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Famous Hope Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Rossetti, Christina
...winter now I waken.

Talk what you please of future spring
  And sun-warm'd sweet to-morrow:—
Stripp'd bare of hope and everything,
No more to laugh, no more to sing,
  I sit alone with sorrow.
...Read more of this...



by Dickinson, Emily
...nd Night—
Are present to us—as Our Own—
And as escapeless—quite—

The narrow Round—the Stint—
The slow exchange of Hope—
For something passiver—Content
Too steep for looking up—

The Liberty we knew
Avoided—Like a Dream—
Too wide for any Night but Heaven—
If That—indeed—redeem—

680

Each Life Converges to some Centre—
Expressed—or still—
Exists in every Human Nature
A Goal—

Embodied scarcely to itself—it may be—
Too fair
For Credibility's presumption
...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...rd
Found way unto Olympus, and made quake
The rebel three.---Thea was startled up,
And in her bearing was a sort of hope,
As thus she quick-voic'd spake, yet full of awe.

 "This cheers our fallen house: come to our friends,
O Saturn! come away, and give them heart;
I know the covert, for thence came I hither."
Thus brief; then with beseeching eyes she went
With backward footing through the shade a space:
He follow'd, and she turn'd to lead the way
Through aged bo...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...think or say, 
 As death's cold hands its fears resuming are. 

 Gladly the dreads I felt, too dire to tell, 
 The hopeless, pathless, lightless hours forgot, 
 I turn my tale to that which next befell, 
 When the dawn opened, and the night was not. 
 The hollowed blackness of that waste, God wot, 
 Shrank, thinned, and ceased. A blinding splendour hot 
 Flushed the great height toward which my footsteps fell, 
 And though it kindled from the nether hell, 
 Or fr...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...

I. 

The Serfs are glad through Lara's wide domain, [2] 
And slavery half forgets her feudal chain; 
He, their unhoped, but unforgotten lord — 
The long self-exiled chieftain is restored: 
There be bright faces in the busy hall, 
Bowls on the board, and banners on the wall; 
Far chequering o'er the pictured window, plays 
The unwonted fagots' hospitable blaze; 
And gay retainers gather round the hearth, 
With tongues all loudness, and with eyes all mirth. 

II....Read more of this...



by Wordsworth, William
...onshine stealing o'er the scene  Had blended with the Lights of Eve;  And she was there, my Hope, my Joy,    My own dear Genevieve!   She lean'd against the Armed Man,  The Statue of the Armed Knight:  She stood and listen'd to my Harp    Amid the ling'ring Light.   Few Sorrows hath she of her own,  My Hope, my Joy, my...Read more of this...

by Angelou, Maya
...ook up and out
And into your sister's eyes,
Into your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

...Read more of this...

by Shakespeare, William
...uble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee—and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
   For thy sweet love rememb'r...Read more of this...

by Angelou, Maya
...ot oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your wor...Read more of this...

by Chesterton, G K
...

And there was death on the Emperor
And night upon the Pope:
And Alfred, hiding in deep grass,
Hardened his heart with hope.

A sea-folk blinder than the sea
Broke all about his land,
But Alfred up against them bare
And gripped the ground and grasped the air,
Staggered, and strove to stand.

He bent them back with spear and spade,
With desperate dyke and wall,
With foemen leaning on his shield
And roaring on him when he reeled;
And no help came at all.

He broke ...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...chers, for they taught
Earth had this joy; but that 'twould ever be
That fortune should be perfected in me,
My heart of hope dared not engage the thought.
So I stood low, and now but to be caught
By any self-styled lords of the age with thee
Vexes my modesty, lest they should see
I hold them owls and peacocks, things of nought. 
And when we sit alone, and as I please
I taste thy love's full smile, and can enstate
The pleasure of my kingly heart at ease,
My thought swi...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...arked."

But the principal failing occurred in the sailing,
 And the Bellman, perplexed and distressed,
Said he had hoped, at least, when the wind blew due East,
 That the ship would not travel due West!

But the danger was past--they had landed at last,
 With their boxes, portmanteaus, and bags:
Yet at first sight the crew were not pleased with the view,
 Which consisted to chasms and crags.

The Bellman perceived that their spirits were low,
 And repeated in musical...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...m;  How quietly her Johnny goes.   The silence of her idiot boy,  What hopes it sends to Betty's heart!  He's at the guide-post—he turns right,  She watches till he's out of sight,  And Betty will not then depart.   Burr, burr—now Johnny's lips they burr,  As loud as any mill, or near it,  Meek as a lamb the pony moves,  And...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
..., fire, nor air,
Nor creature, that of them maked is,
That may me helpe nor comfort in this,
Well ought I *sterve in wanhope* and distress. *die in despair*
Farewell my life, my lust*, and my gladness. *pleasure
Alas, *why plainen men so in commune *why do men so often complain
Of purveyance of God*, or of Fortune, of God's providence?*
That giveth them full oft in many a guise
Well better than they can themselves devise?
Some man desireth for to have richess,
That ca...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...?

     Not thus, in ancient days of Caledon, 10
        Was thy voice mute amid the festal crowd,
     When lay of hopeless love, or glory won,
        Aroused the fearful or subdued the proud.
     At each according pause was heard aloud
        Thine ardent symphony sublime and high!
     Fair dames and crested chiefs attention bowed;
        For still the burden of thy minstrelsy
     Was Knighthood's dauntless deed, and Beauty's matchless eye.

     O, wake o...Read more of this...

by Poe, Edgar Allan
...tered, 
Till I scarcely more than muttered,¡ª"Other friends have flown before; 
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before." 
Then the bird said, "Nevermore." 60 

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, 
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store, 
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster 
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore: 
Till the dirges of his Hope ...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...his chain?"
"The Child of a fierce hour; he sought to win
"The world, and lost all it did contain
Of greatness, in its hope destroyed; & more
Of fame & peace than Virtue's self can gain
"Without the opportunity which bore
Him on its eagle's pinion to the peak
From which a thousand climbers have before
"Fall'n as Napoleon fell."--I felt my cheek
Alter to see the great form pass away
Whose grasp had left the giant world so weak
That every pigmy kicked it as it lay--
And mu...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...eing, as he says, a good Christian and vindictive, threatens, I understand, a reply to this our answer. It is to be hoped that his visionary faculties will be in the mean time have acquired a little more judgment, properly so called: otherwise he will get himself into new dilemmas. These apostate jacobins furnish rich rejoinders. Let him take a specimen. Mr. Southey laudeth grievously 'one Mr. Landor,' who cultivates much prevate renown in the shape of...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...rth 
Of happiness on earth, 
Out of a world inured to death and pain; 
On a fair spring mom 
To me a son was born, 
And hope was born-the future lived again. 
To me a son was born, 
The lonely hard forlorn 
Travail was, as the Bible tells, forgot. 
How old, how commonplace 
To look upon the face
Of your first-born, and glory in your lot.

To look upon his face
And understand your place
Among the unknown dead in churchyards lying,
To see the reason why
You lived an...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...dawn.



x x x

I have ceased and desisted from smiling
The frosty wind chills lips - say so long
To one hope of which will be lesser,
Instead there will be one more song.
And this song, without my volition,
I will give out for laughter and parable,
For this that the silence of love
Is to me simply unbearable.



x x x

They're on the way, the words of love and freedom,
They're flying faster than the moment flies
And I am in stage fright ...Read more of this...

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