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Famous Delays Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Dickinson, Emily
...s
Of indigo and brown.

With specimens of song,
As if for you to choose,
Discretion in the interval,
With gay delays he goes
To some superior tree
Without a single leaf,
And shouts for joy to nobody
But his seraphic self!...Read more of this...



by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...sunlit day.
A soldier may not weep, but drums and bugles may.



XXXIV.
Now, Muse, recount, how after long delays
And dangerous marches through untrodden ways, 
Where cold and hunger on each hour attend, 
At last the army gains the journey's end.
An Indian village bursts upon the eye; 
Two hundred lodges, sleep-encompassed lie, 
There captives moan their anguished prayers through tears, 
While in the silent dawn the armied answer nears.



XXXV.
To sn...Read more of this...

by Herbert, George
...not languish then, and spend 
A life as barren to thy praise, 
As is the dust, to which that life doth tend, 
But with delays.

All things are busy; only I
Neither bring honey with the bees, 
Nor flowers to make that, nor the husbandry
To water these.

I am no link of thy great chain, 
But all my company is a weed.
Lord place me in thy consort; give one strain
To my poor reed....Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...m his county, or could answer him,
If question'd, aught of what he cared to know.
And dull the voyage was with long delays,
The vessel scarce sea-worthy; but evermore
His fancy fled before the lazy wind
Returning, till beneath a clouded moon
He like a lover down thro' all his blood
Drew in the dewy meadowy morning-breath
Of England, blown across her ghostly wall:
And that same morning officers and men
Levied a kindly tax upon themselves,
Pitying the lonely man, and gave h...Read more of this...

by Raleigh, Sir Walter
...which pass'd the sorrow only stays. 

As in a country strange, without companion, 
I only wail the wrong of death's delays, 
Whose sweet spring spent, whose summer well-nigh done-- 
Of all which pass'd only the sorrow stays. 

Whom care forewarns, ere age and winter cold, 
To haste me hence to find my fortune's fold....Read more of this...



by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...tiest, holds her stayed 
In her own castle, and so besieges her 
To break her will, and make her wed with him: 
And but delays his purport till thou send 
To do the battle with him, thy chief man 
Sir Lancelot whom he trusts to overthrow, 
Then wed, with glory: but she will not wed 
Save whom she loveth, or a holy life. 
Now therefore have I come for Lancelot.' 

Then Arthur mindful of Sir Gareth asked, 
'Damsel, ye know this Order lives to crush 
All wrongers of the ...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...

What great fear, should one say, ``Three days
``That change the world might change as well
``Your fortune; and if joy delays,
``Be happy that no worse befell!''
What small fear, if another says,
``Three days and one short night beside
``May throw no shadow on your ways;
``But years must teem with change untried,
``With chance not easily defied,
``With an end somewhere undescried.''
No fear!---or if a fear be born
This minute, it dies out in scorn.
Fear? I shall see ...Read more of this...

by Dyke, Henry Van
...ew.

Along the garden ways
We chase the light-foot tune,
And in and out the flowery maze,
With eager haste and fond delays,
In pleasant paths of June.

For us the fields are new,
For us the woods are rife
With fairy secrets, deep and true,
And heaven is but a tent of blue
Above the game of life.

The world is far away:
The fever and the fret,
And all that makes the heart grow gray,
Is out of sight and far away,
Dear Music, while I hear thee play
That olden, golden...Read more of this...

by Warton, Thomas
...harm:
Black midnight and the blaze of noon alike
To me appear, while with uplifted arm
Death stands prepar'd, but still delays, to strike....Read more of this...

by Milton, John
..., 
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind, 
Moors by his side under the lee, while night 
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays. 
So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay, 
Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence 
Had risen, or heaved his head, but that the will 
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven 
Left him at large to his own dark designs, 
That with reiterated crimes he might 
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought 
Evil to others, and enraged mi...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ion to afflictions high!
Afflicted I may be, it seems, and blest!
I will not argue that, nor will repine.
But where delays he now? Some great intent
Conceals him. When twelve years he scarce had seen,
I lost him, but so found as well I saw
He could not lose himself, but went about
His Father's business. What he meant I mused—
Since understand; much more his absence now 
Thus long to some great purpose he obscures.
But I to wait with patience am inured;
My hear...Read more of this...

