Famous Cries Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Street Cries

by Sarojini Naidu
 WHEN dawn's first cymbals beat upon the sky, 
Rousing the world to labour's various cry, 
To tend the flock, to bind the mellowing grain, 
From ardent toil to forge a little gain, 
And fasting men go forth on hurrying feet, 
Buy bread, buy bread, rings down the eager street. 


When the earth falters and the waters swoon 
With the...Read more of this...

Menelaus and Helen

by Rupert Brooke
 I

Hot through Troy's ruin Menelaus broke
To Priam's palace, sword in hand, to sate
On that adulterous whore a ten years' hate
And a king's honour. Through red death, and smoke,
And cries, and then by quieter ways he strode,
Till the still innermost chamber fronted him.
He swung his sword, and crashed into the dim
Luxurious bower, flaming like a god.

High sat white Helen, lonely...Read more of this...

An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with Penetential Cries

by Jupiter Hammon
 Salvation comes by Christ alone,
The only Son of God;
Redemption now to every one,
That love his holy Word.

Dear Jesus, we would fly to Thee,
And leave off every Sin,
Thy tender Mercy well agree;
Salvation from our King. 

Salvation comes now from the Lord,
Our victorious King.
His holy Name be well ador'd,
Salvation surely bring.

Dear Jesus, give thy Spirit now, 
Thy Grace to every Nation,
That...Read more of this...

The Watching Angel

by Victor Hugo
 ("Dans l'alcôve sombre.") 
 
 {XX., November, 1831.} 


 In the dusky nook, 
 Near the altar laid, 
 Sleeps the child in shadow 
 Of his mother's bed: 
 Softly he reposes, 
 And his lid of roses, 
 Closed to earth, uncloses 
 On the heaven o'erhead. 
 
 Many a dream is with him, 
 Fresh...Read more of this...

The Eagle The Sow And The Cat

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 THE Queen of Birds, t'encrease the Regal Stock, 
Had hatch'd her young Ones in a stately Oak, 
Whose Middle-part was by a Cat possest, 
And near the Root with Litter warmly drest, 
A teeming Sow had made her peaceful Nest. 
(Thus Palaces are cramm'd from Roof to Ground, 
And Animals, as various, in them found.) 
When to the Sow,...Read more of this...

Theoretikos

by Oscar Wilde
 This mighty empire hath but feet of clay:
Of all its ancient chivalry and might
Our little island is forsaken quite:
Some enemy hath stolen its crown of bay,
And from its hills that voice hath passed away
Which spake of Freedom: O come out of it,
Come out of it, my Soul, thou art not fit
For this vile traffic-house, where day by day
Wisdom and...Read more of this...

Dear Heart Why Will You Use Me So?

by James Joyce
 Dear heart, why will you use me so? 
Dear eyes that gently me upbraid, 
Still are you beautiful -- - but O, 
How is your beauty raimented! 

Through the clear mirror of your eyes, 
Through the soft sigh of kiss to kiss, 
Desolate winds assail with cries 
The shadowy garden where love is. 

And soon shall love dissolved be...Read more of this...

Despairing Cries

by Walt Whitman
 1
DESPAIRING cries float ceaselessly toward me, day and night, 
The sad voice of Death—the call of my nearest lover, putting forth, alarmed,
 uncertain, 
This sea I am quickly to sail, come tell me, 
Come tell me where I am speeding—tell me my destination. 

2
I understand your anguish, but I cannot help you,
I approach, hear, behold—the sad mouth, the look...Read more of this...

Mans Injustice Towards Providence

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 A Thriving Merchant, who no Loss sustained, 
In little time a mighty Fortune gain'd. 
No Pyrate seiz'd his still returning Freight; 
Nor foundring Vessel sunk with its own Weight: 
No Ruin enter'd through dissever'd Planks; 
No Wreck at Sea, nor in the Publick Banks. 
Aloft he sails, above the Reach of Chance, 
And do's in Pride, as fast as...Read more of this...

Alphonso Of Castile

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 I Alphonso live and learn,
Seeing nature go astern.
Things deteriorate in kind,
Lemons run to leaves and rind,
Meagre crop of figs and limes,
Shorter days and harder times.
Flowering April cools and dies
In the insufficient skies;
Imps at high Midsummer blot
Half the sun's disk with a spot;
'Twill not now avail to tan
Orange cheek, or skin of man:
Roses bleach, the goats are dry,
Lisbon quakes, the...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...

How long these cries, these groans against the things

by Omar Khayyam
How long these cries, these groans against the things
of this world? Rise, rather, and pass gaily every instant.
When the universe shall be re-dressed in green from end
to end, drink wine in a ruby cup, full to the brim....Read more of this...

