Famous Forsaken Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Forsaken

by Duncan Campbell Scott
 I 
Once in the winter
Out on a lake
In the heart of the north-land,
Far from the Fort
And far from the hunters,
A Chippewa woman
With her sick baby,
Crouched in the last hours
Of a great storm.
Frozen and hungry,
She fished through the ice
With a line of the twisted
Bark of the cedar,
And a rabbit-bone hook
Polished and barbed;
Fished with the bare hook
All through the wild day,
Fished...Read more of this...

The Look

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 The Saviour looked on Peter. Ay, no word,
No gesture of reproach; the Heavens serene
Though heavy with armed justice, did not lean
Their thunders that way: the forsaken Lord
Looked only, on the traitor. None record
What that look was, none guess; for those who have seen
Wronged lovers loving through a death-pang keen,
Or pale-cheeked martyrs smiling to a sword,
Have missed Jehovah at the...Read more of this...

Shancoduff

by Patrick Kavanagh
 My black hills have never seen the sun rising,
Eternally they look north towards Armagh.
Lot's wife would not be salt if she had been
Incurious as my black hills that are happy
When dawn whitens Glassdrummond chapel.

My hills hoard the bright shillings of March
While the sun searches in every pocket.
They are my Alps and I have climbed the Matterhorn
With a sheaf of...Read more of this...

Before A Crucifix

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Here, down between the dusty trees,
At this lank edge of haggard wood,
Women with labour-loosened knees,
With gaunt backs bowed by servitude,
Stop, shift their loads, and pray, and fare
Forth with souls easier for the prayer.

The suns have branded black, the rains
Striped grey this piteous God of theirs;
The face is full of prayers and pains,
To which they bring their pains and prayers;
Lean...Read more of this...

Bridal Ballad

by Edgar Allan Poe
 The ring is on my hand, 
And the wreath is on my brow; 
Satin and jewels grand 
Are all at my command, 
And I am happy now. 
And my lord he loves me well; 
But, when first he breathed his vow, 
I felt my bosom swell- 
For the words rang as a knell, 
And the voice seemed his who...Read more of this...

Psalm 22

by Isaac Watts
 Christ's sufferings and exaltation.

Now let our mournful songs record
The dying sorrows of our Lord,
When he complained in tears and blood,
As one forsaken of his God.

The Jews beheld him thus forlorn,
And shake their heads, and laugh in scorn:
"He rescued others from the grave;
Now let him try himself to save.

"This is the man did once pretend
God was his Father and his...Read more of this...

The Loss Of The Eurydice

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 Foundered March 24. 1878


 1

The Eurydice—it concerned thee, O Lord:
Three hundred souls, O alas! on board,
 Some asleep unawakened, all un-
warned, eleven fathoms fallen 

 2

Where she foundered! One stroke
Felled and furled them, the hearts of oak!
 And flockbells off the aerial
Downs' forefalls beat to the burial. 

 3

For did she pride her, freighted fully, on
Bounden bales or a...Read more of this...

In a Boat

by D. H. Lawrence
 See the stars, love,
In the water much clearer and brighter
Than those above us, and whiter, 
Like nenuphars. 

Star-shadows shine, love,
How many stars in your bowl? 
How many shadows in your soul,
Only mine, love, mine? 

When I move the oars, love, 
See how the stars are tossed,
Distorted, the brightest lost. 
—So that bright one of yours, love.

The poor waters spill...Read more of this...

In Neglect

by Robert Frost
 They leave us so to the way we took,
As two in whom them were proved mistaken,
That we sit sometimes in the wayside nook,
With michievous, vagrant, seraphic look,
And try if we cannot feel forsaken....Read more of this...

The Forsaken Merman

by Matthew Arnold
 Come, dear children, let us away;
Down and away below!
Now my brothers call from the bay,
Now the great winds shoreward blow,
Now the salt tides seaward flow;
Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
Children dear, let us away!
This way, this way!

Call her once before you go— 
Call once yet!
In a voice that she will know:
'Margaret! Margaret!'
Children's...Read more of this...

A Thought For A Lonely Death-Bed

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 IF God compel thee to this destiny,
To die alone, with none beside thy bed
To ruffle round with sobs thy last word said
And mark with tears the pulses ebb from thee,--
Pray then alone, ' O Christ, come tenderly !
By thy forsaken Sonship in the red
Drear wine-press,--by the wilderness out-spread,--
And the lone garden where thine agony
Fell bloody from thy brow,--by all...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXXXIII

by William Shakespeare
 Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan
For that deep wound it gives my friend and me!
Is't not enough to torture me alone,
But slave to slavery my sweet'st friend must be?
Me from myself thy cruel eye hath taken,
And my next self thou harder hast engross'd:
Of him, myself, and thee, I am forsaken;
A torment thrice threefold thus to be...Read more of this...

The Towers of Time

by G K Chesterton
 Under what withering leprous light
The very grass as hair is grey,
Grass in the cracks of the paven courts
Of gods we graved but yesterday.
Senate, republic, empire, all
We leaned our backs on like a wall
And blessed as stron as strong and blamed as stolid--
Can it be these that waver and fall?
And what is this like a ghost returning,
A dream grown strong...Read more of this...

