Famous In Memory Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous In Memory poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous in memory poems. These examples illustrate what a famous in memory poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Dejan Stojanovic
When all is lost, there is still a memory
From which a new city can be built in a new world.
Those with memory will be wealthy.
Oblivion cures the old wounds, and you must agree,
There is only the past and the future on the path;
When all is lost, there is still a memory.
Memory will save oblivion...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
I
Through my bedroom window
The coal carts jolted over the cobbles
A slow heavy rhythm full,
Light and fast returning empty.
The coal office manager was a dwarf
With sixty year old skin
On a ten year old’s body and
Hornrims on a wizened wizard’s face.
The enormous shire horses neighed
In warning if you went near,
Their polished brasses gleaming,
Their worn blinkers waxed;
When they brought in lorries
A two...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
I
In Casterbridge there stood a noble pile,
Wrought with pilaster, bay, and balustrade
In tactful times when shrewd Eliza swayed. -
On burgher, squire, and clown
It smiled the long street down for near a mile
II
But evil days beset that domicile;
The stately beauties of its roof and wall
Passed into sordid hands. Condemned to...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Back to the flower-town, side by side,
The bright months bring,
New-born, the bridegroom and the bride,
Freedom and spring.
The sweet land laughs from sea to sea,
Filled full of sun;
All things come back to her, being free;
All things but one.
In many a tender wheaten plot
Flowers that were dead
Live, and old suns revive; but not
That holier head.
By this white wandering waste of sea,
Far...Read more of this...
by
Anne Bronte
Brightly the sun of summer shone,
Green fields and waving woods upon,
And soft winds wandered by;
Above, a sky of purest blue,
Around, bright flowers of loveliest hue,
Allured the gazer's eye.
But what were all these charms to me,
When one sweet breath of memory
Came gently wafting by?
I closed my eyes against the day,
And called my willing soul away,
From earth, and air, and...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
(Nicola Sacco -- Bartolomeo Vanzetti)
Executed August 23, 1927
I
As men have loved their lovers in times past
And sung their wit, their virtue and their grace,
So have we loved sweet Justice to the last,
That now lies here in an unseemly place.
The child will quit the cradle and grow wise
And stare on beauty till his senses drown;
Yet shall be seen no more...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
"With female Fairies will thy tomb be haunted
"And worms will not come to thee." SHAKSPERE.
WHEN from Day's closing eye the lucid tears
Fall lightly on the bending lily's head;
When o'er the blushing sky night's curtains spread,
And the tall mountain's summit scarce appears;
When languid Evening, sinking to repose,
Her filmy mantle o'er the landscape throws;
Of THEE I'll sing; and...Read more of this...
by
Rupert Brooke
(From a sonnet-sequence)
Somewhile before the dawn I rose, and stept
Softly along the dim way to your room,
And found you sleeping in the quiet gloom,
And holiness about you as you slept.
I knelt there; till your waking fingers crept
About my head, and held it. I had rest
Unhoped this side of Heaven, beneath your breast.
I knelt...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.
But a raving autumn shears
Blossom from the summer's wreath;
The older is condemned to death,
Pardoned, drags out lonely years
Conspiring among the ignorant.
I know not what the younger dreams -
Some vague Utopia - and she seems,
When withered old and skeleton-gaunt,
An image of such politics.
Many...Read more of this...
by
John Milton
When Faith and Love, which parted from thee never,
Had ripened thy just soul to dwell with God,
Meekly thou didst resign this earthly load
Of death, called life, which us from life doth sever.
Thy works, and alms, and all thy good endeavour,
Stayed not behind, nor in the grave were trod;
But, as Faith pointed with her...Read more of this...
by
William Allingham
Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing;
What a little thing
To remember for years-
To remember with tears!...Read more of this...
by
William Blake
Memory, hither come,
And tune your merry notes;
And, while upon the wind
Your music floats,
I'll pore upon the stream
Where sighing lovers dream,
And fish for fancies as they pass
Within the watery glass.
I'll drink of the clear stream,
And hear the linnet's song;
And there I'll lie and dream
The day along:
And, when night comes, I'll go
To places fit for woe,
Walking along the darken'd valley
With...Read more of this...
by
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
Strange Power, I know not what thou art,
Murderer or mistress of my heart.
