Famous Laggard Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Winners

by Rudyard Kipling
 What the moral? Who rides may read.
When the night is thick and the tracks are blind
A friend at a pinch is a friend, indeed,
But a fool to wait for the laggard behind.
Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne,
He travels the fastest who travels alone.

White hands cling to the tightened rein,
Slipping the spur from the booted heel,
Tenderest voices cry...Read more of this...

Sonnet CLI

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CLI. Amor, Natura, e la bell' alma umile. DURING A SERIOUS ILLNESS OF LAURA.  Love, Nature, Laura's gentle self combines,She where each lofty virtue dwells and reigns,[Pg 169]Against my peace: To pierce with mortal painsLove toils—such ever are his stern designs.Nature by bonds so slight to earth...Read more of this...

Symptoms of Love

by Robert Graves
 Love is universal migraine,
A bright stain on the vision
Blotting out reason. 

Symptoms of true love
Are leanness, jealousy,
Laggard dawns; 

Are omens and nightmares -
Listening for a knock,
Waiting for a sign: 

For a touch of her fingers
In a darkened room,
For a searching look. 

Take courage, lover!
Could you endure such pain
At any hand but hers?...Read more of this...

Loves Vicissitudes

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 AS Love and Hope together
Walk by me for a while,
Link-armed the ways they travel
For many a pleasant mile -
Link-armed and dumb they travel,
They sing not, but they smile.

Hope leaving, Love commences
To practise on the lute;
And as he sings and travels
With lingering, laggard foot,
Despair plays obligato
The sentimental flute.

Until in singing garments
Comes royally, at call -
Comes limber-hipped Indiff'rence
Free stepping, straight and...Read more of this...

Flood-Tide of Flowers

by Henry Van Dyke
 IN HOLLAND 

The laggard winter ebbed so slow
With freezing rain and melting snow,
It seemed as if the earth would stay
Forever where the tide was low,
In sodden green and watery gray. 

But now from depths beyond our sight,
The tide is turning in the night,
And floods of color long concealed
Come silent rising toward the light,
Through garden bare and empty field. 

And...Read more of this...

Indifference

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 I said,—for Love was laggard, O, Love was slow to come,—
 "I'll hear his step and know his step when I am warm in
 bed;
But I'll never leave my pillow, though there be some
 As would let him in—and take him in with tears!" I said.
I lay,—for Love was laggard, O, he came not until dawn,—
 I lay and...Read more of this...

My Country 'Tis of Thee

by W. E. B. Du Bois
Of course you have faced the dilemma: it is announced, they all smirk and rise. If they are ultra, they remove their hats and look ecstatic; then they look at you. What shall you do? Noblesse oblige; you cannot be boorish, or ungracious; and too, after all it is your country and you do love its ideals if not all...Read more of this...

Lochinvar

by Sir Walter Scott
Oh! young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
And save his good broadsword he weapons had none.
He rode all unarmed and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love and so dauntless in war,
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar. 

He stayed not for brake and he stopped not for stone,
He...Read more of this...

To an Early Daffodil

by Amy Lowell
 Thou yellow trumpeter of laggard Spring!
Thou herald of rich Summer's myriad flowers!
The climbing sun with new recovered powers
Does warm thee into being, through the ring
Of rich, brown earth he woos thee, makes thee fling
Thy green shoots up, inheriting the dowers
Of bending sky and sudden, sweeping showers,
Till ripe and blossoming thou art a thing
To make all nature glad, thou art...Read more of this...

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