Famous Life And Love Poems by Famous Poets

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

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To Heaven

by Robert Herrick
 Good and great God, can I not think of thee
But it must straight my melancholy be?
Is it interpreted in me disease
That, laden with my sins, I seek for ease?
Oh be thou witness, that the reins dost know
And hearts of all, if I be sad for show,
And judge me after; if I dare pretend
To ought but grace or aim at...Read more of this...

Two Lovers

by George Eliot
 Two lovers by a moss-grown spring:
They leaned soft cheeks together there,
Mingled the dark and sunny hair,
And heard the wooing thrushes sing.
O budding time!
O love's blest prime!

Two wedded from the portal stept:
The bells made happy carolings,
The air was soft as fanning wings,
White petals on the pathway slept.
O pure-eyed bride!
O tender pride!

Two faces o'er a cradle bent:
Two hands above the head...Read more of this...

Sonnet for Mother

by John Matthew
 Decked in blooms,
Swaddled in gold filigreed shrouds, 
Smeared with perfumes,
She traveled into the clouds.

A life of love lived,
A life of more giving than taking,
Living a life of tears shed,
Turnings, and missed crossings.

She lies still beside father,
In an earthen grave dug for her,
On ere visits she knew this sepulcher,
And, with her man, she would rest there.

There is a time when...Read more of this...

The Prospector

by Robert William Service
 I strolled up old Bonanza, where I staked in ninety-eight,
A-purpose to revisit the old claim.
I kept thinking mighty sadly of the funny ways of Fate,
And the lads who once were with me in the game.
Poor boys, they're down-and-outers, and there's scarcely one to-day
Can show a dozen colors in his poke;
And me, I'm still prospecting, old and battered, gaunt and...Read more of this...

In Former Songs

by Walt Whitman
 1
IN former songs Pride have I sung, and Love, and passionate, joyful Life, 
But here I twine the strands of Patriotism and Death. 

And now, Life, Pride, Love, Patriotism and Death, 
To you, O FREEDOM, purport of all! 
(You that elude me most—refusing to be caught in songs of mine,)
I offer all to you. 

2
’Tis not for nothing, Death,...Read more of this...

To Lovers

by Ellis Parker Butler
 Ho, ye lovers, list to me;
 Warning words have I for thee:
 Give ye heed, hefore ye wed,
 To this thing Sir Chaucer said:

“Love wol not be constrained by maistrie,
When maistrie cometh, the god of love anon
Beteth his winges, and farewel, he is gon.”

 Other poets knew as well,
 And the same sad story tell,
 Hark ye, heed ye,...Read more of this...

To Anthea Who May Command Him Anything

by Robert Herrick
 Bid me to live, and I will live
Thy Protestant to be;
Or bid me love, and I will give
A loving heart to thee.

A heart as soft, a heart as kind,
A heart as sound and free,
As in the whole world thou canst find,
That heart I'll give to thee.

Bid that heart stay, and it will stay,
To honour thy decree;
Or bid it languish...Read more of this...

Sounds of Life and Love

by Dejan Stojanovic
Love: Which is more important: Love or life? 
Life: Without life, there would be no love. 

Love: But without love, life would have no meaning. 
Life: True, but life gives birth to love. 

Love: And what gives birth to life? 
Life: Life gives birth to itself. 

Love: Nothing gives birth to itself automatically, 
There must be some cause, a reason...Read more of this...

The Life of Love XVI

by Kahlil Gibran
 Spring


Come, my beloved; let us walk amidst the knolls, 
For the snow is water, and Life is alive from its 
Slumber and is roaming the hills and valleys. 
Let us follow the footprints of Spring into the 
Distant fields, and mount the hilltops to draw 
Inspiration high above the cool green plains. 


Dawn of Spring has unfolded her winter-kept...Read more of this...

Twin Lilies

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Twin lilies in the river floating,
  Two lilies pure and white;
And one is pale and faintly drooping,
  The other glad and bright.
Twin lilies in the silvery waters,
  Two lilies white and frail;
And one is ever laughing gladly,
  The other, still and pale.
Upon the peaceful gleaming waters,
  They linger side by side;
And one, her head is...Read more of this...

Explosión (Explosion)

by Delmira Agustini
SpanishSi la vida es amor, bendita sea!Quiero más vida para amar! Hoy sientoQue no valen mil años de la ideaLo que un minuto azul del sentimiento.Mi corazon moria triste y lento…Hoy abre en luz como una flor febea;La vida brota como un mar violentoDonde la mano del amor golpea!Hoy partio hacia la noche, triste, fríaRotas las alas mi melancolía;Como una...Read more of this...

A Life-Lesson

by James Whitcomb Riley
 There! little girl; don't cry! 
They have broken your doll, I know; 
And your tea-set blue, 
And your play-house, too, 
Are things of the long ago; 
But childish troubles will soon pass by. -- 
There! little girl; don't cry! 

