Famous Hopes Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Sonnet LXI

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LXI. S' onesto amor può meritar mercede. HE PRAYS THAT, IN REWARD FOR HIS LONG AND VIRTUOUS ATTACHMENT, SHE WILL VISIT HIM IN DEATH.  If Mercy e'er rewardeth virtuous love,If Pity still can do, as she has done,I shall have rest, for clearer than the sunMy lady and the world my...Read more of this...

thirteeners

by Rg Gregory
 18
if you want a revolution attack
symbols not systems - the simple forms
that (blithely) give the truth away
tying down millions to their terms
quietly with no one answering back

where the stage is makes the play
keeps actors (meanings) to those norms
stability requires - change tack
(remove the stage) violent storms
will sweep the old regime away

eventually there'll be no going back
once new symbols breed...Read more of this...

Elegy XVI: On His Mistress

by John Donne
 By our first strange and fatal interview,
By all desires which thereof did ensue,
By our long starving hopes, by that remorse
Which my words' masculine persuasive force
Begot in thee, and by the memory
Of hurts, which spies and rivals threatened me,
I calmly beg: but by thy father's wrath,
By all pains, which want and divorcement hath,
I conjure thee, and all the oaths which...Read more of this...

The Sad Day

by Thomas Flatman
 O THE sad day!
When friends shall shake their heads, and say
Of miserable me--
'Hark, how he groans!
Look, how he pants for breath!
See how he struggles with the pangs of death!'
When they shall say of these dear eyes--
'How hollow, O how dim they be!
Mark how his breast doth rise and swell
Against his potent enemy!'
When some old friend shall step to my...Read more of this...

Dont Tell the World that Youre Waiting for Me

by Eliza Cook
 THREE summers have gone since the first time we met, love,
And still 'tis in vain that I ask thee to wed ;
I hear no reply but a gentle " Not yet, love,"
With a smile of your lip, and a shake of your head.
Ah ! how oft have I whispered, how oft have I sued thee,
And breathed my soul's question...Read more of this...

Alcidor

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 While Monarchs in stern Battle strove 
For proud Imperial Sway; 
Abandon'd to his milder Love, 
Within a silent peaceful Grove, 
Alcidor careless lay. 

Some term'd it cold, unmanly Fear; 
Some, Nicety of Sense, 
That Drums and Trumpets cou'd not hear, 
The sullying Blasts of Powder bear, 
Or with foul Camps dispense. 

A patient Martyr to their Scorn, 
And each...Read more of this...

William H. Herndon

by Edgar Lee Masters
 There by the window in the old house
Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley,
My days of labor closed, sitting out life's decline,
Day by day did I look in my memory,
As one who gazes in an enchantress' crystal globe,
And I saw the figures of the past,
As if in a pageant glassed by a shining dream,
Move through the incredible sphere...Read more of this...

Paper Men To Air Hopes And Fears

by Robert Francis
 The first speaker said
Fear fire. Fear furnaces
Incinerators, the city dump
The faint scratch of a match. 

The second speaker said
Fear water. Fear drenching rain
Drizzle, oceans, puddles, a damp
Day and the flush toilet. 

The third speaker said
Fear wind. And it needn't be
A hurricane. Drafts, open
Windows, electric fans. 

The fourth speaker said
Fear knives. Fear any sharp
Thing, machine, shears
Scissors, lawnmowers. 

The fifth speaker...Read more of this...

Evening Solace

by Charlotte Bronte
 THE human heart has hidden treasures, 
In secret kept, in silence sealed;­
The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, 
Whose charms were broken if revealed. 
And days may pass in gay confusion, 
And nights in rosy riot fly, 
While, lost in Fame's or Wealth's illusion, 
The memory of the Past may die. 

But, there are hours of lonely musing,...Read more of this...

As the Heart Hopes

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 It is a year dear one, since you afar
Went out beyond my yearning mortal sight­
A wondrous year! perchance in many a star
You have sojourned, or basked within the light
Of mightier suns; it may be you have trod
The glittering pathways of the Pleiades,
And through the Milky Way's white mysteries
Have walked at will, fire-shod. 

You may have gazed in the immortal...Read more of this...

Rabbi Ben Ezra

by Robert Browning
 Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith 'A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!'

Not that, amassing flowers,
Youth sighed 'Which rose make ours,
Which lily leave and then as best recall?'
Not that, admiring stars,
It yearned 'Nor...Read more of this...

Clocks

by Carl Sandburg
 HERE is a face that says half-past seven the same way whether a murder or a wedding goes on, whether a funeral or a picnic crowd passes.
A tall one I know at the end of a hallway broods in shadows and is watching booze eat out the insides of the man of the house; it has seen five hopes...Read more of this...

