Famous Cry Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Five Bells

by Kenneth Slessor
 Time that is moved by little fidget wheels 
Is not my time, the flood that does not flow. 
Between the double and the single bell 
Of a ship's hour, between a round of bells 
From the dark warship riding there below, 
I have lived many lives, and this one life 
Of Joe, long dead, who lives between five bells....Read more of this...

The Witnesses

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 In Ocean's wide domains,
Half buried in the sands,
Lie skeletons in chains,
With shackled feet and hands.

Beyond the fall of dews,
Deeper than plummet lies,
Float ships, with all their crews,
No more to sink nor rise.

There the black Slave-ship swims,
Freighted with human forms,
Whose fettered, fleshless limbs
Are not the sport of storms.

These are the bones of Slaves;
They gleam from the abyss;
They cry, from yawning...Read more of this...

Lament (Whom will you cry to heart?)

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Whom will you cry to, heart? More and more lonely,
your path struggles on through incomprehensible
mankind. All the more futile perhaps
for keeping to its direction,
keeping on toward the future,
toward what has been lost.

Once. You lamented? What was it? A fallen berry
of jubilation, unripe.
But now the whole tree of my jubilation
is breaking, in the storm it is breaking, my slow
tree of...Read more of this...

In the cicada's cry

by Matsuo Basho
In the cicada's cry
No sign can foretell
How soon it must die. ...Read more of this...

Thrushes

by Siegfried Sassoon
 Tossed on the glittering air they soar and skim,
Whose voices make the emptiness of light
A windy palace. Quavering from the brim
Of dawn, and bold with song at edge of night,
They clutch their leafy pinnacles and sing
Scornful of man, and from his toils aloof
Whose heart's a haunted woodland whispering; 
Whose thoughts return on tempest-baffled wing; 
Who hears the cry of...Read more of this...

At dawn a cry through all the tavern shrilled,

by Omar Khayyam
At dawn a cry through all the tavern shrilled,
«Arise my brethren of the revellers' guild,
That I may fill our measure, full of wine
Or e'er the measure of our days be filled.»...Read more of this...

He Hears The Cry Of The Sedge

by William Butler Yeats
 I wander by the edge
Of this desolate lake
Where wind cries in the sedge:
Until the axle break
That keeps the stars in their round,
And hands hurl in the deep
The banners of East and West,
And the girdle of light is unhound,
Your breast will not lie by the breast
Of your beloved in sleep....Read more of this...

Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World

by Richard Wilbur
 The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded
 soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and
 simple
As false dawn.
 Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with
 angels.

 Some are in bed-sheets, some are
 in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there
 they are.
Now they are rising together in calm
 swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling...Read more of this...

Sonnet 66: Tired with all these for restful death I cry

by William Shakespeare
 Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disablèd
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly doctor-like controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill.
Tired...Read more of this...

I Cry

by Tupac Shakur
Sometimes when I'm alone
I Cry,
Cause I am on my own.
The tears I cry are bitter and warm.
They flow with life but take no form
I Cry because my heart is torn.
I find it difficult to carry on.
If I had an ear to confide in,
I would cry among my treasured friend,
but who do you know that stops that long,
to help another carry...Read more of this...

Who will cry for the little boy?

by Antwone Fisher
who will cry for the little boy?
Lost and all alone.
Who will cry for the little boy?
Abandoned without his own?

Who will cry for the little boy?
He cried himself to sleep.
Who will cry for the little boy?
He never had for keeps.

Who will cry for the little boy?
He walked the burning sand
Who will cry for the little boy?
The boy inside the man.

Who will...Read more of this...

Faces

by Walt Whitman
 1
SAUNTERING the pavement, or riding the country by-road—lo! such faces! 
Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality; 
The spiritual, prescient face—the always welcome, common, benevolent face, 
The face of the singing of music—the grand faces of natural lawyers and judges, broad
 at
 the
 back-top; 
The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows—the shaved blanch’d faces
 of
 orthodox...Read more of this...

A Far Cry From Africa

by Derek Walcott
 A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
Of Africa, Kikuyu, quick as flies,
Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:
"Waste no compassion on these separate dead!"
Statistics justify and scholars seize
The salients of colonial policy.
What is that to the white child hacked in bed?
To savages, expendable as Jews?
Threshed out by beaters,...Read more of this...