There! little girl; don't cry! 
They have broken your slate, I know; 
And the glad, wild ways 
Of your schoolgirl...Read more of this...

The Song of Yesterday

by James Whitcomb Riley
 I 
But yesterday 
I looked away 
O'er happy lands, where sunshine lay 
In golden blots, 
Inlaid with spots 
Of shade and wild forget-me-nots. 

My head was fair 
With flaxen hair, 
And fragrant breezes, faint and rare, 
And, warm with drouth 
From out the south, 
Blew all my curls across my mouth. 

And, cool and sweet, 
My naked feet 
Found...Read more of this...

On the Building of Springfield

by Vachel Lindsay
 Let not our town be large, remembering 
That little Athens was the Muses' home, 
That Oxford rules the heart of London still, 
That Florence gave the Renaissance to Rome. 

Record it for the grandson of your son — 
A city is not builded in a day: 
Our little town cannot complete her soul 
Till countless generations pass away. 

Now...Read more of this...

Marthys younkit

by Eugene Field
 The mountain brook sung lonesomelike, and loitered on its way
Ez if it waited for a child to jine it in its play;
The wild-flowers uv the hillside bent down their heads to hear
The music uv the little feet that had somehow grown so dear;
The magpies, like winged shadders, wuz a-flutterin' to an' fro
Among the rocks an' holler stumps in the...Read more of this...

The Silence of Love

by George William Russell
 I COULD praise you once with beautiful words ere you came
And entered my life with love in a wind of flame.
I could lure with a song from afar my bird to its nest,
But with pinions drooping together silence is best.


In the land of beautiful silence the winds are laid,
And life grows quietly one in the cloudy shade.
I will not...Read more of this...

Six Feet Of Sod

by Robert William Service
 This is the end of all my ways,
 My wanderings on earth,
My gloomy and my golden days,
 My madness and my mirth.
I've bought ten thousand blades of grass
 To bed me down below,
And here I wait the days to pass
 Until I go.

Until I bid good bye to friend,
 To feast and fast goodbye,
And in a stint of soil...Read more of this...

The Princess: A Medley: O Swallow

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South,
Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves,
And tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee.
O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each,
That bright and fierce and fickle is the South,
And dark and true and tender is the North.
O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light
Upon her lattice, I would pipe...Read more of this...

De Profundis

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 I

The face, which, duly as the sun, 
Rose up for me with life begun, 
To mark all bright hours of the day 
With hourly love, is dimmed away—
And yet my days go on, go on.

II 

The tongue which, like a stream, could run
Smooth music from the roughest stone, 
And every morning with ' Good day'
Make each day good, is...Read more of this...

Song of the Redwood-Tree

by Walt Whitman
 1
A CALIFORNIA song! 
A prophecy and indirection—a thought impalpable, to breathe, as air; 
A chorus of dryads, fading, departing—or hamadryads departing; 
A murmuring, fateful, giant voice, out of the earth and sky, 
Voice of a mighty dying tree in the Redwood forest dense.

Farewell, my brethren, 
Farewell, O earth and sky—farewell, ye neighboring waters; 
My time has ended, my term...Read more of this...

Spontaneous Me

by Walt Whitman
 SPONTANEOUS me, Nature, 
The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with, 
The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder, 
The hill-side whiten’d with blossoms of the mountain ash, 
The same, late in autumn—the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple, and light and dark
 green,
The rich coverlid of the grass—animals and birds—the private untrimm’d
...Read more of this...

386. The Rights of Women—Spoken by Miss Fontenelle

by Robert Burns
 WHILE Europe’s eye is fix’d on mighty things,
The fate of Empires and the fall of Kings;
While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.


First, in the Sexes’ intermix’d connection,
One sacred Right of Woman is, protection.—
The tender flower that lifts...Read more of this...

Ragetty Doll

by Robert William Service
 Rosemary has of dolls a dozen,
 Yet she disdains them all;
While Marie Rose, her pauper cousin
 Has just an old rag doll.
But you should see her mother it,
 And with her kisses smother it.

A twist of twill, a hank of hair,
 Fit for the rubbish bin;
How Rosemary with scorn would stare
 At its pathetic grin!
Yet Marie Rose can lover...Read more of this...

A Parting Guest

by James Whitcomb Riley
 What delightful hosts are they -- 
      Life and Love! 
Lingeringly I turn away, 
      This late hour, yet glad enough 
They have not withheld from me 
      Their high hospitality. 
So, with face lit with delight 
      And...Read more of this...

Lucinda Matlock

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I went to the dances at Chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester.
One time we changed partners,
Driving home in the midnight of middle June,
And then I found Davis.
We were married and lived together for seventy years,
Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
Eight of whom we lost
Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed...Read more of this...

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