Famous Friendships Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Tragedy

by Henry Lawson
 Oh, I never felt so wretched, and things never looked so blue 
Since the days I gulped the physic that my Granny used to brew; 
For a friend in whom I trusted, entering my room last night, 
Stole a bottleful of Heenzo from the desk whereon I write. 

I am certain sure he did it (though he never would...Read more of this...

A drinking song

by Eugene Field
 Come, brothers, share the fellowship
We celebrate to-night;
There's grace of song on every lip
And every heart is light!
But first, before our mentor chimes
The hour of jubilee,
Let's drink a health to good old times,
And good times yet to be!
Clink, clink, clink!
Merrily let us drink!
There's store of wealth
And more of health
In every glass, we think.
Clink, clink, clink!
To fellowship we drink!
And from the...Read more of this...

The Teachers Monologue

by Charlotte Bronte
 The room is quiet, thoughts alone 
People its mute tranquillity; 
The yoke put on, the long task done,­ 
I am, as it is bliss to be, 
Still and untroubled. Now, I see, 
For the first time, how soft the day 
O'er waveless water, stirless tree, 
Silent and sunny, wings its way. 
Now, as I watch that distant hill, 
So...Read more of this...

The Lover And The Moon

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
A lover whom duty called over the wave,
[Pg 30]With himself communed: "Will my love be true
If left to herself? Had I better not sue
Some friend to watch over her, good and grave?
But my friend might fail in my need," he said,
"And I return to find love dead.
Since friendships fade like the flow'rs of June,
I will leave her in...Read more of this...

533. Song—Forlorn my love no comfort here

by Robert Burns
 FORLORN, my Love, no comfort near,
Far, far from thee, I wander here;
Far, far from thee, the fate severe,
 At which I most repine, Love.


Chorus.—O wert thou, Love, but near me!
But near, near, near me,
How kindly thou wouldst cheer me,
 And mingle sighs with mine, Love.


Around me scowls a wintry sky,
Blasting each bud of hope and joy;
And shelter, shade, nor...Read more of this...

Sorrows Uses

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 The uses of sorrow I comprehend
Better and better at each year’s end.

Deeper and deeper I seem to see
Why and wherefore it has to be

Only after the dark, wet days
Do we fully rejoice in the sun’s bright rays.

Sweeter the crust tastes after the fast
Than the sated gourmand’s finest repast.

The faintest cheer sounds never amiss
To the actor who once has heard...Read more of this...

No Thank You John

by Christina Rossetti
 I never said I loved you, John:
Why will you tease me day by day,
And wax a weariness to think upon
With always "do" and "pray"?

You Know I never loved you, John;
No fault of mine made me your toast:
Why will you haunt me with a face as wan
As shows an hour-old ghost?

I dare say Meg or Moll would take
Pity upon you,...Read more of this...

Old And New

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Long have the poets vaunted, in their lays, 
Old times, old loves, old friendships, and old wine
Why should the old monopolise all praise? 
Then let the new claim mine.

Give me strong new friends, when the old prove weak, 
Or fail me in my darkest hour of need; 
Why perish with the ship that springs a leak, 
Or lean upon...Read more of this...

A Fairy Tale

by Amy Lowell
 On winter nights beside the nursery fire
We read the fairy tale, while glowing coals
Builded its pictures. There before our eyes
We saw the vaulted hall of traceried stone
Uprear itself, the distant ceiling hung
With pendent stalactites like frozen vines;
And all along the walls at intervals,
Curled upwards into pillars, roses climbed,
And ramped and were confined, and clustered leaves
Divided where there peered a...Read more of this...

Preference

by Charlotte Bronte
 NOT in scorn do I reprove thee,
Not in pride thy vows I waive,
But, believe, I could not love thee,
Wert thou prince, and I a slave.
These, then, are thine oaths of passion ?
This, thy tenderness for me ?
Judged, even, by thine own confession,
Thou art steeped in perfidy.
Having vanquished, thou wouldst leave me !
Thus I read thee long ago;
Therefore, dared I...Read more of this...

Desesperanto

by Marilyn Hacker
 After Joseph Roth

Parce que c'était lui; parce que c'était moi.
Montaigne, De L'amitië

The dream's forfeit was a night in jail
and now the slant light is crepuscular.
Papers or not, you are a foreigner
whose name is always difficult to spell.
You pack your one valise. You ring the bell.
Might it not be prudent to disappear
beneath that mauve-blue sky above the square
fronting your cosmopolitan...Read more of this...

Three Odes To My Friend

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 THESE are the most singular of all the Poems 
of Goethe, and to many will appear so wild and fantastic, as to 
leave anything but a pleasing impression. Those at the beginning, 
addressed to his friend Behrisch, were written at the age of eighteen, 
and most of the remainder were composed while he was still quite 
young. Despite, however,...Read more of this...

340. Song—Thou Fair Eliza

by Robert Burns
 TURN again, thou fair Eliza!
 Ae kind blink before we part;
Rue on thy despairing lover,
 Can’st thou break his faithfu’ heart?
Turn again, thou fair Eliza!
 If to love thy heart denies,
Oh, in pity hide the sentence
 Under friendship’s kind disguise!


Thee, sweet maid, hae I offended?
 My offence is loving thee;
Can’st thou wreck his peace for ever,
 Wha for thine...Read more of this...