Blue-Crested Cry

by Jennifer Reeser
 We’re through, we’re through, we’re through, we’re through, we’re through
and – flanking, now, the edges of our schism –
it seems your coldness and my idealism
alone for all this time have kept us true.

Credulous I and hedonistic you:
opposed, refracting angles of a prism
who challenged sense with childish skepticism –
and every known the bulk of mankind knew....Read more of this...

uganda cry

by Rg Gregory
 i have lost touch over the years
with the hot africa inside me

illness and all - i spread to root
in the red earth siphoned the sun

loved the black inflections of my eyes
cut callow cords and found new forms

felt free to fashion and freely raised
orchards of feelings where the groves

were rife with desiccated pens
but all the time my ears insistent to

the...Read more of this...

The Red Shirt

by Philip Levine
 "...his poems that no one reads anymore become dust, wind, nothing, 
like the insolent colored shirt he bought to die in." 
-Vargas Llosa



If I gave 5 birds 
each 4 eyes 
I would be blind 
unto the 3rd 
generation, if I 
gave no one a word 
for a day 
and let the day 
grow into a week 
and the week...Read more of this...

Cry, Baby

by Mother Goose
Cry, baby, cry,
Put your finger in your eye,
And tell your mother it wasn't I....Read more of this...

The Cry Of The Children

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,
And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows,
The young birds are chirping in the nest,
The young fawns are playing with the shadows,
The young flowers are blowing toward the west— 
But the young, young...Read more of this...

Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle IV To Richard Boyle

by Alexander Pope
 Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu se 
Impediat verbis lassas onerantibus aures: 
Et sermone opus est modo tristi, saepe jocoso, 
Defendente vicem modo Rhetoris atque Poetae, 
Interdum urbani, parcentis viribus, atque
Extenuantis eas consulto.
(Horace, Satires, I, x, 17-22)
'Tis strange, the miser should his cares employ 
To gain those riches he can ne'er enjoy:
Is it less strange, the prodigal should...Read more of this...

The Leal

by Dorothy Parker
 The friends I made have slipped and strayed,
And who's the one that cares?
A trifling lot and best forgot-
And that's my tale, and theirs.

Then if my friendships break and bend,
There's little need to cry
The while I know that every foe
Is faithful till I die....Read more of this...

We dont cry -- Tim and I

by Emily Dickinson
 We don't cry -- Tim and I,
We are far too grand --
But we bolt the door tight
To prevent a friend --

Then we hide our brave face
Deep in our hand --
Not to cry -- Tim and I --
We are far too grand --

Nor to dream -- he and me --
Do we condescend --
We just shut our brown eye
To see to...Read more of this...

88. The Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer

by Robert Burns
 YE Irish lords, ye knights an’ squires,
Wha represent our brughs an’ shires,
An’ doucely manage our affairs
 In parliament,
To you a simple poet’s pray’rs
 Are humbly sent.


Alas! my roupit Muse is hearse!
Your Honours’ hearts wi’ grief ’twad pierce,
To see her sittin on her ****
 Low i’ the dust,
And scriechinh out prosaic verse,
 An like to brust!


Tell them wha hae the...Read more of this...

O wine, most limpid, pure, and crystalline,

by Omar Khayyam
O wine, most limpid, pure, and crystalline,
Would I could drench this silly frame of mine
With thee, that passers by might think 'twas thou,
And cry, «Whence comest thou, fair master wine?»...Read more of this...

Lament for Boromir

by J R R Tolkien
 Through Rohan over fen and field where the long grass grows,
The West Wind comes walking, and about the walls it goes.
'What news from the West, O wandering wind, do you bring to me tonight?
Have you seen Boromir the Tall by moon or by starlight?'
'I saw him ride over seven streams, over waters wide and grey.
I saw him walk in...Read more of this...

A Cry

by Sara Teasdale
 Oh, there are eyes that he can see,
 And hands to make his hands rejoice,
But to my lover I must be
 Only a voice.

Oh, there are breasts to bear his head,
 And lips whereon his lips can lie,
But I must be till I am dead
 Only a cry....Read more of this...

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