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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by
Baudelaire, Charles
...
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 voluptuous calms,
In splendours of blue sky and wandering wave,
Tended by many a naked, perfumed slave,
Who fanned my languid brow with waving p...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The Moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perished! Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe!...Read more of this...
by
Hacker, Marilyn
...arrayed
itself; despite itself, dismayed
you with your certainties, your visa, gone
from your breast-pocket, or perhaps expired.
At the reception desk, no one inquired
if you'd be returning. Now you wonder why.
When the stout conductor comes down the aisle
mustached, red-faced, at first jovial,
and asks for your passport, what will you say?
When they ask for your passport, will you say
that town's name they'd find unpronounceable
which resonates, when uttered, li...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...anny and crevice,
Warm by the forge within they watched the laboring bellows,
And as its panting ceased, and the sparks expired in the ashes,
Merrily laughed, and said they were nuns going into the chapel.
Oft on sledges in winter, as swift as the swoop of the eagle,
Down the hillside hounding, they glided away o'er the meadow.
Oft in the barns they climbed to the populous nests on the rafters,
Seeking with eager eyes that wondrous stone, which the swallow
Brings from...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...ick-stove
That no one's lit for years an' years!
I passed by that when I began,
An' I go 'ome the road I came,
A time-expired soldier-man
With six years' service to 'is name.
My girl she said, "Oh, stay with me!"
My mother 'eld me to 'er breast.
They've never written none, an' so
They must 'ave gone with all the rest --
With all the rest which I 'ave seen
An' found an' known an' met along.
I cannot say the things I feel,
And so I sing my evenin' song:
For...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...est Ulsterman’ you founded
Lost its honesty the day you withdrew
But floundered on, publicly sighed and
Ungraciously expired as soon as you died.
You went with fallen women, smoked and sang and boozed,
Loved your many children, wrote poetry
As good as Yeats but the ignominy you had to bear
Bred an immortality impossible to share.
You showed us your own peccadilloes,
Your early lust for fame, but you learned
The cost of suffering, love and talent winning th...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...nd they are gone — but Ezzelin is there,
With thoughtful visage and imperious air;
But long remain'd not; ere an hour expired
He waved his hand to Otho, and retired.
XXIX.
The crowd are gone, the revellers at rest;
The courteous host, and all-approving guest,
Again to that accustom'd couch must creep
Where joy subsides, and sorrow sighs to sleep,
And man, o'erlabour'd with his being's strife,
Shrinks to that sweet forgetfulness of life:
There lie love's f...Read more of this...
by
Raleigh, Sir Walter
...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 which passed the sorrow only stays.
As in a country strange, without c...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...
Two hours had pass'd the mid-way line,
And driving at his usual rate,
Lash'd on his downward car of state.
And now expired the short vacation,
And dinner o'er in epic fashion,
While all the crew, beneath the trees,
Eat pocket-pies, or bread and cheese,
(Nor shall we, like old Homer, care
To versify their bill of fare)
Each active party, feasted well,
Throng'd in, like sheep, at sound of bell;
With equal spirit took their places,
And meeting oped with three Oh Yesses:
Whe...Read more of this...
by
Arnold, Matthew
...hat tide of common thought,
Which bathed our life, retired;
Slow, slow the old world wore to nought,
And pulse by pulse expired.
'Its frame yet stood without a breach
When blood and warmth were fled;
And still it spake its wonted speech--
But every word was dead.
'And oh, we cried, that on this corse
Might fall a freshening storm!
Rive its dry bones, and with new force
A new-sprung world inform!
'--Down came the storm! O'er France it pass'd
In sheets of scathing fi...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...th abhor, since thou hast dared to utter
The abominable terms, impious condition.
But I endure the time, till which expired
Thou hast permission on me. It is written,
The first of all commandments, 'Thou shalt worship
The Lord thy God, and only Him shalt serve.'
And dar'st thou to the Son of God propound
To worship thee, accursed? now more accursed
For this attempt, bolder than that on Eve,
And more blasphemous; which expect to rue.
The kingdoms of the world ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...
And night and day he worked that lay for all that he was worth.
