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Famous Constancy Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...Heaven! we would wait and wait 
 Through Time and to Eternity!
Ah Heaven! we could conquer Fate
 With more than Godlike constancy
I cut the date upon a tree --
 Here stand the clumsy figures still: 
"10-7-85, A.D."
 Damp with the mist of Jakko Hill.

What came of high resolve and great,
 And until Death fidelity!
Whose horse is waiting at your gate?
 Whose 'rickshaw-wheels ride over me?
No Saint's, I swear; and -- let me see
 To-night what names your programme fill --
We drif...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard



...ss Great, did stain: 

For proud he was, of an Ungovern'd Will, 
With Love Familiar, but a Stranger still 
To Faith and Constancy; and did his Heart, 
Retaining none, expose to ev'ry Dart. 
Hapless Rodanthe, the Fond Rover, caught, 
To whom, for Love, with usual Arts he sought; 
Which she, ah too unwary, did bestow:
'Cause True her self, believ'd that he was so. 
But he, alas, more wav'ring than the Wind, 
Streight broke the Chain, she thought so fast did bind; 
For he no soo...Read more of this...
by Killigrew, Anne
...e. 
Her worthier sons, whom not Rome's pontiff high, 
Nor king with arbitrary sway could move. 
Those mightier who with constancy untam'd, 
Did quench the violence of fire, at death 
Did smile, and maugre ev'ry pain, of bond, 
Cold dark imprisonment, and scourge severe, 
By hell-born popery devis'd, held fast 
The Christian hope firm anchor of the soul. 
Or those who shunning that fell rage of war, 
And persecution dire, when civil pow'r, 
Leagu'd in with sacerdotal sway triu...Read more of this...
by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...ord Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine?
Alas! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth;
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain.
And thus it chanced, as I divine,
With Roland and Sir Leoline.
Each spake words of high disdain
And insult to his heart's best brother:
They parted- ne'er to meet again!
But never either found another
To free...Read more of this...
by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
...have taught thee
More than Wifehood ever may!

Love that never leaped its socket—
Trust entrenched in narrow pain—
Constancy thro fire—awarded—
Anguish—bare of anodyne!

Burden—borne so far triumphant—
None suspect me of the crown,
For I wear the "Thorns" till Sunset—
Then—my Diadem put on.

Big my Secret but it's bandaged—
It will never get away
Till the Day it's Weary Keeper
Leads it through the Grave to thee....Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily



...
Nor yet by oaths betrothed, nor kisses breathed
Into my Purgatory, faithless thee,
Thy heart seemed wax, and steel thy constancy:
So, careless flowers strowed on the waters face
The curled whirlpools suck, smack, and embrace,
Yet drown them; so, the taper's beamy eye
Amorously twinkling beckons the giddy fly,
Yet burns his wings; and such the devil is,
Scarce visiting them who are entirely his.
When I behold a stream which, from the spring,
Doth with doubtful melodious murmu...Read more of this...
by Donne, John
...ct.
The moment that a Plot is plumbed
Prospective is extinct --

Prospective is the friend
Reserved for us to know
When Constancy is clarified
Of Curiosity --

Of subjects that resist
Redoubtablest is this
Where go we --
Go we anywhere
Creation after this?...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily
...f youthful metabolism, as the slight fermentation
of the last of the wine, or as each excuse of love.
Learning then the constancy of music and of mind,
now he takes seriously that visionary wood
where he saw his being and his future underfoot
and someone like me listening for a resolution....Read more of this...
by Bell, Marvin
...nswers, `Let him be,
   He loves to make parade of pain
   That with his piping he may gain
The praise that comes to constancy.'
 
A third is wroth: `Is this an hour
   For private sorrow's barren song,
   When more and more the people throng
The chairs and thrones of civil power?
 
'A time to sicken and to swoon,
   When Science reaches forth her arms
   To feel from world to world, and charms
Her secret from the latest moon?'
 
Behold, ye speak an idle thing:...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...d Sublimity. 

For there be three to the North -- Meditation, Happiness, Strength. 

For there be three to the South -- Constancy, Pleasantry and Wisdom. 

