Famous Faring Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Last Words To A Dumb Friend

by Thomas Hardy
 Pet was never mourned as you,
Purrer of the spotless hue,
Plumy tail, and wistful gaze
While you humoured our ***** ways,
Or outshrilled your morning call
Up the stairs and through the hall--
Foot suspended in its fall--
While, expectant, you would stand
Arched, to meet the stroking hand;
Till your way you chose to wend
Yonder, to your tragic end.

Never another pet for me!
Let your place all...Read more of this...

LEnvoi

by Robert William Service
 You who have lived in the land,
 You who have trusted the trail,
You who are strong to withstand,
 You who are swift to assail:
 Songs have I sung to beguile,
 Vintage of desperate years,
 Hard as a harlot's smile,
 Bitter as unshed tears.

Little of joy or mirth,
 Little of ease I sing;
Sagas of men of earth
 Humanly suffering,
 Such...Read more of this...

Sonnet 22: My glass shall not persuade me I am old

by William Shakespeare
 My glass shall not persuade me I am old
So long as youth and thou are of one date;
But when in thee Time's furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.
For all that beauty that doth cover thee
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me.
How can I then be...Read more of this...

Before Her Portrait In Youth

by Francis Thompson
 As lovers, banished from their lady's face
And hopeless of her grace,
Fashion a ghostly sweetness in its place,
Fondly adore
Some stealth-won cast attire she wore,
A kerchief or a glove:
And at the lover's beck
Into the glove there fleets the hand,
Or at impetuous command
Up from the kerchief floats the virgin neck:
So I, in very lowlihead of love, -
Too shyly reverencing
To let one thought's...Read more of this...

The Wooing

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
A youth went faring up and down,
Alack and well-a-day.
He fared him to the market town,
Alack and well-a-day.
And there he met a maiden fair,
With hazel eyes and auburn hair;
His heart went from him then and there,
Alack and well-a-day.
She posies sold right merrily,
Alack and well-a-day;
But not a flower was fair as she,
Alack and well-a-day.
He bought a rose and sighed a sigh,
"Ah, dearest...Read more of this...

At Sea

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 'Farewell and adieu' was the burden prevailing
Long since in the chant of a home-faring crew;
And the heart in us echoes, with laughing or wailing,
Farewell and adieu.

Each year that we live shall we sing it anew,
With a water untravelled before us for sailing
And a water behind us that wrecks may bestrew.

The stars of the past and the beacons are paling,
The...Read more of this...

Two Sonnets

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I

Just as I wonder at the twofold screen 
Of twisted innocence that you would plait 
For eyes that uncourageously await 
The coming of a kingdom that has been, 
So do I wonder what God’s love can mean
To you that all so strangely estimate 
The purpose and the consequent estate 
Of one short shuddering step to the Unseen. 

No, I...Read more of this...

Chrystmasse of Olde

by Eugene Field
 God rest you, Chrysten gentil men,
Wherever you may be,--
God rest you all in fielde or hall,
Or on ye stormy sea;
For on this morn oure Chryst is born
That saveth you and me.

Last night ye shepherds in ye east
Saw many a wondrous thing;
Ye sky last night flamed passing bright
Whiles that ye stars did sing,
And angels came to bless ye name
Of Jesus...Read more of this...

Homeward Bound

by Henry Van Dyke
 Home, for my heart still calls me;
Home, through the danger zone;
Home, whatever befalls me,
I will sail again to my own! 

Wolves of the sea are hiding
Closely along the way,
Under the water biding
Their moment to rend and slay. 

Black is the eagle that brands them,
Black are their hearts as the night,
Black is the hate that sends them
To murder but not...Read more of this...

The Poets Calendar

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 January

Janus am I; oldest of potentates; 
Forward I look, and backward, and below 
I count, as god of avenues and gates, 
The years that through my portals come and go. 
I block the roads, and drift the fields with snow; 
I chase the wild-fowl from the frozen fen; 
My frosts congeal the rivers in their flow, 
My fires light...Read more of this...

Our Eunuch Dreams

by Dylan Thomas
 I

Our eunuch dreams, all seedless in the light,
Of light and love the tempers of the heart,
Whack their boys' limbs,
And, winding-footed in their shawl and sheet,
Groom the dark brides, the widows of the night
Fold in their arms.

The shades of girls, all flavoured from their shrouds,
When sunlight goes are sundered from the worm,
The bones of men, the broken in their beds,
By...Read more of this...

Pasa Thalassa Thalassa

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 “The sea is everywhere the sea.”


I

Gone—faded out of the story, the sea-faring friend I remember? 
Gone for a decade, they say: never a word or a sign. 
Gone with his hard red face that only his laughter could wrinkle, 
Down where men go to be still, by the old way of the sea. 

