Famous Faltering Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Sang from the Heart Sire

by Emily Dickinson
 Sang from the Heart, Sire,
Dipped my Beak in it,
If the Tune drip too much
Have a tint too Red

Pardon the Cochineal --
Suffer the Vermillion --
Death is the Wealth
Of the Poorest Bird.

Bear with the Ballad --
Awkward -- faltering --
Death twists the strings --
'Twasn't my blame --

Pause in your Liturgies --
Wait your Chorals --
While I repeat your
Hallowed name --...Read more of this...

Modern Love XLII: I Am to Follow Her

by George Meredith
 I am to follow her. There is much grace 
In woman when thus bent on martyrdom. 
They think that dignity of soul may come, 
Perchance, with dignity of body. Base! 
But I was taken by that air of cold 
And statuesque sedateness, when she said 
'I'm going'; lit a taper, bowed her head, 
And went, as with the stride...Read more of this...

Memory Of My Father

by Patrick Kavanagh
 Every old man I see
Reminds me of my father
When he had fallen in love with death
One time when sheaves were gathered.
That man I saw in Gardner Street
Stumbled on the kerb was one,
He stared at me half-eyed,
I might have been his son.
And I remember the musician
Faltering over his fiddle
In Bayswater, London,
He too set me the riddle.
Every old man I see
In...Read more of this...

Mary smith

by Eugene Field
 Away down East where I was reared amongst my Yankee kith,
There used to live a pretty girl whose name was Mary Smith;
And though it's many years since last I saw that pretty girl,
And though I feel I'm sadly worn by Western strife and whirl;
Still, oftentimes, I think about the old familiar place,
Which, someway, seemed the brighter for Miss Mary's...Read more of this...

To Four Psychoanalysts

by Barry Tebb
 Richard Chessick, John Gedo, James Grotstein and Vamik Voltan



What darknesses have you lit up for me

What depths of infinite space plumbed

With your finely honed probes

What days of unending distress lightened 

With your wisdom, skills and jouissance?

Conquistadores of the unconscious

For three decades how often have I come to you

And from your teachings gathered the manna

Of meaning eluding me alone in...Read more of this...

The Gardener XXIV: Do Not Keep to Yourself

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Do not keep to yourself the secret of
your heart, my friend!
Say it to me, only to me, in secret.
You who smile so gently, softly
whisper, my heart will hear it, not my
ears.
The night is deep, the house is
silent, the birds' nests are shrouded
with sleep.
Speak to me through hesitating
tears, through faltering smiles, through
sweet shame and pain, the secret of
your heart!...Read more of this...

A Forest Hymn

by William Cullen Bryant
The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned 
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, 
And spread the roof above them,---ere he framed 
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back 
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, 
Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down, 
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks 
And supplication. For his...Read more of this...

Call It Music

by Philip Levine
 Some days I catch a rhythm, almost a song
in my own breath. I'm alone here
in Brooklyn Heights, late morning, the sky
above the St. George Hotel clear, clear
for New York, that is. The radio playing
"Bird Flight," Parker in his California
tragic voice fifty years ago, his faltering
"Lover Man" just before he crashed into chaos.
I would guess that outside the recording studio
in...Read more of this...

My Foe

by Robert William Service
 A Belgian Priest-Soldier Speaks;

GURR! You cochon! Stand and fight!
Show your mettle! Snarl and bite!
Spawn of an accursed race,
Turn and meet me face to face!
Here amid the wreck and rout
Let us grip and have it out!
Here where ruins rock and reel
Let us settle, steel to steel!
Look! Our houses, how they spit
Sparks from brands your friends have lit.
See! Our gutters running...Read more of this...

A Forest Hymn

by William Cullen Bryant
THE GROVES were God's first temples. Ere man learned 
To hew the shaft and lay the architrave  
And spread the roof above them¡ªere he framed 
The lofty vault to gather and roll back 
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood 5 
Amidst the cool and silence he knelt down  
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks 
And...Read more of this...

Before Sleep

by Catherine Anderson
 I was in love with anatomy
the symmetry of my body
poised for flight,
the heights it would take
over parents, lovers, a keen
riding over truth and detail.
I thought growing up would be
this rising from everything
old and earthly,
not these faltering steps out the door
every day, then back again....Read more of this...

Pensive and Faltering

by Walt Whitman
 PENSIVE and faltering, 
The words, the dead, I write; 
For living are the Dead; 
(Haply the only living, only real, 
And I the apparition—I the spectre.) 5...Read more of this...

