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Famous Fulfillment Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Doty, Mark
...ther
--nothing about them
of individuality. Instead 

they're all exact expressions
of the one soul,
each a perfect fulfillment 

of heaven's template,
mackerel essence. As if, 
after a lifetime arriving 

at this enameling, the jeweler's
made uncountable examples
each as intricate 

in its oily fabulation
as the one before;
a cosmos of champleve. 

Suppose we could iridesce,
like these, and lose ourselves
entirely in the universe 

of shimmer--would you want
to b...Read more of this...



by Gibran, Kahlil
...with the eye of his spirit. She impressed a deep and long and gently withdrawn kiss that left and eternal smile of fulfillment upon his lips. Then the hovel became empty and nothing was lest save parchments and papers which the poet had strewn with bitter futility. 

Hundreds of years later, when the people of the city arose from the diseases slumber of ignorance and saw the dawn of knowledge, they erected a monument in the most beautiful garden of the city and c...Read more of this...

by Rilke, Rainer Maria
...o free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine. 

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the
evening,
and wander the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.


Translated by Stephen Mitchell, 
"The Selected Poetr...Read more of this...

by Gluck, Louise
...of sickness, humiliation.
Like anyone, I have my dreams.
But I've learned to hide them,
To protect myself
From fulfillment: all happiness
Attracts the Fates' anger.
They are sisters, savages--
In the end they have
No emotion but envy....Read more of this...

by Cavafy, Constantine P
...ent mausoleum,
with roses at the head and jasmine at the feet --
this is what desires resemble that have passed
without fulfillment; with none of them having achieved
a night of sensual delight, or a bright morning....Read more of this...



by Gibran, Kahlil
...hen even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment. 

You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief, 

But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound. 

And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have faste...Read more of this...

by Parker, Dorothy
...For this my mother wrapped me warm,
And called me home against the storm,
And coaxed my infant nights to quiet,
And gave me roughage in my diet,
And tucked me in my bed at eight,
And clipped my hair, and marked my weight,
And watched me as I sat and stood:
That I might grow to womanhood
To hear a whistle and drop my wits
And break my heart to clattering bi...Read more of this...

by Sherrick, Fannie Isabelle
...art, and with a glow
Of pride she vows her future life to live
So good and true that all her days shall seem
But the fulfillment of his heart's proud dream.
Yet soon she trembles with some unknown thought,
A vague and restless longing fills her breast,
And with a passionate fear her mind is wrought.
She cannot case away the strange unrest;
With hands clasped close in attitude of prayer
She stands, her pleading face so young and fair,
Is turned unto the skies, but no...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...ehead hid among the stars. 


Mystical, feminine, provoking, nude, 
Radiant there with rosy arms outspread, 
Sum of fulfillment, sovereign attitude, 
Sensual with laughing lips and thrown-back head, 


Draped in the rainbow on the summer hills, 
Hidden in sea-mist down the hot coast-line, 
Couched on the clouds that fiery sunset fills, 
Blessed, remote, impersonal, divine; 


The gold all color and grace are folded o'er, 
The warmth all beauty and tenderness embower, -- 
...Read more of this...

by Milosz, Czeslaw
...or
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
staving its hull against a reef - they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.

I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the same time,
whether they are aware of it or not....Read more of this...

by Larkin, Philip
...to me;
To watch that world come up like a cold sun,
Rewarding others, is my liberty.
Not to prevent it is my will's fulfillment.
Willing it, my ailment....Read more of this...

by Hikmet, Nazim
...n
that you could hardly recognize
 the drop in a block of ice
 in a boiling pan.
The masterpiece of these eyes
 the fulfillment of their genius
 the living iron.
In these eyes
 filled with limpid
 pure tears
had failed to emerge
 from the infinite Ocean
if the strength
 had dispersed,
we could never have mated
 the dynamo with the turbine,
never have moved
 those steel mountains in water
easily
 as if made of hollow wood.
The masterpiece of these eyes
 the fulfill...Read more of this...

by Schwartz, Delmore
...l to your commandments, o consciousness, o

Holy bird of words soaring ever whether to nothingness or
 to inconceivable fulfillment slowly:

And still I follow you, awkward as that dandy of ontology
 and as awkward as his albatross and as

another dandy of ontology before him, another shepherd
 and watchdog of being, the one who

Talked forever of forever as if forever of having been
 and being an ancient mariner,

Hesitant forever as if forever were the albatross 

Hung roun...Read more of this...

by Stevens, Wallace
...till feel
The need of some imperishable bliss."
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to ...Read more of this...

by Francis, Robert
...et winter is not yet here.

How warm the late November sun although how wan.
The white house stands a symbol of fulfillment there,
Housing one old woman, a cat, and one old man
After abundance but before the earth is bare....Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...y or night, 
No matter; she could see what was to see— 
All that had been till now shut out from her, 
The service, the fulfillment, and the truth, 
And thus the cruel wiseness of it all.

So Damaris, more like than anything 
To one long prisoned in a twilight cave 
With hovering bats for all companionship, 
And after time set free to fight the sun, 
Laughed out, so glad she was to recognize
The test of what had been, through all her folly, 
The courage of her conscience;...Read more of this...

by Gibran, Kahlil
...o your thoughts. 

I go with the wind, people of Orphalese, but not down into emptiness; 

And if this day is not a fulfillment of your needs and my love, then let it be a promise till another day. Know therefore, that from the greater silence I shall return. 

The mist that drifts away at dawn, leaving but dew in the fields, shall rise and gather into a cloud and then fall down in rain. 

And not unlike the mist have I been. 

In the stillness of the nigh...Read more of this...

by Hesse, Hermann
...y the poet is missing,
The lonely one who looks on,
The bearer of human longing, the pale image
Of whom the future, the fulfillment of the world
Has no further need. Many garlands
Wilt on his grave,
But no one remembers him....Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...through convuls’d pains as through parturitions; 
How America illustrates birth, muscular youth, the promise, the sure fulfillment, the
 Absolute
 Success, despite of people—Illustrates evil as well as good; 
How many hold despairingly yet to the models departed, caste, myths, obedience,
 compulsion, and
 to infidelity; 
How few see the arrived models, the Athletes, the Western States—or see freedom or
 spirituality—or hold any faith in results,
(But I see the Athletes—and I...Read more of this...

by Brecht, Bertolt
...Avoid the strife of the world
Live out your little time
Fearing no one
Using no violence
Returning good for evil --
Not fulfillment of desire but forgetfulness
Passes for wisdom.
I can do none of this:
Indeed I live in the dark ages!

2.

I came to the cities in a time of disorder
When hunger ruled.
I came among men in a time of uprising
And I revolted with them.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.

I ate my food between massacres.
The...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs