Famous Lifts Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Bride Of Corinth

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [First published in Schiller's Horen, in connection 
with a
friendly contest in the art of ballad-writing between the two
great poets, to which many of their finest works are owing.]

ONCE a stranger youth to Corinth came,

Who in Athens lived, but hoped that he
From a certain townsman there might claim,

As his father's friend, kind courtesy.

Son and daughter, they

Had been wont to say

Should...Read more of this...

Morning Midday And Evening Sacrifice

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 The dappled die-away
Cheek and wimpled lip,
The gold-wisp, the airy-grey
Eye, all in fellowship—
This, all this beauty blooming,
This, all this freshness fuming,
Give God while worth consuming. 

Both thought and thew now bolder
And told by Nature: Tower;
Head, heart, hand, heel, and shoulder
That beat and breathe in power—
This pride of prime's enjoyment
Take as for tool, not toy meant
And hold at Christ's employment. 

The...Read more of this...

Johanna Sebus

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [To the memory of an excellent and beautiful 
girl of 17, belonging to the village of Brienen, who perished on 
the 13th of January, 1809, whilst giving help on the occasion of 
the breaking up of the ice on the Rhine, and the bursting of the 
dam of Cleverham.]

THE DAM BREAKS DOWN, THE ICE-PLAIN GROWLS,
THE FLOODS ARISE, THE WATER...Read more of this...

Exhilaration is the Breeze

by Emily Dickinson
 Exhilaration is the Breeze
That lifts us from the Ground
And leaves us in another place
Whose statement is not found --

Returns us not, but after time
We soberly descend
A little newer for the term
Upon Enchanted Ground --...Read more of this...

Joy and Sorrow chapter VIII

by Kahlil Gibran
 Then a woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow." 

And he answered: 

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. 

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. 

And how else can it be? 

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. 

Is not the cup...Read more of this...

Now Returned Home

by Robinson Jeffers
 Beyond the narrows of the Inner Hebrides
We sailed the cold angry sea toward Barra, where Heaval mountain
Lifts like a mast. There were few people on the steamer, it was late in the
 year; I noticed most an old shepherd,
Two wise-eyed dogs wove anxious circles around his feet, and a thin-armed
 girl 
Who cherished what seemed a doll, wrapping it...Read more of this...

LEnvoi

by Rudyard Kipling
 There's a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield,
 And the ricks stand gray to the sun,
Singing: -- "Over then, come over, for the bee has quit the clover,
 And your English summer's done."
 You have heard the beat of the off-shore wind,
 And the thresh of the deep-sea rain;
 You have heard the song...Read more of this...

Third Avenue In Sunlight

by Anthony Hecht
 Third Avenue in sunlight. Nature's error.
Already the bars are filled and John is there.
Beneath a plentiful lady over the mirror
He tilts his glass in the mild mahogany air.
I think of him when he first got out of college,
Serious, thin, unlikely to succeed;
For several months he hung around the Village,
Boldly T-shirtet, unfettered but unfreed.

Now he confides to a stranger, "I...Read more of this...

Bill and Joe

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 COME, dear old comrade, you and I
Will steal an hour from days gone by,
The shining days when life was new,
And all was bright with morning dew,
The lusty days of long ago,
When you were Bill and I was Joe.

Your name may flaunt a titled trail
Proud as a cockerel's rainbow tail,
And mine as brief appendix wear
As Tam O'Shanter's luckless mare;
To-day, old...Read more of this...

Sonnet VII

by William Shakespeare
 Lo! in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty;
And having climb'd the steep-up heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage;
But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,
Like feeble age, he reeleth from...Read more of this...

Who Bides His Time

by James Whitcomb Riley
 Who bides his time, and day by day 
Faces defeat full patiently, 
And lifts a mirthful roundelay, 
However poor his fortunes be,-- 
He will not fail in any qualm 
Of poverty -- the paltry dime 
It will grow golden in his palm, 
Who bides his time.

Who bides his time -- he tastes the sweet 
Of honey in the saltest...Read more of this...

The Task: Book VI The Winter Walk at Noon (excerpts)

by William Cowper
 Thus heav'nward all things tend. For all were once
Perfect, and all must be at length restor'd.
So God has greatly purpos'd; who would else
In his dishonour'd works himself endure
Dishonour, and be wrong'd without redress.
Haste then, and wheel away a shatter'd world,
Ye slow-revolving seasons! We would see
(A sight to which our eyes are strangers yet)
A world that does not dread and...Read more of this...

A Summer Night

by George William Russell
 HER mist of primroses within her breast
Twilight hath folded up, and o’er the west,
Seeking remoter valleys long hath gone,
Not yet hath come her sister of the dawn.
Silence and coolness now the earth enfold,
Jewels of glittering green, long mists of gold,
Hazes of nebulous silver veil the height,
And shake in tremors through the shadowy night.
Heard through the stillness, as in whispered...Read more of this...

