Famous Cease Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Olive Branch

by Robert Herrick
 Sadly I walk'd within the field,
To see what comfort it would yield;
And as I went my private way,
An olive-branch before me lay;
And seeing it, I made a stay,
And took it up, and view'd it; then
Kissing the omen, said Amen;
Be, be it so, and let this be
A divination unto me;
That in short time my woes shall cease,
And love shall crown...Read more of this...

For the Anniversary of My Death

by W S Merwin
Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star
Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And then shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing...Read more of this...

The Muses Son

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [Goethe quotes the beginning of this song in 
his Autobiography, as expressing the manner in which his poetical 
effusions used to pour out from him.]

THROUGH field and wood to stray,
And pipe my tuneful lay,--

'Tis thus my days are pass'd;
And all keep tune with me,
And move in harmony,

And so on, to the last.

To wait I scarce have power
The garden's earliest...Read more of this...

Farewell Frost Or Welcome Spring

by Robert Herrick
 Fled are the frosts, and now the fields appear
Reclothed in fresh and verdant diaper;
Thaw'd are the snows; and now the lusty Spring
Gives to each mead a neat enamelling;
The palms put forth their gems, and every tree
Now swaggers in her leafy gallantry.
The while the Daulian minstrel sweetly sings
With warbling notes her Terean sufferings.
--What gentle winds perspire! as if here
Never had...Read more of this...

A Song Of The Sandbags

by Robert William Service
 No, Bill, I'm not a-spooning out no patriotic tosh
 (The cove be'ind the sandbags ain't a death-or-glory cuss).
And though I strafes 'em good and 'ard I doesn't 'ate the Boche,
 I guess they're mostly decent, just the same as most of us.
I guess they loves their 'omes and kids as much as you or me;
 And just the same...Read more of this...

Rudiger - A Ballad

by Robert Southey
 Author Note: Divers Princes and Noblemen being assembled in a beautiful and fair
Palace, which was situate upon the river Rhine, they beheld a boat or
small barge make toward the shore, drawn by a Swan in a silver chain,
the one end fastened about her neck, the other to the vessel; and in it
an unknown soldier, a man of a comely...Read more of this...

Two Sonnets In Memory

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 (Nicola Sacco -- Bartolomeo Vanzetti)
Executed August 23, 1927


I

As men have loved their lovers in times past
And sung their wit, their virtue and their grace,
So have we loved sweet Justice to the last,
That now lies here in an unseemly place.
The child will quit the cradle and grow wise
And stare on beauty till his senses drown;
Yet shall be seen no more...Read more of this...

Weary

by Robert William Service
 Some praise the Lord for Light,
 The living spark;
I thank God for the Night
 The healing dark.
When wearily I lie,
 With aching sight,
With what thanksgiving I
 Turn out the light!

When to night's drowsy deep
 Serene I sink,
How glad am I to sleep,
 To cease to think!
From care and fret set free,
 In sweet respite,
With joy I peacefully
 Turn out...Read more of this...

A Song of Defeat

by G K Chesterton
 The line breaks and the guns go under, 
The lords and the lackeys ride the plain; 
I draw deep breaths of the dawn and thunder, 
And the whole of my heart grows young again. 
For our chiefs said 'Done,' and I did not deem it; 
Our seers said 'Peace,' and it was not peace; 
Earth will grow worse till...Read more of this...

Deaths And Entrances

by Dylan Thomas
 On almost the incendiary eve
 Of several near deaths,
When one at the great least of your best loved
 And always known must leave
Lions and fires of his flying breath,
 Of your immortal friends
Who'd raise the organs of the counted dust
 To shoot and sing your praise,
One who called deepest down shall hold his peace
 That cannot sink or cease
...Read more of this...

The September Gale

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 I'M not a chicken; I have seen 
Full many a chill September, 
And though I was a youngster then, 
That gale I well remember; 
The day before, my kite-string snapped, 
And I, my kite pursuing, 
The wind whisked off my palm-leaf hat; 
For me two storms were brewing!

It came as quarrels sometimes do, 
When married folks get clashing;
There was...Read more of this...

When Roses cease to bloom Sir

by Emily Dickinson
 When Roses cease to bloom, Sir,
And Violets are done --
When Bumblebees in solemn flight
Have passed beyond the Sun --
The hand that paused to gather
Upon this Summer's day
Will idle lie -- in Auburn --
Then take my flowers -- pray!...Read more of this...

