Famous Efforts Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Efforts poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous efforts poems. These examples illustrate what a famous efforts poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Sometimes, when I am toil-worn and aweary,
And tired out with working long and well,
And earth is dark, and skies above are dreary,
And heart and soul are all too sick to tell,
These words have come to me like angel fingers
Pressing the spirit's eyelids down in sleep,
'Oh let us not be weary in well doing,
For in due season we shall surely...Read more of this...
by
Hugo Williams
Whether it was putting in an extra beat,
or leaving one out, I couldn't tell.
My heart seemed to have forgotten
everything it ever knew
about timing and co-ordination
in its efforts to get through to someone
on the other side of a wall.
As I lay in bed, I could hear it
hammering away inside my pillow,
being...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Employ all thy efforts to be agreeable to drinkers,
and follow the good counsel of Khayyam. O friend!
demolish the bases of prayer and of fasting, drink wine,
steal if you will, but do good....Read more of this...
by
Jorie Graham
Shall I move the flowers again?
Shall I put them further to the left
into the light?
Win that fix it, will that arrange the
thing?
Yellow sky.
Faint cricket in the dried-out bush.
As I approach, my footfall in the leaves
drowns out the cricket-chirping I was
coming close to hear
Yellow sky with black leaves rearranging it.
Wind rearranging the black leaves in it.
But anyway I am...Read more of this...
by
Constantine P Cavafy
Our efforts are those of the unfortunate;
our efforts are like those of the Trojans.
Somewhat we succeed; somewhat
we regain confidence; and we start
to have courage and high hopes.
But something always happens and stops us.
Achilles in the trench before us
emerges and with loud cries terrifies us.--
Our efforts are like those of the Trojans.
We believe that with resolution and daring
we will alter...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
'Twas on a Sunday morning, and in the year of 1888,
The steamer "Saxmundham," laden with coal and coke for freight,
Was run into amidships by the Norwegian barque "Nor,"
And sunk in the English Channel, while the storm fiend did roar.
She left Newcastle on Friday, in November, about two o'clock,
And proceeded well on her way until she received a shock;
And...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
The ferryman, a green reed 'twixt his teeth,
With hand on oar, against the current strong
Had rowed and rowed so long.
But she, alas! whose voice was hailing him
Across the far waves dim.
Still further o'er the far waves seemed to float,
Still further backwards, 'mid the mists, remote.
The casements with their eyes.
The dial-faces of the towers that rise
Upon the shore,
Watched, as he strove...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
Some men there are who find in nature all
Their inspiration, hers the sympathy
Which spurs them on to any great endeavor,
To them the fields and woods are closest friends,
And they hold dear communion with the hills;
The voice of waters soothes them with its fall,
And the great winds bring healing in their sound.
To them a city is a prison house
Where pent...Read more of this...
by
Les Murray
Sprawl is the quality
of the man who cut down his Rolls-Royce
into a farm utility truck, and sprawl
is what the company lacked when it made repeated efforts
to buy the vehicle back and repair its image.
Sprawl is doing your farm work by aeroplane, roughly,
or driving a hitchhiker that extra hundred miles home.
It is the rococo of being your own still...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
I
My love, this is the bitterest, that thou
Who art all truth and who dost love me now
As thine eyes say, as thy voice breaks to say—
Shouldst love so truly and couldst love me still
A whole long life through, had but love its will,
Would death that leads me from thee brook delay!
II
I have but to be by thee, and...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Existing things were already predestined upon the
tablet of creation. The brush [of the universe] did not
paint good and bad. With destiny God imprinted whatever
should be so imprinted, and the efforts that we
make in these directions are wholly lost....Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Forever fair, forever calm and bright,
Life flies on plumage, zephyr-light,
For those who on the Olympian hill rejoice--
Moons wane, and races wither to the tomb,
And 'mid the universal ruin, bloom
The rosy days of Gods--With man, the choice,
Timid and anxious, hesitates between
The sense's pleasure and the soul's content;
While on celestial brows, aloft and sheen,
The beams of both are blent.
Seekest thou on...Read more of this...
by
Marriott Edgar
I'll tell you the story of Balbus,
You know, him as builded a wall;
I'll tell you the reason he built it,
And the place where it happened an' all.
