Famous Faint Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Gwin King of Norway

by William Blake
 Come, kings, and listen to my song:
When Gwin, the son of Nore,
Over the nations of the North
His cruel sceptre bore;
The nobles of the land did feed
Upon the hungry poor;
They tear the poor man's lamb, and drive
The needy from their door.

`The land is desolate; our wives
And children cry for bread;
Arise, and pull the tyrant down!
Let Gwin be humbl?d!'

Gordred the giant...Read more of this...

The Broken Balance

by Robinson Jeffers
 I. Reference to a Passage in Plutarch's Life of Sulla

The people buying and selling, consuming pleasures, talking in the archways,
Were all suddenly struck quiet
And ran from under stone to look up at the sky: so shrill and mournful,
So fierce and final, a brazen
Pealing of trumpets high up in the air, in the summer blue over Tuscany.
They marvelled; the soothsayers...Read more of this...

Better -- than Music! For I -- who heard it --

by Emily Dickinson
 Better -- than Music! For I -- who heard it --
I was used -- to the Birds -- before --
This -- was different -- 'Twas Translation --
Of all tunes I knew -- and more --

'Twasn't contained -- like other stanza --
No one could play it -- the second time --
But the Composer -- perfect Mozart --
Perish with him --...Read more of this...

Voices Of the Night

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 PRELUDE.

Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene,
Where, the long drooping boughs between
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
Alternate come and go;

Or where the denser grove receives
No sunlight from above
But the dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
The shadows hardly move.

Beneath some patriarchal tree
I lay upon the ground;
His...Read more of this...

Sestina

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
I saw my soul at rest upon a day
      As a bird sleeping in the nest of night,
Among soft leaves that give the starlight way
      To touch its wings but not its eyes with light;
So that it knew as one in visions may,
      And knew...Read more of this...

Two Octaves

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I

Not by the grief that stuns and overwhelms 
All outward recognition of revealed 
And righteous omnipresence are the days 
Of most of us affrighted and diseased, 
But rather by the common snarls of life 
That come to test us and to strengthen us 
In this the prentice-age of discontent, 
Rebelliousness, faint-heartedness, and shame. 


II

When through hot fog the fulgid...Read more of this...

88. The Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer

by Robert Burns
 YE Irish lords, ye knights an’ squires,
Wha represent our brughs an’ shires,
An’ doucely manage our affairs
 In parliament,
To you a simple poet’s pray’rs
 Are humbly sent.


Alas! my roupit Muse is hearse!
Your Honours’ hearts wi’ grief ’twad pierce,
To see her sittin on her ****
 Low i’ the dust,
And scriechinh out prosaic verse,
 An like to brust!


Tell them wha hae the...Read more of this...

Sympathy

by
I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
   When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
   When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!

I...Read more of this...

Sympathy

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
 I know what the caged bird feels, alas! 
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes; 
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass, 
And the river flows like a stream of glass; 
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes, 
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals-- 
I know what the caged bird...Read more of this...

Sonnet 80: O how I faint when I of you do write

by William Shakespeare
 O, how I faint when I of you do write,
Knowing a better spirit doth use your name,
And in the praise thereof spends all his might
To make me tongue-tied speaking of your fame.
But since your worth, wide as the ocean is,
The humble as the proudest sail doth bear,
My saucy bark, inferior far to his,
On your broad main doth wilfully appear.
Your...Read more of this...

Preludium to Europe

by William Blake
 The nameless shadowy female rose from out the breast of Orc, 
Her snaky hair brandishing in the winds of Enitharmon;
And thus her voice arose:

'O mother Enitharmon, wilt thou bring forth other sons?
To cause my name to vanish, that my place may not be found,
For I am faint with travail,
Like the dark cloud disburden'd in the day of dismal thunder.

My...Read more of this...

Ephemera

by William Butler Yeats
 'Your eyes that once were never weary of mine
Are bowed in sotrow under pendulous lids,
Because our love is waning.'
 And then She:
'Although our love is waning, let us stand
By the lone border of the lake once more,
Together in that hour of gentleness
When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep.
How far away the stars seem, and how far
Is our first...Read more of this...

The Pipes At Lucknow

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 Pipes of the misty moorlands,
Voice of the glens and hills;
The droning of the torrents,
The treble of the rills!
Not the braes of bloom and heather,
Nor the mountains dark with rain,
Nor maiden bower, nor border tower,
Have heard your sweetest strain!

Dear to the Lowland reaper,
And plaided mountaineer, -
To the cottage and the castle
The Scottish pipes are dear; -
Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch
O'er...Read more of this...

