Famous Caring Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Caring poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous caring poems. These examples illustrate what a famous caring poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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105. Despondency: An Ode

by Robert Burns
 OPPRESS’D with grief, oppress’d with care,
A burden more than I can bear,
 I set me down and sigh;
O life! thou art a galling load,
Along a rough, a weary road,
 To wretches such as I!
Dim backward as I cast my view,
 What sick’ning scenes appear!
What sorrows yet may pierce me through,
 Too justly I may fear!
 Still caring, despairing,
 Must...Read more of this...

Asking For Roses

by Robert Frost
 A house that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master,
With doors that none but the wind ever closes,
Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster;
It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses.

I pass by that way in the gloaming with Mary;
'I wonder,' I say, 'who the owner of those is.'
'Oh, no one you know,' she answers me airy,
'But one we...Read more of this...

Death Of A Poet

by Barry Tebb
 for Wendy Oliver, who knew him

I am the sick animal you dream you are caring for

In the long avenues of night I cannot find a name

For the sickness except the despair of a poet sensing his veins

Silt up like the delta of a neglected river with none of the solace

Sidney Graham felt as he lay by Nessie’s side with...Read more of this...

To All That Love The Far And Blue

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 TO all that love the far and blue:
Whether, from dawn to eve, on foot
The fleeing corners ye pursue,
Nor weary of the vain pursuit;
Or whether down the singing stream,
Paddle in hand, jocund ye shoot,
To splash beside the splashing bream
Or anchor by the willow root:

Or, bolder, from the narrow shore
Put forth, that cedar ark to steer,
Among the seabirds and the roar
Of...Read more of this...

The Grindstone

by Robert Frost
 Having a wheel and four legs of its own
Has never availed the cumbersome grindstone
To get it anywhere that I can see.
These hands have helped it go, and even race;
Not all the motion, though, they ever lent,
Not all tke miles it may have thought it went,
Have got it one step from the starting place.
It stands beside the same old apple...Read more of this...

Lines by Taj Mahomed

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   There were Roses in the hedges, and Sunshine in the sky,
   Red Lilies in the sedges, where the water rippled by,
   A thousand Bulbuls singing, oh, how jubilant they were,
   And a thousand flowers flinging their sweetness on the air.

   But you, who sat beside me, had a shadow...Read more of this...

Freedom

by Helen Hunt Jackson
 he drank wine all night of the 
28th, and he kept thinking of her: 
the way she walked and talked and loved 
the way she told him things that seemed true 
but were not, and he knew the color of each 
of her dresses 
and her shoes-he knew the stock and curve of 
each heel 
as well as the...Read more of this...

Fall In My Men Fall In

by Henry Lawson
 The short hour's halt is ended, 
The red gone from the west, 
The broken wheel is mended, 
And the dead men laid to rest. 
Three days have we retreated 
The brave old Curse-and-Grin – 
Outnumbered and defeated – 
Fall in, my men, fall in. 

Poor weary, hungry sinners, 
Past caring and past fear, 
The camp-fires of the winners 
Are...Read more of this...

We Alone

by Alice Walker
We alone can devalue gold
by not caring
if it falls or rises
in the marketplace.
Wherever there is gold
there is a chain, you know,
and if your chain
is gold
so much the worse
for you.


Feathers, shells
and sea-shaped stones
are all as rare.


This could be our revolution:
to love what is plentiful
as much as
what's scarce. ...Read more of this...

Doc Hill

by Edgar Lee Masters
I went up and down the streets
Here and there by day and night,
Through all hours of the night caring for the poor who were sick.
Do you know why?
My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs.
And I turned to the people and poured out my love to them.
Sweet it was to see the crowds about the lawns on the...Read more of this...

To Four Psychoanalysts

by Barry Tebb
 Richard Chessick, John Gedo, James Grotstein and Vamik Voltan



What darknesses have you lit up for me

What depths of infinite space plumbed

With your finely honed probes

What days of unending distress lightened 

With your wisdom, skills and jouissance?

Conquistadores of the unconscious

For three decades how often have I come to you

And from your teachings gathered the manna

Of meaning eluding me alone in...Read more of this...

Vanity

by Robert William Service
 My tangoing seemed to delight her;
With me it was love at first sight.
I mentioned That I was a writer:
She asked me: "What is it you write?"
"Oh, only best-sellers," I told her.
Their titles? . . . She shook her blonde head;
The atmosphere seemed to grow colder:
Not one of my books had she read.

Oh, she was a beauty ensnaring,
And I was...Read more of this...

Maids In May

by Robert William Service
 Three maids there were in meadow bright,
The eldest less then seven;
Their eyes were dancing with delight,
And innocent as Heaven.