The Wood Pool

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Here is a voice that soundeth low and far
And lyric­voice of wind among the pines,
Where the untroubled, glimmering waters are,
And sunlight seldom shines. 

Elusive shadows linger shyly here,
And wood-flowers blow, like pale, sweet spirit-bloom, 
And white, slim birches whisper, mirrored clear
In the pool's lucent gloom. 

Here Pan might pipe, or wandering dryad kneel
To view her loveliness beside the brim,
Or...Read more of this...

The Triumph Of Achilles

by Louise Gluck
 In the story of Patroclus
no one survives, not even Achilles
who was nearly a god.
Patroclus resembled him; they wore
the same armor.

Always in these friendships
one serves the other, one is less than the other:
the hierarchy
is always apparant, though the legends
cannot be trusted--
their source is the survivor,
the one who has been abandoned.

What were the Greek ships on fire
compared to this loss?

In his...Read more of this...

A Valentine

by Lewis Carroll
 Sent to a friend who had complained that I was glad enough to see 
him when he came, but didn't seem to miss him if he stayed away.

And cannot pleasures, while they last,
Be actual unless, when past,
They leave us shuddering and aghast,
With anguish smarting?
And cannot friends be firm and fast,
And yet bear parting?

And must I then, at Friendship's call,
Calmly...Read more of this...

308. The Epitaph on Captain Matthew Henderson

by Robert Burns
 STOP, passenger! my story’s brief,
 And truth I shall relate, man;
I tell nae common tale o’ grief,
 For Matthew was a great man.


If thou uncommon merit hast,
 Yet spurn’d at Fortune’s door, man;
A look of pity hither cast,
 For Matthew was a poor man.


If thou a noble sodger art,
 That passest by this grave, man;
There moulders here a gallant...Read more of this...

The Leal

by Dorothy Parker
 The friends I made have slipped and strayed,
And who's the one that cares?
A trifling lot and best forgot-
And that's my tale, and theirs.

Then if my friendships break and bend,
There's little need to cry
The while I know that every foe
Is faithful till I die....Read more of this...

Friendships Mystery To My Dearest Lucasia

by Katherine Philips
 Come, my Lucasia, since we see 
That miracles Men's Faith do move,
By wonder and by prodigy
To the dull angry World let's prove
There's a Religion in our Love. 

For Though we were design'd t'agree,
That Fate no liberty destroys,
But our Election is as free
As Angels, who with greedy choice
Are yet determin'd to their joys. 

Our hearts are doubled by the loss,
Here...Read more of this...

The Ghosts

by Robert William Service
 Smith, great writer of stories, drank; found it immortalized his pen;
Fused in his brain-pan, else a blank, heavens of glory now and then;
Gave him the magical genius touch; God-given power to gouge out, fling
Flat in your face a soul-thought -- Bing!
Twiddle your heart-strings in his clutch. "Bah!" said Smith, "let my body lie
 stripped to the buff in swinish...Read more of this...

A Pindaric Ode

by Ben Jonson
 THE TURN
Brave infant of Saguntum, clear
Thy coming forth in that great year,
When the prodigious Hannibal did crown
His rage with razing your immortal town.
Thou looking then about,
Ere thou wert half got out,
Wise child, didst hastily return,
And mad'st thy mother's womb thine urn.
How summ'd a circle didst thou leave mankind
Of deepest lore, could we the centre find!

THE COUNTER-TURN

Did wiser nature draw...Read more of this...

540. Inscription to Chloris

by Robert Burns
 ’TIS Friendship’s pledge, my young, fair Friend,
 Nor thou the gift refuse,
Nor with unwilling ear attend
 The moralising Muse.


Since thou, in all thy youth and charms,
 Must bid the world adieu,
(A world ’gainst Peace in constant arms)
 To join the Friendly Few.


Since, thy gay morn of life o’ercast,
 Chill came the tempest’s lour;
(And ne’er Misfortune’s eastern blast
 Did nip...Read more of this...

On Music

by Thomas Moore
 When through life unblest we rove, 
Losing all that made life dear, 
Should some notes we used to love, 
In days of boyhood, meet our ear, 
Oh! how welcome breathes the strain! 
Wakening thoughts that long have slept, 
Kindling former smiles again 
In faded eyes that long have wept. 

Like the gale, that sighs along 
Beds of oriental flowers,...Read more of this...

There is no Fatwa in this Land

by Taja Kramberger
For Taslima Nasrin, in sisterhood
There is no fatwa in this land,
what are you thinking,
this is Europe.
A place without borders and
without internal wrinkles,
without possibilities for asylum and exile.

There is no fatwa in this land –
it is divided into
thousands of small conspiracies,
tiny murders per partes,
which seem like coincidental misfortunes
and sap your blood, drop by drop.

There is no fatwa in this land,
what are...Read more of this...

Stanzas To A Lady On Leaving England

by George (Lord) Byron
 'Tis done---and shivering in the gale
The bark unfurls her snowy sail;
And whistling o'er the bending mast,
Loud sings on high the fresh'ning blast;
And I must from this land be gone,
Because I cannot love but one.

But could I be what I have been,
And could I see what I have seen---
Could I repose upon the breast
Which once my warmest wishes blest---
I should...Read more of this...

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