Famous Expired Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Thoughts On Jesus Christs Descent Into Hell

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 THOUGHTS ON JESUS CHRIST'S DESCENT INTO HELL.

[THE remarkable Poem of which this is a literal 
but faint representation, was written when Goethe was only sixteen 
years old. It derives additional interest from the fact of its being 
the very earliest piece of his that is preserved. The few other 
pieces included by Goethe under the title of Religion and...Read more of this...

Sonnet LII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LII. Sente l' aura mia antica, e i dolci colli. HE REVISITS VAUCLUSE.  I feel the well-known gale; the hills I spySo pleasant, whence my fair her being drew,Which made these eyes, while Heaven was willing, shewWishful, and gay; now sad, and never dry.[Pg 275]O feeble hopes!...Read more of this...

Wolf Knife

by Donald Hall
 In the mid August, in the second year
of my First Polar Expedition, the snow and ice of winter
almost upon us, Kantiuk and I
attempted to dash the sledge
along Crispin Bay, searching again for relics
of the Frankline Expedition. Now a storm blew,
and we turned back, and we struggled slowly
in snow, lest we depart land and venture onto ice
from which a sudden...Read more of this...

Desesperanto

by Marilyn Hacker
 After Joseph Roth

Parce que c'était lui; parce que c'était moi.
Montaigne, De L'amitië

The dream's forfeit was a night in jail
and now the slant light is crepuscular.
Papers or not, you are a foreigner
whose name is always difficult to spell.
You pack your one valise. You ring the bell.
Might it not be prudent to disappear
beneath that mauve-blue sky above the square
fronting your cosmopolitan...Read more of this...

The Dream-Follower

by Thomas Hardy
 A dream of mine flew over the mead 
 To the halls where my old Love reigns; 
And it drew me on to follow its lead: 
 And I stood at her window-panes; 

And I saw but a thing of flesh and bone 
 Speeding on to its cleft in the clay; 
And my dream was scared, and expired...Read more of this...

To Helen 2

by Edgar Allan Poe
 I saw thee once- once only- years ago: 
I must not say how many- but not many. 
It was a July midnight; and from out 
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, 
Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, 
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light, 
With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber, 
Upon the upturned faces of...Read more of this...

Darkness

by George (Lord) Byron
 I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chilled into...Read more of this...

James Simmons R.i.p

by Barry Tebb
 You were the one I wanted most to know

So like yet unlike, like fire and snow,

The casual voice, the sharp invective,

The barbed wit, the lapsed Irish Protestant

Who never gave a ****, crossed the palms

Of the great and good with coins hot with contempt

For the fakers and the tricksters whose poetry

Deftly bent to fashion’s latest slant.



You wrote from the heart,...Read more of this...

A Former Life

by Charles Baudelaire
 LONG since, I lived beneath vast porticoes, 
By many ocean-sunsets tinged and fired, 
Where mighty pillars, in majestic rows, 
Seemed like basaltic caves when day expired. 

The rolling surge that mirrored all the skies 
Mingled its music, turbulent and rich, 
Solemn and mystic, with the colours which 
The setting sun reflected in my eyes. 

And there I lived amid...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of Hard-Luck Henry

by Robert William Service
 Now wouldn't you expect to find a man an awful crank
That's staked out nigh three hundred claims, and every one a blank;
That's followed every fool stampede, and seen the rise and fall
Of camps where men got gold in chunks and he got none at all;
That's prospected a bit of ground and sold it for a song
To see it yield...Read more of this...

The Warning

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Beware! The Israelite of old, who tore
The lion in his path,--when, poor and blind,
He saw the blessed light of heaven no more,
Shorn of his noble strength and forced to grind
In prison, and at last led forth to be
A pander to Philistine revelry,--

Upon the pillars of the temple laid
His desperate hands, and in its overthrow
Destroyed himself, and with him those...Read more of this...

For To Admire

by Rudyard Kipling
 The Injian Ocean sets an' smiles
 So sof', so bright, so bloomin' blue;
There aren't a wave for miles an' miles
 Excep' the jiggle from the screw.
The ship is swep', the day is done,
 The bugle's gone for smoke and play;
An' black agin' the settin' sun
 The Lascar sings, "Hum deckty hai!" ["I'm looking out."]

For to admire an' for to...Read more of this...

Like Truthless Dreams So Are My Joys Expired

by Sir Walter Raleigh
 Like truthless dreams, so are my joys expired, 
And past return are all my dandled days; 
My love misled, and fancy quite retired— 
Of all which passed the sorrow only stays. 

My lost delights, now clean from sight of land, 
Have left me all alone in unknown ways; 
My mind to woe, my life in fortune's hand— 
Of all...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXVII

by William Shakespeare
 Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body's work's expired:
For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see
Save that my soul's...Read more of this...

The Last Man

by Thomas Campbell
 All worldly shapes shall melt in gloom, 
The Sun himself must die, 
Before this mortal shall assume 
Its Immortality! 
I saw a vision in my sleep 
That gave my spirit strength to sweep 
Adown the gulf of Time! 
I saw the last of human mould, 
That shall Creation's death behold, 
As Adam saw her prime! 

The Sun's eye had...Read more of this...

The Wanderer

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [Published in the Gottingen Musen Almanach, 
having been written "to express his feelings and caprices" after 
his separation from Frederica.]

WANDERER.

YOUNG woman, may God bless thee,
Thee, and the sucking infant
Upon thy breast!
Let me, 'gainst this rocky wall,
Neath the elm-tree's shadow,
Lay aside my burden,
Near thee take my rest.

WOMAN.

What vocation leads thee,
While the day is burning,
Up this dusty path?
Bring'st thou goods from...Read more of this...

On Hearing

by William Lisle Bowles
 O stay, harmonious and sweet sounds, that die 
In the long vaultings of this ancient fane! 
Stay, for I may not hear on earth again 
Those pious airs--that glorious harmony; 
Lifting the soul to brighter orbs on high, 
Worlds without sin or sorrow! Ah, the strain 
Has died--even the last sounds that lingeringly 
Hung on the roof ere they...Read more of this...

Troopin

by Rudyard Kipling
 Troopin', troopin', troopin' to the sea:
'Ere's September come again -- the six-year men are free.
O leave the dead be'ind us, for they cannot come away
To where the ship's a-coalin' up that takes us 'ome to-day.
 We're goin' 'ome, we're goin' 'ome,
 Our ship is at the shore,
 An' you must pack your 'aversack,
 For we won't come back no...Read more of this...

There was a Young Lady of Clare

by Edward Lear
There was a Young Lady of Clare,Who was madly pursued by a Bear;When she found she was tired, she abruptly expired,That unfortunate Lady of Clare. ...Read more of this...

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