Famous Life Is What You Make It Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Life Is What You Make It 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 what you make it poems. These examples illustrate what a famous life is what you make it poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
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
Amy Levy
I.
She, who so long has lain
Stone-stiff with folded wings,
Within my heart again
The brown bird wakes and sings.
Brown nightingale, whose strain
Is heard by day, by night,
She sings of joy and pain,
Of sorrow and delight.
II.
'Tis true,--in other days
Have I unbarred the door;
He knows the walks and ways--
Love has been here before.
Love blest and love accurst
Was here in days long past;
This time...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
"I want" -- it pleaded -- All its life --
I want -- was chief it said
When Skill entreated it -- the last --
And when so newly dead --
I could not deem it late -- to hear
That single -- steadfast sigh --
The lips had placed as with a "Please"
Toward Eternity --...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Ceux-ci partent.")
{Bk. III. v., February, 1843.}
We pass—these sleep
Beneath the shade where deep-leaved boughs
Bend o'er the furrows the Great Reaper ploughs,
And gentle summer winds in many sweep
Whirl in eddying waves
The dead leaves o'er the graves.
And the living sigh:
Forgotten ones, so...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
Henrik Ibsen
IN summer dusk the valley lies
With far-flung shadow veil;
A cloud-sea laps the precipice
Before the evening gale:
The welter of the cloud-waves grey
Cuts off from keenest sight
The glacier, looking out by day
O'er all the district, far away,
And crowned with golden light.
But o'er the smouldering cloud-wrack's flow,
Where gold and amber kiss,
Stands...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
When life has fled, and we rest in the tomb,
They'll place a pair of bricks to mark our tomb;
And, a while after, mould our dust to bricks,
To furnish forth some other person's tomb!...Read more of this...
by
William Cowper
To tell the Saviour all my wants,
How pleasing is the task!
Nor less to praise Him when He grants
Beyond what I can ask.
My laboring spirit vainly seeks
To tell but half the joy,
With how much tenderness He speaks,
And helps me to reply.
Nor were it wise, nor should I choose,
Such secrets to declare;
Like precious wines their taste they lose,
Exposed to open air.
But...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
There is a Languor of the Life
More imminent than Pain --
'Tis Pain's Successor -- When the Soul
Has suffered all it can --
A Drowsiness -- diffuses --
A Dimness like a Fog
Envelops Consciousness --
As Mists -- obliterate a Crag.
The Surgeon -- does not blanch -- at pain
His Habit -- is severe --
But tell him that it ceased to feel --
The Creature...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
TO THE HONOURED MR ENDYMION PORTER, GROOM OF
THE BED-CHAMBER TO HIS MAJESTY
Sweet country life, to such unknown,
Whose lives are others', not their own!
But serving courts and cities, be
Less happy, less enjoying thee.
Thou never plough'st the ocean's foam
To seek and bring rough pepper home:
Nor to the Eastern Ind dost rove
To bring from thence the scorched clove:
Nor, with the loss of...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Each life converges to some centre
Expressed or still;
Exists in every human nature
A goal,
Admitted scarcely to itself, it may be,
Too fair
For credibility's temerity
To dare.
Adored with caution, as a brittle heaven,
To reach
Were hopeless as the rainbow's raiment
To touch,
Yet persevered toward, surer for the distance;
How high
Unto the saints' slow diligence
The sky!
Ungained, it may be, by a life's low venture,
But then,
Eternity enables the endeavoring
Again....Read more of this...
by
Christina Rossetti
VI
We lack, yet cannot fix upon the lack:
Not this, nor that; yet somewhat, certainly.
We see the things we do not yearn to see
Around us: and what see we glancing back?
Lost hopes that leave our hearts upon the rack,
Hopes that were never ours yet seem’d to be,
For which we steer’d on life’s salt stormy...Read more of this...
by
John Clare
And what is Life? An hour-glass on the run,
A mist retreating from the morning sun,
A busy, bustling, still-repeated dream.
