Famous Hoping Poems by Famous Poets

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

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At Algeciras - A Meditaton Upon Death

by William Butler Yeats
 The heron-billed pale cattle-birds
That feed on some foul parasite
Of the Moroccan flocks and herds
Cross the narrow Straits to light
In the rich midnight of the garden trees
Till the dawn break upon those mingled seas.

Often at evening when a boy
Would I carry to a friend -
Hoping more substantial joy
Did an older mind commend -
Not such as are in Newton's metaphor,
But actual...Read more of this...

the ordinary again

by Rg Gregory
 (1) the ordinary

you are not interested in me
a receiver of food and a giver of ****
my brain knuckled under

i have rendered the skills of my 
limbs to generations of caesars
and caesar's gods have siphoned off my spirit
by day i have been trained to dismember my own brothers
my own pieces travel through the night yearning for union

in every land i...Read more of this...

The Amaranth

by Vachel Lindsay
 Ah, in the night, all music haunts me here. . . .
Is it for naught high Heaven cracks and yawns
And the tremendous Amaranth descends
Sweet with the glory of ten thousand dawns?

Does it not mean my God would have me say: — 
"Whether you will or no, O city young, 
Heaven will bloom like one great flower for you, 
Flash...Read more of this...

December At Yase

by Gary Snyder
 You said, that October,
In the tall dry grass by the orchard
When you chose to be free,
"Again someday, maybe ten years."

After college I saw you
One time. You were strange,
And I was obsessed with a plan.

Now ten years and more have
Gone by: I've always known
 where you were—
I might have gone to you
Hoping to win your love back.
You still are single.

I...Read more of this...

The Magi

by William Butler Yeats
 Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of Silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied,
The...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXVI: I Ever Love

by Michael Drayton
 To Despair

I ever love where never hope appears, 
Yet hope draws on my never-hoping care, 
And my life's hope would die, but for despair; 
My never-certain joy breeds ever-certain fears; 
Uncertain dread gives wings unto my hope, 
Yet my hope's wings are laden so with fear 
As they cannot ascend to my hope's sphere; 
Though fear gives them more...Read more of this...

Freedoms Plow

by Langston Hughes
 When a man starts out with nothing,
 When a man starts out with his hands
 Empty, but clean,
 When a man starts to build a world,
He starts first with himself
And the faith that is in his heart-
The strength there,
The will there to build.

First in the heart is the dream-
Then the mind starts seeking a way.
His eyes look out on...Read more of this...

The Inauguration of the University College

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Good people of Dundee, your voices raise,
And to Miss Baxter give great praise;
Rejoice and sing and dance with glee,
Because she has founded a College in Bonnie Dundee. 

Therefore loudly in her praise sing,
And make Dundee with your voices ring,
And give honour to whom honour is due,
Because ladies like her are very few. 

'Twas on the 5th day of October,...Read more of this...

The Abominable Snowman

by Ogden Nash
 I've never seen an abominable snowman, 
I'm hoping not to see one, 
I'm also hoping, if I do, 
That it will be a wee one....Read more of this...

To a Lady

by Matthew Prior
 Spare, gen'rous victor, spare the slave,
Who did unequal war pursue;
That more than triumph he might have,
In being overcome by you.

In the dispute whate'er I said,
My heart was by my tongue belied;
And in my looks you might have read
How much I argued on your side.

You, far from danger as from fear,
Might have sustain'd an open fight:
For seldom your opinions err:
Your...Read more of this...

Lilys Menagerie

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [Goethe describes this much-admired Poem, which 
he wrote in honour of his love Lily, as being "designed to change 
his surrender of her into despair, by drolly-fretful images."]

THERE'S no menagerie, I vow,

Excels my Lily's at this minute;

She keeps the strangest creatures in it,
And catches them, she knows not how.

Oh, how they hop, and run, and rave,
And their clipp'd pinions...Read more of this...

Richard Pigott the Forger

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Richard Pigott, the forger, was a very bad man,
And to gainsay it there's nobody can,
Because for fifty years he pursued a career of deceit,
And as a forger few men with him could compete. 

For by forged letters he tried to accuse Parnell
For the Phoenix Park murders, but mark what befell.
When his conscience smote him he confessed to the fraud,
And...Read more of this...

The Troubles of Matthew Mahoney

by William Topaz McGonagall
 In a little town in Devonshire, in the mellow September moonlight,
A gentleman passing along a street saw a pitiful sight,
A man bending over the form of a woman on the pavement.
He was uttering plaintive words and seemingly discontent. 

"What's the matter with the woman?" asked the gentleman,
As the poor, fallen woman he did narrowly scan.
"There's something the matter, as...Read more of this...