Drinking Song

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 INSCRIPTION FOR AN ANTIQUE PITCHER

Come, old friend! sit down and listen!
From the pitcher, placed between us,
How the waters laugh and glisten
In the head of old Silenus!

Old Silenus, bloated, drunken,
Led by his inebriate Satyrs;
On his breast his head is sunken,
Vacantly he leers and chatters.

Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow;
Ivy crowns that brow supernal
As the forehead of Apollo,
And possessing youth eternal.

Round about...Read more of this...

The Complaint Of A Forsaken Indian Woman

by William Wordsworth
[When a Northern Indian, from sickness, is unable to continue his journey with his companions; he is left behind, covered over with Deer-skins, and is supplied with water, food, and fuel if the situation of the place will afford it. He is informed of the track which his companions intend to pursue, and if he is unable to follow, or...Read more of this...

Andromeda

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 Now Time's Andromeda on this rock rude,
With not her either beauty's equal or
Her injury's, looks off by both horns of shore,
Her flower, her piece of being, doomed dragon's food.
 Time past she has been attempted and pursued
By many blows and banes; but now hears roar
A wilder beast from West than all were, more
Rife in her wrongs, more lawless, and...Read more of this...

Song V: Through the Trouble and Tangle

by William Morris
 Love is enough: through the trouble and tangle
From yesterday's dawning to yesterday's night
I sought through the vales where the prisoned winds wrangle,
Till, wearied and bleeding, at end of the light
I met him, and we wrestled, and great was my might. 

O great was my joy, though no rest was around me,
Though mid wastes of the world were we twain...Read more of this...

Song of the Wise Children

by Rudyard Kipling
 1902

When the darkened Fifties dip to the North,
 And frost and the fog divide the air,
And the day is dead at his breaking-forth,
 Sirs, it is bitter beneath the Bear!

Far to Southward they wheel and glance,
 The million molten spears of morn --
The spears of our deliverance
 That shine on the house where we were born.

Flying-fish about our bows,
...Read more of this...

Owl Against Robin

by Sidney Lanier
 Frowning, the owl in the oak complained him
Sore, that the song of the robin restrained him
Wrongly of slumber, rudely of rest.
"From the north, from the east, from the south and the west,
Woodland, wheat-field, corn-field, clover,
Over and over and over and over,
Five o'clock, ten o'clock, twelve, or seven,
Nothing but robin-songs heard under heaven:
How can we sleep?

`Peep!' you whistle, and `cheep!...Read more of this...

To Outer Nature

by Thomas Hardy
 SHOW thee as I thought thee
When I early sought thee,
Omen-scouting,
All undoubting
Love alone had wrought thee--

Wrought thee for my pleasure,
Planned thee as a measure
For expounding
And resounding
Glad things that men treasure.

O for but a moment
Of that old endowment--
Light to gaily
See thy daily
Iris?d embowment!

But such readorning
Time forbids with scorning--
Makes me see things
Cease to be things
They were in my morning.

Fad'st thou, glow-forsaken,
Darkness-overtaken!
Thy first...Read more of this...

No Not More Welcome

by Thomas Moore
 No, not more welcome the fairy numbers 
Of music fall on the sleeper's ear, 
When half awaking from fearful slumbers, 
He thinks the full quire of heaven is near -- 
Than came that voice, when, all forsaken, 
This heart long had sleeping lain, 
Nor thought its cold pulse would ever waken 
To such benign blessed sounds again. 

Sweet voice...Read more of this...

The Forsaken

by Amy Lowell
 Holy Mother of God, Merciful Mary. Hear 
me! I am very weary. I have come
from a village miles away, all day I have been coming, and I ache 
for such
far roaming. I cannot walk as light as I used, and my 
thoughts grow confused.
I am heavier than I was. Mary Mother, you know the cause!

Beautiful Holy Lady, take my...Read more of this...

Mementos

by Charlotte Bronte
 ARRANGING long-locked drawers and shelves 
Of cabinets, shut up for years, 
What a strange task we've set ourselves ! 
How still the lonely room appears ! 
How strange this mass of ancient treasures, 
Mementos of past pains and pleasures; 
These volumes, clasped with costly stone, 
With print all faded, gilding gone; 

These fans of leaves, from Indian trees­ 
These...Read more of this...

A Forsaken Garden

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 IN a coign of the cliff between lowland and highland,
At the sea-down's edge between windward and lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,
The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses
The steep square slope of the blossomless bed
Where the weeds that grew green from the graves of its roses
Now lie dead.

The fields fall...Read more of this...

IV. To the River Wenbeck

by William Lisle Bowles
 AS slowly wanders thy forsaken stream, 
Wenbeck! the mossy-scatter'd rocks among, 
In fancy's ear still making plaintive song 
To the dark woods above: ah! sure I seem 
To meet some friendly Genius in the gloom, 
And in each breeze a pitying voice I hear 
Like sorrow's sighs upon misfortune's tomb. 
Ah! soothing are your quiet scenes -- the tear...Read more of this...

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