And when in chill December's gloom his lucky lease expired,
He found that he had made a stake as big as he desired.
One day while meditating on the waywardness of fate,
He felt the ache of lonely man to find a fitting mate;
A petticoated pard to cheer his solitary life,
A woman with soft, soothing ways, a confidant, a wife.
And while he cooked his supper on his little Yukon stove,
He wished that he ...Read more of this...
by
Campbell, Thomas
...eye had a sickly glare,
The Earth with age was wan,
The skeletons of nations were
Around that lonely man!
Some had expired in fight,--the brands
Still rested in their bony hands;
In plague and famine some!
Earth's cities had no sound nor tread;
And ships were drifting with the dead
To shores where all was dumb!
Yet, prophet-like, that lone one stood
With dauntless words and high,
That shook the sere leaves from the wood
As if a storm passed by,
Saying, "We are...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...tors, the Christian band,
All that of living or dead remain,
Hurl'd on high with the shiver'd fane,
In one wild roar expired!
The shatter'd town — the walls thrown down —
The waves a moment backward bent —
The hills that shake, although unrent,
As if an earthquake pass'd —
The thousand shapeless things all driven
In cloud and flame athwart the heaven,
By that tremendous blast —
Proclaim'd the desperate conflict o'er
On that too long afflicted shore!
Up to the sky...Read more of this...
by
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...cottage
Of tiles and stones from out the ruins.
'Tis here we dwell.
He gave me to a husbandman,
And in our arms expired.--
Hast thou been sleeping, dearest heart
How lively, and how full of play!
Sweet rogue!
WANDERER.
Nature, thou ever budding one,
Thou formest each for life's enjoyments,
And, like a mother, all thy children dear,
Blessest with that sweet heritage,--a home
The swallow builds the cornice round,
Unconscious of the beauties
She plasters up.Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...lf, and with him those who made
A cruel mockery of his sightless woe;
The poor, blind Slave, the scoff and jest of all,
Expired, and thousands perished in the fall!
There is a poor, blind Samson in this land,
Shorn of his strength and bound in bonds of steel,
Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand,
And shake the pillars of this Commonweal,
Till the vast Temple of our liberties.
A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies....Read more of this...
by
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang
...e sun, the world quake fearfully.
I see Him in His victor-car,
On fiery axles borne afar,
Who on the cross for us expired.
The triumph to yon realms He shows,--
Remote from earth, where star ne'er glows,
The triumph He for us acquired.
He cometh, Hell to extirpate,
Whom He, by dying, wellnigh kill'd;
He shall pronounce her fearful fate
Hark! now the curse is straight fulfill'd.
Hell sees the victor come at last,
She feels that now her reign is past,
She...Read more of this...
by
Poe, Edgar Allan
...and the repining trees,
Were seen no more: the very roses' odors
Died in the arms of the adoring airs.
All- all expired save thee- save less than thou:
Save only the divine light in thine eyes-
Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.
I saw but them- they were the world to me!
I saw but them- saw only them for hours,
Saw only them until the moon went down.
What wild heart-histories seemed to he enwritten
Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres!
How ...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...ck no more.
Ho, don't you grieve for me,
My lovely Mary-Ann,
For I'll marry you yit on a fourp'ny bit
As a time-expired man.
The Malabar's in 'arbour with the ~Jumner~ at 'er tail,
An' the time-expired's waitin' of 'is orders for to sail.
Ho! the weary waitin' when on Khyber 'ills we lay,
But the time-expired's waitin' of 'is orders 'ome to-day.
They'll turn us out at Portsmouth wharf in cold an' wet an' rain,
All wearin' Injian cotton kit, but we will n...Read more of this...
by
Hall, Donald
...uk
as he approached, then passed me,
carrying knives red with the gore of our dog--
who had yowled, moaned, and now lay
expired, surrounded
by curious cousins and uncles, possibly
hungry--and he trusted the knives
handle-down in the snow.
Immediately after he left the knives, the vague, gray
shape of wolves
turned solid, out of the darkness and the snow, and set ravenously
to licking blood from the honed steel.
the double-edge of the knives
so lacerated the tongues o...Read more of this...
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