Famous Lifelong Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Lifelong poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous lifelong poems. These examples illustrate what a famous lifelong poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Hall, Donald
...news,
the obits, the comics, and the sports.
Carrying my cup twenty feet,
I sat myself at the desk
for this day's lifelong
engagement with the one task and desire....Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...id,
If you love me as I love you
What knife can cut our love in two?
By all that lights our daily life
Or works our lifelong woe,
From Boileaugunge to Simla Downs
And those grim glades below,
Where, heedless of the flying hoof
And clamour overhead,
Sleep, with the grey langur for guard
Our very scornful Dead,
If you love me as I love you
All Earth is servant to us two!
By Docket, Billetdoux, and File,
By Mountain, Cliff, and Fir,
By Fan and Sword and Office-box,
B...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...I am neither rich nor poor,
No worker I dispoil;
Yet I am glad to be secure
From servitude and toil.
For with my lifelong savings I
Have bought annuity;
And so unto the day I die
I'll have my toast and tea.
When on the hob the kettle sings
I'll make an amber brew,
And crunch my toast and think of things
I do not have to do.
In dressing-gown and deep arm-chair
I'll give the fire a poke;
Then worlds away from cark and care
I'll smoke and smoke and smoke.Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...thelstan King,
Lord among Earls,
Bracelet-bestower and
Baron of Barons,
He with his brother,
Edmund Atheling,
Gaining a lifelong
Glory in battle,
Slew with the sword-edge
There by Brunanburh,
Brake the shield-wall,
Hew'd the lindenwood,
Hack'd the battleshield,
Sons of Edward with hammer'd brands.
Theirs was a greatness
Got from their Grandsires--
Theirs that so often in
Strife with their enemies
Struck for their hoards and their hearths and their homes.
Bow'd the...Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...eTo have read this truth, "Here all thy pleasure dies,And hence thy lifelong trial dates its rise."My spirit then had gently pass'd awayIn her dear presence from all mortal care;Freed from this troublesome and heavy clay,Mounting, before her, whereAngels and saints prepared on high her place,<...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...-- the parrots fly together --
As the sun is sinking slowly over Home;
And his last ray seems to mock us shackled in a lifelong tether.
That drags us back how'er so far we roam.
Hard her service, poor her payment -- she is ancient, tattered raiment --
India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind.
If a year of life be lent her, if her temple's shrine we enter,
The door is hut -- we may not look behind.
Black night behind the tamarisks -- the owls begin the...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...on one great love, perfect,
Requited and for ever,
I missed love's everywhere
Small presence, thousand-guised.
And lifelong have been reading
Book after book, searching
For wisdom, but bringing
Only my own understanding.
Forgive me, forgiver,
Whether you be infinite omniscient
Or some unnoticed other
My existence has hurt.
Being what I am
What could I do but wrong?
Yet love can bring
To heart healing
To chaos meaning....Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...lows of the wood;
There, while the rest were loud in merrymaking,
Had his dark hour unseen, and rose and past
Bearing a lifelong hunger in his heart.
So these were wed, and merrily rang the bells,
And merrily ran the years, seven happy years,
Seven happy years of health and competence,
And mutual love and honorable toil;
With children; first a daughter. In him woke,
With his first babe's first cry, the noble wish
To save all earnings to the uttermost,
And give his c...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...nd
butter are
at ...
but, no, I've felt sad
about everything:
the lost redhead was just another
smash in a lifelong
loss ...
I listen to drums on the radio now
and grin.
there is something wrong with me
besides
melancholia....Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...ailing as a farmer
Burned down his farmhouse for the fire insurance,
And spent the proceeds on a telescope
To satisfy a lifelong curiosity
About our place among the infinities.
And how was that for otherworldliness?
If I must choose which I would elevate —
The people or the already lofty mountains
I'd elevate the already lofty mountains
The only fault I find with old New Hampshire
Is that her mountains aren't quite high enough.
I was not always so; I've come to be s...Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...eakTo mitigate our still increasing smart,Partner and prophet of my lifelong ache.H. O wretch! in whom vain thoughts and idle swell,Thou, who thyself hast tutor'd to forget,Speak'st to thy heart as if 'twere with thee yet?When to thy greatest bliss thou saidst farewell,Thou didst depart...Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...did dare.I first that glance so full of love declareWhich served my lifelong torment to awake,Next, how, content and wretched for her sake,Love day by day my tost heart knew to tear.She speaks not, but, with pity's dewy trace,Intently looks on me, and gently sighs,While pure and lustrous tears beg...Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...n my cherish'd ill:With what frank sighs and fond I then had toldMy lifelong toils, which now from heaven, I ween,She sees, and with me sympathises still. Macgregor. My life's long warfare seem'd about to cease,Peace had my spirit's contest wel...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...ce then 'tis only pity looking back,
Fear looking forward, and the busy mind
Will in one woeful moment more upwind
Than lifelong years unroll of bitter or black;
What is man's privilege, his hoarding knack
Of memory with foreboding so combined,
Whereby he comes to dream he hath of kind
The perpetuity which all things lack?
Which but to hope is doubtful joy, to have
Being a continuance of what, alas,
We mourn, and scarcely hear with to the grave;
Or something so unknown that...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...ch forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.
He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life's been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! H...Read more of this...
by
Walcott, Derek
...e, Trelawny trembling with dusk,
the scorched pastures of the old benign Custos; blew
far the decent servants and the lifelong cook,
and shriveled to a shard that ancient pastoral
of dusk in a gilt-edged frame now catching the evening sun
in Jamaica, making both epochs one.
He looked out from the Great House windows on
clouds that still held the fragrance of fire,
he saw the Botanical Gardens officially drown
in a formal dusk, where governors had strolled
and b...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...ugger-mugger farming
He burned his house down for the fire insurance
And spent the proceeds on a telescope
To satisfy a lifelong curiosity
About our place among the infinities.
`What do you want with one of those blame things?'
I asked him well beforehand. `Don't you get one!'
`Don't call it blamed; there isn't anything
More blameless in the sense of being less
A weapon in our human fight,' he said.
`I'll have one if I sell my farm to buy it.'
There where he...Read more of this...
by
Hayden, Robert
...
and the boy sobs in his room,
And the woman leans muttering against
a tree, exhausted, purged--
avenged in part for lifelong hidings
she has had to bear....Read more of this...
by
Padel, Ruth
...Treasure found but lost, flirting between
The worlds of lost and found. An unjust law
Repealed, a wish come true, a lifelong
Sadness healed. Haven, in the mind,
To anyone hurt by littleness. A prayer
For the moment, saved; treachery forgiven.
Flame of the crackle-glaze tangle, amber
Reflected in grey milk-jade. An old song
Remembered, long debt paid.
A painting on silk, which may fade....Read more of this...
by
Montgomery, Lucy Maud
...teful be,
But I a lyric garland bring
To crown thee, O, mine enemy!
Thanks, endless thanks, to thee I owe
For that my lifelong journey through
Thine honest hate has done for me
What love perchance had failed to do.
I had not scaled such weary heights
But that I held thy scorn in fear,
And never keenest lure might match
The subtle goading of thy sneer.
Thine anger struck from me a fire
That purged all dull content away,
Our mortal strife to me has been
Unflagging...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Lifelong poems.