Famous Fresh Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Sonnet 17: Who will believe my verse in time to come

by William Shakespeare
 Who will believe my verse in time to come
If it were filled with your most high deserts?
Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts:
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say, "This poet lies,
Such heavenly...Read more of this...

Pompeii And Herculaneum

by Friedrich von Schiller
 What wonder this?--we ask the lympid well,
O earth! of thee--and from thy solemn womb
What yieldest thou?--is there life in the abyss--
Doth a new race beneath the lava dwell?
Returns the past, awakening from the tomb?
Rome--Greece!--Oh, come!--Behold--behold! for this!
Our living world--the old Pompeii sees;
And built anew the town of Dorian Hercules!
House upon house--its silent halls once more
Opes the broad portico!--Oh, haste...Read more of this...

Sonnet 21 - Say over again and yet once over again

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 Say over again, and yet once over again,
That thou dost love me. Though the word repeated
Should seem 'a cuckoo-song,' as thou dost treat it,
Remember, never to the hill or plain,
Valley and wood, without her cuckoo-strain
Comes the fresh Spring in all her green completed.
Beloved, I, amid the darkness greeted
By a doubtful spirit-voice, in that doubt's pain
Cry, 'Speak once more—thou lovest!...Read more of this...

A Carol of Harvest for 1867

by Walt Whitman
 1
A SONG of the good green grass! 
A song no more of the city streets; 
A song of farms—a song of the soil of fields. 

A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch-fork; 
A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk’d maize.

2
For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for...Read more of this...

Astrophel and Stella: I

by Sir Philip Sidney
 ASTROPHEL AND STELLA: I
Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,--
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,--
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe;
Studying inventions fine her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others' leaves,...Read more of this...

Wreck of the Schooner Samuel Crawford

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1886, and on the 29th of November,
Which the surviving crew of the "Samuel Crawford" will long remember,
She was bound to Baltimore with a cargo of pine lumber;
But, alas! the crew suffered greatly from cold and hunger. 

'Twas on December 3rd when about ten miles south-west
Of Currituck light, and scudding at her best;
That a heavy...Read more of this...

To Mr. Lawrence

by John Milton
 Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son, 
Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire, 
Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire 
Help waste a sullen day, what may be won 
From the hard season gaining? Time will run
On smoother, till Favonius reinspire 
The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire 
The lily and rose, that...Read more of this...

Dream Song 119: Fresh-shaven past months and a picture in New York

by John Berryman
 Fresh-shaven, past months & a picture in New York
of Beard Two, I did have Three took off. Well. .
Shadow & act, shadow & act,
Better get white or you' get whacked,
or keep so-called black
& raise new hell.

I've had enough of this dying.
You've done me a dozen goodnesses; get well.
Fight again for our own.
Henry felt baffled, in the middle of the...Read more of this...

The First Walpurgis-night

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 A DRUID.


 SWEET smiles the May!

 The forest gay

From frost and ice is freed;

 No snow is found,

 Glad songs resound

Across the verdant mead.

 Upon the height

 The snow lies light,

Yet thither now we go,
There to extol our Father's name,

Whom we for ages know.
Amid the smoke shall gleam the flame;

Thus pure the heart will grow.

THE DRUIDS.

Amid the smoke shall...Read more of this...

On the Death of the Honourable Mr. James Thynne

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 Farewell, lov'd Youth! since 'twas the Will of Heaven 
So soon to take, what had so late been giv'n; 
And thus our Expectations to destroy, 
Raising a Grief, where we had form'd a Joy; 
Who once believ'd, it was the Fates Design 
In Him to double an Illustrious Line, 
And in a second Channel spread that Race 
Where ev'ry...Read more of this...

Head Against The Walls

by Paul Eluard
 There were only a few of them 
In all the earth
Each one thought he was alone
They sang, they were right
To sing
But they sang the way you sack a city
The way you kill yourself. 

Frayed moist night
Shall we endure you
Longer
Shall we not shake
Your cloacal evidence
We shall not wait for a morning
Made to measure
We wanted to see in other people's eyes
Their...Read more of this...

A Song of Peach-Blossom River

by Wang Wei
 A fisherman is drifting, enjoying the spring mountains, 
And the peach-trees on both banks lead him to an ancient source. 
Watching the fresh-coloured trees, he never thinks of distance 
Till he comes to the end of the blue stream and suddenly- strange men! 
It's a cave-with a mouth so narrow that he has to crawl through; 
But then it...Read more of this...

Thus spake at dawn to the fresh-open'd rose

by Hafez
Thus spake at dawn to the fresh-open’d rose
The courting-bird, ‘Cease thy so empty vaunt:
Comelier than thou full many each day unclose.’

She laughed:—‘In truth I care not, ne’ertheless
Strange lover thou, to use such harsh address:
No gallant vexeth beauty with such taunt.

