Famous Impatience Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Impatience poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous impatience poems. These examples illustrate what a famous impatience poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
How can I wait until you come to me?
The once fleet mornings linger by the way;
Their sunny smiles touched with malicious glee
At my unrest, they seem to pause, and play
Like truant children, while I sigh and say,
How can I wait?
How can I wait? Of old, the rapid hours
Refused to pause or loiter with me long;...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Threefold is the march of time
While the future slow advances,
Like a dart the present glances,
Silent stands the past sublime.
No impatience e'er can speed him
On his course if he delay;
No alarm, no doubts impede him
If he keep his onward way;
No regrets, no magic numbers
Wake the tranced one from his slumbers.
Wouldst thou wisely and with pleasure,
Pass the days of life's short...Read more of this...
by
Emily Brontë
In the dungeon-crypts, idly did I stray,
Reckless of the lives wasting there away;
"Draw the ponderous bars! open, Warder stern!"
He dared not say me nay - the hinges harshly turn.
"Our guests are darkly lodged," I whisper'd, gazing through
The vault, whose grated eye showed heaven more grey than blue;
(This was when glad spring laughed in awaking pride;)
"Aye, darkly lodged enough!"...Read more of this...
by
Craig Raine
Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings --
they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.
I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.
Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:
then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue...Read more of this...
by
Vernon Scannell
Waiting for her in the usual bar
He finds she's late again.
Impatience frets at him,
But not the fearful, half-sweet pain he knew
So long ago.
That cherished perturbation is replaced
By styptic irritation
And, under that, a cold
Dark current of dejection moves
That this is so.
There was a time when all her failings were
Delights he marvelled at:
It seemed her clumsiness,
Forgetfulness and wild non-sequiturs
Could never...Read more of this...
by
Rupert Brooke
The day that YOUTH had died,
There came to his grave-side,
In decent mourning, from the country's ends,
Those scatter'd friends
Who had lived the boon companions of his prime,
And laughed with him and sung with him and wasted,
In feast and wine and many-crown'd carouse,
The days and nights and dawnings of the time
When YOUTH kept open house,
Nor left untasted
Aught of his high emprise...Read more of this...
by
Anne Bronte
Love, indeed thy strength is mighty
Thus, alone, such strife to bear --
Three 'gainst one, and never ceasing --
Death, and Madness, and Despair!
'Tis not my own strength has saved me;
Health, and hope, and fortitude,
But for love, had long since failed me;
Heart and soul had sunk subdued.
Often, in my wild impatience,
I have lost my trust in Heaven,
And my soul has...Read more of this...
by
Bertolt Brecht
Indeed I live in the dark ages!
A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens
A hard heart. He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.
Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!
And he who walks calmly across the street,
Is he not out of reach...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
O THOU, whose sober precepts can controul
The wild impatience of the troubled soul,
Sweet Nymph serene ! whose all-consoling pow'r
Awakes to calm delight the ling'ring hour;
O hear thy suppliant's ardent pray'r !
Chase from my pensive mind corroding care,
Steal thro' the heated pulses of the brain,
Charm sorrow to reposeand lull the throb of pain....Read more of this...
by
Rupert Brooke
The Day that Youth had died,
There came to his grave-side,
In decent mourning, from the country’s ends,
Those scatter’d friends
Who had lived the boon companions of his prime,
And laughed with him and sung with him and wasted,
In feast and wine and many-crown’d carouse,
The days and nights and dawnings of the time
When Youth kept open house,...Read more of this...
by
Charlotte Bronte
ARRANGING long-locked drawers and shelves
Of cabinets, shut up for years,
What a strange task we've set ourselves !
How still the lonely room appears !
How strange this mass of ancient treasures,
Mementos of past pains and pleasures;
These volumes, clasped with costly stone,
With print all faded, gilding gone;
These fans of leaves, from Indian trees
These...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Never stoops the soaring vulture
On his quarry in the desert,
On the sick or wounded bison,
But another vulture, watching
From his high aerial look-out,
Sees the downward plunge, and follows;
And a third pursues the second,
Coming from the invisible ether,
First a speck, and then a vulture,
Till the air is dark with pinions.
So disasters come not singly;
But as if they watched and waited,
Scanning one...Read more of this...
by
William Cowper
My God, how perfect are Thy ways!