The Road to Old Mans Town

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 The fields of youth are filled with flowers, 
The wine of youth is strong: 
What need have we to count the hours? 
The summer days are long. 
But soon we find to our dismay 
That we are drifting down 
The barren slopes that fall away 
Towards the foothills grim and grey 
That lead to Old Man's Town. 

And marching...Read more of this...

Pensive and Faltering

by Walt Whitman
 PENSIVE and faltering, 
The words, the dead, I write; 
For living are the Dead; 
(Haply the only living, only real, 
And I the apparition—I the spectre.) 5...Read more of this...

Paris

by Alan Seeger
 First, London, for its myriads; for its height, 
Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite; 
But Paris for the smoothness of the paths 
That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . . 


Fair loiterer on the threshold of those days 
When there's no lovelier prize the world displays 
Than, having beauty and your twenty years, 
You have the means...Read more of this...

Compensation

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Because I had loved so deeply,
Because I had loved so long,
God in His great compassion
Gave me the gift of song.
Because I have loved so vainly,
And sung with such faltering breath,
The Master in infinite mercy
Offers the boon of Death.
...Read more of this...

Pensive and Faltering

by Walt Whitman
 PENSIVE and faltering, 
The words, the dead, I write; 
For living are the Dead; 
(Haply the only living, only real, 
And I the apparition—I the spectre.) 5...Read more of this...

Birth-Day Ode 03

by Robert Southey
 And wouldst thou seek the low abode
Where PEACE delights to dwell?
Pause Traveller on thy way of life!
With many a snare and peril rife
Is that long labyrinth of road:
Dark is the vale of years before
Pause Traveller on thy way!
Nor dare the dangerous path explore
Till old EXPERIENCE comes to lend his leading ray.

Not he who comes with lanthorn light
Shall guide thy...Read more of this...

Hope in Failure

by George William Russell
 THOUGH now thou hast failed and art fallen, despair not because of defeat,
Though lost for a while be thy heaven and weary of earth be thy feet,
For all will be beauty about thee hereafter through sorrowful years,
And lovely the dews for thy chilling and ruby thy heart-drip of tears.


The eyes that had gazed from afar on a beauty that...Read more of this...

Small Frogs Killed On The Highway

by James Wright
 Still,
I would leap too
Into the light,
If I had the chance.
It is everything, the wet green stalk of the field
On the other side of the road.
They crouch there, too, faltering in terror
And take strange wing. Many
Of the dead never moved, but many
Of the dead are alive forever in the split second
Auto headlights more sudden
Than their drivers know.
The drivers burrow backward...Read more of this...

Stars

by Robert Frost
 How countlessly they congregate
O'er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When wintry winds do blow!--

As if with keeness for our fate,
Our faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
Invisible at dawn,--

And yet with neither love nor hate,
Those starts like somw snow-white
Minerva's snow-white marble eyes
Without the gift of sight....Read more of this...

The Maid of Neidpath

by Sir Walter Scott
 O lovers’ eyes are sharp to see, 
And lovers’ ears in hearing; 
And love, in life’s extremity, 
Can lend an hour of cheering. 
Disease had been in Mary’s bower 
And slow decay from mourning, 
Though now she sits on Neidpath’s tower 
To watch her Love’s returning. 

All sunk and dim her eyes so bright, 
Her form decay’d by pining,...Read more of this...

Because My Faltering Feet

by Hilaire Belloc
 Because my faltering feet may fail to dare
The first descendant of the steps of Hell
Give me the Word in time that triumphs there.
I too must pass into the misty hollow
Where all our living laughter stops: and hark!
The tiny stuffless voices of the dark
Have called me, called me, till I needs must follow:
Give me the Word and I'll attempt it...Read more of this...

Epistle to Neruda

by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
 Superb,
 Like a seasoned lion,
Neruda buys bread in the shop.
He asks for it to be wrapped in paper
And solemly puts it under his arm:
"Let someone at least think
that at some time
 I bought a book…"
Waving his hand in farewell,
like a Roman
 rather dreamily royal, 
in the air scented with mollusks, 
 oysters,
 rice, 
he walks with the bread through...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXXXVI

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXXXVI. Pien d' un vago pensier, che me desvia. HIS TONGUE IS TIED BY EXCESS OF PASSION.  Such vain thought as wonted to mislead meIn desert hope, by well-assurèd moan,Makes me from company to live alone,In following her whom reason bids me flee.She fleeth as fast by gentle cruelty;And...Read more of this...

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