Famous Dooms Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Thing of Beauty (Endymion)

...ot season; the mid-forest brake, 
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms: 
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms 
We have imagined for the mighty dead; 
An endless fountain of immortal drink, 
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink....Read more of this...
by Keats, John


An Essay on Man in Four Epistles: Epistle 1

...resent state:
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.
Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv'n,
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n:
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander

An Expostulation to Lord King

...that Lord L-d-d-le's joking!

And then, those unfortunate weavers of Perth -
Not to know the vast difference Providence dooms
Between weavers of Perth and Peers of high birth,
'Twixt those who have heir-looms, and those who've but looms!

"To talk now of starving!" - as great Ath-l said --
(and nobles all cheer'd, and the bishops all wonder'd,)
"When, some years ago, he and others had fed
Of these same hungry devils about fifteen hundred!"

It follows from hence - and the Duk...Read more of this...
by Moore, Thomas

Canzone X

...blood hides itself I know not where;Nor as I was remain I: hence I knowLove dooms my death and this the fatal blow. Farewell, my song! already do I seeHeavily in my hand the tired pen moveFrom its long dear discourse with her I love;Not so my thoughts from communing with me. Read more of this...
by Petrarch, Francesco

Endymion: Book I

...hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

 Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glorie...Read more of this...
by Keats, John


Essay on Man

...ent state; 
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know: 
Or who could suffer Being here below? 
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, 
Had he thy Reason, would he skip and play? 
Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow'ry food, 
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood. 
Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv'n, 
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n; 
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, 
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall, 
Atoms or systems into ru...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander

From an Essay on Man

...resent state:
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.
Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv'n,
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n:
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander

I Have Lived With Shades

...ll pause awhile 
 To hear my say; 

II 

And take me by the hand, 
And lead me through their rooms 
In the To-be, where Dooms 
Half-wove and shapeless stand: 
 And show from there 
 The dwindled dust 
 And rot and rust 
 Of things that were. 

III 

"Now turn," spake they to me 
One day: "Look whence we came, 
And signify his name 
Who gazes thence at thee." - 
 --"Nor name nor race 
 Know I, or can," 
 I said, "Of man 
 So commonplace. 

IV 

"He moves me not at all; 
I note...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas

Justice

...secret woe
 The shuddering waters saw.
Willed and fulfilled by high and low.
 Let them relearn the Low.


That when the dooms are read,
 Not high nor low shall say:--
" My haughty or my humble head
 Was saved me in this day."
That, till the end of time,
 Their remnant shall recall
Their fathers old, confederate crime
 Availed them not at all.


That neither schools nor priests,
 Nor Kings may build again
A people with the heart of beasts
 Made wise concerning men.
Whereby our...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

My Hour

...d me,
The forests frown, the floods appall;
The mountains tiptoe to confound me,
The rivers roar to speed my fall.
Wild dooms shall daunt, and dawns be gory,
And Death shall sit beside my knee;
Till after terror, torment, glory,
I win again the sea, the sea. . . .

Oh, anguish sweet! Oh, triumph splendid!
Oh, dreams adieu! my pipe is dead.
My glass is dry, my Hour is ended,
It's time indeed I stole to bed.
How peacefully the house is sleeping!
Ah! why should I strange fortune...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Resurrection

...nd the dim blotch of heart-committed theft.

O still vast vision of transfigured features
Unvisited by secret crimes or dooms,
Remain, remain amid these water-creatures,
Stand, shine among yon water-lily blooms.

For eighteen centuries ripple down the river,
And windy times the stalks of empires wave,
-- Let the winds come from the moor and sigh and shiver,
Fain, fain am I, O Christ, to pass the grave....Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

...mile, a spark
Or star one is not sure of having seen
As darkness resumes. A perverse light whose
Imperative of subtlety dooms in advance its
Conceit to light up: unimportant but meant.
Francesco, your hand is big enough
To wreck the sphere, and too big,
One would think, to weave delicate meshes
That only argue its further detention.
(Big, but not coarse, merely on another scale,
Like a dozing whale on the sea bottom
In relation to the tiny, self-important ship
On the surface....Read more of this...
by Ashbery, John

Senlin: His Dark Origins

...scented cloth the sage unwinds: 
Delicious to see our futile modern sunlight 
Dance like a harlot among these Dogs and Dooms!