Id Mourn the Hopes

by Thomas Moore
 I'd mourn the hopes that leave me, 
If thy smiles had left me too; 
I'd weep when friends deceive me, 
If thou wert, like them, untrue. 
But while I've thee before me, 
With heart so warm and eyes so bright, 
No clouds can linger o'er me, 
That smile turns them all to light. 

'Tis not in fate to harm...Read more of this...

A Song Of The Future

by Sidney Lanier
 Sail fast, sail fast,
Ark of my hopes, Ark of my dreams;
Sweep lordly o'er the drowned Past,
Fly glittering through the sun's strange beams;
Sail fast, sail fast.
Breaths of new buds from off some drying lea
With news about the Future scent the sea:
My brain is beating like the heart of Haste:
I'll loose me a bird upon this Present waste;
Go, trembling song,
And stay...Read more of this...

The Irreparable

by Charles Baudelaire
 AN we suppress the old Remorse 
Who bends our heart beneath his stroke, 
Who feeds, as worms feed on the corse, 
Or as the acorn on the oak? 
Can we suppress the old Remorse? 

Ah, in what philtre, wine, or spell, 
May we drown this our ancient foe, 
Destructive glutton, gorging well, 
Patient as the ants, and slow? 
What...Read more of this...

Hymn To Intellectual Beauty

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats through unseen among us, -- visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower, --
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening, --
Like clouds in starlight widely spread, --
Like memory of music fled,...Read more of this...

A March Day in London

by Amy Levy
 The east wind blows in the street to-day;
The sky is blue, yet the town looks grey.
'Tis the wind of ice, the wind of fire,
Of cold despair and of hot desire,
Which chills the flesh to aches and pains,
And sends a fever through all the veins.

From end to end, with aimless feet,
All day long have I paced the street.
My limbs are...Read more of this...

The Light of Stars

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 The night is come, but not too soon;
And sinking silently,
All silently, the little moon
Drops down behind the sky.

There is no light in earth or heaven
But the cold light of stars;
And the first watch of night is given
To the red planet Mars.

Is it the tender star of love?
The star of love and dreams?
O no! from that blue tent above,
A hero's...Read more of this...

Daphnis And Chloe

by Andrew Marvell
 Daphnis must from Chloe part:
Now is come the dismal Hour
That must all his Hopes devour,
All his Labour, all his Art.

Nature, her own Sexes foe,
Long had taught her to be coy:
But she neither knew t' enjoy,
Nor yet let her Lover go.

But, with this sad News surpriz'd,
Soon she let that Niceness fall;
And would gladly yield to all,
So it had his stay...Read more of this...

That Wind I Used to Hear it Swelling

by Emily Brontë
 That wind I used to hear it swelling
With joy divinely deep
You might have seen my hot tears welling
But rapture made me weep 

I used to love on winter nights
To lie and dream alone
Of all the hopes and real delights
My early years had known 

And oh above the rest of those
That coming time should [bear]
Like heaven's own glorious stars they...Read more of this...

We rest our hopes on Thy free grace alone,

by Omar Khayyam
We rest our hopes on Thy free grace alone,
Nor seek by merits for our sins to atone;
Mercy drops where it lists, and estimates
Ill done as undone, good undone as done....Read more of this...

And this of all my Hopes

by Emily Dickinson
 And this of all my Hopes
This, is the silent end
Bountiful colored, my Morning rose
Early and sere, its end

Never Bud from a Stem
Stepped with so gay a Foot
Never a Worm so confident
Bored at so brave a Root...Read more of this...

Epistle to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland

by Ben Jonson
  XII. — EPISTLE TO ELIZABETH COUNTESS OF RUTLAND. That which, to boot with hell, is thought worth heaven, And for it, life, conscience, yea souls are given, Toils, by grave custom, up and down the court, To every squire, or groom, that will report Well or ill, only all the following year, Just to the weight their this day's presents...Read more of this...

Mr Floods Party

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night
Over the hill between the town below
And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
On earth again of home, paused warily.
The road was his with not a native near;
And Eben, having leisure, said aloud,
For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:

"Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon
Again,...Read more of this...

Psalm 119 part 10

by Isaac Watts
 Pleading the promises.

ver. 38,49 

Behold thy waiting servant, Lord,
Devoted to thy fear;
Remember and confirm thy word,
For all my hopes are there.

ver. 41,58,107 

Hast thou not writ salvation down,
And promised quick'ning grace?
Doth not my heart address thy throne?
And yet thy love delays.

ver. 123,42 

Mine eyes for thy salvation fail;
O bear thy servant up!
Nor let the scoffing lips prevail
Who dare reproach...Read more of this...

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