Famous Last Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Last poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous last poems. These examples illustrate what a famous last poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
D. H. Lawrence
Yours is the shame and sorrow,
But the disgrace is mine;
Your love was dark and thorough,
Mine was the love of the sun for a flower
He creates with his shine.
I was diligent to explore you,
Blossom you stalk by stalk,
Till my fire of creation bore you
Shrivelling down in the final dour
Anguish -- then...Read more of this...
by
Norman Dubie
You were never told, Mother, how old Illyawas drunk
That last holiday, for five days and nights
He stumbled through Petersburg forming
A choir of mutes, he dressed them in pink ascension gowns
And, then, sold Father's Tirietz stallion so to rent
A hall for his Christmas recital: the audience
Was rowdy but Illya in his black robes turned on them
And gave them that look...Read more of this...
by
Louise Bogan
Come, let us tell the weeds in ditches
How we are poor, who once had riches,
And lie out in the sparse and sodden
Pastures that the cows have trodden,
The while an autumn night seals down
The comforts of the wooden town.
Come, let us counsel some cold stranger
How we sought safety, but loved danger.
So, with stiff walls about us, we
Chose this more fragile...Read more of this...
by
John Keats
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art! -
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors -
No -yet still steadfast, still...Read more of this...
by
George (Lord) Byron
The roses of Love glad the garden of life,
Though nurtur'd 'mid weeds dropping pestilent dew,
Till Time crops the leaves with unmerciful knife,
Or prunes them for ever, in Love's last adieu!
In vain, with endearments, we soothe the sad heart,
In vain do we vow for an age to be true;
The chance of an hour may command us to part,
Or Death disunite...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Last night, as I reeled from the tavern door,
I saw a sage, who a great wine-jug bore;
I said, «O Shaikh, have you no shame?» Said he,
«Allah hath boundless mercy in his store.»...Read more of this...
by
Philip Larkin
Why did I dream of you last night?
Now morning is pushing back hair with grey light
Memories strike home, like slaps in the face;
Raised on elbow, I stare at the pale fog
beyond the window.
So many things I had thought forgotten
Return to my mind with stranger pain:
- Like letters that arrive addressed to someone
Who left the...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
I know that the day will come
when my sight of this earth shall be lost,
and life will take its leave in silence,
drawing the last curtain over my eyes.
Yet stars will watch at night,
and morning rise as before,
and hours heave like sea waves casting up pleasures and pains.
When I think of this end...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
That's my last duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
The world will last long after Khayyam's fame
Has passed away, yea, and his very name;
Aforetime we were not, and none did heed.
When we are dead and gone, 'twill be the same....Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
'Twas at the disastrous battle of Maiwand, in Afghanistan,
Where the Berkshires were massacred to the last man;
On the morning of July the 27th, in the year eighteen eighty,
Which I'm sorry to relate was a pitiful sight to see.
Ayoub Khan's army amounted to twelve thousand in all,
And honestly speaking it wasn't very small,
And by such a great force the...Read more of this...
by
G K Chesterton
WE laid him to rest with tenderness;
Homeward we turned in the twilight’s gold;
We thought in ourselves with dumb distress—
All the story of earth is told.
A beautiful word at the last was said:
A great deep heart like the hearts of old
Went forth; and the speaker had lost the thread,
Or all the story of earth was told.
The dust hung over the...Read more of this...
by
Sandra Cisneros
December 24th and we’re through again.
This time for good I know because I didn’t
throw you out — and anyway we waved.
No shoes. No angry doors.
We folded clothes and went
our separate ways.
You left behind that flannel shirt
of yours I liked but remembered to take
your toothbrush. Where are you tonight?
Richard, it’s Christmas Eve again
and old ghosts come back home.
I’m sitting by the...Read more of this...
by
Wilfred Owen
'O Jesus Christ! I'm hit,' he said; and died.
Whether he vainly cursed, or prayed indeed,
The Bullets chirped - 'In vain! vain! vain!'
Machine-guns chuckled, 'Tut-tut! Tut-tut!'
And the Big Gun guffawed.
Another sighed, - 'O Mother, Mother! Dad!'
Then smiled, at nothing, childlike, being dead.
And the lofty Shrapnel-cloud
Leisurely gestured, - 'Fool!'
And the falling splinters tittered.
'My Love!' one...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
With never a sound of trumpet,
With never a flag displayed,
The last of the old campaigners
Lined up for the last parade.
Weary they were and battered,
Shoeless, and knocked about;
From under their ragged forelocks
Their hungry eyes looked out.
And they watched as the old commander
Read out to the cheering men
The Nation's thanks, and...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
They say that at the last day there will be judgments,
and that our dear Friend [God] will be in anger. But
from pure goodness only goodness emanates. Be then
without fear, for finally you will see that He is full of
gentleness....Read more of this...
by
Vasko Popa
The little box which contains the world
Fell in love with herself
And conceived
Still another little box
The little box of the little box
Also fell in love with herself
And conceived
Still another little box
And so it went on forever
The world from the little box
Ought to be inside
The last offspring of the little box
But not one of the little boxes
Inside the little box in...Read more of this...
by
John Betjeman
With one consuming roar along the shingle
The long wave claws and rakes the pebbles down
To where its backwash and the next wave mingle,
A mounting arch of water weedy-brown
Against the tide the off-shore breezes blow.
Oh wind and water, this is Felixstowe.
In winter when the sea winds chill and shriller
Than those of summer, all their cold unload
Full on the gimcrack attic...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
FROM my last years, last thoughts I here bequeath,
Scatter’d and dropt, in seeds, and wafted to the West,
Through moisture of Ohio, prairie soil of Illinois—through Colorado, California air,
For Time to germinate fully....Read more of this...
by
James Dickey
They will soon be down
To one, but he still will be
For a little while still will be stopping
The flakes in the air with a look,
Surrounding himself with the silence
Of whitening snarls. Let him eat
The last red meal of the condemned
To extinction, tearing the guts
From an elk. Yet that is not enough
For me. I would have him eat
The heart, and,...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Last night that idol who enchants my heart,
With true desire to elevate my heart,
Gave me his cup to drink; when I refused,
He said, «Oh, drink to gratify my heart!»...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Campbell
All worldly shapes shall melt in gloom,
The Sun himself must die,
Before this mortal shall assume
Its Immortality!
I saw a vision in my sleep
That gave my spirit strength to sweep
Adown the gulf of Time!
I saw the last of human mould,
That shall Creation's death behold,
As Adam saw her prime!
The Sun's eye had...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
I
Because the night was falling warm and still
Upon a golden day at April’s end,
I thought; I will go up the hill once more
To find the face of him that I have lost,
And speak with him before his ghost has flown
Far from the earth that might not keep him long.
So down the road I went,...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
They are assembled, astonished and disturbed
round him, who like a sage resolved his fate,
and now leaves those to whom he most belonged,
leaving and passing by them like a stranger.
The loneliness of old comes over him
which helped mature him for his deepest acts;
now will he once again walk through the olive grove,
and those who love him still will flee before...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
How long shall I tarnish the mirror of life,
A spatter of rust on its polished steel!
The seasons reel
Like a goaded wheel.
Half-numb, half-maddened, my days are strife.
The night is sliding towards the dawn,
And upturned hills crouch at autumn's knees.
A torn moon flees
Through the hemlock trees,
The hours have gnawed it to feed their spawn.
Pursuing and jeering the misshapen thing
A rabble of...Read more of this...
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