Famous In Time Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous In Time 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 time poems. These examples illustrate what a famous in time poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Time And Life

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 I.

Time, thy name is sorrow, says the stricken
Heart of life, laid waste with wasting flame
Ere the change of things and thoughts requicken,
Time, thy name.

Girt about with shadow, blind and lame,
Ghosts of things that smite and thoughts that sicken
Hunt and hound thee down to death and shame.

Eyes of hours whose paces halt or quicken
Read in bloodred lines of loss and...Read more of this...

Soon shall I go, by time and fate deplored,

by Omar Khayyam
Soon shall I go, by time and fate deplored,
Of all my precious pearls not one is bored;
Alas! there die with me a thousand truths
To which these fools fit audience ne'er accord....Read more of this...

Time XXI

by Kahlil Gibran
 And an astronomer said, "Master, what of Time?" 

And he answered: 

You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable. 

You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons. 

Of time you would make a stream upon whose bank you would sit and watch its flowing. 

Yet the timeless in...Read more of this...

At the time when I had long suffered

by Emile Verhaeren
At the time when I had long suffered and the hours were snares to me, you appeared to me as the welcoming light that shines from the windows on to the snow in the depths of winter evenings.
The brightness of your hospitable soul touched my heart lightly without wounding it, like a hand of tranquil warmth.
Then came a holy trust,...Read more of this...

Time Of Disturbance

by Robinson Jeffers
 The best is, in war or faction or ordinary vindictive
 life, not to take sides.
Leave it for children, and the emotional rabble of the
 streets, to back their horse or support a brawler.

But if you are forced into it: remember that good and
 evil are as common as air, and like air shared
By the panting belligerents; the moral indignation...Read more of this...

I had no time to hate because

by Emily Dickinson
I had no time to hate, because
The grave would hinder me,
And life was not so ample I
Could finish enmity.

Nor had I time to love, but since
Some industry must be,
The little toil of love, I thought,
Was large enough for me....Read more of this...

Who Bides His Time

by James Whitcomb Riley
 Who bides his time, and day by day 
Faces defeat full patiently, 
And lifts a mirthful roundelay, 
However poor his fortunes be,-- 
He will not fail in any qualm 
Of poverty -- the paltry dime 
It will grow golden in his palm, 
Who bides his time.

Who bides his time -- he tastes the sweet 
Of honey in the saltest...Read more of this...

An Old-time Lay

by Victor Hugo
 ("Jamais elle ne raille.") 
 
 {Bk. III. xiii.} 


 Where your brood seven lie, 
 Float in calm heavenly, 
 Life passing evenly, 
 Waterfowl, waterfowl! often I dream 
 For a rest 
 Like your nest, 
 Skirting the stream. 
 
 Shine the sun tearfully 
 Ere the clouds clear fully, 
 Still you skim cheerfully,...Read more of this...

Sonnet 02: Time Does Not Bring Relief; You All Have Lied

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
 Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
 I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
 And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
 But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on...Read more of this...

A Time to Talk

by Robert Frost
 When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven't hoed,
And shout from where I am, 'What is it?'
No, not as there is a time talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up...Read more of this...

Was There A Time

by Dylan Thomas
 Was there a time when dancers with their fiddles
In children's circuses could stay their troubles?
There was a time they could cry over books,
But time has set its maggot on their track.
Under the arc of the sky they are unsafe.
What's never known is safest in this life.
Under the skysigns they who have no arms
Have cleanest hands, and, as the heartless...Read more of this...

Ask not the chances of the time to be,

by Omar Khayyam
Ask not the chances of the time to be,
And for the past, 'tis vanished, as you see;
This ready-money breath set down as gain,
Future and past concern not you or me....Read more of this...

Time Stands Still over Govandi Station

by John Matthew
 A kite flutters,
On a high tension wire —
Against a stark blue sky.
Beggar and old mother huddle
On Govandi Railway Station —
The dirtiest station in the universe.

He shows her a plastic watch,
Smiles, “See I have time,”
She, old, gnarled, wrinkled,
Looks through beady eyes,
“I have no need for time.”

Children toss rubber ball —
In cricketing passion.
Jagged slum roofs puncture the sky,
Open drain stinks.

