Famous Life Is Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Life Is 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 is poems. These examples illustrate what a famous life is poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Omar Khayyam
Why spend life in vainglorious essay
All Being and Not-being to survey?
Since Death is ever pressing at your heels,
'Tis best to drink or dream your life away....Read more of this...
by
Adrienne Rich
Our whole life a translation
the permissible fibs
and now a knot of lies
eating at itself to get undone
Words bitten thru words
~~
meanings burnt-off like paint
under the blowtorch
All those dead letters
rendered into the oppressor's language
Trying to tell the doctor where it hurts
like the Algerian
who waled form his village, burning
his whole body a could of pain
and...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
From life we draw now wine, now dregs to drink,
Now flaunt in silk, and now in tatters shrink;
Such changes wisdom holds of slight account
To those who stand on death's appalling brink!...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground;
And for the peace of you I hold such strife
As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found.
Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;
Now counting best to be with you alone,
Then bettered that the world may...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Tie the Strings to my Life, My Lord,
Then, I am ready to go!
Just a look at the Horses --
Rapid! That will do!
Put me in on the firmest side --
So I shall never fall --
For we must ride to the Judgment --
And it's partly, down Hill --
But never I mind the steeper --
And never I mind the Sea --
Held fast...Read more of this...
by
John Clare
Resembles Life what once was held of Light,
Too ample in itself for human sight ?
An absolute Self--an element ungrounded--
All, that we see, all colours of all shade
[Image]By encroach of darkness made ?--
Is very life by consciousness unbounded ?
And all the thoughts, pains, joys of mortal breath,
A war-embrace of wrestling Life and Death ?...Read more of this...
by
Lam Quang My
I tire of stopping wings of summer
You the slow run down of autumn
No boats at anchor in the sea of eyes
The shade of clouds floats melancholy
Does something wait for us
Upon the far horizon…
Winter sits upon the long-drawn barricade
The stones ache under circled wheels
Breeze borne images of mountain thorn and timeless place
Far off singing soothes nostalgic soul
Does someone wait for...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
This caravan of life passes in curious guise! Be on thy
guard, my friend, for it is joy that thus escapes! Disturb
not thyself with the sorrow which to-morrow waits
our friends, and bring me my cup quickly, for the night
fast slips away!...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
Touch it: it won't shrink like an eyeball,
This egg-shaped bailiwick, clear as a tear.
Here's yesterday, last year ---
Palm-spear and lily distinct as flora in the vast
Windless threadwork of a tapestry.
Flick the glass with your fingernail:
It will ping like a Chinese chime in the slightest air stir
Though nobody in there looks up or bothers to answer.
The inhabitants are light as...Read more of this...
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...
by
Carl Sandburg
COOL your heels on the rail of an observation car.
Let the engineer open her up for ninety miles an hour.
Take in the prairie right and left, rolling land and new hay crops, swaths of new hay laid in the sun.
A gray village flecks by and the horses hitched in front of the post-office never blink an eye.
A barnyard and...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I have no Life but this --
To lead it here --
Nor any Death -- but lest
Dispelled from there --
Nor tie to Earths to come --
Nor Action new --
Except through this extent --
The Realm of you --...Read more of this...
by
Yehuda Amichai
A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.
A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
Escape me?
Never—
Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
So long as the world contains us both,
Me the loving and you the loth,
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
My life is a fault at last, I fear—
It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed—
But what if I fail...Read more of this...
by
William Drummond
This Life, which seems so fair,
Is like a bubble blown up in the air
By sporting children's breath,
Who chase it everywhere
And strive who can most motion it bequeath.
And though it sometimes seem of its own might
Like to an eye of gold to be fixed there,
And firm to hover in that empty height,
That only is because it is so light.
But in...Read more of this...
by
Grace Paley
My friend tells me
a man in my house jumped off the roof
the roof is the eighth floor of this building
the roof door was locked how did he manage?
his girlfriend had said goodbye I'm leaving
he was 22
his mother and father were hurrying
at that very moment
from upstate to help him move out of Brooklyn
they had heard about the girl
the people who...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I cautious, scanned my little life --
I winnowed what would fade
From what would last till Heads like mine
Should be a-dreaming laid.
I put the latter in a Barn --
The former, blew away.
I went one winter morning
And lo - my priceless Hay
Was not upon the "Scaffold" --
Was not upon the "Beam" --
And from a thriving Farmer --
A Cynic, I became.
Whether a...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Between the form of Life and Life
The difference is as big
As Liquor at the Lip between
And Liquor in the Jug
The latter -- excellent to keep --
But for ecstatic need
The corkless is superior --
I know for I have tried...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Drink wine! 'tis life etern, and travail's meed,
Fruitage of youth, and balm of age's need:
'Tis the glad time of roses, wine and friends;
Rejoice thy spirit—that is life indeed....Read more of this...
by
Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
i shall imagine life
is not worth dying if
(and when)roses complain
their beauties are in vain
but though mankind persuades
itself that every weed's
a rose roses(you feel
certain)will only smile...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Forever fair, forever calm and bright,
Life flies on plumage, zephyr-light,
For those who on the Olympian hill rejoice--
Moons wane, and races wither to the tomb,
And 'mid the universal ruin, bloom
The rosy days of Gods--With man, the choice,
Timid and anxious, hesitates between
The sense's pleasure and the soul's content;
While on celestial brows, aloft and sheen,
The beams of both are blent.
Seekest thou on...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike;
Eat I must, and sleep I will,—and would that night were
here!
But ah!—to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!
Would that it were day again!—with twilight near!
Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do;
This or that or what you...Read more of this...
by
William Stafford
With Kit, Age 7, at the Beach
We would climb the highest dune,
from there to gaze and come down:
the ocean was performing;
we contributed our climb.
Waves leapfrogged and came
straight out of the storm.
What should our gaze mean?
Kit waited for me to decide.
Standing on such a hill,
what would you tell your child?
That...Read more of this...
by
George Meredith
All other joys of life he strove to warm,
And magnify, and catch them to his lip:
But they had suffered shipwreck with the ship,
And gazed upon him sallow from the storm.
Or if Delusion came, 'twas but to show
The coming minute mock the one that went.
Cold as a mountain in its star-pitched tent,
Stood high...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The first Day that I was a Life
I recollect it -- How still --
That last Day that I was a Life
I recollect it -- as well --
'Twas stiller -- though the first
Was still --
"Twas empty -- but the first
Was full --
This -- was my finallest Occasion --
But then
My tenderer Experiment
Toward Men --
"Which choose I"?
That -- I cannot say --
"Which...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Life Is poems.