The Gypsy and the Wind

by Federico García Lorca
 Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes
along a watery path of laurels and crystal lights.
The starless silence, fleeing
from her rhythmic tambourine,
falls where the sea whips and sings,
his night filled with silvery swarms.
High atop the mountain peaks
the sentinels are weeping;
they guard the tall white towers
of the English consulate.
And gypsies of the water
for their pleasure erect
little castles of conch shells
and arbors of greening...Read more of this...

Psalm 50 part 1

by Isaac Watts
 v.1-6 
C. M.
The last judgment

The Lord, the Judge, before his throne
Bids the whole earth draw nigh,
The nations near the rising sun,
And near the western sky.

No more shall bold blasphemers say,
"Judgment will ne'er begin;"
No more abuse his long delay
To impudence and sin.

Throned on a cloud our God shall come,
Bright flames prepare his way;
Thunder and darkness, fire and storm,
Lead on the...Read more of this...

The Rock Cries Out to Us Today

by Maya Angelou
 A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Mark the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But...Read more of this...

Singer in the Prison The

by Walt Whitman
 1
 O sight of shame, and pain, and dole! 
 O fearful thought—a convict Soul! 
RANG the refrain along the hall, the prison, 
Rose to the roof, the vaults of heaven above, 
Pouring in floods of melody, in tones so pensive, sweet and strong, the like whereof was
 never
 heard,
Reaching the far-off sentry, and the armed guards, who ceas’d...Read more of this...

Sonnet XI

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XI. Se lamentar augelli, o Verdi fronde. SHE IS EVER PRESENT TO HIM.  If the lorn bird complain, or rustling sweepSoft summer airs o'er foliage waving slow,Or the hoarse brook come murmuring down the steep,Where on the enamell'd bank I sit belowWith thoughts of love that bid my numbers flow;Read more of this...

Ode to the Cambro-Britons and their Harp His Ballad of Agi

by Michael Drayton
 Fair stood the wind for France,
When we our sails advance;
Nor now to prove our chance
Longer will tarry;
But putting to the main,
At Caux, the mouth of Seine,
With all his martial train
Landed King Harry.

And taking many a fort,
Furnish'd in warlike sort,
Marcheth towards Agincourt
In happy hour;
Skirmishing day by day
With those that stopp'd his way,
Where the French gen'ral lay
With all his power.

Which, in...Read more of this...

A True Story

by Ann Taylor
 Little Ann and her mother were walking one day
Through London's wide city so fair,
And business obliged them to go by the way
That led them through Cavendish Square. 
And as they pass'd by the great house of a Lord,
A beautiful chariot there came,
To take some most elegant ladies abroad, 
Who straightway got into the same. 

The ladies in feathers and...Read more of this...

The Boy Who Laughed At Santa Claus

by Ogden Nash
 In Baltimore there lived a boy.
He wasn't anybody's joy.
Although his name was Jabez Dawes,
His character was full of flaws.


In school he never led his classes,
He hid old ladies' reading glasses,
His mouth was open when he chewed,
And elbows to the table glued.
He stole the milk of hungry kittens,
And walked through doors marked NO ADMITTANCE.
He said he acted thus because
There wasn't...Read more of this...

Hymn 156

by Isaac Watts
 Presumption and despair; or, Satan's various temptations.

I hate the tempter and his charms,
I hate his flatt'ring breath;
The serpent takes a thousand forms
To cheat our souls to death.

He feeds our hopes with airy dreams,
Or kills with slavish fear;
And holds us still in wide extremes,
Presumption or despair.

Now he persuades, "How easy 'tis
To walk the road to heav'n;"
Anon he swells our sins,...Read more of this...

The Black Virgin

by G K Chesterton
 One in thy thousand statues we salute thee 
On all thy thousand thrones acclaim and claim 
Who walk in forest of thy forms and faces 
Walk in a forest calling on one name 
And, most of all, how this thing may be so 
Who know thee not are mystified to know
That one cries "Here she stands" and one cries...Read more of this...

The Violent Space (Or When Your Sister Sleeps Around For Money)

by Etheridge Knight
 Exchange in greed the ungraceful signs. Thrust
The thick notes between green apple breasts.
Then the shadow of the devil descends,
The violent space cries and angel eyes,
Large and dark, retreat in innocence and in ice. 
(Run sister run—the Bugga man comes!)

The violent space cries silently,
Like you cried wide years ago
In another space, speckled by the sun
And the leaves of a green...Read more of this...

Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse

by Matthew Arnold
 Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused
With rain, where thick the crocus blows,
Past the dark forges long disused,
The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes.
The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride,
Through forest, up the mountain-side. 

The autumnal evening darkens round,
The wind is up, and drives the rain;
While, hark! far down, with strangled sound
Doth the Dead Guier's stream complain,
Where that wet smoke, among the...Read more of this...

The pheasant cries

by Kobayashi Issa
 The pheasant cries
as if it just noticed
the mountain....Read more of this...

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