav'rite seers 
Had intercourse divine with this pure source, 
And oft from them a stream of light did flow, 
To each adjoining vale and desert pl...Read more of this...
by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry



...nt—and it I teach again. 

(Democracy! while weapons were everywhere aim’d at your breast, 
I saw you serenely give birth to immortal children—saw in dreams your dilating form; 
Saw you with spreading mantle covering the world.)

19
I will confront these shows of the day and night! 
I will know if I am to be less than they! 
I will see if I am not as majestic as they! 
I will see if I am not as subtle and real as they! 
I will see if I am to be less generous than they...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...ajeunesse, the son of Basil the blacksmith,
Who was a mighty man in the village, and honored of all men;
For, since the birth of time, throughout all ages and nations,
Has the craft of the smith been held in repute by the people.
Basil was Benedict's friend. Their children from earliest childhood
Grew up together as brother and sister; and Father Felician,
Priest and pedagogue both in the village, had taught them their letters
Out of the selfsame book, with the hymns ...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ugh a primeval God:
The sacred seasons might not be disturb'd.
Therefore the operations of the dawn
Stay'd in their birth, even as here 'tis told.
Those silver wings expanded sisterly,
Eager to sail their orb; the porches wide
Open'd upon the dusk demesnes of night
And the bright Titan, phrenzied with new woes,
Unus'd to bend, by hard compulsion bent
His spirit to the sorrow of the time;
And all along a dismal rack of clouds,
Upon the boundaries of day and night,
He s...Read more of this...
by Keats, John
...His mind would half exult and half regret: 
With more capacity for love than earth 
Bestows on most of mortal mould and birth, 
His early dreams of good outstripp'd the truth, 
And troubled manhood follow'd baffled youth; 
With thought of years in phantom chase misspent, 
And wasted powers for better purpose lent; 
And fiery passions that had pour'd their wrath 
In hurried desolation o'er his path, 
And left the better feelings all at strife 
In wild reflection o'er his storm...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)



..., and if faced with courage,
Need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness...Read more of this...
by Angelou, Maya
...dance not without song, resound 
His praise, who out of darkness called up light. 
Air, and ye Elements, the eldest birth 
Of Nature's womb, that in quaternion run 
Perpetual circle, multiform; and mix 
And nourish all things; let your ceaseless change 
Vary to our great Maker still new praise. 
Ye Mists and Exhalations, that now rise 
From hill or steaming lake, dusky or gray, 
Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold, 
In honour to the world's great Author ri...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...from all those orbs: in thee, 
Not in themselves, all their known virtue appears 
Productive in herb, plant, and nobler birth 
Of creatures animate with gradual life 
Of growth, sense, reason, all summed up in Man. 
With what delight could I have walked thee round, 
If I could joy in aught, sweet interchange 
Of hill, and valley, rivers, woods, and plains, 
Now land, now sea and shores with forest crowned, 
Rocks, dens, and caves! But I in none of these 
Find place or ref...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...n? 
I hasten to inform him or her, it is just as lucky to die, and I know it. 

I pass death with the dying, and birth with the new-wash’d babe, and am not
 contain’d between my hat and boots;
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every one good; 
The earth good, and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good. 

I am not an earth, nor an adjunct of an earth; 
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as
 myself; 
(...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...rence or denial; 
The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas’d, the illiterate person, are not
 denied;

The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar’s tramp, the drunkard’s stagger,
 the
 laughing party of mechanics, 
The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple,
The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back
 from
 the
 town, 
They pass—I also pass—anything passes—none can be interd...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...nd,
O God, how long ago.

For the end of the world was long ago,
And all we dwell to-day
As children of some second birth,
Like a strange people left on earth
After a judgment day.

For the end of the world was long ago,
When the ends of the world waxed free,
When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves,
And the sun drowned in the sea.

When Caesar's sun fell out of the sky
And whoso hearkened right
Could only hear the plunging
Of the nations in the night.