Attack

by Siegfried Sassoon
 AT dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun 
In the wild purple of the glow'ring sun, 
Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud 
The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one, 
Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire. 
The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed 
With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear, 
Men jostle and...Read more of this...

A Calendar of Sonnets: July

by Helen Hunt Jackson
 Some flowers are withered and some joys have died; 
The garden reeks with an East Indian scent 
From beds where gillyflowers stand weak and spent; 
The white heat pales the skies from side to side; 
But in still lakes and rivers, cool, content, 
Like starry blooms on a new firmament, 
White lilies float and regally abide. 
In vain the...Read more of this...

Queen Mab: Part VI (excerpts)

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 "Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light, 
Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffus'd
A Spirit of activity and life,
That knows no term, cessation, or decay;
That fades not when the lamp of earthly life,
Extinguish'd in the dampness of the grave,
Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe
In the dim newness of its being feels
The impulses of sublunary things,
And...Read more of this...

Morning-Glory

by Siegfried Sassoon
 In this meadow starred with spring 
Shepherds kneel before their king. 
Mary throned, with dreaming eyes, 
Gowned in blue like rain-washed skies, 
Lifts her tiny son that he
May behold their courtesy. 
And green-smocked children, awed and good, 
Bring him blossoms from the wood. 

Clear the sunlit steeples chime 
Mary’s coronation-time.
Loud the happy children quire 
To the golden-windowed morn; 
While...Read more of this...

Brothers let us glorify freedom's twilight

by Osip Mandelstam
 Brothers, let us glorify freedom’s twilight –
the great, darkening year.
Into the seething waters of the night
heavy forests of nets disappear.
O Sun, judge, people, your light 
is rising over sombre years 

Let us glorify the deadly weight
the people’s leader lifts with tears.
Let us glorify the dark burden of fate,
power’s unbearable yoke of fears.
How your ship is sinking, straight,
he who has...Read more of this...

In the Womb

by George William Russell
 STILL rests the heavy share on the dark soil:
Upon the black mould thick the dew-damp lies:
The horse waits patient: from his lowly toil
The ploughboy to the morning lifts his eyes.


The unbudding hedgerows dark against day’s fires
Glitter with gold-lit crystals: on the rim
Over the unregarding city’s spires
The lonely beauty shines alone for him.


And day by day the dawn or dark...Read more of this...

January 3

by David Lehman
 The shrink says, "Everything depends
on how many stuffed animals you had
as a boy," and my mother tells me my
father was left-handed and so is my son
and they're both named Joe whose favorite 
stuffed animal was a bear called Sweetheart
while I, the sole constant in this dream,
am carrying a little girl who has a gun
in her hand as I climb...Read more of this...

Dear Reader

by Billy Collins
 Baudelaire considers you his brother,
and Fielding calls out to you every few paragraphs 
as if to make sure you have not closed the book,
and now I am summoning you up again,
attentive ghost, dark silent figure standing 
in the doorway of these words.

Pope welcomes you into the glow of his study,
takes down a leather-bound Ovid to show you.
Tennyson lifts the...Read more of this...

Sonnet X

by Alan Seeger
 A splendor, flamelike, born to be pursued, 
With palms extent for amorous charity 
And eyes incensed with love for all they see, 
A wonder more to be adored than wooed, 
On whom the grace of conscious womanhood 
Adorning every little thing she does 
Sits like enchantment, making glorious 
A careless pose, a casual attitude; 
Around her lovely shoulders mantle-wise...Read more of this...

416. Song—Logan Braes

by Robert Burns
 O LOGAN, sweetly didst thou glide,
That day I was my Willie’s bride,
And years sin syne hae o’er us run,
Like Logan to the simmer sun:
But now thy flowery banks appear
Like drumlie Winter, dark and drear,
While my dear lad maun face his faes,
Far, far frae me and Logan braes.


Again the merry month of May
Has made our hills and valleys gay;
The birds...Read more of this...

In Abbot Zan's Room at Dayun Temple: Four Poems (4)

by Du Fu
 Boy draw water well shining Agile container rise hand Wet sprinkle not soak earth Sweep surpass like without broom Bright rosy clouds shining again pavilion Clear mist lift high window Lean fill cover path flower Dance end steps willow Difficulty world affair compel Hide away right time after Meet talk agree deep heart How can all restrain...Read more of this...

Benediction

by Charles Baudelaire
 When, by decree of the supreme power,
The Poet appears in this annoyed world,
His mother, blasphemous out of horror
At God's pity, cries out with fists curled:

"Ah! I'd rather You'd will me a snake's skin
Than to keep feeding this monstrous slur!
I curse that night's ephemera are sins
To make my womb atone for pleasure.

"Since You have chosen me from all the brides
To...Read more of this...

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