Famous Fallen Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Fallen Star

by Tupac Shakur
They could never understand
what u set out 2 do
instead they chose 2
ridicule u
when u got weak
they loved the sight
of your dimming
and flickering starlight
How could they understand what was so intricate
2 be loved by so many, so intimate
they wanted 2 c your lifeless corpse
this way u could not alter the course
of ignorance that they have set
2 make my people forget
what they...Read more of this...

To A Fallen Elm

by John Clare
 Old Elm that murmured in our chimney top
The sweetest anthem autumn ever made
And into mellow whispering calms would drop
When showers fell on thy many coloured shade
And when dark tempests mimic thunder made
While darkness came as it would strangle light
With the black tempest of a winter night
That rocked thee like a cradle to thy root
How did I love to hear...Read more of this...

Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France

by Alan Seeger
 I

Ay, it is fitting on this holiday, 
Commemorative of our soldier dead, 
When -- with sweet flowers of our New England May 
Hiding the lichened stones by fifty years made gray -- 
Their graves in every town are garlanded, 
That pious tribute should be given too 
To our intrepid few 
Obscurely fallen here beyond the seas. 
Those to preserve...Read more of this...

Something Has Fallen

by Philip Levine
 Something has fallen wordlessly 
and holds still on the black driveway. 

You find it, like a jewel, 
among the empty bottles and cans 

where the dogs toppled the garbage. 
You pick it up, not sure 

if it is stone or wood 
or some new plastic made 

to replace them both. 
When you raise your sunglasses 

to see exactly what...Read more of this...

A Fallen Leaf

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 A trusting little leaf of green,
A bold audacious frost;
A rendezvous, a kiss or two,
And youth for ever lost.
Ah, me!
The bitter, bitter cost.

A flaunting patch of vivid red,
That quivers in the sun;
A windy gust, a grave of dust,
The little race is run.
Ah, me!
Were that the only one....Read more of this...

Told

by Philip Levine
 The air lay soffly on the green fur 
of the almond, it was April 

and I said, I begin again 
but my hands burned in the damp earth 

the light ran between my fingers 
a black light like no other 

this was not home, the linnet 
settling on the oleander 

the green pod swelling 
the leaf slowly untwisting 

the...Read more of this...

Fallen Majesty

by William Butler Yeats
 Although crowds gathered once if she but showed her face,
And even old men's eyes grew dim, this hand alone,
Like some last courtier at a gypsy camping-place
Babbling of fallen majesty, records what's gone.

These lineaments, a heart that laughter has made sweet,
These, these remain, but I record what's gone. A crowd
Will gather, and not know it walks the very street
Whereon a...Read more of this...

Fallen Leaves

by Robert William Service
 Why should I be the first to fall
Of all the leaves on this old tree?
Though sadly soon I know that all
Will lose their hold and follow me.
While my birth-brothers bravely blow,
Why should I be first to go?

Why should I be the last to cling
Of all the leaves on this bleak bough?
I've fluttered since the fire of Spring
And I am...Read more of this...

On a Tree Fallen Across the Road

by Robert Frost
 (To hear us talk)

The tree the tempest with a crash of wood
Throws down in front of us is not bar
Our passage to our journey's end for good,
But just to ask us who we think we are

Insisting always on our own way so.
She likes to halt us in our runner tracks,
And make us get down in a foot of snow
Debating...Read more of this...

The fly-away horse

by Eugene Field
 Oh, a wonderful horse is the Fly-Away Horse -
Perhaps you have seen him before;
Perhaps, while you slept, his shadow has swept

Through the moonlight that floats on the floor.
For it's only at night, when the stars twinkle bright,
That the Fly-Away Horse, with a neigh
And a pull at his rein and a toss of his mane,
Is up on his heels and...Read more of this...

Rain Has Fallen All the Day

by James Joyce
 Rain has fallen all the day. 
O come among the laden trees: 
The leaves lie thick upon the way 
Of memories. 

Staying a little by the way 
Of memories shall we depart. 
Come, my beloved, where I may 
Speak to your heart....Read more of this...

a man who had fallen among thieves

by Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
a man who had fallen among thieves

lay by the roadside on his back
dressed in fifteenthrate ideas
wearing a round jeer for a hat

fate per a somewhat more than less
emancipated evening
had in return for consciousness
endowed him with a changeless grin

whereon a dozen staunch and Meal
citizens did graze at pause
then fired by hypercivic zeal
sought newer pastures or because

swaddled with a frozen brook
of pinkest...Read more of this...