I know I'd rather meet the blow
Of my most unrelenting foe
Than live---as now I live---to be
Slain twenty times a day by thee.
Yet, when I would command thee hence,
Thou mockest at the vain pretence,
Murmuring in mine ear a song
Once...Read more of this...
by
Joyce Kilmer
In alien earth, across a troubled sea,
His body lies that was so fair and young.
His mouth is stopped, with half his songs unsung;
His arm is still, that struck to make men free.
But let no cloud of lamentation be
Where, on a warrior's grave, a lyre is hung.
We keep the echoes of his golden tongue,
We keep the vision of his chivalry.
So...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither Man nor Muse can praise too much.
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
For silliest ignorance on these may light,
Which when it sounds at best but...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
So bends beneath the storm yon balmy flow'r,
Whose spicy blossoms once perfum'd the gale;
So press'd with tears reclines yon lily pale,
Obedient to the rude and beating show'r.
Still is the LARK, that hov'ring o'er yon spray,
With jocund carol usher'd in the morn;
And mute the NIGHTINGALE, whose tender lay
Melted the feeling mind with sounds forlorn:
More sweet, MARIA, was thy...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Out in de night a sad bird moans,
An', oh, but hit 's moughty lonely;
Times I kin sing, but mos' I groans,
Fu' oh, but hit 's moughty lonely!
Is you sleepin' well dis evenin', Marfy, deah?
W'en I calls you fom de cabin, kin you hyeah?
'T ain't de same ol' place to me,
[Pg 195]Nuffin' 's lak hit used to be,
W'en I...Read more of this...
by
John Dryden
Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies,
Made in the last promotion of the Blest;
Whose palms, new pluck'd from Paradise,
In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
Rich with immortal green above the rest:
Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
Thou roll'st above us, in thy wand'ring race,
Or, in procession fix'd and regular,
Mov'd with the Heavens' majestic pace:
Or, call'd to more superior...Read more of this...
by
David Lehman
We were smoking some of this knockout weed when
Operation Memory was announced. To his separate bed
Each soldier went, counting backwards from a hundred
With a needle in his arm. And there I was, in the middle
Of a recession, in the middle of a strange city, between jobs
And apartments and wives. Nobody told me the gun was loaded.
We'd been drinking since...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
O thought, fly to her when the end of day
Awakens an old memory, and say,
'Your strength, that is so lofty and fierce and kind,
It might call up a new age, calling to mind
The queens that were imagined long ago,
Is but half yours: he kneaded in the dough
Through the long years of youth, and who would have thought
It all, and...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
SHALL I strew on thee rose or rue or laurel,
Brother, on this that was the veil of thee?
Or quiet sea-flower moulded by the sea,
Or simplest growth of meadow-sweet or sorrel,
Such as the summer-sleepy Dryads weave,
Waked up by snow-soft sudden rains at eve?
Or wilt thou rather, as on earth before,...Read more of this...
by
Alexander Pope
What beck'ning ghost, along the moon-light shade
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?
'Tis she!--but why that bleeding bosom gor'd,
Why dimly gleams the visionary sword?
Oh ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell,
Is it, in heav'n, a crime to love too well?
To bear too tender, or too firm a heart,
To act a lover's or a Roman's part?
Is there no bright reversion in...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
Chill penury repress'd his noble rage,
And froze the genial current of his soul.
GRAY.
IF GRIEF can deprecate the wrath of Heaven,
Or human frailty hope to be forgiven !
Ere now thy sainted spirit bends its way
To the bland regions of celestial day;
Ere now, thy soul, immers'd in purest air
Smiles at the triumphs of supreme...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
They have vanished, the pop men with their varnished crates
Of Tizer and dandy, American ice-cream soda and one percent shandy.
The clunk of frothy quarts dumped on donkey-stoned doorsteps
Is heard no more, nor the neighs of restless mares between the shafts.
The shining brass of harness hangs in bar-rooms or droops
From imitation beams.
Gelded stallions no longer chomp and champ
In stalls beneath...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
How sweet the music sounded
That summer long ago,
When you were by my side, love,
To list its gentle flow.
I saw your eyes a-shining,
I felt your rippling hair,
I kissed your pearly cheek, love,
And had no thought of care.
And gay or sad the music,
With subtle charm replete;
I found in after years, love
'Twas you that made it sweet.
For standing where we heard it,
I hear...Read more of this...
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