But mine polluted are;
Sin twines itself about my praise,
And slides into my prayer.
When I would speak what Thou hast done
To save me from my sin,
I cannot make Thy mercies known,
But self-applause creeps in.
Divine desire, that holy flame
Thy grace creates in me;
Alas! impatience is its name,
When it returns to Thee.
This heart, a fountain of...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
IN the deepest nights of Winter
To the Muses kind oft cried I:
"Not a ray of morn is gleaming,
Not a sign of daylight breaking;
Bring, then, at the fitting moment,
Bring the lamp's soft glimm'ring lustre,
'Stead of Phoebus and Aurora,
To enliven my still labours!"
Yet they left me in my slumbers,
Dull and unrefreshing, lying,
And to each late-waken'd morning
Follow'd days devoid of profit.
When at...Read more of this...
by
Delmore Schwartz
The riches of the poet are equal to his poetry
His power is his left hand
It is idle weak and precious
His poverty is his wealth, a wealth which may destroy him
like Midas Because it is that laziness which is a form of impatience
And this he may be destroyed by the gold of the light
which never...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
A youth, impelled by a burning thirst for knowledge
To roam to Sais, in fair Egypt's land,
The priesthood's secret learning to explore,
Had passed through many a grade with eager haste,
And still was hurrying on with fond impatience.
Scarce could the Hierophant impose a rein
Upon his headlong efforts. "What avails
A part without the whole?" the youth exclaimed;
"Can there be here a lesser...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
In a back room a man is performing an autopsy
on an old raincoat.
His wife appears in the doorway with a candle
and asks, how does it go?
Not now, not now, I'm just getting to the lining,
he murmurs with impatience.
I just wanted to know if you found any blood clots?
Blood clots?!
For my necklace...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
The summer hums. The afternoon fatigues;
she breathed her crisp white dress distractedly
and put into it that sharply etched etude
her impatience for a reality
that could come: tomorrow, this evening--,
that perhaps was there, was just kept hidden;
and at the window, tall and having everything,
she suddenly could feel the pampered park.
With that she broke off; gazed outside, locked
her hands together; wished for...Read more of this...
by
John Clare
When first we hear the shy-come nightingales,
They seem to mutter o'er their songs in fear,
And, climb we e'er so soft the spinney rails,
All stops as if no bird was anywhere.
The kindled bushes with the young leaves thin
Let curious eyes to search a long way in,
Until impatience cannot see or hear
The hidden music; gets but little way
Upon the path—when up...Read more of this...
by
Marianne Moore
This institution,
perhaps one should say enterprise
out of respect for which
one says one need not change one's mind
about a thing one has believed in,
requiring public promises
of one's intention
to fulfill a private obligation:
I wonder what Adam and Eve
think of it by this time,
this firegilt steel
alive with goldenness;
how bright it shows --
"of circular traditions and impostures,
committing many spoils,"
requiring all one's criminal ingenuity
to...Read more of this...
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...
by
Emily Brontë
Still let my tyrants know, I am not doomed to wear
Year after year in gloom and desolate despair;
A messenger of Hope comes every night to me,
And offers for short life, eternal liberty.
He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs,
With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars:
Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire,
And...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
And wilt thou, faithless one, then, leave me,
With all thy magic phantasy,--
With all the thoughts that joy or grieve me,
Wilt thou with all forever fly?
Can naught delay thine onward motion,
Thou golden time of life's young dream?
In vain! eternity's wide ocean
Ceaselessly drowns thy rolling stream.
The glorious suns my youth enchanting
Have set in never-ending night;
Those blest ideals now are wanting
That swelled...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
MANY a day and night my bark stood ready laden;
Waiting fav'ring winds, I sat with true friends round me,
Pledging me to patience and to courage,
In the haven.
And they spoke thus with impatience twofold:
"Gladly pray we for thy rapid passage,
Gladly for thy happy voyage; fortune
In the distant world is waiting for thee,
In our arms thoult find thy prize, and love...Read more of this...
by
Adrienne Rich
This is the grass your feet are planted on.
You paint it orange or you sing it green,
But you have never found
A way to make the grass mean what you mean.
A cloud can be whatever you intend:
Ostrich or leaning tower or staring eye.
But you have never found
A cloud sufficient to express the sky.
Get out there with your splendid expertise;
Raymond who...Read more of this...
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