Imanuel Ehrenhardt

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I began with Sir William Hamilton's lectures.
Then studied Dugald Stewart;
And then John Locke on the Understanding,
And then Descartes, Fichte and Schelling,
Kant and then Schopenhauer --
Books I borrowed from old Judge Somers.
All read with rapturous industry
Hoping it was reserved to me
To grasp the tail of the ultimate secret,
And drag it out of its hole.
My soul flew up ten thousand miles,
And...Read more of this...

Black Stone On Top Of Nothing

by Philip Levine
 Still sober, César Vallejo comes home and finds a black ribbon 
around the apartment building covering the front door. 
He puts down his cane, removes his greasy fedora, and begins 
to untangle the mess. His neighbors line up behind him 
wondering what's going on. A middle-aged woman carrying 
a loaf of fresh bread asks him to step aside so...Read more of this...

Sonnet CVI

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CVI. L' avara Babilonia ha colmo 'l sacco. HE PREDICTS TO ROME THE ARRIVAL OF SOME GREAT PERSONAGE WHO WILL BRING HER BACK TO HER OLD VIRTUE.  Covetous Babylon of wrath divineBy its worst crimes has drain'd the full cup now,And for its future Gods to whom to bowNot Pow'r nor...Read more of this...

Wolf Knife

by Donald Hall
 In the mid August, in the second year
of my First Polar Expedition, the snow and ice of winter
almost upon us, Kantiuk and I
attempted to dash the sledge
along Crispin Bay, searching again for relics
of the Frankline Expedition. Now a storm blew,
and we turned back, and we struggled slowly
in snow, lest we depart land and venture onto ice
from which a sudden...Read more of this...

The Burghers of Calais

by Marriott Edgar
 It were after the Battle of Crecy- 
The foe all lay dead on the ground- 
And King Edward went out with his soldiers
To clean up the places around.

The first place they came to were Calais, 
Where t' burghers all stood in a row,
And when Edward told them to surrender 
They told Edward where he could go.

Said he, " I'll...Read more of this...

The Story Of Our Lives

by Mark Strand
 1
We are reading the story of our lives
which takes place in a room.
The room looks out on a street.
There is no one there,
no sound of anything.
The tress are heavy with leaves,
the parked cars never move.
We keep turning the pages, hoping for something,
something like mercy or change,
a black line that would bind us
or keep us apart.
The way it is, it...Read more of this...

The Hermit of Mont-Blanc

by Mary Darby Robinson
 High, on the Solitude of Alpine Hills,
O'er-topping the grand imag'ry of Nature,
Where one eternal winter seem'd to reign;
An HERMIT'S threshold, carpetted with moss,
Diversified the Scene. Above the flakes
Of silv'ry snow, full many a modest flow'r
Peep'd through its icy veil, and blushing ope'd
Its variegated hues; The ORCHIS sweet,
The bloomy CISTUS, and the fragrant branch
Of glossy MYRTLE. In his rushy cell,
The...Read more of this...

Leeds

by Barry Tebb
 O my beloved city,

How many times have I deserted you

For the sights and sounds of Babylon?

How often and from how far

Have I conjured your broad boulevards

O Quartier Latin, crowded street caf?s

With white and scarlet awnings, gold

Adornings on stone cupolas, Byzantine domes

And plinths of equine statuary before

The Gare du Nord, grumbling fading

Faience of the Gare de l’Est?



Often, O how often,...Read more of this...

To Father* Kronos

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [written in a post-chaise.]

 (* In the original, Schwager, which has the 
twofold meaning of brother-in-law and postilion.)

HASTEN thee, Kronos!
On with clattering trot
Downhill goeth thy path;
Loathsome dizziness ever,
When thou delayest, assails me.
Quick, rattle along,
Over stock and stone let thy trot
Into life straightway lead

Now once more
Up the toilsome ascent
Hasten, panting for breath!
Up, then, nor idle be,--
Striving and hoping, up, up!

Wide,...Read more of this...

On Receipt Of My Mothers Picture

by William Cowper
 Oh that those lips had language! Life has pass'd
With me but roughly since I heard thee last.
Those lips are thine--thy own sweet smiles I see,
The same that oft in childhood solaced me;
Voice only fails, else, how distinct they say,
"Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!"
The meek intelligence of those dear eyes
(Blest be the art that can immortalize,
The...Read more of this...

Landing Under Water I See Roots

by Annie Finch
 All the things we hide in water
hoping we won't see them go—
(forests growing under water
press against the ones we know)—

and they might have gone on growing
and they might now breathe above
everything I speak of sowing
(everything I try to love)....Read more of this...

Middle Passage

by Robert Hayden
 I 

Jesús, Estrella, Esperanza, Mercy: 

Sails flashing to the wind like weapons, 
sharks following the moans the fever and the dying; 
horror the corposant and compass rose. 

Middle Passage: 
voyage through death 
to life upon these shores. 

"10 April 1800-- 
Blacks rebellious. Crew uneasy. Our linguist says 
their moaning is a prayer for death, 
our and their own. Some...Read more of this...

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