Cease, if ye are my friends, all vain discourse, and,

by Omar Khayyam
Cease, if ye are my friends, all vain discourse, and,
to relieve my mental pains pour out the wine. And
when to dust my frame returns, the self-same dust
collect and make it brick to stop some crevice in the
tavern wall....Read more of this...

Apostasy

by Charlotte Bronte
 THIS last denial of my faith, 
Thou, solemn Priest, hast heard; 
And, though upon my bed of death,
I call not back a word.
Point not to thy Madonna, Priest,­
Thy sightless saint of stone; 
She cannot, from this burning breast,
Wring one repentant moan. 

Thou say'st, that when a sinless child, 
I duly bent the knee,
And prayed to what in marble smiled...Read more of this...

When I have Fears that I may cease to be

by John Keats
WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be 
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain  
Before high pil`d books in charact'ry  
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain; 
When I behold upon the night's starr'd face 5 
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance  
And feel that I may never live to trace 
Their...Read more of this...

The Mountain And The Lake

by Robert William Service
 I know a mountain thrilling to the stars,
Peerless and pure, and pinnacled with snow;
Glimpsing the golden dawn o'er coral bars,
Flaunting the vanisht sunset's garnet glow;
Proudly patrician, passionless, serene;
Soaring in silvered steeps where cloud-surfs break;
Virgin and vestal -- Oh, a very Queen!
And at her feet there dreams a quiet lake.

My lake adores my mountain -- well I know,
For I have...Read more of this...

The Last Word

by Matthew Arnold
 Creep into thy narrow bed,
Creep, and let no more be said!
Vain thy onset! all stands fast.
Thou thyself must break at last!

Let the long contention cease!
Geese are swans, and swans are geese.
Let them have it how they will!
Thou art tired; best be still!

They out-talked thee, hissed thee, tore thee?
Better men fared thus before thee;
Fired their ringing shot and passed,
Hotly charged...Read more of this...

Requiescat

by Dorothy Parker
 Fair is her cottage in its place,
Where yon broad water sweetly slowly glides.
It sees itself from thatch to base
Dream in the sliding tides. 

And fairer she, but ah how soon to die!
Her quiet dream of life this hour may cease.
Her peaceful being slowly passes by
To some more perfect peace....Read more of this...

Ye, who cease not to drink on common days,

by Omar Khayyam
Ye, who cease not to drink on common days,
Do not on Friday quit your drinking ways;
Adopt my creed, and count all days the same,
Be worshippers of God, and not of days....Read more of this...

In Memoriam A. H. H.: The Prelude

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows...Read more of this...

Three Counsellors

by George William Russell
 IT was the fairy of the place,
Moving within a little light,
Who touched with dim and shadowy grace
The conflict at its fever height.


It seemed to whisper “Quietness,”
Then quietly itself was gone:
Yet echoes of its mute caress
Were with me as the years went on.


It was the warrior within
Who called “Awake, prepare for fight:
Yet lose not memory in the din:
Make of thy...Read more of this...

If I should cease to bring a Rose

by Emily Dickinson
 If I should cease to bring a Rose
Upon a festal day,
'Twill be because beyond the Rose
I have been called away --

If I should cease to take the names
My buds commemorate --
'Twill be because Death's finger
Claps my murmuring lip!...Read more of this...

Ode On The Insurrection In Candia

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 STR. 1

I laid my laurel-leaf
At the white feet of grief,
Seeing how with covered face and plumeless wings,
With unreverted head
Veiled, as who mourns his dead,
Lay Freedom couched between the thrones of kings,
A wearied lion without lair,
And bleeding from base wounds, and vexed with alien air.

STR. 2

Who was it, who, put poison to thy mouth,
Who lulled with craft or chant thy...Read more of this...

The Jewish Cemetery at Newport

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,
Close by the street of this fair seaport town,
Silent beside the never-silent waves,
At rest in all this moving up and down!

The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep
Wave their broad curtains in the southwind's breath,
While underneath these leafy tents they keep
The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.

And these sepulchral stones,...Read more of this...

Sonnet XI

by William Shakespeare
 As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou growest
In one of thine, from that which thou departest;
And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestowest
Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest.
Herein lives wisdom, beauty and increase:
Without this, folly, age and cold decay:
If all were minded so, the times should cease
And threescore year would make the world away.
Let...Read more of this...

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