This 'ere Balbus, though only a Tackler,
Were the most enterprising of men;
He'd heard Chicken Farms were lucrative,
So he went out and purchased a hen.
'Twere a White Wyandot he called...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
Bare-handed, I hand the combs.
The man in white smiles, bare-handed,
Our cheesecloth gauntlets neat and sweet,
The throats of our wrists brave lilies.
He and I
Have a thousand clean cells between us,
Eight combs of yellow cups,
And the hive itself a teacup,
White with pink flowers on it,
With excessive love I enameled it
Thinking 'Sweetness, sweetness.'
Brood cells gray as the fossils of shells
Terrify me, they...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
You've heard of "Casey at The Bat,"
And "Casey's Tabble Dote";
But now it's time
To write a rhyme
Of "Casey's Billy-goat."
Pat Casey had a billy-goat he gave the name of Shamus,
Because it was (the neighbours said) a national disgrace.
And sure enough that animal was eminently famous
For masticating every rag of laundry round the place.
For shirts to skirts prodigiously...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
A youth, impelled by a burning thirst for knowledge
To roam to Sais, in fair Egypt's land,
The priesthood's secret learning to explore,
Had passed through many a grade with eager haste,
And still was hurrying on with fond impatience.
Scarce could the Hierophant impose a rein
Upon his headlong efforts. "What avails
A part without the whole?" the youth exclaimed;
"Can there be here a lesser...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
'Twas in the year of 1858, and on October the fourteenth day,
That a fire broke out in a warehouse, and for hours blazed away;
And the warehouse, now destroyed, was occupied by the Messrs R. Wylie, Hill & Co.,
Situated in Buchanan Street, in the City of Glasgow.
The flames burst forth about three o'clock in the afternoon,
And intimation of the...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
It
I may not reach the heights I seek,
My untried strength may fail me;
Or, halfway up the mountain peak
Fierce tempests may assail me.
But though that place I never gain,
Herein lies the comfort for my pain –
I will be worthy of it.
I may not triumph in success,
Despite my earnest labour;
I may not grasp results that bless
The...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
Things throng and laugh loud in the sky; the sands and dust dance
and whirl like children. Man's mind is aroused by their shouts; his
thoughts long to be the playmates of things.
Our dreams, drifting in the stream of the vague, stretch their
arms to clutch the earth, -their efforts stiffen into bricks and
stones, and thus the city of man is built.
Voices...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
High above he stands, beside the many
saintly figures fronting the cathedral's
gothic tympanum, close by the window
called the rose, and looks astonished at his
own deification which placed him there.
Erect and proud he smiles, and quite enjoys
this feat of his survival, willed by choice.
As labourer in the fields he made his start
and through his efforts brought to full fruition
the garden God...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXXX. Amor, che vedi ogni pensiero aperto. HE CARES NOT FOR SUFFERINGS, SO THAT HE DISPLEASE NOT LAURA. Love, thou who seest each secret thought display'd,And the sad steps I take, with thee sole guide;This throbbing breast, to thee thrown open wide,To others' prying barr'd, thine eyes pervade.Thou know'st what...Read more of this...
by
Bertolt Brecht
After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
CANZONE XIII. Se 'l pensier che mi strugge. HE SEEKS IN VAIN TO MITIGATE HIS WOE. Oh! that my cheeks were taughtBy the fond, wasting thoughtTo wear such hues as could its influence speak;Then the dear, scornful fairMight all my ardour share;And where Love slumbers now he might awake!Less...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
Deep in th' abyss where frantic horror bides,
In thickest mists of vapours fell,
Where wily Serpents hissing glare
And the dark Demon of Revenge resides,
At midnight's murky hour
Thy origin began:
Rapacious MALICE was thy sire;
Thy Dam the sullen witch, Despair;
Thy Nurse, insatiate Ire.
The FATES conspir'd their ills to twine,
About thy heart's infected shrine;
They gave thee each disastrous spell,
Each desolating...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
Ye landsmen, all pray list to me,
While I relate a terrible tale of the sea,
Concerning the screw steamer "Storm Queen"
Which was wrecked, alas! a most heast-rending scene.
From Sebastopol, with a cargo of grain, she was on her way,
And soon after entering the Bay of Biscay,
On the 21st of December, they experienced a fearful storm
Such as they never experienced...Read more of this...
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