Famous Haste Poems by Famous Poets

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

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To Kate. (In Lieu Of A Valentine)

by Ellis Parker Butler
 Sweet Love and I had oft communed;
 We were, indeed, great friends,
And oft I sought his office, near
 Where Courtship Alley ends.

I used to sit with him, and smoke,
 And talk of your blue eyes,
And argue how I best might act
 To make your heart my prize.

He always seemed to have much time
 To hear me tell my joy,
So...Read more of this...

Like Truthless Dreams So Are My Joys Expired

by Sir Walter Raleigh
 Like truthless dreams, so are my joys expired, 
And past return are all my dandled days; 
My love misled, and fancy quite retired— 
Of all which passed the sorrow only stays. 

My lost delights, now clean from sight of land, 
Have left me all alone in unknown ways; 
My mind to woe, my life in fortune's hand— 
Of all...Read more of this...

Apostasy

by Charlotte Bronte
 THIS last denial of my faith, 
Thou, solemn Priest, hast heard; 
And, though upon my bed of death,
I call not back a word.
Point not to thy Madonna, Priest,­
Thy sightless saint of stone; 
She cannot, from this burning breast,
Wring one repentant moan. 

Thou say'st, that when a sinless child, 
I duly bent the knee,
And prayed to what in marble smiled...Read more of this...

Venus and Adonis

by William Shakespeare
 Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest,
From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast
The sun ariseth in his majesty;
Who doth the world so gloriously behold
That cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold.

Venus salutes him with this fair good-morrow;
"O thou clear god, and patron of all light,
From whom each lamp and shining star...Read more of this...

Ode to Health

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Come, bright-eyed maid, 
Pure offspring of the tranquil mind,
Haste, my fev'rish temples bind
With olive wreaths of em'rald hue
Steep'd in morn's ethereal dew, 
Where in mild HELVETIA's shade, 
Blushing summer round her flings
Warm gales and sunny show'rs that hang upon her wings. 

I'll seek thee in ITALIA's bow'rs, 
Where supine on beds of flow'rs
Melody's soul-touching throng
Strike the soft lute or...Read more of this...

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 22. The path by which we twain did go

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 The path by which we twain did go,
Which led by tracts that pleased us well,
Thro' four sweet years arose and fell,
From flower to flower, from snow to snow:
And we with singing cheer'd the way,
And, crown'd with all the season lent,
From April on to April went,
And glad at heart from May to May:
But where the path we walk'd began
To slant...Read more of this...

Storm and Sunlight

by Siegfried Sassoon
 I

In barns we crouch, and under stacks of straw, 
Harking the storm that rides a hurtling legion 
Up the arched sky, and speeds quick heels of panic 
With growling thunder loosed in fork and clap 
That echoes crashing thro’ the slumbrous vault.
The whispering woodlands darken: vulture Gloom 
Stoops, menacing the skeltering flocks of Light, 
Where the gaunt shepherd shakes...Read more of this...

The Death of Prince Leopold

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Alas! noble Prince Leopold, he is dead!
Who often has his lustre shed:
Especially by singing for the benefit of Esher School,
Which proves he was a wise prince. and no conceited fool.

Methinks I see him on the platform singing the Sands o' Dee,
The generous-hearted Leopold, the good and the free,
Who was manly in his actions, and beloved by his mother;
And in...Read more of this...

See they come post haste from Thanet

by Jane Austen
 See they come, post haste from Thanet,
Lovely couple, side by side;
They've left behind them Richard Kennet
With the Parents of the Bride! 
Canterbury they have passed through;
Next succeeded Stamford-bridge;
Chilham village they came fast through;
Now they've mounted yonder ridge. 

Down the hill they're swift proceeding,
Now they skirt the Park around;
Lo! The Cattle sweetly feeding
Scamper, startled at the sound! 

Run, my Brothers,...Read more of this...

Hymn 31

by Isaac Watts
 Christ's presence makes death easy.

Why should we start, and fear to die
What timorous worms we mortals are!
Death is the gate of endless joy,
And yet we dread to enter there.

The pains, the groans, and dying strife,
Fright our approaching souls away;
Still we shrink back again to life,
Fond of our prison and our clay.

O! if my Lord would come and meet,
My soul...Read more of this...

Trilogy of Passion: II. ELEGY

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 When man had ceased to utter his lament,

 A god then let me tell my tale of sorrow.

WHAT hope of once more meeting is there now
In the still-closed blossoms of this day?
Both heaven and hell thrown open seest thou;
What wav'ring thoughts within the bosom play
No longer doubt! Descending from the sky,
She lifts thee in her arms to realms on...Read more of this...

The Three Kings

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Three Kings came riding from far away,
Melchior and Gaspar and Baltasar;
Three Wise Men out of the East were they,
And they travelled by night and they slept by day,
For their guide was a beautiful, wonderful star. 

The star was so beautiful, large, and clear,
That all the other stars of the sky
Became a white mist in the atmosphere,
And by this they...Read more of this...

