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Famous Changeless Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...r a hat

fate per a somewhat more than less
emancipated evening
had in return for consciousness
endowed him with a changeless grin

whereon a dozen staunch and Meal
citizens did graze at pause
then fired by hypercivic zeal
sought newer pastures or because

swaddled with a frozen brook
of pinkest vomit out of eyes
which noticed nobody he looked
as if he did not care to rise

one hand did nothing on the vest
its wideflung friend clenched weakly dirt
while the...Read more of this...
by Cummings, Edward Estlin (E E)



...In a dream I meet
my dead friend. He has,
I know, gone long and far,
and yet he is the same
for the dead are changeless.
They grow no older.
It is I who have changed,
grown strange to what I was.
Yet I, the changed one,
ask: "How you been?"
He grins and looks at me.
"I been eating peaches
off some mighty fine trees."...Read more of this...
by Berry, Wendell
...he move the more when wan moonlight 
Streamed through the pillows for a little while, 
And lighted up the white Queen's changeless smile.

Nought noted he the shallow-flowing sea 
As step by step it set the wrack a-swim; 
The yellow torchlight nothing noted he 
Wherein with fluttering gown and half-bared limb 
The temple damsels sung their midnight hymn;
And nought the doubled stillness of the fane 
When they were gone and all was hushed again.

But when the waves had touched...Read more of this...
by Morris, William
...ted on the star-lit golden bough,
Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.

At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit
Flames that no ****** feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot singe...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler
...reigns above, He reigns alone; 
Systems burn out and have his throne; 
Fair mists of seraphs melt and fall 
Around Him, changeless amid all, 
Ancient of Days, whose days go on.

XVIII

He reigns below, He reigns alone, 
And, having life in love forgone 
Beneath the crown of sovran thorns, 
He reigns the Jealous God. Who mourns 
Or rules with Him, while days go on?

XIX

By anguish which made pale the sun, 
I hear Him charge his saints that none 
Among his creatures anywhere 
...Read more of this...
by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett



...ervent hope, through storm and foam,
Through wind and ocean's roar,
To reach, at last, the eternal home,
The steadfast, changeless, shore!'...Read more of this...
by Brontë, Emily
...s orbit,
And that, concealed in the bud, teaches the point how to move,
When necessity's silent law, the steadfast, the changeless,
Stirred up billows more free, e'en in the bosom of man,--
When the sense, unerring, and true as the hand of the dial,
Pointed only to truth, only to what was eternal?

Then no profane one was seen, then no initiate was met with,
And what as living was felt was not then sought 'mongst the dead;
Equally clear to every breast was the precept eternal...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von
...sh up, nought vainly scribble.
The world shall stand before thee, then,
As seen by Albert Durer's ken,
In manliness and changeless life,
In inward strength, with firmness rife.
Fair Nature's Genius by the hand
Shall lead thee on through every land,
Teach thee each different life to scan,
Show thee the wondrous ways of man,
His shifts, confusions, thrustings, and drubbings,
Pushings, tearings, pressings, and rubbings;
The varying madness of the crew,
The anthill's ravings brin...Read more of this...
by von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...is what my heart first awaking
Whispered the world was; morning light is she.
Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless;
Fain would fling the net, and fain have her free.

Happy happy time, when the white star hovers
Low over dim fields fresh with bloomy dew,
Near the face of dawn, that draws athwart the darkness,
Threading it with colour, as yewberries the yew.
Thicker crowd the shades while the grave East deepens
Glowing, and with crimson a long cloud swells.
Mai...Read more of this...
by Meredith, George
...t a lonely mind,
Befitting emblems of adversity.


 III. My Table

Two heavy trestles, and a board
Where Sato's gift, a changeless sword,
By pen and paper lies,
That it may moralise
My days out of their aimlessness.
A bit of an embroidered dress
Covers its wooden sheath.
Chaucer had not drawn breath
When it was forged. In Sato's house,
Curved like new moon, moon-luminous
It lay five hundred years.
Yet if no change appears
No moon; only an aching heart
Conceives a changeless w...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler
...nd - 
Over dale and upland stretching out behind this mountain land. 