For the Argument A PRIORI is GOD in every man's CONSCIENCE. 

For the Argument A POSTERIORI is God before every man's eyes. 

For the Four and Twenty Elders of the Revelation are Four and Twenty Eternities. 

For their Four and Twenty Crowns are their respective Consummations. 

For a CHARACTER is the votes of the Worldlin...Read more of this...
by Smart, Christopher
...to avoid 
Were better, and most likely if from me 
Thou sever not: Trial will come unsought. 
Wouldst thou approve thy constancy, approve 
First thy obedience; the other who can know, 
Not seeing thee attempted, who attest? 
But, if thou think, trial unsought may find 
Us both securer than thus warned thou seemest, 
Go; for thy stay, not free, absents thee more; 
Go in thy native innocence, rely 
On what thou hast of virtue; summon all! 
For God towards thee hath done his pa...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...and shrink into a trivial toy,
At every sudden slighting quite abashed.
Therefore with manlier objects we must try
His constancy—with such as have more shew
Of worth, of honour, glory, and popular praise
(Rocks whereon greatest men have oftest wrecked);
Or that which only seems to satisfy
Lawful desires of nature, not beyond. 
And now I know he hungers, where no food
Is to be found, in the wide Wilderness:
The rest commit to me; I shall let pass
No advantage, and his strengt...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...'d to apprehend
Or value what is best
In choice, but oftest to affect the wrong? 
Or was too much of self-love mixt,
Of constancy no root infixt,
That either they love nothing, or not long?
What e're it be, to wisest men and best
Seeming at first all heavenly under virgin veil,
Soft, modest, meek, demure,
Once join'd, the contrary she proves, a thorn
Intestin, far within defensive arms
A cleaving mischief, in his way to vertue
Adverse and turbulent, or by her charms 
Draws hi...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...dous Lover.
Float thy vague veil about me lest He see.
I tempted all His servitors but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him, their fickleness to me,
Their traitorous trueness and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue,
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind,
But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
The long savannahs of the blue,
Or whether, thunder-driven,
They clanged His chariot thwart a heaven,
Plashy with flying lightning...Read more of this...
by Thompson, Francis
...mong the stars that have a different birth, 10 
And ever changing, like a joyless eye 
That finds no object worth its constancy?  ...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...st
With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st,
'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.

Here the anthem doth commence:
Love and constancy is dead;
Phoenix and the turtle fled
In a mutual flame from hence.

So they lov'd, as love in twain
Had the essence but in one;
Two distincts, division none:
Number there in love was slain.

Hearts remote, yet not asunder;
Distance, and no space was seen
'Twixt the turtle and his queen;
But in them it were a wonder.

So between them love did shine,...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William
...in this giddy whirl 
(Not being really bad at heart), 
Remembered Shakespeare with a start -- 
But not with that grand constancy 
Of Clement Shorter, Herbert Tree, 
Lord Rosebery and Comyn Carr 
And all the other names there are; 
Who stuck like limpets to the spot, 
Lest they forgot, lest they forgot. 

Lord Lilac was of slighter stuff; 
Lord Lilac had had quite enough....Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K
...nks.

The sea laps the great rocks
Because I love you
And takes no heed of the moon dragging it away
And saying coldly 'Constancy is not for you'.
The blackbird fills the air
Because I love you
With spring and lawns and shadows falling on lawns.

The people walk in the street and laugh
I love you
And far down the river ships sound their hooters
Crazy with joy because I love you....Read more of this...
by Joseph, Jenny
...ctor who will ask his son? 
In whom his qualities are reigning still, 
Except that household virtue, most uncommon, 
Of constancy to a bad, ugly woman. 

XIII 

'God save the king!' It is a large economy 
In God to save the like; but if he will 
Be saving, all the better; for not one am I 
Of those who think damnation better still: 
I hardly know too if not quite alone am I 
In this small hope of bettering future ill 
By circumscribing, with some slight restriction, 
The eter...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...mong the stars that have a different birth ¡ª 
And ever-changing like a joyless eye 5 
That finds no object worth its constancy? ...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things