Famous Companionship Poems by Famous Poets

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

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I Loved Thee Atthis in the Long Ago

by Bliss Carman
 (Sappho XXIII)
I loved thee, Atthis, in the long ago,
When the great oleanders were in flower
In the broad herded meadows full of sun.
And we would often at the fall of dusk
Wander together by the silver stream,
When the soft grass-heads were all wet with dew
And purple-misted in the fading light.
And joy I knew and sorrow at thy voice,
And the superb magnificence...Read more of this...

Coldness in Love

by D. H. Lawrence
And you remember, in the afternoon
The sea and the sky went grey, as if there had sunk
A flocculent dust on the floor of the world: the festoon
Of the sky sagged dusty as spider cloth,
And coldness clogged the sea, till it ceased to croon.

A dank, sickening scent came up from the grime
Of weed that blackened the shore, so that I recoiled
Feeling...Read more of this...

By The Pacific Ocean

by Joaquin Miller
Here room and kingly silence keep
Companionship in state austere;
The dignity of death is here,
The large, lone vastness of the deep.
Here toil has pitched his camp to rest:
The west is banked against the west.

Above yon gleaming skies of gold
One lone imperial peak is seen;
While gathered at his feet in green
Ten thousand foresters are told.
And all so still! so still the air
That...Read more of this...

Widows

by Louise Gluck
 My mother's playing cards with my aunt,
Spite and Malice, the family pastime, the game
my grandmother taught all her daughters.

Midsummer: too hot to go out.
Today, my aunt's ahead; she's getting the good cards.
My mother's dragging, having trouble with her concentration.
She can't get used to her own bed this summer.
She had no trouble last summer,
getting used to the floor. She learned...Read more of this...

Amidst the Flowers a Jug of Wine

by Li Bai
Amidst the flowers a jug of wine,

I pour alone lacking companionship.

So raising the cup I invite the Moon,

Then turn to my shadow which makes three of us.

Because the Moon does not know how to drink,

My shadow merely follows the movement of my body.

The moon has brought the shadow to keep me company a while,

The practice of mirth should keep pace...Read more of this...

Amidst the Flowers a Jug of Wine

by Li Po
 Amidst the flowers a jug of wine, 
I pour alone lacking companionship. 
So raising the cup I invite the Moon, 
Then turn to my shadow which makes three of us. 
Because the Moon does not know how to drink, 
My shadow merely follows the movement of my body. 
The moon has brought the shadow to keep me company a...Read more of this...

The Jolly Company

by Rupert Brooke
 The stars, a jolly company,
I envied, straying late and lonely;
And cried upon their revelry:
"O white companionship! You only
In love, in faith unbroken dwell,
Friends radiant and inseparable!"

Light-heart and glad they seemed to me
And merry comrades (EVEN SO
GOD OUT OF HEAVEN MAY LAUGH TO SEE
THE HAPPY CROWDS; AND NEVER KNOW
THAT IN HIS LONE OBSCURE DISTRESS
EACH WALKETH IN A WILDERNESS).

But I, remembering,...Read more of this...

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 22. The path by which we twain did go

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 The path by which we twain did go,
Which led by tracts that pleased us well,
Thro' four sweet years arose and fell,
From flower to flower, from snow to snow:
And we with singing cheer'd the way,
And, crown'd with all the season lent,
From April on to April went,
And glad at heart from May to May:
But where the path we walk'd began
To slant...Read more of this...

The Ghost Of The Past

by Thomas Hardy
 We two kept house, the Past and I,
The Past and I;
I tended while it hovered nigh,
Leaving me never alone.
It was a spectral housekeeping
Where fell no jarring tone,
As strange, as still a housekeeping
As ever has been known.

As daily I went up the stair,
And down the stair,
I did not mind the Bygone there --
The Present once to me;
Its moving meek companionship
I...Read more of this...

You And I

by Ehsan Sehgal
I want nothing else,
But a dream
That comes true
The dream of love,
Truth and purity of the affection,
And your loving companionship
That would fulfil the life
The place where you live
I heard that also
Looks like a dreamland
As it is my dream
I want to come and see
With the desire of;
You and I
Live and love
There
Together
Forever...Read more of this...

The Horses

by Edwin Muir
 Barely a twelvemonth after
The seven days war that put the world to sleep,
Late in the evening the strange horses came.
By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.
On the third day a...Read more of this...

