Famous Fate Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Fate poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous fate poems. These examples illustrate what a famous fate poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Crowley, Aleister
...ery hour of rest
Was honied from your tiger-lily breast.
We --- oh what lingering doubt or fear betrayed
My life to fate! --- we parted. Was I afraid?
I was afraid, afraid to live my love,
Afraid you played the serpent, I the dove,
Afraid of what I know not. I am glad
Of all the shame and wretchedness I had,
Since those six weeks have taught me not to doubt you,
And also that I cannot live without you.
Then I came back to you; black treasons rear
Their heads...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ort Royal.
Many already have fled to the forest, and lurk on its outskirts,
Waiting with anxious hearts the dubious fate of to-morrow.
Arms have been taken from us, and warlike weapons of all kinds;
Nothing is left but the blacksmith's sledge and the scythe of the mower."
Then with a pleasant smile made answer the jovial farmer:--
"Safer are we unarmed, in the midst of our flocks and our cornfields,
Safer within these peaceful dikes, besieged by the ocean,
Than ou...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...
when the blond & naked angel came to pierce
them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate
the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar
the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb
and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but
sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden
threads of the craftsman's loom,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of
beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a can-
dle and fell off th...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...Saturn? Who had power
To make me desolate? Whence came the strength?
How was it nurtur'd to such bursting forth,
While Fate seem'd strangled in my nervous grasp?
But it is so; and I am smother'd up,
And buried from all godlike exercise
Of influence benign on planets pale,
Of admonitions to the winds and seas,
Of peaceful sway above man's harvesting,
And all those acts which Deity supreme
Doth ease its heart of love in.---I am gone
Away from my own bosom: I have left
My s...Read more of this...
by
Cummings, Edward Estlin (E E)
...never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the so...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...les I saw, at last whose feet
The same net trammelled; and Tristram, Paris, he showed;
And thousand other along the fated road
Whom love led deathward through disastrous things
He pointed as they passed, until my mind
Was wildered in this heavy pass to find
Ladies so many, and cavaliers and kings
Fallen, and pitying past restraint, I said,
"Poet, those next that on the wind appear
So light, and constant as they drive or veer
Are parted never, I fain would ...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
.../their/ fear was less forgot.
In trembling pairs (alone they dared not) crawl
The astonish'd slaves, and shun the fated hall;
The waving banner, and the clapping door;
The rustling tapestry, and the echoing floor;
The long dim shadows of surrounding trees,
The flapping bat, the night song of the breeze;
Aught they behold or hear their thought appals
As evening saddens o'er the dark gray walls.
XVI.
Vain thought! that hour of ne'er unravell'd gloom
Cam...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...
And good he made thee, but to persevere
He left it in thy power; ordained thy will
By nature free, not over-ruled by fate
Inextricable, or strict necessity:
Our voluntary service he requires,
Not our necessitated; such with him
Finds no acceptance, nor can find; for how
Can hearts, not free, be tried whether they serve
Willing or no, who will but what they must
By destiny, and can no other choose?
Myself, and all the angelick host, that stand
In sight of God, enth...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...e midnight owl hath made her secret nest.
O fallen! fallen! from thy high estate,
O city trammelled in the toils of Fate,
Doth nought remain of all thy glorious days,
But a dull shield, a crown of withered bays!
Yet who beneath this night of wars and fears,
From tranquil tower can watch the coming years;
Who can foretell what joys the day shall bring,
Or why before the dawn the linnets sing?
Thou, even thou, mayst wake, as wakes the rose
To crimson splendour from its gra...Read more of this...
by
Shakespeare, William
...all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee—and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at hea...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...e,
(Woe to the head whose eye beheld
My child Zuleika's face unveil'd!)
Hence, lead my daughter from her tower:
Her fate is fix'd this very hour:
Yet not to her repeat my thought;
By me alone be duty taught!"
"Pacha! to hear is to obey."
No more must slave to despot say —
Then to the tower had ta'en his way,
But here young Selim silence brake,
First lowly rendering reverence meet!