Its length? A minute's pause, a moment's thought.
And Happiness? A bubble on the stream,
That in the act of seizing shrinks to nought.
And what is Hope? The puffing gale of morn,
That of its charms divests the dewy lawn,
And robs each flow'ret of...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
Nazim Hikmet
The hair falling on your forehead
suddenly lifted.
Suddenly something stirred on the ground.
The trees are whispering
in the dark.
Your bare arms will be cold.
Far off
where we can't see,
the moon must be rising.
It hasn't reached us yet,
slipping through the leaves
to light up your shoulder.
But I know
a wind comes up with the moon.
The trees are whispering.
Your...Read more of this...
by
Delmore Schwartz
Tiger Christ unsheathed his sword,
Threw it down, became a lamb.
Swift spat upon the species, but
Took two women to his heart.
Samson who was strong as death
Paid his strength to kiss a ****.
Othello that stiff warrior
Was broken by a woman's heart.
Troy burned for a sea-tax, also for
Possession of a charming whore.
What do all examples show?
What must the finished murderer know?
You cannot...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
More Life -- went out -- when He went
Than Ordinary Breath --
Lit with a finer Phosphor --
Requiring in the Quench --
A Power of Renowned Cold,
The Climate of the Grave
A Temperature just adequate
So Anthracite, to live --
For some -- an Ampler Zero --
A Frost more needle keen
Is necessary, to reduce
The Ethiop within.
Others -- extinguish easier --
A Gnat's minutest Fan
Sufficient to...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
O life with the sad seared face,
I weary of seeing thee,
And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace,
And thy too-forced pleasantry!
I know what thou would'st tell
Of Death, Time, Destiny -
I have known it long, and know, too, well
What it all means for me.
But canst thou...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
All my life long from drink I have not ceased,
And drink I will to-night on Kadr's feast;
And throw my arms about the wine-jar's neck,
And kiss its lip, and clasp it to my breast!...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
FULL of life, now, compact, visible,
I, forty years old the Eighty-third Year of The States,
To one a century hence, or any number of centuries hence,
To you, yet unborn, these, seeking you.
When you read these, I, that was visible, am become invisible;
Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me;
Fancying how happy you...Read more of this...
by
Rupert Brooke
He wakes, who never thought to wake again,
Who held the end was Death. He opens eyes
Slowly, to one long livid oozing plain
Closed down by the strange eyeless heavens. He lies;
And waits; and once in timeless sick surmise
Through the dead air heaves up an unknown hand,
Like a dry branch. No life is in that land,
Himself not lives, but is a...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
My Life had stood -- a Loaded Gun --
In Corners -- till a Day
The Owner passed -- identified --
And carried Me away --
And now We roam in Sovereign Woods --
And now We hunt the Doe --
And every time I speak for Him --
The Mountains straight reply --
And do I smile, such cordial light
Upon the Valley glow --
It is as...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Contained in this short Life
Are magical extents
The soul returning soft at night
To steal securer thence
As Children strictest kept
Turn soonest to the sea
Whose nameless Fathoms slink away
Beside infinity...Read more of this...
by
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
A dewy flower, bathed in crimson light,
May touch the soul—a pure and beauteous sight;
A golden river flashing 'neath the sun,
May reach the spot where life's dark waters run;
Yet, when the sun is gone, the splendor dies,
With drooping head the tender flower lies.
And such is life; a golden mist of light,
A tangled web that glitters in the sun;
When shadows come, the...Read more of this...
by
Ruth Stone
It is so hard to see where it is,
but it is there even in the morning
when the miracle of shapes
assemble and become familiar,
but not quite; and the echo
of a voice, now changed,
utterly dissociated, as though
all warmth and shared sweetness
had never been. It is this alien
space, not stark as the moon,
but lush and almost identical
to the space that was. But it...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Life Is What You Make It poems.