Famous Futures Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Futures poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous futures poems. These examples illustrate what a famous futures poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
He rides away with sword and spur,
Garbed in his warlike blazonry,
With gallant glance and smile for her
Upon the dim-lit balcony.
Her kiss upon his lips is warm,
Upon his breast he wears her rose,
From her fond arms to stress and storm
Of many a bannered field he goes.
He dreams of danger, glory, strife,
His voice is blithe, his hand is strong,
He rides...Read more of this...
by
Ted Hughes
Russia and America circle each other;
Threats nudge an act that were without doubt
A melting of the mould in the mother,
Stones melting about the root.
The quick of the earth burned out:
The toil of all our ages a loss
With leaf and insect. Yet flitting thought
(Not to be thought ridiculous)
Shies from the world-cancelling black
Of its playing shadow: it has learned
That...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
If you're up against a bruiser and you're getting knocked about --
Grin.
If you're feeling pretty groggy, and you're licked beyond a doubt --
Grin.
Don't let him see you're funking, let him know with every clout,
Though your face is battered to a pulp, your blooming heart is stout;
Just stand upon your pins until the beggar knocks you out --
And grin.
This life's...Read more of this...
by
Les Murray
Sprawl is the quality
of the man who cut down his Rolls-Royce
into a farm utility truck, and sprawl
is what the company lacked when it made repeated efforts
to buy the vehicle back and repair its image.
Sprawl is doing your farm work by aeroplane, roughly,
or driving a hitchhiker that extra hundred miles home.
It is the rococo of being your own still...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
i have lost touch over the years
with the hot africa inside me
illness and all - i spread to root
in the red earth siphoned the sun
loved the black inflections of my eyes
cut callow cords and found new forms
felt free to fashion and freely raised
orchards of feelings where the groves
were rife with desiccated pens
but all the time my ears insistent to
the...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
Prate, ye who will, of so-called charms you find across the sea--
The land of stoves and sunshine is good enough for me!
I've done the grand for fourteen months in every foreign clime,
And I've learned a heap of learning, but I've shivered all the time;
And the biggest bit of wisdom I've acquired--as I can see--
Is that which teaches that this...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
The Shame of Going Back And the reason of your failure isn't anybody's fault --
When you haven't got a billet, and the times are very slack,
There is nothing that can spur you like the shame of going back;
Crawling home with empty pockets,
Going back hard-up;
Oh! it's then you learn the meaning of humiliation's cup.
When...Read more of this...
by
Alexander Pushkin
The senseless years' extinguished mirth and laughter
Oppress me like some hazy morning-after.
But sadness of days past, as alcohol -
The more it age, the stronger grip the soul.
My course is dull. The future's troubled ocean
Forebodes me toil, misfortune and commotion.
But no, my friends, I do not wish to leave;
I'd rather live, to ponder and to grieve -
And I shall have...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
These quiet Autumn days,
My soul, like Noah's dove, on airy wings
Goes out and searches for the hidden things
Beyond the hills of haze.
With mournful, pleading cries,
Above the waters of the voiceless sea
That laps the shore of broad Eternity,
Day after day, it flies,
Searching, but all in vain,
For some stray leaf that it may light upon,
And...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Ourselves were wed one summer -- dear --
Your Vision -- was in June --
And when Your little Lifetime failed,
I wearied -- too -- of mine --
And overtaken in the Dark --
Where You had put me down --
By Some one carrying a Light --
I -- too -- received the Sign.
'Tis true -- Our Futures different lay --
Your Cottage -- faced...Read more of this...
by
John Greenleaf Whittier
The autumn-time has come;
On woods that dream of bloom,
And over purpling vines,
The low sun fainter shines.
The aster-flower is failing,
The hazel's gold is paling;
Yet overhead more near
The eternal stars appear!
And present gratitude
Insures the future's good,
And for the things I see
I trust the things to be;
That in the paths...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Three gentlemen live close beside me --
A painter of pictures bizarre,
A poet whose virtues might guide me,
A singer who plays the guitar;
And there on my lintel is Cupid;
I leave my door open, and yet
These gentlemen, aren't they stupid!
They never make love to Babette.