Or ever thou receive this ruby red,
This wine, first must thy pearl’d disdainfulness
In passion’s suppliant sea its jewels shed.’

O vain it...Read more of this...

White

by Charles Simic
 A New Version: 1980

 What is that little black thing I see there
 in the white?
 Walt Whitman


One

Out of poverty
To begin again: 

With the color of the bride
And that of blindness,

Touch what I can
Of the quick,

Speak and then wait,
As if this light

Will continue to linger
On the threshold.



All that is near,
I no longer give it a name.

Once a stone hard...Read more of this...

Love's Chastening

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Once Love grew bold and arrogant of air,[Pg 103]
Proud of the youth that made him fresh and fair;
So unto Grief he spake, "What right hast thou
To part or parcel of this heart?" Grief's brow
Was darkened with the storm of inward strife;
Thrice smote he Love as only he might dare,
And Love, pride purged, was chastened all his life.
...Read more of this...

On days of fresh and tranquil health

by Emile Verhaeren
On days of fresh and tranquil health, when life is as fine as a conquest, the pleasant task sits down by my side like an honoured friend.
He comes from gentle, radiant countries, with words brighter than the dews, in which to set, illuminating them, our feelings and our thoughts.
He seizes our being in a mad whirlwind; he lifts up the...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...

The Furl of Fresh-Leaved Dogrose Down

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 The furl of fresh-leaved dogrose down 
His cheeks the forth-and-flaunting sun 
Had swarthed about with lion-brown 
Before the Spring was done. 

His locks like all a ravel-rope’s-end,
With hempen strands in spray— 
Fallow, foam-fallow, hanks—fall’n off their ranks, 
Swung down at a disarray. 

Or like a juicy and jostling shock 
Of bluebells sheaved in May
Or wind-long fleeces on the flock...Read more of this...

The Mowers Song

by Andrew Marvell
 My Mind was once the true survey
Of all these Medows fresh and gay;
And in the greenness of the Grass
Did see its Hopes as in a Glass;
When Juliana came, and she
What I do to the Grass, does to my Thoughts and Me.

But these, while I with Sorrow pine,
Grew more luxuriant still and fine;
That not one Blade of Grass you spy'd,
But...Read more of this...

To What Serves Mortal Beauty?

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 To what serves mortal beauty '—dangerous; does set danc-
ing blood—the O-seal-that-so ' feature, flung prouder form
Than Purcell tune lets tread to? ' See: it does this: keeps warm
Men's wits to the things that are; ' what good means—where a glance
Master more may than gaze, ' gaze out of countenance.
Those lovely lads once, wet-fresh ' windfalls of war's storm,
How then...Read more of this...

Sonnet XLIIII

by Edmund Spenser
 When those renoumed noble Peres of Greece,
thrugh stubborn pride amongst the[m]selues did iar
forgetfull of the famous golden fleece,
then Orpheus with his harp theyr strife did bar.
But this continuall cruell ciuill warre,
the which my selfe against my selfe doe make:
whilest my weak powres of passions warreid arre.
no skill can stint nor reason can aslake.
But when in hand my tunelesse harp...Read more of this...

To-morrow to Fresh Woods and Pastures New

by Amy Lowell
 As for a moment he stands, in hardy masculine beauty,
Poised on the fircrested rock, over the pool which below him
Gleams in the wavering sunlight, waiting the shock of his plunging.
So for a moment I stand, my feet planted firm in the present,
Eagerly scanning the future which is so soon to possess me....Read more of this...

The Cow

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 Thank you, pretty cow, that made
Pleasant milk to soak my bread, 
Every day and every night, 
Warm, and fresh, and sweet, and white. 

Do not chew the hemlock rank,
Growing on the weedy bank; 
But the yellow cowslips eat; 
They perhaps will make it sweet. 

Where the purple violet grows,
Where the bubbling water flows, 
Where the grass is fresh and...Read more of this...

Ballad Of The Long-Legged Bait

by Dylan Thomas
 The bows glided down, and the coast
Blackened with birds took a last look
At his thrashing hair and whale-blue eye;
The trodden town rang its cobbles for luck.

Then good-bye to the fishermanned
Boat with its anchor free and fast
As a bird hooking over the sea,
High and dry by the top of the mast,

Whispered the affectionate sand
And the bulwarks of the dazzled quay.
For...Read more of this...

Psalm 92 part 2

by Isaac Watts
 v.12ff 
L. M.
The church is the garden of God.

Lord, 'tis a pleasant thing to stand
In gardens planted by thine hand;
Let me within thy courts be seen,
Like a young cedar, fresh and green.

There grow thy saints in faith and love,
Blest with thine influence from above;
Not Lebanon with all its trees
Yields such a comely sight as these.

The plants of grace shall...Read more of this...

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