89. The Ordination

by Robert Burns
 KILMARNOCK wabsters, fidge an’ claw,
 An’ pour your creeshie nations;
An’ ye wha leather rax an’ draw,
 Of a’ denominations;
Swith to the Ligh Kirk, ane an’ a’
 An’ there tak up your stations;
Then aff to Begbie’s in a raw,
 An’ pour divine libations
 For joy this day.


Curst Common-sense, that imp o’ hell,
 Cam in wi’ Maggie Lauder; 1
But Oliphant 2...Read more of this...

Make haste! soon must you quit this life below,

by Omar Khayyam
Make haste! soon must you quit this life below,
And pass the veil, and Allah's secrets know,
Make haste to take your pleasure while you may,
You wot not whence you come, nor whither go....Read more of this...

Sonnet 27: Weary with toil I haste me to my bed

by William Shakespeare
 Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear respose for limbs with travel tirèd;
But then begins a journey in my head
To work my mind, when body's work's expirèd.
For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see;
Save that my soul's...Read more of this...

Dedication

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 for Moremi, 1963

Earth will not share the rafter's envy; dung floors
Break, not the gecko's slight skin, but its fall
Taste this soil for death and plumb her deep for life

As this yam, wholly earthed, yet a living tuber
To the warmth of waters, earthed as springs
As roots of baobab, as the hearth.

The air will not deny you. Like a top
Spin you...Read more of this...

The Princes Progress (excerpt)

by Christina Rossetti
 "Too late for love, too late for joy,
Too late, too late!
You loitered on the road too long,
You trifled at the gate:
The enchanted dove upon her branch
Died without a mate.
The enchanted princess in her tower
Slept, died, behind the grate;
Her heart was starving all this while
You made it wait.

"Ten years ago, five years ago,
One year ago,
Even then you had arrived in...Read more of this...

Before This Little Gift Was Come

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 BEFORE this little gift was come
The little owner had made haste for home;
And from the door of where the eternal dwell,
Looked back on human things and smiled farewell.
O may this grief remain the only one!
O may our house be still a garrison
Of smiling children, and for evermore
The tune of little feet be heard along the floor!...Read more of this...

69. Third Epistle to J. Lapraik

by Robert Burns
 GUID speed and furder to you, Johnie,
Guid health, hale han’s, an’ weather bonie;
Now, when ye’re nickin down fu’ cannie
 The staff o’ bread,
May ye ne’er want a stoup o’ bran’y
 To clear your head.


May Boreas never thresh your rigs,
Nor kick your rickles aff their legs,
Sendin the stuff o’er muirs an’ haggs
 Like drivin wrack;
But may the tapmost grain that...Read more of this...

The Cranes Of Ibycus

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Once to the song and chariot-fight,
Where all the tribes of Greece unite
On Corinth's isthmus joyously,
The god-loved Ibycus drew nigh.
On him Apollo had bestowed
The gift of song and strains inspired;
So, with light staff, he took his road
From Rhegium, by the godhead fired.

Acrocorinth, on mountain high,
Now burns upon the wanderer's eye,
And he begins, with pious dread,
Poseidon's grove of firs to tread.
Naught...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of The Ice-Worm Cocktail

by Robert William Service
 To Dawson Town came Percy Brown from London on the Thames.
A pane of glass was in his eye, and stockings on his stems.
Upon the shoulder of his coat a leather pad he wore,
To rest his deadly rifle when it wasn't seeking gore;
The which it must have often been, for Major Percy Brown,
According to his story was a hunter of...Read more of this...

Hate

by Robert William Service
 I had a bitter enemy,
His heart to hate he gave,
And when I died he swore that he
Would dance upon my grave;
That he would leap and laugh because
A livid corpse was I,
And that's the reason why I was
In no great haste to die. 

And then - such is the quirk of fate,
One day with joy I read,
Despite his vitalizing hate
My...Read more of this...

Song

by Thomas Carew
 ASK me no more where Jove bestows, 
When June is past, the fading rose; 
For in your beauty's orient deep 
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep. 

Ask me no more whither do stray 
The golden atoms of the day; 
For in pure love heaven did prepare 
Those powders to enrich your hair. 

Ask me no more whither doth...Read more of this...

To a Lady and Her Children

by Phillis Wheatley
 O'erwhelming sorrow now demands my song:
From death the overwhelming sorrow sprung.
What flowing tears? What hearts with grief opprest?
What sighs on sighs heave the fond parent's breast?
The brother weeps, the hapless sisters join
Th' increasing woe, and swell the crystal brine;
The poor, who once his gen'rous bounty fed,
Droop, and bewail their benefactor dead.
In death the friend, the kind companion lies,
And in...Read more of this...

The Sun and Moon must make their haste --

by Emily Dickinson
 The Sun and Moon must make their haste --
The Stars express around
For in the Zones of Paradise
The Lord alone is burned --

His Eye, it is the East and West --
The North and South when He
Do concentrate His Countenance
Like Glow Worms, flee away --

Oh Poor and Far --
Oh Hindred Eye
That hunted for the Day --
The Lord a Candle entertains
Entirely for...Read more of this...

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