Famous Friends Only Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Friends Only poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous friends only poems. These examples illustrate what a famous friends only poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Dorothy Parker
They laid their hands upon my head,
They stroked my cheek and brow;
And time could heal a hurt, they said,
And time could dim a vow.
And they were pitiful and mild
Who whispered to me then,
"The heart that breaks in April, child,
Will mend in May again."
Oh, many a mended heart they knew.
So old they were, and wise.
And little did they have to...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
SOON our friends perish,
Soon all we cherish
Fades as days darken - goes as flowers go.
Soon in December
Over an ember,
Lonely we hearken, as loud winds blow....Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
I
Eddie Linden
Dear Eddie we’ve not met
Except upon the written page
And at your age the wonder
Is that you write at all
When so many have gone under
Or been split asunder by narcissistic humours
Blunder following blunder
Barker and Graham, godfathering my verse
Bearing me cloud-handed to Haworth moor
From my chained metropolitan moorings,
O hyaline March morning with Leeds
At its thrusting best, the...Read more of this...
by
Donald Justice
We shall not ever meet them bearded in heaven
Nor sunning themselves among the bald of hell;
If anywhere, in the deserted schoolyard at twilight,
forming a ring, perhaps, or joining hands
In games whose very names we have forgotten.
Come memory, let us seek them there in the shadows....Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Kindness to friends and foes 'tis well to show,
No kindly heart can prove unkind, I trow:
Harshness will alienate a bosom friend,
And kindness reconcile a deadly foe....Read more of this...
by
Alexander Pushkin
The chain of golden days and nights
Is still your heritage from Deity,
And, still, the languid maidens’ eyes
Are turned to you as well intently.
So, play and sing, friends of my years!
Lose very quickly passing evening,
And, at your heedless joy and singing,
I will be smiling through my tears....Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Cease, if ye are my friends, all vain discourse, and,
to relieve my mental pains pour out the wine. And
when to dust my frame returns, the self-same dust
collect and make it brick to stop some crevice in the
tavern wall....Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
One writes, that "Other friends remain,"
That "Loss is common to the race"--
And common is the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.
That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more.
Too common! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.
O father, wheresoe'er thou be,
Who pledgest now thy gallant son,
A shot, ere half thy draught be...Read more of this...
by
William Strode
Come, come, I faint: thy heavy stay
Doubles each houre of the day:
The winged hast of nimble love
Makes aged Time not seeme to move:
Did not the light,
And then the night
Instruct my sight
I should believe the Sunne forgot his flight.
Show not the drooping marygold
Whose leaves like grieving amber fold:
My longing nothing can explain
But soule and body rent in twain:
Did I not...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
If ever I am old, and all alone,
I shall have killed one grief, at any rate;
For then, thank God, I shall not have to wait
Much longer for the sheaves that I have sown.
The devil only knows what I have done,
But here I am, and here are six or eight
Good friends, who most ingenuously prate...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
Though you are in your shining days,
Voices among the crowd
And new friends busy with your praise,
Be not unkind or proud,
But think about old friends the most:
Time's bitter flood will rise,
Your beauty perish and be lost
For all eyes but these eyes....Read more of this...
by
Sir Philip Sidney
Fly, fly, my friends, I have my death wound; fly!
See there that boy, that murthering boy I say,
Who like a thief, hid in dark bush doth lie,
Till bloody bullet get him wrongful prey.
So tyrant he no fitter place could spy,
Nor so fair level in so secret stay,
As that sweet black which veils the...Read more of this...
by
Henry Vaughan
They are all gone into the world of light!
And I alone sit ling'ring here;
Their very memory is fair and bright,
And my sad thoughts doth clear.
It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast,
Like stars upon some gloomy grove,
Or those faint beams in which this hill is drest
After the sun's remove.
I see them walking...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Are Friends Delight or Pain?
Could Bounty but remain
Riches were good --
But if they only stay
Ampler to fly away
Riches are sad....Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
Again, his friend's death made the man sit still
and freeze inside-”his daughter won first price-”
his wife scowled over at him-”
It seemed to be Hallowe'en.
His friend's death had been adjudged suicide,
which dangles a trail
longer than Henry's chill, longer than his loss
and longer than the letter that he wrote
that day to the widow
to find out what the hell had happened...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
Laughter not time destroyed my voice
And put that crack in it,
And when the moon's pot-bellied
I get a laughing fit,
For that old Madge comes down the lane,
A stone upon her breast,
And a cloak wrapped about the stone,
And she can get no rest
With singing hush and hush-a-bye;
She that has been wild
And barren as a breaking wave
Thinks that the stone's a child.
And...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
FRAE the friends and land I love,
Driv’n by Fortune’s felly spite;
Frae my best belov’d I rove,
Never mair to taste delight:
Never mair maun hope to find
Ease frae toil, relief frae care;
When Remembrance wracks the mind,
Pleasures but unveil despair.
Brightest climes shall mirk appear,
Desert ilka blooming shore,
Till the Fates, nae mair severe,
Friendship, love, and peace restore,
Till...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Chief of old friends! hearken to what I say,
Let not heaven's treacherous wheel your heart dismay;
But rest contented in your humble nook,
And watch the games that wheel is wont to play....Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
O Friends! meet together [after my death]. Once reunited,
rejoice in being together and, when the cupbearer
takes in his hand a cup of old wine, remember poor
Khayyam and drink to his memory.
327...Read more of this...
by
William Stafford
There is a country to cross you will
find in the corner of your eye, in
the quick slip of your foot--air far
down, a snap that might have caught.
And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing
voice that finds its way by being
afraid. That country is there, for us,
carried as it is crossed. What you fear
will not go away: it will...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Yes, my friends!--that happier times have been
Than the present, none can contravene;
That a race once lived of nobler worth;
And if ancient chronicles were dumb,
Countless stones in witness forth would come
From the deepest entrails of the earth.
But this highly-favored race has gone,
Gone forever to the realms of night.
We, we live! The moments are our own,
And the living judge the right.
Brighter...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatedly) 'Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no
Inner Resources.' I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me,...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
TO friends at home, the lone, the admired, the lost
The gracious old, the lovely young, to May
The fair, December the beloved,
These from my blue horizon and green isles,
These from this pinnacle of distances I,
The unforgetful, dedicate....Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
As we the withered ferns
By the roadway lying,
Time, the jester, spurns
All our prayers and prying --
All our tears and sighing,
Sorrow, change, and woe --
All our where-and-whying
For friends that come and go.
Life awakes and burns,
Age and death defying,
Till at last it learns
All but Love is dying;
Love's the trade...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Listen to me, O thou who hast not seen old friends
[of experience]! Vex not thyself with this Wheel of
Heaven which has neither surface nor foundation: content
thyself with what thou hast and, as a peaceable spectator,
observe here below the various games to which men are
destined....Read more of this...
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