Wild flowers they wound with tender glee,
Their cheeks with rapture rosy;
All radiant they smiled at me,
When I besought a posy.

She gave me a columbine,
And one a poppy brought me;
The tiniest, with eyes ashine,
A simple daisy sought me.

And as I went my...Read more of this...

The Long Boat

by Stanley Kunitz
 When his boat snapped loose
from its mooring, under
the screaking of the gulls,
he tried at first to wave
to his dear ones on shore,
but in the rolling fog
they had already lost their faces.
Too tired even to choose
between jumping and calling,
somehow he felt absolved and free
of his burdens, those mottoes
stamped on his name-tag:
conscience, ambition, and all
that caring.
He was content to lie down
with...Read more of this...

The Conversation Of Prayer

by Dylan Thomas
 The conversation of prayers about to be said
By the child going to bed and the man on the stairs
Who climbs to his dying love in her high room,
The one not caring to whom in his sleep he will move
And the other full of tears that she will be dead,

Turns in the dark on the sound they know will arise
Into...Read more of this...

The Revealer

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 (ROOSEVELT)

He turned aside to see the carcase of the lion: and behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcase of the lion … And the men of the city said unto him, What is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion?—Judges, 14.


The palms of Mammon have disowned 
The gift of our complacency;...Read more of this...

My Centenarian

by Robert William Service
 A hundred years is a lot of living
I've often thought. and I'll know, maybe,
Some day if the gods are good in giving,
And grant me to turn the century.
Yet in all my eighty years of being
I've never known but one ancient man
Who actively feeling, hearing, seeing,
Survived t beyond the hundred span.

Thinking? No, I don't guess he pondered;
He had the brains...Read more of this...

Christmas in India

by Rudyard Kipling
 Dim dawn behind the tamerisks -- the sky is saffron-yellow --
 As the women in the village grind the corn,
And the parrots seek the riverside, each calling to his fellow
 That the Day, the staring Easter Day is born.
 Oh the white dust on the highway! Oh the stenches in the byway!
 Oh the clammy fog that hovers
 And...Read more of this...

A Boy in Church

by Robert Graves
 “Gabble-gabble,… brethren,… gabble-gabble!” 
My window frames forest and heather. 
I hardly hear the tuneful babble, 
Not knowing nor much caring whether 
The text is praise or exhortation,
Prayer or thanksgiving, or damnation. 

Outside it blows wetter and wetter, 
The tossing trees never stay still. 
I shift my elbows to catch better 
The full round sweep of heathered hill.
The tortured copse...Read more of this...

Pasa Thalassa Thalassa

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 “The sea is everywhere the sea.”


I

Gone—faded out of the story, the sea-faring friend I remember? 
Gone for a decade, they say: never a word or a sign. 
Gone with his hard red face that only his laughter could wrinkle, 
Down where men go to be still, by the old way of the sea. 

Never again will he come, with...Read more of this...

The Second Voyage

by Rudyard Kipling
 We've sent our little Cupids all ashore --
 They were frightened, they were tired, they were cold:
Our sails of silk and purple go to store,
 And we've cut away our mast of beaten gold
  (Foul weather!)
Oh 'tis hemp and singing pine for to stand against the brine,
 But Love he is our master as of old!

The sea has...Read more of this...

Lois Spears

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Here lies the body of Lois Spears,
Born Lois Fluke, daughter of Willard Fluke,
Wife of Cyrus Spears,
Mother of Myrtle and Virgil Spears,
Children with clear eyes and sound limbs --
(I was born blind)
I was the happiest of women
As wife, mother and housekeeper,
Caring for my loved ones,
And making my home
A place of order and bounteous hospitality:
For I went about the rooms,
And about...Read more of this...

safe-home

by Rg Gregory
 don't be so lazy maisie maisie
don't be so lazy please
i know it's snowing
and a hard wind's blowing
but nobody knows
at the rate we're going
what time we'll get home tonight

keep to the path for me timothy timothy
keep to the path for me please
my legs are aching
and my poor back's breaking
and everyone knows
the track you're taking
will not fetch us home tonight

i know...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 04: 06: Cinema

by Conrad Aiken
 As evening falls,
The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls
Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving,
Moving like music, secret and rich and warm.
How shall we live to-night, where shall we turn?
To what new light or darkness yearn?
A thousand winding stairs lead down before us;
And one by one in myriads we descend
By lamplit flowered walls, long balustrades,
Through half-lit...Read more of this...

In Memoriam 131: O Living Will That Shalt Endure

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 O living will that shalt endure
When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Rise in the spiritual rock,
Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure, 

That we may lift from out of dust
A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquer'd years
To one that with us works, and trust, 

With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can...Read more of this...

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