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Famous Goals Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Lewis, C S
...through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man.Read more of this...



by Jong, Erica
...Life we have made.

I see myself then: tense, solemn,
in high-heeled shoes that pinch,
not basking in the light of goals fulfilled,
but looking back to now and seeing
a lazy, sunburned, sandaled girl
in a bare room, full of promise
and feeling envious.

Now we plan, postponing, pushing our lives forward
into the future--as if, when the room
contains us and all our treasured junk
we will have filled whatever gap it is
that makes us wander, discontented
from ourselves....Read more of this...

by Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...up,
like a flower of the fields,
 after a long day’s work.
I want
 the Gosplan to sweat
 in debate,
assignning me
 goals a year ahead.
I want
 a commissar
 with a decree
to lean over the thought of the age.
I want
 the heart to earn
its love wage
 at a specialist’s rate.
I want
 the factory committee
 to lock
My lips
 when the work is done.
I want
 the pen to be on a par
 with the bayonet;
and Stalin
 to deliver his Politbureau
reports
 about verse in the...Read more of this...

by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...ugh defeat, not triumph, ends the tale, 
Great victors sometimes are the souls that fail.
All glory lies not in the goals we reach, 
But in the lessons which our actions teach.
And he who, conquered, to the end believes
In God and in himself, though vanquished, still achieves.



***.
Ah, grand as rash was that last fatal raid
The little group of daring heroes made.
Two hundred and two score intrepid men
Rode out to war; not one came back again.
Like f...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...et --
Yet confident they run
Am I, from symptoms that are past
And Series that are done --

I find my feet have further Goals --
I smile upon the Aims
That felt so ample -- Yesterday --
Today's -- have vaster claims --

I do not doubt the self I was
Was competent to me --
But something awkward in the fit --
Proves that -- outgrown -- I see --...Read more of this...



by Alighieri, Dante
...things of earth," I said, 
 "What is she?" 
 "O betrayed in foolishness I 
 Blindness of creatures born of earth, whose goals 
 Are folly and loss!" he answered, "I would make 
 Thy mouth an opening for this truth I show. 

 "Transcendent Wisdom, when the spheres He built 
 Gave each a guide to rule it: more nor less 
 Their light distributes. For the earth he gave 
 Like guide to rule its splendours. As we know 
 The heavenly lights move round us, and is spilt 
 ...Read more of this...

by Crowley, Aleister
...s!? And how this thousand million souls
And half a thousand million souls of earth
That swarm, all bound for unimagined goals,
All pioneers of death enrolled at birth,

How were they swept away before my sight,
That I might stand upon the single prick
Of infinite space and time as infinite,
Who knows? Yet here I stand, climacteric,

Having found you. Was it by fall of chance?
Then what a stake against what odds I have won!
Was it determined in God's ordinance?
Then wondro...Read more of this...

by Herrick, Robert
...the air, as that no night
Can ever rust th' enamel of the light:
Here naked younglings, handsome striplings, run
Their goals for virgins' kisses; which when done,
Then unto dancing forth the learned round
Commix'd they meet, with endless roses crown'd.
And here we'll sit on primrose-banks, and see
Love's chorus led by Cupid; and we'll he
Two loving followers too unto the grove,
Where poets sing the stories of our love.
There thou shalt hear divine Musaeus sing
Of Her...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...lying
 To the State-kept Stockholmites,
The Pope, the swithering Neutrals
 The Kaiser and his Gott--
Their roles, their goals, their naked souls--
 He knew and drew the lot.


Now he hath left his quarters,
 In Bunhill Fields to lie,
The wisdom that he taught us
 Is proven prophecy--
One watchword through our Armies,
 One answer from our Lands:--
"No dealings with Diabolus
 As long as Mansoul stands!"


A pedlar from a hovel,
 The lowest of the low,
The Father of the Nove...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...ir act set free,
While they quicken, tend and raise
Power that must their power displace.

Lesser men feign greater goals,
 Failing whereof they may sit
Scholarly to judge the souls
 That go down into the pit,
And, despite its certain clay,
Heave a new world towards the day.

These at labour make no sign,
 More than planets, tides or years
Which discover God's design,
 Not our hopes and not our fears;
Nor in aught they gain or lose
Seek a triumph or excuse.

For, ...Read more of this...

by Lindsay, Vachel
...rn, quaint-horn, saint-horn, 
Hark to the calm-horn, balm-horn, psalm-horn. . . .

They are hunting the goals that they understand:—
San-Francisco and the brown sea-sand. 
My goal is the mystery the beggars win. 
I am caught in the web the night-winds spin.
The edge of the wheat-ridge speaks to me.
I talk with the leaves of the mulberry tree.
And now I hear, as I sit all alone
In the dusk, by another big Santa-Fe stone,
The souls of the tal...Read more of this...

by Doty, Mark
...lt education class in Montpelier. In one evening Bessie Drennan learned everything she would need to accomplish her goals. . .
The Vermont Folklife Center Newsletter


Bessie, you've made space dizzy
with your perfected technique for snow:
white spatters and a dry brush
feathering everything in the world

seem to make the firmament fly.
Four roads converge on the heart of town,
this knot of white and yellow houses
angling off kilter, their astigmatic windo...Read more of this...

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