I go to the shop every morning;
I work with my needle and thread;
Silk, satin and velvet adorning,
Then...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Aunt Imogen was coming, and therefore
The children—Jane, Sylvester, and Young George—
Were eyes and ears; for there was only one
Aunt Imogen to them in the whole world,
And she was in it only for four weeks
In fifty-two. But those great bites of time
Made all September a Queen’s Festival;
And they would strive, informally, to make
The...Read more of this...
by
Jennifer Reeser
Whether the clouds had abandoned Geneva that evening
no one can say now, but what I remember are roses
bruised at their edges, and china cups yellowed with age.
“I am too sick of interior vapors,” I told you,
“Find us a corner of sunlight, and hammer it down...
Tell me again I’m so lovely the insects won’t bite.”
Do you remember it, Victor? A...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Il neigeait.")
{Bk. V. xiii., Nov. 25-30, 1852.}
It snowed. A defeat was our conquest red!
For once the eagle was hanging its head.
Sad days! the Emperor turned slowly his back
On smoking Moscow, blent orange and black.
The winter burst, avalanche-like, to reign
Over the endless blanched sheet of...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Non, l'avenir n'est à personne!")
{V. ii., August, 1832.}
Sire, beware, the future's range
Is of God alone the power,
Naught below but augurs change,
E'en with ev'ry passing hour.
Future! mighty mystery!
All the earthly goods that be,
Fortune, glory, war's renown,
King or kaiser's sparkling crown,
...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
In me, past, present, future meet
To hold long chiding conference.
My lusts usurp the present tense
And strangle Reason in his seat.
My loves leap through the future’s fence
To dance with dream-enfranchised feet.
In me the cave-man clasps the seer,
And garlanded Apollo goes
Chanting to Abraham’s deaf ear.
In me the tiger sniffs the rose.
Look in my heart, kind friends, and tremble,
Since there your elements...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Dear child! how radiant on thy mother's knee,
With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles,
Thou gazest at the painted tiles,
Whose figures grace,
With many a grotesque form and face.
The ancient chimney of thy nursery!
The lady with the gay macaw,
The dancing girl, the grave bashaw
With bearded lip and chin;
And, leaning idly o'er his gate,
Beneath the imperial fan of state,
The Chinese mandarin.
With what a...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
In the garden yonder of yews and death,
There sojourneth
A man who toils, and has toiled for aye.
Digging the dried-up ground all day.
Some willows, surviving their own dead selves.
Weep there around him as he delves.
And a few poor flowers, disconsolate
Because the tempest and wind and wet
Vex them with ceaseless scourge and fret.
The ground is nothing but pits and cones,
Deep graves in...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
The photographic chamber of the eye
records bare painted walls, while an electric light
lays the chromium nerves of plumbing raw;
such poverty assaults the ego; caught
naked in the merely actual room,
the stranger in the lavatory mirror
puts on a public grin, repeats our name
but scrupulously reflects the usual terror.
Just how guilty are we when the ceiling
reveals no cracks that can be decoded?...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
'My future will not copy fair my past'—
I wrote that once; and thinking at my side
My ministering life-angel justified
The word by his appealing look upcast
To the white throne of God, I turned at last,
And there, instead, saw thee, not unallied
To angels in thy soul! Then I, long tried
By natural ills, received the comfort fast,
While budding, at thy sight, my...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Qui leur eût dit l'austère destineé?")
{II. v., November, 1836.}
Who then, to them{1} had told the Future's story?
Or said that France, low bowed before their glory,
One day would mindful be
Of them and of their mournful fate no more,
Than of the wrecks its waters have swept o'er
...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
(Lied: Ins Stille Land)
BY JOHANN GAUDENZ VON SALIS-SEEWIS
INTO the Silent Land!
Ah! who shall lead us thither?
Clouds in the evening sky more darkly gather
And shattered wrecks lie thicker on the strand.
Who leads us with a gentle hand 5
Thither oh thither
Into the Silent Land?
Into the Silent Land!
To you ye boundless regions...Read more of this...
by
Audre Lorde
For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
Out of the mud two strangers came
And caught me splitting wood in the yard,
And one of them put me off my aim
By hailing cheerily "Hit them hard!"
I knew pretty well why he had dropped behind
And let the other go on a way.
I knew pretty well what he had in mind:
He wanted to take my job for pay.
Good blocks of...Read more of this...
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