Famous Life Is Short Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Life Is Short 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 short poems. These examples illustrate what a famous life is short poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Corinnas Going A-Maying

by Robert Herrick
 Get up, get up for shame! the blooming morn
Upon her wings presents the god unshorn.
See how Aurora throws her fair
Fresh-quilted colours through the air!
Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see
The dew bespangled herb and tree.
Each flower has wept and bowed toward the east
Above an hour since,—yet you not dressed;
Nay! not so much as out of bed?
When all the birds have...Read more of this...

The Sick Stockrider

by Adam Lindsay Gordon
 Hold hard, Ned! Lift me down once more, and lay me in the shade. 
Old man, you've had your work cut out to guide 
Both horses, and to hold me in the saddle when I swayed, 
All through the hot, slow, sleepy, silent ride. 
The dawn at "Moorabinda" was a mist rack dull and dense, 
The sun-rise was a...Read more of this...

The Gardener LXVIII: None Lives For Ever Brother

by Rabindranath Tagore
 None lives for ever, brother, and
nothing lasts for long. Keep that in
mind and rejoice.
Our life is not the one old burden,
our path is not the one long
journey.
One sole poet has not to sing one
aged song.
The flower fades and dies; but he
who wears the flower has not to
mourn for it for ever.
Brother, keep that in mind and 
rejoice.
There must come...Read more of this...

From an Atlas of the Difficult World

by Adrienne Rich
 I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains' enormous spaces around...Read more of this...

Ask not (TU NE QUAESIERIS)

by Horace
   Ask not ('tis forbidden knowledge), what our destined term of years,
   Mine and yours; nor scan the tables of your Babylonish seers.
   Better far to bear the future, my Leuconoe, like the past,
   Whether Jove has many winters yet to give, or this our last;
   THIS, that makes the...Read more of this...

To William Roe

by Ben Jonson
LXX. — TO WILLIAM ROE. When nature bids us leave to live, 'tis late Then to begin, my ROE!  He makes a state In life, that can employ it; and takes hold On the true causes, ere they grow to old. Delay is bad, doubt worse, depending worst; Each best day of our life escapes us, first: Then, since we, more...Read more of this...

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