First, the huge pyramid, with rock on rock 
Bloodily piled to heaven; and under this 
A gilded cavern, bat festooned; 
And here in rows on rows, with gods about them, 
Cloudily lustrous, dim, the sacred coffins, 
Silver starred and crimson mooned.

What holy secret shall we now uncover? 
Inside the outer coffin is a second; 
Inside the second, smalle...Read more of this...
by Aiken, Conrad

Still

...out for water for
the name Aaron that's dying of thirst.

Don't jump while it's moving, name David.
You're a name that dooms to defeat,
given to no one, and homeless,
too heavy to bear in this land.

Let your son have a Slavic name,
for here they count hairs on the head,
for here they tell good from evil
by names and by eyelids' shape.

Don't jump while it's moving. Your son will be Lech.
Don't jump while it's moving. Not time yet.
Don't jump. The night echoes like laughter
...Read more of this...
by Szymborska, Wislawa

The Ballad of the White Horse

...,
But the heart of flame therein,
But you go clothed in feasts and flames,
When all is ice within;

"Nor shall all iron dooms make dumb
Men wondering ceaselessly,
If it be not better to fast for joy
Than feast for misery.

"Nor monkish order only
Slides down, as field to fen,
All things achieved and chosen pass,
As the White Horse fades in the grass,
No work of Christian men.

"Ere the sad gods that made your gods
Saw their sad sunrise pass,
The White Horse of the White Horse...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K

The Good Man in Hell

...wicket gate
In patience for the first ten thousand years,

Feeling the curse climb slowly to his throat
That, uttered, dooms him to rescindless ill,
Forcing his praying tongue to run by rote,
Eternity entire before him still?

Would he at last, grown faithful in his station,
Kindle a little hope in hopeless Hell,
And sow among the damned doubts of damnation,
Since here someone could live, and live well?

One doubt of evil would bring down such a grace,
Open such a gate, and ...Read more of this...
by Muir, Edwin

The Law Of The Yukon

...was -- Men.
One by one I dismayed them, frighting them sore with my glooms;
One by one I betrayed them unto my manifold dooms.
Drowned them like rats in my rivers, starved them like curs on my plains,
Rotted the flesh that was left them, poisoned the blood in their veins;
Burst with my winter upon them, searing forever their sight,
Lashed them with fungus-white faces, whimpering wild in the night;

"Staggering blind through the storm-whirl, stumbling mad through the snow,
Fro...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The Medal

...! 
Athens, no doubt, did righteously decide, 
When Phocion and when Socrates were tried; 
As righteously they did those dooms repent; 
Still they were wise, whatever way they went. 
Crowds err not, though to both extremes they run; 
To kill the father and recall the son. 
Some think the fools were most, as times went then, 
But now the world's o'erstocked with prudent men. 
The common cry is even religion's test; 
The Turk's is at Constantinople best, 
Idols in India, Popery ...Read more of this...
by Dryden, John

The Old Issue

...pter," warn (he Trum pets,
 "He hath changed the fashion of the lies that cloak his will.
"Hard die the Kings--ah hard--dooms hard!" declare the Trumpets,
 Trumpets at the gang-plank where the brawling troop-decks fill!

Ancient and Unteachable, abide--abide the Trumpets!
 Once again the Trumpets, for the shuddering ground-swell brings 
Clamour over ocean of the harsh, pursuing Trumpets--
 Trumpets of the Vanguard that have sworn no truce with Kings! 

All we have of freedom,...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

Yet Do I Marvel

...st some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!...Read more of this...
by Cullen, Countee

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