Faint Yet Pursuing

by Coventry Patmore
 Heroic Good, target for which the young
Dream in their dreams that every bow is strung,
And, missing, sigh
Unfruitful, or as disbelievers die,
Thee having miss'd, I will not so revolt,
But lowlier shoot my bolt,
And lowlier still, if still I may not reach,
And my proud stomach teach
That less than highest is good, and may be high.
And even walk in life's uneven way,
Though...Read more of this...

What The Thunder Said

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
  After the frosty silence in the gardens
  After the agony in stony places
  The shouting and the crying
  Prison and palace and reverberation
  Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
  He who was living is now dead
  We who were living are now dying
  With...Read more of this...

Epilogue

by Vachel Lindsay
 UNDER THE BLESSING OF YOUR PSYCHE WINGS


Though I have found you llke a snow-drop pale, 
On sunny days have found you weak and still,
Though I have often held your girlish head
Drooped on my shoulder, faint from little ill:—

Under the blessing of your Psyche-wings
I hide to-night like one small broken bird,
So soothed. I half-forget the world gone mad:—
And all the...Read more of this...

The Farewell

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Of A Virginia Slave Mother To Her Daughters Sold Into Southern Bondage

Gone, gone, -- sold and gone 
To the rice-swamp dank and lone. 
Where the slave-whip ceaseless swings 
Where the noisome insect stings 
Where the fever demon strews 
Poison with the falling dews 
Where the sickly sunbeams glare 
Through the hot and misty air; 
Gone, gone, -- sold and...Read more of this...

Four Riddles

by Lewis Carroll
 I 

There was an ancient City, stricken down
With a strange frenzy, and for many a day
They paced from morn to eve the crowded town,
And danced the night away. 

I asked the cause: the aged man grew sad:
They pointed to a building gray and tall,
And hoarsely answered "Step inside, my lad,
And then you'll see it all." 


Yet what are all...Read more of this...

Tortoise Shout

by D. H. Lawrence
 I thought he was dumb, said he was dumb,
Yet I've heard him cry.
First faint scream,
Out of life's unfathomable dawn,
Far off, so far, like a madness, under the horizon's dawning rim,
Far, far off, far scream.
Tortoise in extremis.
Why were we crucified into sex?
Why were we not left rounded off, and finished in ourselves,
As we began,
As he certainly began, so perfectly alone?

A...Read more of this...

Still Falls the Rain

by Dame Edith Sitwell
 Still falls the Rain---
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss---
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.

Still falls the Rain
With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat
In the Potter's Field, and the sound of the impious feet

On the Tomb:
Still falls the Rain

In the Field of Blood where...Read more of this...

A Little Girls Prayer

by Katherine Mansfield
 Grant me the moment, the lovely moment
That I may lean forth to see
The other buds, the other blooms,
The other leaves on the tree:

That I may take into my bosom
The breeze that is like his brother,
But stiller, lighter, whose faint laughter
Exhoes the joy of the other.

Above on the blue and white cloud-spaces
There are small clouds at play.
I watch their remote,...Read more of this...

The Last Judgment

by Amy Levy
 With beating heart and lagging feet,
Lord, I approach the Judgment-seat.
All bring hither the fruits of toil,
Measures of wheat and measures of oil;

Gold and jewels and precious wine;
No hands bare like these hands of mine.
The treasure I have nor weighs nor gleams:
Lord, I can bring you only dreams.

In days of spring, when my blood ran high,
I lay in the grass...Read more of this...

Morning -- means Milking -- to the Farmer

by Emily Dickinson
 "Morning" -- means "Milking" -- to the Farmer --
Dawn -- to the Teneriffe --
Dice -- to the Maid --
Morning means just Risk -- to the Lover --
Just revelation -- to the Beloved --

Epicures -- date a Breakfast -- by it --
Brides -- an Apocalypse --
Worlds -- a Flood --
Faint-going Lives -- Their Lapse from Sighing --
Faith -- The Experiment...Read more of this...

Sonnet 12 - Indeed this very love which is my boast

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 Indeed this very love which is my boast,
And which, when rising up from breast to brow,
Doth crown me with a ruby large enow
To draw men's eyes and prove the inner cost,—
This love even, all my worth, to the uttermost,
I should not love withal, unless that thou
Hadst set me an example, shown me how,
When first thine earnest eyes with mine...Read more of this...

Autumn in the Garden

by Henry Van Dyke
 When the frosty kiss of Autumn in the dark
Makes its mark
On the flowers, and the misty morning grieves
Over fallen leaves;
Then my olden garden, where the golden soil
Through the toil
Of a hundred years is mellow, rich, and deep,
Whispers in its sleep.

'Mid the crumpled beds of marigold and phlox,
Where the box
Borders with its glossy green the ancient walks,
There's a voice that...Read more of this...

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