When th...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K
...ut durst not tell. 
"Much I misdoubt this wayward boy 
Will one day work me more annoy: 
I never loved him from his birth, 
And — but his arm is little worth, 
And scarcely in the chase could cope 
With timid fawn or antelope, 
Far less would venture into strife 
Where man contends for fame and life — 
I would not trust that look or tone: 
No — nor the blood so near my own. 

That blood — he hath not heard — no more — 
I'll watch him closer than before. 
He is an ...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...stage.
2.57 But yet me let me relate, before I go,
2.58 The sins and dangers I am subject to:
2.59 From birth stained, with Adam's sinful fact,
2.60 From thence I 'gan to sin, as soon as act;
2.61 A perverse will, a love to what's forbid;
2.62 A serpent's sting in pleasing face lay hid;
2.63 A lying tongue as soon as it could speak
2.64 And fifth Commandment do daily break;
2.65 Oft stubborn, peevish, sullen, pout, and cry;
2.66 The...Read more of this...
by Bradstreet, Anne
...t in my secret book with so much care
I write you, this one here and that one there,
Marking the time and order of your birth?
How, with a fancy so unkind to mirth,
A sense so hard, a style so worn and bare,
Look ye for any welcome anywhere
From any shelf or heart-home on the earth? 
Should others ask you this, say then I yearn'd
To write you such as once, when I was young,
Finding I should have loved and thereto turn'd.
'Twere something yet to live again among
The gentle...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...

     A chieftain's daughter seemed the maid;
     Her satin snood, her silken plaid,
     Her golden brooch, such birth betrayed.
     And seldom was a snood amid
     Such wild luxuriant ringlets hid,
     Whose glossy black to shame might bring
     The plumage of the raven's wing;
     And seldom o'er a breast so fair
     Mantled a plaid with modest care,
     And never brooch the folds combined
     Above a heart more good and kind.
     Her kindness and h...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...al, Mankind's never-failing Friend,
His Guide to Happiness on high -- and see!
'Tis come, the Glorious Morn! the second Birth
Of Heaven, and Earth! -- awakening Nature hears
Th'Almighty Trumpet's Voice, and starts to Life,
Renew'd, unfading. Now, th'Eternal Scheme,
That Dark Perplexity, that Mystic Maze,
Which Sight cou'd never trace, nor Heart conceive,
To Reason's Eye, refin'd, clears up apace.
Angels, and Men, astonish'd, pause -- and dread
To travel thro' the Dept...Read more of this...
by Thomson, James
...ness fell from the awakened Earth.
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
Flamed above crimson clouds, & at the birth
Of light, the Ocean's orison arose
To which the birds tempered their matin lay,
All flowers in field or forest which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray
Burned slow & inconsumably, & sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air,
And in succession due, did Co...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ight 
Its way back into earth, and fire, and air; 
But the unnatural balsams merely blight 
What nature made him at his birth, as bare 
As the mere million's base unmarried clay — 
Yet all his spices but prolong decay. 

XII 

He's dead — and upper earth with him has done; 
He's buried; save the undertaker's bill, 
Or lapidary scrawl, the world is gone 
For him, unless he left a German will: 
But where's the proctor who will ask his son? 
In whom his qualities are reignin...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...uttermost Thule produces,
High with heart-gladdening stores fills Amalthea her horn.
Fortune wedded to talent gives birth there to children immortal,
Suckled in liberty's arms, flourish the arts there of joy.
With the image of life the eyes by the sculptor are ravished,
And by the chisel inspired, speaks e'en the sensitive stone.
Skies artificial repose on slender Ionian columns,
And a Pantheon includes all that Olympus contains.
Light as the rainbow's spring ...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von
...be free,
Who took our desperate chance, and fought and won
Under a colonist called Washington?

One does not lose one's birthright, it appears.
I had been English then for many years.

X 
We went down to Cambridge, 
Cambridge in the spring. 
In a brick court at twilight 
We heard the thrushes sing, 
And we went to evening service 
In the chapel of the King. 
The library of Trinity, 
The quadrangle of Clare, 
John bought a pipe from Bacon, 
And I acquired there...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer

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