``Lovely Being, can a mortal, weary of this changeless scene, 

Cross these cloudy summits to the land where man hath never been? 
Can he find a pathway leading through that wildering mass of pines, 
So that he shall reach the country where ethereal glory shines; 
So that he may glance at waters never dark with coming ships; 
Hearing round him gentle language floating from angelic lips; 
Castin...Read more of this...
by Kendall, Henry
...u how young we were!
Your hair, upon that music, seemed to stir.
Let us return there, let us return, you and I;
Through changeless streets our memories retain
Let us go back again. 

 III. 

 Mist goes up from the rain steeped earth, and clings
Ghostly with lamplight among drenched maple trees.
We walk in silence and see how the lamplight flings
Fans of shadow upon it the music's mournful pleas
Die out behind us, the door is closed at last,
A net of silver silence is softly c...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad
...halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.

So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,...Read more of this...
by Neruda, Pablo
...know that men’s applause 
And women’s envy savor so much of dust
That I go hungry, having at home no fare 
But the same changeless bread that I may swallow 
Only with tears and prayers? Who told you that? 
You know that if I read, and read alone, 
Too many books that no men yet have written,
I may go blind, or worse? You know yourself, 
Of all insistent and insidious creatures, 
To be the one to save me, and to guard 
For me their flaming language? And you know 
That if I giv...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...the placid cheek,
And--but for that sad shrouded eye,
That fires not, wins not, weeps not, now,
And but for that chill, changeless brow,

Where cold Obstruction's apathy
Appals the gazing mourner's heart,
As if to him it could impart
The doom he dreads, yet dwells upon;
Yes, but for these and these alone,
Some moments, aye, one treacherous hour,
He still might doubt the Tyrant's power;
So fair, so calm, so softly sealed,
The first, last look by Death revealed!
Such is the asp...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...r when God sendeth sorrow, it doth bless. 

50
The world comes not to an end: her city-hives
Swarm with the tokens of a changeless trade,
With rolling wheel, driver and flagging jade,
Rich men and beggars, children, priests and wives.
New homes on old are set, as lives on lives;
Invention with invention overlaid:
But still or tool or toy or book or blade
Shaped for the hand, that holds and toils and strives. 
The men to-day toil as their fathers taught,
With little better'd m...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...shore Alp mutely mused, 
And woo'd the freshness night diffused. 
There shrinks no ebb in that tideless sea, [3] 
Which changeless rolls eternally; 
So that wildest of waves, in their angriest mood, 
Scarce break on the bounds of the land for a rood; 
And the powerless moon beholds them flow, 
Heedless if she come or go: 
Calm or high, in main or bay, 
On their course she hath no sway. 
The rock unworn its base doth bare, 
And looks o'er the surf, but it comes not there; 
And...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...tales for the telling, that Earth shall be holpen at least,
If the Gods think scorn of its fairness, as they sit at the changeless feast.'
"Then somewhat smiled Allfather; and he spake: 'So let it be!
The doom thereof abideth; the doom of me and thee.
Yet long shall the time pass over ere thy waking day be born:
Fare forth, and forget and be weary 'neath the Sting of the Sleepful Thorn!'

'So I came to the head of Hindfell and the ruddy shields and white,
And the wall of the ...Read more of this...
by Morris, William
...hath passed the human harvest 
To its garner green and low. 

But the trees the gleeman planted, 
Through the changes, changeless stand; 
As the marble calm of Tadmor 
Mocks the deserts shifting sand. 

Still the level moon at rising 
Silvers o'er each stately shaft; 
Still beneath them, half in shadow, 
Singing, glides the pleasure craft; 

Still beneath them, arm-enfolded, 
Love and Youth together stray; 
While, as heart to heart beats faster, 
More and more their feet del...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...udgment Day,
The ghosts of ruined ships will rise
In sea and strait and bay.
Though they have lain for ages
Beneath the changeless flood,
They shall be white as silver,
But one -- shall be like blood....Read more of this...
by Kilmer, Joyce

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry