Famous Fade Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Faerie Queene Book III Canto VI

by Edmund Spenser
The birth of faire Belphoebe and
Of Amoret is told.
The Gardins of Adonis fraught
With pleasures manifold.
 
And gentle sprite deforme with rude rusticity.
 But to this faire Belphoebe in her berth
The heauens so fauourable were and free,
Looking with myld aspect vpon the earth,
In th'Horoscope of her natiuitee,
That all the gifts of grace and chastitee
On her they poured forth of plenteous horne;
Ioue...Read more of this...

Psalm 102 part 3

by Isaac Watts
 v.23-28 
L. M.
Man's mortality, and Christ's eternity.

It is the Lord our Savior's hand
Weakens our strength amidst the race;
Disease and death at his command
Arrest us, and cut short our days.

Spare us, O Lord, aloud we pray,
Nor let our sun go down at noon;
Thy years are one eternal day,
And must thy children die so soon?

Yet in the midst of death and...Read more of this...

The Four Brothers

by Carl Sandburg
 MAKE war songs out of these;
Make chants that repeat and weave.
Make rhythms up to the ragtime chatter of the machine guns;
Make slow-booming psalms up to the boom of the big guns.
Make a marching song of swinging arms and swinging legs,
 Going along,
 Going along,
On the roads from San Antonio to Athens, from Seattle to Bagdad—
The boys and men in...Read more of this...

Finnigans Finish

by Robert William Service
 They thought I'd be a champion;
 They boasted loud of me.
A dozen victories I'd won,
 The Press was proud of me.
I saw myself with glory crowned,
 And would, beyond a doubt,
Till last night in the second round
 A Dago knocked me out.

It must have been an accident;
 I cannot understand.
For I was so damn confident
 I'd lick him with...Read more of this...

In the Morning of Life

by Thomas Moore
 In the morning of life, when its cares are unknown, 
And its pleasures in all their new lustre begin, 
When we live in a bright-beaming world of our own, 
And the light that surrounds us is all from within; 
Oh 'tis not, believe me, in that happy time 
We can love, as in hours of less transport we may;...Read more of this...

To Thyrza: And Thou Art Dead

by George (Lord) Byron
 And thou art dead, as young and fair
As aught of mortal birth;
And form so soft and charm so rare
Too soon returned to Earth!
Though Earth received them in her bed,
And o'er the spot the crowd may tread
In carelessness or mirth,
There is an eye which could not brook
A moment on that grave to look.

I will not ask where thou liest low,
Nor...Read more of this...

Hymn To Intellectual Beauty

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats through unseen among us, -- visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower, --
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening, --
Like clouds in starlight widely spread, --
Like memory of music fled,...Read more of this...

The White Birds

by William Butler Yeats
 I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea!
We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee;
And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,
Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.
A weariness comes from...Read more of this...

Of the Mean and Sure Estate

by Sir Thomas Wyatt
 My mother's maids, when they did sew and spin,
They sang sometime a song of the field mouse,
That, for because her livelood was but thin,

Would needs go seek her townish sister's house.
She thought herself endurèd too much pain;
The stormy blasts her cave so sore did souse

That when the furrows swimmèd with the rain,
She must lie cold and wet in sorry...Read more of this...

I cautious scanned my little life

by Emily Dickinson
 I cautious, scanned my little life --
I winnowed what would fade
From what would last till Heads like mine
Should be a-dreaming laid.

I put the latter in a Barn --
The former, blew away.
I went one winter morning
And lo - my priceless Hay

Was not upon the "Scaffold" --
Was not upon the "Beam" --
And from a thriving Farmer --
A Cynic, I became.

Whether a...Read more of this...

Hugos flower to butterfly

by Eugene Field
 Sweet, bide with me and let my love
Be an enduring tether;
Oh, wanton not from spot to spot,
But let us dwell together.

You've come each morn to sip the sweets
With which you found me dripping,
Yet never knew it was not dew
But tears that you were sipping.

You gambol over honey meads
Where siren bees are humming;
But mine the fate to watch and wait
For...Read more of this...

Amoretti LXXIX: Men Call you Fair

by Edmund Spenser
 Men call you fair, and you do credit it,
For that your self ye daily such do see:
But the true fair, that is the gentle wit,
And vertuous mind, is much more prais'd of me.
For all the rest, how ever fair it be,
Shall turn to naught and lose that glorious hue:
But only that is permanent and free
From frail corruption, that doth...Read more of this...

The Cats Song

by Marge Piercy
 Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness. 
My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says 
the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing 
milk from his mother's forgotten breasts. 

Let us walk in the woods, says the cat. 
I'll teach you to read the tabloid of scents, 
to fade into shadow, wait like...Read more of this...

Sinfonia Eroica

by Amy Levy
 (To Sylvia.)


My Love, my Love, it was a day in June,
A mellow, drowsy, golden afternoon;
And all the eager people thronging came
To that great hall, drawn by the magic name
Of one, a high magician, who can raise
The spirits of the past and future days,
And draw the dreams from out the secret breast,
Giving them life and shape.
I, with the rest,
Sat there...Read more of this...

Subtraction Flower

by Lisa Zaran
 You could die for it-- 
love, 
or refuse it altogether 
and know nothing 
except the urgency 
of youth. Men 

have been 
solitary 
for ages 
carrying the 
stoniest of hearts 
in their broad chests 
while we women 

begin too early 
brush the brown leaves 
from our shoulders, go 
from bloom to fade 
as soon as 
we see the sunrise 

We...Read more of this...

Song VII: Dawn Talks to Day

by William Morris
 Dawn talks to Day
Over dew-gleaming flowers,
Night flies away
Till the resting of hours:
Fresh are thy feet
And with dreams thine eyes glistening,
Thy still lips are sweet
Though the world is a-listening.
O Love, set a word in my mouth for our meeting,
Cast thine arms round about me to stay my heart's beating!
O fresh day, O fair day, O long day made ours! 

Morn...Read more of this...

Ode to the Memory of Burns

by Thomas Campbell
 Soul of the Poet ! wheresoe'er,
Reclaimed from earth, thy genius plume
Her wings of immortality ;
Suspend thy harp in happier sphere,
And with thine influence illume
The gladness of our jubilee.

And fly like fiends from secret spell,
Discord and Strife, at Burn's name,
Exorcised by his memory ;
For he was chief of bards that swell
The heart with songs of social flame,
And high delicious revelry.

And...Read more of this...

The Baldness Of Chewed-Ear

by Robert William Service
 When Chewed-ear Jenkins got hitched up to Guinneyveer McGee,
His flowin' locks, ye recollect, wuz frivolous an' free;
But in old Hymen's jack-pot, it's a most amazin' thing,
Them flowin' locks jest disappeared like snow-balls in the Spring;
Jest seemed to wilt an' fade away like dead leaves in the Fall,
An' left old Chewed-ear balder than a white-washed cannon ball.

Now Missis Chewed-ear Jenkins,...Read more of this...

In Romney Marsh

by John Davidson
 As I went down to Dymchurch Wall,
I heard the South sing o'er the land
I saw the yellow sunlight fall
On knolls where Norman churches stand.

And ringing shrilly, taut and lithe,
Within the wind a core of sound,
The wire from Romney town to Hythe
Along its airy journey wound.

A veil of purple vapour flowed
And trailed its fringe along the Straits;
The upper air like...Read more of this...

Hymn 27

by Isaac Watts
 Assurance of heaven.

2 Tim. 4:68,18. 

[Death may dissolve my body now,
And bear my spirit home;
Why do my minutes move so slow,
Nor my salvation come?

With heav'nly weapons I have fought
The battles of the Lord;
Finished my course, and kept the faith,
And wait the sure reward.]

God has laid up in heav'n for me
A crown which cannot fade;
The righteous Judge at that great...Read more of this...

from the Ansty Experience

by Rg Gregory
 (a)
they seek to celebrate the word
not to bring their knives out on a poem
dissecting it to find a heart
whose beat lies naked on a table
not to score in triumph on a line
no sensitive would put a nostril to
but simply to receive it as an
offering glimpsing the sacred there

poem probes the poet's once-intention
but each time said budges its truth
afresh (leaving...Read more of this...

Transit

by Richard Wilbur
 A woman I have never seen before
Steps from the darkness of her town-house door
At just that crux of time when she is made
So beautiful that she or time must fade.

What use to claim that as she tugs her gloves
A phantom heraldry of all the loves
Blares from the lintel? That the staggered sun
Forgets, in his confusion, how to run?

Still, nothing...Read more of this...

O Glorious France

by Edgar Lee Masters
 You have become a forge of snow-white fire,
A crucible of molten steel, O France!
Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn
And fade in light for you, O glorious France!
They pass through meteor changes with a song
Which to all islands and all continents
Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame,
Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child,
Nor love, nor youth's...Read more of this...

Tiare Tahiti

by Rupert Brooke
 Mamua, when our laughter ends,
And hearts and bodies, brown as white,
Are dust about the doors of friends,
Or scent ablowing down the night,
Then, oh! then, the wise agree,
Comes our immortality.
Mamua, there waits a land
Hard for us to understand.
Out of time, beyond the sun,
All are one in Paradise,
You and Pupure are one,
And Tau, and the ungainly wise.
There the Eternals are, and...Read more of this...

To Hope

by John Keats
 When by my solitary hearth I sit,
 And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom;
When no fair dreams before my "mind's eye" flit,
 And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;
 Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
 And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!

Whene'er I wander, at the fall of night,
 Where woven boughs shut out...Read more of this...

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