Never again will he come, with...Read more of this...

The Seafarer

by Ezra Pound
 (From the early Anglo-Saxon text) 

May I for my own self song's truth reckon,
Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days
Hardship endured oft.
Bitter breast-cares have I abided,
Known on my keel many a care's hold,
And dire sea-surge, and there I oft spent
Narrow nightwatch nigh the ship's head
While she tossed close to cliffs. Coldly afflicted,
My feet were by frost benumbed.
Chill its chains...Read more of this...

An Autograph

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 I write my name as one, 
On sands by waves o'errun 
Or winter's frosted pane, 
Traces a record vain. 

Oblivion's blankness claims 
Wiser and better names, 
And well my own may pass 
As from the strand or glass. 

Wash on, O waves of time! 
Melt, noons, the frosty rime! 
Welcome the shadow vast, 
The silence that shall last! 

When...Read more of this...

To Dan

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Step me now a bridal measure,
Work give way to love and leisure,
Hearts be free and hearts be gay—
Doctor Dan doth wed to-day.
Diagnosis, cease your squalling—
Check that scalpel's senseless bawling,
Put that ugly knife away—
Doctor Dan doth wed to-day.
'Tis no time for things unsightly,
Life's the day and life goes lightly;
Science lays aside her sway—
Love rules Dr. Dan to-day.[Pg 249]
Gather, gentlemen...Read more of this...

Lancelot

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Gawaine, aware again of Lancelot 
In the King’s garden, coughed and followed him; 
Whereat he turned and stood with folded arms 
And weary-waiting eyes, cold and half-closed— 
Hard eyes, where doubts at war with memories
Fanned a sad wrath. “Why frown upon a friend? 
Few live that have too many,” Gawaine said, 
And wished unsaid, so thinly came the light...Read more of this...

The Alarm

by Thomas Hardy
 In Memory of one of the Writer's Family who was a Volunteer during the War
with Napoleon

In a ferny byway
Near the great South-Wessex Highway,
A homestead raised its breakfast-smoke aloft;
The dew-damps still lay steamless, for the sun had made no sky-way,
And twilight cloaked the croft.

'Twas hard to realize on
This snug side the mute horizon
That beyond it hostile armaments might steer,
Save from...Read more of this...

Corn

by Sidney Lanier
 To-day the woods are trembling through and through
With shimmering forms, that flash before my view,
Then melt in green as dawn-stars melt in blue.
The leaves that wave against my cheek caress
Like women's hands; the embracing boughs express
A subtlety of mighty tenderness;
The copse-depths into little noises start,
That sound anon like beatings of a heart,
Anon like talk 'twixt lips not far apart.
The...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXII

by William Shakespeare
 My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date;
But when in thee time's furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.
For all that beauty that doth cover thee
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:
How can I then be...Read more of this...

The Prospector

by Robert William Service
 I strolled up old Bonanza, where I staked in ninety-eight,
A-purpose to revisit the old claim.
I kept thinking mighty sadly of the funny ways of Fate,
And the lads who once were with me in the game.
Poor boys, they're down-and-outers, and there's scarcely one to-day
Can show a dozen colors in his poke;
And me, I'm still prospecting, old and battered, gaunt and...Read more of this...

Men Of The High North

by Robert William Service
 Men of the High North, the wild sky is blazing;
 Islands of opal float on silver seas;
Swift splendors kindle, barbaric, amazing;
 Pale ports of amber, golden argosies.
Ringed all around us the proud peaks are glowing;
 Fierce chiefs in council, their wigwam the sky;
Far, far below us the big Yukon flowing,
 Like threaded quicksilver, gleams to the eye.

Men of the...Read more of this...

The Wilderness

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Come away! come away! there’s a frost along the marshes, 
And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes the dead black water;
There’s a moan across the lowland and a wailing through the woodland 
Of a dirge that sings to send us back to the arms of those that love us. 
There is nothing left but ashes...Read more of this...

Wedding Song

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 THE tale of the Count our glad song shall record

Who had in this castle his dwelling,
Where now ye are feasting the new-married lord,

His grandson of whom we are telling.
The Count as Crusader had blazon'd his fame,
Through many a triumph exalted his name,
And when on his steed to his dwelling he came,

His castle still rear'd its proud head,
But servants and...Read more of this...

To Dan

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
 STEP me now a bridal measure, 
Work give way to love and leisure, 
Hearts be free and hearts be gay -- 
Doctor Dan doth wed to-day.

Diagnosis, cease your squalling -- 
Check that scalpel's senseless bawling, 
Put that ugly knife away -- 
Doctor Dan doth wed to-day.

'Tis no time for things unsightly, 
Life's the day and life goes lightly; 
Science...Read more of this...

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