by Watts, Isaac
...thy law by day.

ver. 81 

My spirit faints to see thy grace,
Thy promise bears me up;
And while salvation long delays,
Thy word supports my hope.

ver. 164 

Seven times a day I lift my hands,
And pay my thanks to thee;
Thy righteous providence demands
Repeated praise from me.

ver. 62 

When midnight darkness veils the skies,
I call thy works to mind;
My thoughts in warm devotion rise,
And sweet acceptance find....Read more of this...

by Bryant, William Cullen
..., where the thick turf, 
Yet virgin from the kisses of the sun, 
Retains some freshness, and I woo the wind 
That still delays its coming. Why so slow, 
Gentle and voluble spirit of the air? 
Oh, come and breathe upon the fainting earth 
Coolness and life. Is it that in his caves 
He hears me? See, on yonder woody ridge, 
The pine is bending his proud top, and now, 
Among the nearer groves, chesnut and oak 
Are tossing their green boughs about. He comes! 
Lo, wher...Read more of this...

by Borges, Jorge Luis
...er grays
That spun the fine thread of her destiny,
For the nicest distinctions and all spent
In waverings, ambiguities, delays.
Lacking the nerve to tread this treacherous
Labyrinth, she looked in on, whom without,
The shapes, the turbulence, the striving rout,
(Like the other lady of the looking glass.)
The gods that dwell too far away for prayer
Abandoned her to the final tiger, Fire....Read more of this...

by Verhaeren, Emile
...the spade turns round and round
The weary sods of the dried-up ground.


Then—fear-struck dallyings with suicide;
Delays, that conquer hours that would decide:
Again—the terrors of dark crime and sin
Furtively felt with frenzied fingers thin:
The fierce craze and the fervent rage to be
The man who lives of the extremity
Of his own fear:
And then, too, doubt immense and wild affright.
And madness, with its eyes of marble white,
These all are here.


His head a...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...rock the snowy cradle till I died. 

'Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love, 
Delaying as the tender ash delays 
To clothe herself, when all the woods are green? 

'O tell her, Swallow, that thy brood is flown: 
Say to her, I do but wanton in the South, 
But in the North long since my nest is made. 

'O tell her, brief is life but love is long, 
And brief the sun of summer in the North, 
And brief the moon of beauty in the South. 

'O Swallow, flying fr...Read more of this...

by Arnold, Matthew
...e away,
And lose tomorrow the ground won today— 
Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too?

Yes, we await it!—but it still delays,
And then we suffer! and amongst us one,
Who most has suffered, takes dejectedly
His seat upon the intellectual throne;
And all his store of sad experience he
Lays bare of wretched days;
Tells us his misery's birth and growth and signs,
And how the dying spark of hope was fed,
And how the breast was soothed, and how the head,
And all his hourly varied...Read more of this...

by Herbert, George
...contrive, 
That three years hence, if I survive, 
I'll build a spittle, or mend common ways, 
But mend mine own without delays.
Then I will use the works of thy creation, 
As if I us'd them but for fashion.
The world and I will quarrel; and the year
Shall not perceive, that I am here.
My music shall find thee, and ev'ry string
Shall have his attribute to sing; 
That all together may accord in thee, 
And prove one God, one harmony.
If thou shalt give me wit, it...Read more of this...

by Petrarch, Francesco
...>(As a well-managed steed his lord obeys,And at the straiten'd rein his course delays,)And still the flying war the tide of dayPursued, and show'd their bands in wild dismay.—Victorious faith! to thee belongs the prize;In earth thy power is felt, and in the circling skies.—The father next, who erst b...Read more of this...

by Shakespeare, William
...ousand spleens bear her a thousand ways;
She treads the path that she untreads again;
Her more than haste is mated with delays,
Like the proceedings of a drunken brain,
Full of respects, yet nought at all respecting;
In hand with all things, nought at all effecting.

Here kennell'd in a brake she finds a hound,
And asks the weary caitiff for his master,
And there another licking of his wound,
'Gainst venom'd sores the only sovereign plaster;
And here she meets another sad...Read more of this...

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