Dawn

by Yosa Buson
 STILL as the holy of holies breathes the vast,
Within its crystal depths the stars grow dim;
Fire on the altar of the hills at last
 Burns on the shadowy rim.


Moment that holds all moments; white upon
The verge it trembles; then like mists of flowers
Break from the fairy fountain of the dawn
 The hues of many hours.


Thrown downward from that high...Read more of this...

Prairie-Grass Dividing The

by Walt Whitman
 THE prairie-grass dividing—its special odor breathing, 
I demand of it the spiritual corresponding, 
Demand the most copious and close companionship of men, 
Demand the blades to rise of words, acts, beings, 
Those of the open atmosphere, coarse, sunlit, fresh, nutritious,
Those that go their own gait, erect, stepping with freedom and command—leading, not
 following, 
Those with a never-quell’d audacity—those with...Read more of this...

A Lost Dream

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Ah, I have changed, I do not know
Why lonely hours affect me so.
In days of yore, this were not wont,
No loneliness my soul could daunt.
For me too serious for my age,
The weighty tome of hoary sage,
Until with puzzled heart astir,
One God-giv'n night, I dreamed of her.
I loved no woman, hardly knew
More of the sex that strong men woo
Than cloistered monk...Read more of this...

In Memoriam A. H. H.

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...Read more of this...

A Song

by Walt Whitman
 1
COME, I will make the continent indissoluble; 
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon; 
I will make divine magnetic lands, 
 With the love of comrades, 
 With the life-long love of comrades.

2
I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America, and along the
 shores
 of
 the great lakes,...Read more of this...

The Nurse

by Katharine Tynan
 Such innocent companionship 
Is hers, whether she wake or sleep, 
'Tis scarcely strange her face should wear 
The young child's grave and innocent air. 

All the night long she hath by her 
The quiet breathing, the soft stir, 
Nor knows how in that tender place 
The children's angels veil the face. 

She wakes at dawn with bird and child
To...Read more of this...

Companioned

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 I walked to-day, but not alone,
Adown a windy, sea-girt lea,
For memory, spendthrift of her charm,
Peopled the silent lands for me. 

The faces of old comradeship
In golden youth were round my way,
And in the keening wind I heard
The songs of many an orient day. 

And to me called, from out the pines
And woven grasses, voices dear,
As if from elfin lips...Read more of this...

Go Plant a Tree

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 God, what a joy it is to plant a tree, 
And from the sallow earth to watch it rise, 
Lifting its emerald branches to the skies 
In silent adoration; and to see 
Its strength and glory waxing with each spring. 
Yes, 'tis a goodly, and a gladsome thing 
To plant a tree. 

Nature has many marvels; but a tree...Read more of this...

Pipe Smoker

by Robert William Service
 Because I love the soothing weed
 And am of sober type,
I'd choose me for a friend in need
 A man who smokes a pipe.
A cove who hasn't much to say,
 And spits into the fire,
Puffing like me a pipe of clay,
 Corn-cob or briar.

A chap original of thought,
 With cheery point of view,
Who has of gumption quite a lot,
...Read more of this...

The Harper

by James Whitcomb Riley
 Like a drift of faded blossoms 
Caught in a slanting rain, 
His fingers glimpsed down the strings of his harp 
In a tremulous refrain:

Patter and tinkle, and drip and drip! 
Ah! but the chords were rainy sweet! 
And I closed my eyes and I bit my lip, 
As he played there in the street.

Patter, and drip, and tinkle! 
And...Read more of this...

Nos Immortales

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 Perhaps we go with wind and cloud and sun, 
Into the free companionship of air; 
Perhaps with sunsets when the day is done, 
All's one to me -- I do not greatly care; 
So long as there are brown hills -- and a tree 
Like a mad prophet in a land of dearth -- 
And I can lie and...Read more of this...

In The Night

by Stevie Smith
 I longed for companionship rather,
But my companions I always wished farther.
And now in the desolate night
I think only of the people i should like to bite....Read more of this...

Octaves

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I 

We thrill too strangely at the master's touch;
We shrink too sadly from the larger self
Which for its own completeness agitates
And undetermines us; we do not feel -- 
We dare not feel it yet -- the splendid shame
Of uncreated failure; we forget,
The while we groan, that God's accomplishment
Is always and unfailingly at hand. 

II 

Tumultuously void of a clean...Read more of this...

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