And downcast look'd, and gently spake,
Still standing at the Pacha's feet:
For...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...d aspire,
4.64 My dunghill thoughts or hopes could reach no higher.
4.65 If to be rich, or great, it was my fate.
4.66 How was I broil'd with envy, and with hate?
4.67 Greater than was the great'st was my desire,
4.68 And greater still, did set my heart on fire.
4.69 If honour was the point to which I steer'd,
4.70 To run my hull upon disgrace I fear'd,
4.71 But by ambitious sails I was so carried
4.72 That over flats, and sands...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...e gate,
And richest heirlooms all to ruin gone;
Because maybe some fancied shame or fear,
Bred of disease or melancholy fate,
Hath driven the owner from his rightful sphere
To wander nameless save to pity or hate:
What is the wreck of all he hath in fief
When he that hath is wrecking? nought is fine
Unto the sick, nor doth it burden grief
That the house perish when the soul doth pine.
Thus I my state despise, slain by a sting
So slight 'twould not have hurt a meaner thin...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...nting
Fit the Fifth. The Beaver's Lesson
Fit the Sixth. The Barrister's Dream
Fit the Seventh. The Banker's Fate
Fit the Eighth. The Vanishing
Fit the First.
THE LANDING
"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.
"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snar...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...e she's not quite so flurried; Demure with porringer and plate She sits, as if in Susan's fate Her life and soul were buried. But Betty, poor good woman! she, You plainly in her face may read it, Could lend out of that moment's store Five years of happiness or more, To any that might need it. But yet I guess that now and thenRead more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...
Seemed watching the awakening fire;
So still he sat as those who wait
Till judgment speak the doom of fate;
So still, as if no breeze might dare
To lift one lock of hoary hair;
So still, as life itself were fled
In the last sound his harp had sped.
V.
Upon a rock with lichens wild,
Beside him Ellen sat and smiled.—
Smiled she to see the stately drake
Lead forth his fleet upon the lake,
While her v...Read more of this...
by
Thomson, James
...mmense,
And roar their Terrors, thro' the shuddering Soul
Of feeble Man, amidst their Fury caught,
And, dash'd upon his Fate: Then, o'er the Cliff,
Where dwells the Sea-Mew, unconfin'd, they fly,
And, hurrying, swallow up the steril Shore.
THE Mountain growls; and all its sturdy Sons
Stoop to the Bottom of the Rocks they shade:
Lone, on its Midnight-Side, and all aghast,
The dark, way-faring, Stranger, breathless, toils,
And climbs against the Blast --
Low, waves the r...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...ear did seem
Like echoed flow of silent stream,
Or shadow of forgotten dream,
The whisper trembling in the wind:
"Her fate with thine was intertwined,"
So spake it in his inner mind:
"Each orbed on each a baleful star:
Each proved the other's blight and bar:
Each unto each were best, most far:
"Yea, each to each was worse than foe:
Thou, a scared dullard, gibbering low,
AND SHE, AN AVALANCHE OF WOE!"...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...ting and crying
Over their words, so silly and simple and loving,
Suddenly, looking up, I saw the old Vicar moving
Like fate down the hospital ward, until
He stood still
Beside her, where she sat at a bed.
'Dear friend, come home. I have tragic news,' he said
She looked straight at him without a spasm of fear,
Her face not stern or masked—
'Is it Percy or John?' she asked.
'Percy.' She dropped her eyes. 'I am needed here.
Surely you know
I cannot go
Un...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...e storm is fearful to my soul.
You ask me what it is that I have done of late
With given unto me forever love and fate.
I have betrayed you. And this to repeat --
Oh, if you could one moment tire of it!
The killer's sleep is haunted, dead man said,
Death's angel thus awaits me at deathbed.
Forgive me now. Lord teaches to forgive.
In burning agony my flesh does live,
And already the spirit gently sleeps,
A garden I recall, tender with autumn l...Read more of this...
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