Famous Born Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Born poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous born poems. These examples illustrate what a famous born poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Rudyard Kipling
We've drunk to the Queen -- God bless her! --
We've drunk to our mothers' land;
We've drunk to our English brother,
(But he does not understand);
We've drunk to the wide creation,
And the Cross swings low for the mom,
Last toast, and of Obligation,
A health to the Native-born!
They change their skies above them,
But not their hearts that roam!
We...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Days changed to nights, ere you were born, or I,
And on its business ever rolled the sky;
See you tread gently on this dust—perchance
'Twas once the apple of some beauty's eye....Read more of this...
by
Yves Bonnefoy
I woke up, it was the house where I was born.
It was raining softly in all the rooms,
I went from one to another, looking at
The water that shone on the mirrors
Piled up everywhere, some broken or even
Pushed between the furniture and the walls.
It was from these reflections that sometimes a face
Would emerge, laughing, of a gentleness
That was different...Read more of this...
by
Bertolt Brecht
To the cities I came in a time of disorder
That was ruled by hunger.
I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar
And then I joined in their rebellion.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.
I ate my dinners between the battles,
I lay down to sleep among the murderers,
I didn't care for much...Read more of this...
by
Hafez
All things born to break
In meek sacrifice
For another’s sake,
All man’s striving vain,
Lavish’d as the price
Of the heart’s hid pain—
Long, O spirit-bird,
Of thy lonely fear
Hast thou sung unheard
In hope’s moon-lit wood,
While no creature near
Knew nor understood.
...Read more of this...
by
Yves Bonnefoy
I woke up, it was the house where I was born,
Sea foam splashed against the rock,
Not a single bird, only the wind to open and close the wave,
Everywhere on the horizon the smell of ashes,
As if the hills were hiding a fire
That somewhere else was burning up a universe.
I went onto the veranda, the table was set,
The water knocked...Read more of this...
by
Yves Bonnefoy
I remember, it was a morning, in summer,
The window was half-open, I drew near,
I could see my father at the end of the garden.
He was motionless, looking for something,
I could not tell what, or where, beyond the world,
His body was already bent over, but his gaze
Was lifted toward the unaccomplished or the impossible.
He had put aside his pick and...Read more of this...
by
Aleksandr Blok
He, who was born in stagnant year
Does not remember own way.
We, kids of Russia's years of fear,
Remember every night and day.
Years that burned everything to ashes!
Do you bring madness or grace?
The war's and freedom's fire flashes
Left bloody light on every face.
We are struck dumb: the toxsin's pressure
Has made us tightly close lips.
In living hearts, once full of...Read more of this...
by
Fernando Pessoa
Something in me was born before the stars
And saw the sun begin from far away.
Our yellow, local day on its wont jars,
For it hath communed with an absolute day.
Through my Thought's night, as a worn robe's heard trail
That I have never seen, I drag this past
That saw the Possible like a dawn grow pale
On the lost night before it, mute...Read more of this...
by
Fernando Pessoa
We are born at sunset and we die ere morn,
And the whole darkness of the world we know,
How can we guess its truth, to darkness born,
The obscure consequence of absent glow?
Only the stars do teach us light. We grasp
Their scattered smallnesses with thoughts that stray,
And, though their eyes look through night's complete mask,
Yet they speak not the features of the...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Comme le matin rit sur les roses.")
{Bk. I. xii.}
The dawn is smiling on the dew that covers
The tearful roses—lo, the little lovers—
That kiss the buds and all the flutterings
In jasmine bloom, and privet, of white wings
That go and come, and fly, and peep, and hide
...Read more of this...
by
Mark Van Doren
Equality is absolute or no.
Nothing between can stand. We are the sons
Of the same sire, or madness breaks and runs
Through the rude world. Ridiculous our woe
If single pity does not love it. So
Our separate fathers love us. No man shuns
His poorest child's embrace. We are the sons
Of such, or ground and sky...Read more of this...
by
Kobayashi Issa
His death poem:
A bath when you're born,
a bath when you die,
how stupid....Read more of this...
by
Yves Bonnefoy
I woke up, but I was travelling,
The train had rolled throughout the night,
It was now going toward huge clouds
That were standing, packed together, down there,
Dawn rent from time to time by forks of lightning.
I watched the advent of the world
In the bushes of the embankment; and all at once
That other fire below a field
Of stones and vines. The wind,...Read more of this...
by
Wendell Berry
The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,
whose hands reach into the ground and sprout
to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death
yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down
in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.
His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.
What miraculous...Read more of this...
by
Yves Bonnefoy
Another time.
It was still night. Water slid
Silently on the black ground,
And I knew that my only task would be
To remember, and I laughed,
I bent down, I took from the mud
A pile of branches and leaves,
I lifted up the whole dripping mass
In arms I held close to my heart.
What to do with this wood where
The sound of color rose from...Read more of this...
by
Yves Bonnefoy
In the same dream
I am lying in the hollow of a boat,
My forehead and eyes against the curved planks
Where I can hear the undercurrents
Striking the bottom of the boat.
All at once, the prow rises up,
And I think that we’ve come to the estuary,
But I keep my eyes against the wood
That smells of tar and glue.
Too vast, too luminous the...Read more of this...
by
Yves Bonnefoy
And then life; and once again
A house where I was born. Around us
The granary above what once had been a church,
The gentle play of shadow from the dawn clouds,
And in us that smell of the dry straw
That had seemed to be waiting for us
From the moment the last sack, of wheat or rye,
Had been brought in so long ago,
In...Read more of this...
by
Mari Evans
Who
can be born black
and not
sing
the wonder of it
the joy
the
challenge
And/to come together
in a coming togetherness
vibrating with the fires of pure knowing
reeling with power
ringing with the sound above sound above sound
to explode/in the majesty of our oneness
our comingtogether
in a comingtogetherness
...Read more of this...
by
Yves Bonnefoy
And then the day came
When I heard the extraordinary lines in Keats,
The evocation of Ruth “when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn.”
I did not need to search for the meaning
Of these words,
For it was in me since childhood,
I had only to recognize and to love it
When it came back from the depths of my life.
What...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Give me the scorn of the stars and a peak defiant;
Wail of the pines and a wind with the shout of a giant;
Night and a trail unknown and a heart reliant.
Give me to live and love in the old, bold fashion;
A soldier's billet at night and a soldier's ration;
A heart that leaps to the fight with a soldier's passion.
For...Read more of this...
by
Yves Bonnefoy
I open my eyes, yes, it’s the house where I was born,
Exactly as it was and nothing more.
The same small dining room whose window
Gives onto a peach tree that never grows.
A man and a woman are seated
At this window, facing one another,
They are talking, for once. And the child
Sees them from the end of the garden, watches them,
He knows...Read more of this...
by
Denise Duhamel
We must have clamored for the same mother, hurried for
the same womb.
I know it now as I read that my birthday is his.
Since the first time I saw his picture, I sensed something—
and with a fierce bonding and animosity
began following his career.
Look where I am and look where he is!
There is a book documenting his every haircut
while...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Cover him over with daisies white
And eke with the poppies red,
[Pg 259]Sit with me here by his couch to-night,
For the First-Born, Love, is dead.
Poor little fellow, he seemed so fair
As he lay in my jealous arms;
Silent and cold he is lying there
Stripped of his darling charms.
Lusty and strong he had grown forsooth,
Sweet with an infinite grace,
Proud in the...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
THE TIME has gone by.
The child is dead.
The child was never even born.
Why go on? Why so much as begin?
How can we turn the clock back now
And not laugh at each other
As ashes laugh at ashes?...Read more of this...
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