Famous Forswear Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Drink wine to root up metaphysic weeds,

by Omar Khayyam
Drink wine to root up metaphysic weeds,
And tangle of the two-and-seventy creeds;
Do not forswear that wondrous alchemy,
'Twill turn to gold, and cure a thousand needs....Read more of this...

The Reformers

by Rudyard Kipling
 1901

Not in the camp his victory lies
 Or triumph in the market-place,
Who is his Nation's sacrifice
To turn the judgement from his race.

Happy is he who, bred and taught
 By sleek, sufficing Circumstance --
Whose Gospel was the apparelled thought,
 Whose Gods were Luxury and Chance --

Seese, on the threshold of his days,
 The old life shrivel like a scroll,
And to...Read more of this...

Womans Constancy

by John Donne
 Now thou hast loved me one whole day,
Tomorrow when thou leav'st, what wilt thou say?
Wilt thou then antedate some new made vow?
 Or say that now
We are not just those persons, which we were?
Or, that oaths made in reverential fear
Of Love, and his wrath, any may forswear?
Or, as true deaths, true marriages untie,
So lovers' contracts, images of those,
Bind but...Read more of this...

Daphnis And Chloe

by Andrew Marvell
 Daphnis must from Chloe part:
Now is come the dismal Hour
That must all his Hopes devour,
All his Labour, all his Art.

Nature, her own Sexes foe,
Long had taught her to be coy:
But she neither knew t' enjoy,
Nor yet let her Lover go.

But, with this sad News surpriz'd,
Soon she let that Niceness fall;
And would gladly yield to all,
So it had his stay...Read more of this...

The Whip

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 The doubt you fought so long 
The cynic net you cast, 
The tyranny, the wrong, 
The ruin, they are past; 
And here you are at last,
Your blood no longer vexed. 
The coffin has you fast, 
The clod will have you next. 

But fear you not the clod, 
Nor ever doubt the grave:
The roses and the sod 
Will not forswear...Read more of this...

The Respectable Burgher on The Higher Criticism

by Thomas Hardy
 Since Reverend Doctors now declare 
That clerks and people must prepare 
To doubt if Adam ever were; 
To hold the flood a local scare; 
To argue, though the stolid stare, 
That everything had happened ere 
The prophets to its happening sware; 
That David was no giant-slayer, 
Nor one to call a God-obeyer 
In certain details we could spare, 
But...Read more of this...

Veteran Sirens

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 The ghost of Ninon would be sorry now 
To laugh at them, were she to see them here, 
So brave and so alert for learning how 
To fence with reason for another year. 

Age offers a far comelier diadem
Than theirs; but anguish has no eye for grace, 
When time’s malicious mercy cautions them 
To think a while of number...Read more of this...

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