Mother and...Read more of this...

Time

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe
Are brackish with the salt of human tears!
Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow
Claspest the limits of mortality,
And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable Sea?...Read more of this...

You constituted Time --

by Emily Dickinson
 You constituted Time --
I deemed Eternity
A Revelation of Yourself --
'Twas therefore Deity

The Absolute -- removed
The Relative away --
That I unto Himself adjust
My slow idolatry --...Read more of this...

With Lifes Tomorrow Time You Grasp

by Mihai Eminescu
With life's tomorrow time you grasp, 
Its yesterdays you fling away, 
And still, in spite of all remains 
Its long eternity, today. 

When one thing goes, another comes 
In this wide world by heaven borne; 
And when the sun is setting here 
'Tis somewhere else just breaking dawn. 

It seems somehow that other waves 
Are rolling down the same old...Read more of this...

Sonnet 38 - First time he kissed me he but only kissed

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 First time he kissed me, he but only kissed
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;
And ever since, it grew more clean and white,
Slow to world-greetings, quick with its 'Oh, list,'
When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst
I could not wear here, plainer to my sight,
Than that first kiss. The second passed in height
The first, and sought the forehead,...Read more of this...

More Strong Than Time

by Victor Hugo
 ("Puisque j'ai mis ma lèvre à ta coupe.") 
 
 {XXV., Jan. 1, 1835.} 


 Since I have set my lips to your full cup, my sweet, 
 Since I my pallid face between your hands have laid, 
 Since I have known your soul, and all the bloom of it, 
 And all the perfume rare, now buried...Read more of this...

Upon Time

by Robert Herrick
 Time was upon
The wing, to fly away;
And I call'd on
Him but awhile to stay;
But he'd be gone,
For aught that I could say.

He held out then
A writing, as he went,
And ask'd me, when
False man would be content
To pay again
What God and Nature lent.

An hour-glass,
In which were sands but few,
As he did pass,
He shew'd,--and told me too
Mine end near was;--
And so...Read more of this...

Some time

by Eugene Field
 Last night, my darling, as you slept,
I thought I heard you sigh,
And to your little crib I crept,
And watched a space thereby;
And then I stooped and kissed your brow,
For oh! I love you so--
You are too young to know it now,
But some time you shall know!

Some time when, in a darkened place
Where others come to weep,
Your eyes shall look...Read more of this...

Lovers Gifts LIV: In the Beginning of Time

by Rabindranath Tagore
 In the beginning of time, there rose from the churning of God's
dream two women. One is the dancer at the court of paradise, the
desired of men, she who laughs and plucks the minds of the wise
from their cold meditations and of fools from their emptiness; and
scatters them like seeds with careless hands in the extravagant
winds of March, in the...Read more of this...

In Time Of The Breaking Of Nations

by Thomas Hardy
 I
Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.

 II
Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onwards the same
Though Dynasties pass.

 III
Yonder a maid and her wight
Go whispering by:
War's annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die....Read more of this...

Cherry-Time

by Robert Graves
 Cherries of the night are riper
Than the cherries pluckt at noon 
Gather to your fairy piper 
When he pipes his magic tune: 
 Merry, merry, 
 Take a cherry; 
 Mine are sounder, 
 Mine are rounder, 
 Mine are sweeter 
 For the eater
 Under the moon. 
And you’ll be fairies soon. 

In the cherry pluckt at night,...Read more of this...

Time

by Anonymous
A minute,—how soon it is flown!And yet, how important it is!God calls every moment His own,—For all our existence is His:And tho’ we may waste many moments each day,He notices each that we squander away.We should not a minute despise,Although it so quickly is o’er;We know that it rapidly flies,And therefore should prize it the more.Another, indeed, may appear in...Read more of this...

The Time Ive Lost In Wooing

by Thomas Moore
 The time I've lost in wooing, 
In watching and pursuing 
The light that lies 
In woman's eyes, 
Has been my heart's undoing. 
Tho' Wisdom oft has sought me, 
I scorn'd the lore she brought me, 
My only books 
Were women's looks, 
And folly's all they taught me. 

Her smile when Beauty granted, 
I hung with gaze enchanted, 
Like him...Read more of this...

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