Wittgensteins Ladder

by David Lehman
 "My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: 
 anyone who understands them eventually recognizes them as 
 nonsensical, when he has used them -- as steps -- to climb 
 up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder 
 after he has climbed up it.)" -- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus 

1. 

The first time...Read more of this...

HEAR the Voice

by William Blake
HEAR the voice of the Bard  
Who present past and future sees; 
Whose ears have heard 
The Holy Word 
That walk'd among the ancient trees; 5 

Calling the laps¨¨d soul  
And weeping in the evening dew; 
That might control 
The starry pole  
And fallen fallen light renew! 10 

'O Earth O Earth return! 
Arise from out the...Read more of this...

On a Soldier Fallen in the Philippines

by William Vaughn Moody
 Streets of the roaring town, 
Hush for him, hus, be still! 
He comes, who was stricken down 
Doing the word of our will. 
Hush! Let him have his state, 
Give him his soldier's crown. 
The grists of trade can wait 
Their grinding at the mill, 
But he cannot wait for his honor, now the trumpet has been blown. 
Wreathe...Read more of this...

The willow leaves fallen

by Yosa Buson
 The willow leaves fallen,
the spring gone dry,
 rocks here and there....Read more of this...

The Ship of Death

by D. H. Lawrence
 I 

Now it is autumn and the falling fruit 
and the long journey towards oblivion. 

The apples falling like great drops of dew 
to bruise themselves an exit from themselves. 

And it is time to go, to bid farewell 
to one's own self, and find an exit 
from the fallen self. 

II 

Have you built your ship of death,...Read more of this...

Henry Purcell

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 The poet wishes well to the divine genius of Purcell 
 and praises him that, whereas other musicians have 
 given utterance to the moods of man's mind, he has, 
 beyond that, uttered in notes the very make and 
 species of man as created both in him and in all men 
 generally.


Have, fair fallen, O fair,...Read more of this...

When, with bowed head, I have fallen at the feet of

by Omar Khayyam
When, with bowed head, I have fallen at the feet of
death; when this destroying angel shall have made me
like a bird robbed of its plumage, then of my dust make
nothing other than a flask, for the perfume of the wine
that it contains might revive me for an instant....Read more of this...

And now that the lofty leaves have fallen

by Emile Verhaeren
And now that the lofty leaves have fallen, that kept our garden sheltered beneath their shade, through the bare branches can be seen beyond them the roofs of the old villages climbing towards the horizon.
So long as summer poured out its gladness, none of us saw them grouped so near our door; but now that the flowers and the leaves...Read more of this...

Insult Not The Fallen

by Victor Hugo
 ("Oh! n'insultez jamais une femme qui tombe.") 
 
 {XIV., Sept. 6, 1835.} 


 I tell you, hush! no word of sneering scorn— 
 True, fallen; but God knows how deep her sorrow. 
 Poor girl! too many like her only born 
 To love one day—to sin—and die the morrow. 
 What know you of her struggles or...Read more of this...

For the Fallen

by Laurence Binyon
 With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, 
England mourns for her dead across the sea. 
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit, 
Fallen in the cause of the free. 

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal 
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres, 
There is music in the midst of desolation 
And a glory that...Read more of this...

The Fallen Angels

by Anne Sexton
 They come on to my clean
sheet of paper and leave a Rorschach blot.
They do not do this to be mean,
they do it to give me a sign
they want me, as Aubrey Beardsley once said,
to shove it around till something comes.
Clumsy as I am,
I do it.
For I am like them -
both saved and lost,
tumbling downward like Humpty Dumpty
off the alphabet.

Each...Read more of this...

Percival Sharp

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Observe the clasped hands!
Are they hands of farewell or greeting,
Hands that I helped or hands that helped me?
Would it not be well to carve a hand
With an inverted thumb, like Elagabalus?
And yonder is a broken chain,
The weakest-link idea perhaps --
But what was it?
And lambs, some lying down,
Others standing, as if listening to the shepherd --
Others bearing a cross, one...Read more of this...

Gone

by Adam Lindsay Gordon
 IN Collins Street standeth a statute tall, 
A statue tall, on a pillar of stone, 
Telling its story, to great and small, 
Of the dust reclaimed from the sand waste lone; 
Weary and wasted, and worn and wan, 
Feeble and faint, and languid and low, 
He lay on the desert a dying man; 
Who has gone, my friends, where...Read more of this...

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