Famous Elate Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Atavist

by Robert William Service
 What are you doing here, Tom Thorne, on the white top-knot o' the world,
Where the wind has the cut of a naked knife and the stars are rapier keen?
Hugging a smudgy willow fire, deep in a lynx robe curled,
You that's a lord's own son, Tom Thorne -- what does your madness mean?

Go home, go home to your clubs, Tom...Read more of this...

Stanzas Written under an Oak in Windsor Forest

by Mary Darby Robinson
 "HERE POPE FIRST SUNG!" O, hallow'd Tree !
Such is the boast thy bark displays;
Thy branches, like thy Patron's lays,
Shall ever, ever, sacred be; 
Nor with'ring storm, nor woodman's stroke, 
Shall harm the POET'S favourite Oak. 

'Twas HERE, he woo'd his MUSE of fire,
While Inspiration's wond'rous art,
Sublimely stealing thro' his heart
Did Fancy's proudest themes inspire: 
'Twas HERE he wisely learnt...Read more of this...

Sympathy

by Emily Brontë
 There should be no despair for you
While nightly stars are burning,
While evening pours its silent dew
And sunshine gilds the morning.
There should be no despair - though tears
May flow down like a river:
Are not the best beloved of years
Around your heart forever? 

They weep - you weep - it must be so;
Winds sigh as you are sighing,
And Winter sheds his...Read more of this...

Hertha

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 I AM that which began; 
 Out of me the years roll; 
 Out of me God and man; 
 I am equal and whole; 
God changes, and man, and the form of them bodily; I am the soul. 

 Before ever land was, 
 Before ever the sea, 
 Or soft hair of the grass, 
 Or fair...Read more of this...

Ashes of Soldiers

by Walt Whitman
 ASHES of soldiers! 
As I muse, retrospective, murmuring a chant in thought, 
Lo! the war resumes—again to my sense your shapes, 
And again the advance of armies. 

Noiseless as mists and vapors,
From their graves in the trenches ascending, 
From the cemeteries all through Virginia and Tennessee, 
From every point of the compass, out of the countless unnamed graves, 
In...Read more of this...

Canzone VI

by Francesco Petrarch
CANZONE VI. Spirto gentil che quelle membra reggi. TO RIENZI, BESEECHING HIM TO RESTORE TO ROME HER ANCIENT LIBERTY.  Spirit heroic! who with fire divineKindlest those limbs, awhile which pilgrim holdOn earth a Chieftain, gracious, wise, and bold;Since, rightly, now the rod of state is thineRome and her wandering children to...Read more of this...

102. To a Mountain Daisy

by Robert Burns
 WEE, modest crimson-tippèd flow’r,
Thou’s met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure
 Thy slender stem:
To spare thee now is past my pow’r,
 Thou bonie gem.


Alas! it’s no thy neibor sweet,
The bonie lark, companion meet,
Bending thee ’mang the dewy weet,
 Wi’ spreckl’d breast!
When upward-springing, blythe, to greet
 The purpling east.


Cauld blew the bitter-biting north
Upon thy early,...Read more of this...

Cocotte

by Robert William Service
 When a girl's sixteen, and as poor as she's pretty,
 And she hasn't a friend and she hasn't a home,
Heigh-ho! She's as safe in Paris city
 As a lamb night-strayed where the wild wolves roam;
And that was I; oh, it's seven years now
 (Some water's run down the Seine since then),
And I've almost forgotten the pangs and the tears...Read more of this...

To S.M. A Young African Painter On Seeing His Works

by Phillis Wheatley
 O show the lab'ring bosom's deep intent,
And thought in living characters to paint,
When first thy pencil did those beauties give,
And breathing figures learnt from thee to live,
How did those prospects give my soul delight,
A new creation rushing on my sight?
Still, wond'rous youth! each noble path pursue,
On deathless glories fix thine ardent view:
Still may the painter's and the poet's fire...Read more of this...

Emblems of Love

by Lascelles Abercrombie
She

ONLY to be twin elements of joy
In this extravagance of Being, Love,
Were our divided natures shaped in twain;
And to this hour the whole world must consent.
Is it not very marvellous, our lives
Can only come to this out of a long
Strange sundering, with the years of the world between us?

He

Shall life do more than God? for hath not God
Striven with himself,...Read more of this...

A Legend of Service

by Henry Van Dyke
 It pleased the Lord of Angels (praise His name!)
To hear, one day, report from those who came
With pitying sorrow, or exultant joy,
To tell of earthly tasks in His employ:
For some were sorry when they saw how slow
The stream of heavenly love on earth must flow;
And some were glad because their eyes had seen,
Along its banks, fresh flowers and living...Read more of this...

Janus

by George William Russell
 IMAGE of beauty, when I gaze on thee,
Trembling I waken to a mystery,
How through one door we go to life or death
By spirit kindled or the sensual breath.


Image of beauty, when my way I go;
No single joy or sorrow do I know:
Elate for freedom leaps the starry power,
The life which passes mourns its wasted hour.


And, ah, to think how...Read more of this...

Gipsy

by Robert William Service
 The poppies that in Spring I sow,
In rings of radiance gleam and glow,
Like lords and ladies gay.
A joy are they to dream beside,
As in the air of eventide
They flutter, dip and sway.

For some are scarlet, some are gold,
While some in fairy flame unfold,
And some are rose and white.
There's pride of breeding in their glance,
And pride of beauty as they...Read more of this...

An American

by Rudyard Kipling
 If the Led Striker call it a strike,
 Or the papers call it a war,
They know not much what I am like,
 Nor what he is, My Avatar.

Throuh many roads, by me possessed,
 He shambles forth in cosmic guise;
He is the Jester and the Jest,
 And he the Text himself applies.

The Celt is in his heart and hand,
 The...Read more of this...

Canzone IX

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 74] CANZONE IX. Gentil mia donna, i' veggio. IN PRAISE OF LAURA'S EYES: THEY LEAD HIM TO CONTEMPLATE THE PATH OF LIFE.  Lady, in your bright eyesSoft glancing round, I mark a holy light,Pointing the arduous way that heavenward lies;And to my practised sight,From thence, where Love...Read more of this...

The Rape of the Lock: Canto 3

by Alexander Pope
 Close by those meads, for ever crown'd with flow'rs, 
Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs,
There stands a structure of majestic frame,
Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name.
Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom
Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home;
Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take--and sometimes tea.
Hither the heroes and the...Read more of this...

A Carol of Harvest for 1867

by Walt Whitman
 1
A SONG of the good green grass! 
A song no more of the city streets; 
A song of farms—a song of the soil of fields. 

A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork; 
A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk’d maize.

2
For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for...Read more of this...

Twould ease -- a Butterfly --

by Emily Dickinson
 'Twould ease -- a Butterfly --
Elate -- a Bee --
Thou'rt neither --
Neither -- thy capacity --

But, Blossom, were I,
I would rather be
Thy moment
Than a Bee's Eternity --

Content of fading
Is enough for me --
Fade I unto Divinity --

And Dying -- Lifetime --
Ample as the Eye --
Her least attention raise on me --...Read more of this...

Prelude

by Robert William Service
 Alas! upon some starry height,
The Gods of Excellence to please,
This hand of mine will never smite
The Harp of High Serenities.
Mere minstrel of the street am I,
To whom a careless coin you fling;
But who, beneath the bitter sky,
Blue-lipped, yet insolent of eye,
Can shrill a song of Spring;
A song of merry mansard days,
The cheery chimney-tops among;
Of rolics and of roundelays
When we...Read more of this...

The World is with Me

by Thomas Hood
 The world is with me, and its many cares, 
Its woes--its wants--the anxious hopes and fears 
That wait on all terrestrial affairs-- 
The shades of former and of future years-- 
Forboding fancies and prophetic tears, 
Quelling a spirit that was once elate. 
Heavens! what a wilderness the world appears, 
Where youth, and mirth, and health are out of date;...Read more of this...

Stars

by Emily Brontë
 Ah! why, because the dazzling sun
Restored our Earth to joy,
Have you departed, every one,
And left a desert sky? 

All through the night, your glorious eyes
Were gazing down in mine,
And, with a full heart's thankful sighs,
I blessed that watch divine. 

I was at peace, and drank your beams
As they were life to me;
And revelled in my changeful dreams,
Like petrel on...Read more of this...

To A Mountain Daisy

by Robert Burns
 ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH, IN APRIL, 1786

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r,
Thou's met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure
Thy slender stem:
To spare thee now is past my pow'r,
Thou bonie gem.

Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet,
The bonie lark, companion meet,
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet,
Wi' spreckled breast!
When upward-springing, blithe, to greet
The purpling east.

Cauld blew...Read more of this...

The Bat is dun with wrinkled Wings --

by Emily Dickinson
 The Bat is dun, with wrinkled Wings --
Like fallow Article --
And not a song pervade his Lips --
Or none perceptible.

His small Umbrella quaintly halved
Describing in the Air
An Arc alike inscrutable
Elate Philosopher.

Deputed from what Firmament --
Of what Astute Abode --
Empowered with what Malignity
Auspiciously withheld --

To his adroit Creator
Acribe no less the praise --
Beneficent, believe me,
His Eccentricities --...Read more of this...

A Dream of the Unknown

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I DREAM'D that as I wander'd by the way 
Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring, 
And gentle odours led my steps astray, 
Mix'd with a sound of waters murmuring 
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay 5 
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling 
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, 
But kiss'd it and...Read more of this...

To Dora Dorian

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Child of two strong nations, heir
Born of high-souled hope that smiled,
Seeing for each brought forth a fair
Child,

By thy gracious brows, and wild
Golden-clouded heaven of hair,
By thine eyes elate and mild,

Hope would fain take heart to swear
Men should yet be reconciled,
Seeing the sign she bids thee bear,
Child....Read more of this...

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