Famous Linger Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Gardener XVI: Hands Cling to Eyes

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Hands cling to hands and eyes linger
on eyes: thus begins the record of our
hearts.
It is the moonlit night of March;
the sweet smell of henna is in the air;
my flute lies on the earth neglected 
and your garland of flowers is
unfinished.
This love between you and me is
simple as a song.
Your veil of the saffron colour
makes my eyes drunk.
The jasmine wreath...Read more of this...

Twin Lilies

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Twin lilies in the river floating,
  Two lilies pure and white;
And one is pale and faintly drooping,
  The other glad and bright.
Twin lilies in the silvery waters,
  Two lilies white and frail;
And one is ever laughing gladly,
  The other, still and pale.
Upon the peaceful gleaming waters,
  They linger side by side;
And one, her head is...Read more of this...

Reminiscence of Mahomed Akram

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   I shall never forget you, never.  Never escape
   Your memory woven about the beautiful things of life.

   The sudden Thought of your Face is like a Wound
             When it comes unsought
   On some scent of Jasmin, Lilies, or...Read more of this...

Tokens

by Ingeborg Bachmann
 Green mwold on zummer bars do show
That they've a-dripped in winter wet;
The hoof-worn ring o' groun' below
The tree do tell o' storms or het;
The trees in rank along a ledge
Do show where woonce did bloom a hedge;
An' where the vurrow-marks do stripe
The down the wheat woonce rustled ripe.
Each mark ov things a-gone vrom view— 
To eyezight's woone, to soulzight...Read more of this...

Go Valentine

by Robert Southey
 Go, Valentine, and tell that lovely maid 
Whom fancy still will portray to my sight, 
How here I linger in this sullen shade, 
This dreary gloom of dull monastic night; 
Say, that every joy of life remote 
At evening's closing hour I quit the throng, 
Listening in solitude the ring-dome's note, 
Who pours like me her solitary song; 
Say,...Read more of this...

Baccalaureate

by Archibald MacLeish
 A year or two, and grey Euripides, 
And Horace and a Lydia or so, 
And Euclid and the brush of Angelo, 
Darwin on man, Vergilius on bees, 
The nose and Dialogues of Socrates, 
Don Quixote, Hudibras and Trinculo, 
How worlds are spawned and where the dead gods go,-- 
All shall be shard of broken memories.

And there shall linger other,...Read more of this...

An Ode On The Death Of Mr. Henry Purcell

by John Dryden
 Late Servant to his Majesty, and 
Organist of the Chapel Royal, and 
of St. Peter's Westminster 

I

Mark how the Lark and Linnet Sing, 
With rival Notes 
They strain their warbling Throats, 
To welcome in the Spring. 
But in the close of Night, 
When Philomel begins her Heav'nly lay, 
They cease their mutual spite, 
Drink in her Music with delight,...Read more of this...

Corinna from Athens to Tanagra

by Walter Savage Landor
 Tanagra! think not I forget
Thy beautifully-storey’d streets;
Be sure my memory bathes yet
In clear Thermodon, and yet greets
The blythe and liberal shepherd boy,
Whose sunny bosom swells with joy
When we accept his matted rushes
Upheaved with sylvan fruit; away he bounds, and blushes.

I promise to bring back with me
What thou with transport wilt receive,
The only proper gift for thee,
Of which no mortal...Read more of this...

Decadence

by Robert William Service
 Before the florid portico
I watched the gamblers come and go,
While by me on a bench there sat
A female in a faded hat;
A shabby, shrinking, crumpled creature,
Of waxy casino-ward with eyes
Of lost soul seeking paradise. 

Then from the Café de la Paix
There shambled forth a waiter fellow,
Clad dingily, down-stooped and grey,
With hollow face, careworn and yellow.
With furtive feet before our...Read more of this...

In The Small Hours

by Wole Soyinka
Blue diaphane, tobacco smoke
Serpentine on wet film and wood glaze,
Mutes chrome, wreathes velvet drapes,
Dims the cave of mirrors. Ghost fingers
Comb seaweed hair, stroke acquamarine veins
Of marooned mariners, captives
Of Circe's sultry notes. The barman
Dispenses igneous potions ?
Somnabulist, the band plays on.

Cocktail mixer, silvery fish
Dances for limpet clients.
Applause is steeped in lassitude,
Tangled in webs of lovers' whispers
And artful eyelash of the androgynous.
The...Read more of this...

On Going Unnoticed

by Robert Frost
 As vain to raise a voice as a sigh
In the tumult of free leaves on high.
What are you in the shadow of trees
Engaged up there with the light and breeze?

Less than the coral-root you know
That is content with the daylight low,
And has no leaves at all of its own;
Whose spotted flowers hang meanly down.

You grasp the bark by a...Read more of this...

To The Genius Of Africa

by Robert Southey
 O thou who from the mountain's height
Roll'st down thy clouds with all their weight
Of waters to old Niles majestic tide;
Or o'er the dark sepulchral plain
Recallest thy Palmyra's ancient pride,
Amid whose desolated domes
Secure the savage chacal roams,
Where from the fragments of the hallow'd fane
The Arabs rear their miserable homes!

Hear Genius hear thy children's cry!
Not always should'st thou love to brood
Stern...Read more of this...

Come From The Daisied Meadows

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 HOME from the daisied meadows, where you linger yet -
Home, golden-headed playmate, ere the sun is set;
For the dews are falling fast
And the night has come at last.
Home with you, home and lay your little head at rest,
Safe, safe, my little darling, on your mother's breast.
Lullaby, darling; your mother is watching you;
she'll be your guardian and shield.
Lullaby, slumber, my...Read more of this...

Restlessness

by D. H. Lawrence
 At the open door of the room I stand and look at the night,
Hold my hand to catch the raindrops, that slant into sight,
Arriving grey from the darkness above suddenly into the light of the room.
I will escape from the hollow room, the box of light, 
And be out in the bewildering darkness, which is always fecund, which might
Mate...Read more of this...

The City

by Constantine P Cavafy
 WHAT domination of what darkness dies this hour,
And through what new, rejoicing, winged, ethereal power
O’erthrown, the cells opened, the heart released from fear?
Gay twilight and grave twilight pass. The stars appear
O’er the prodigious, smouldering, dusky, city flare.
The hanging gardens of Babylon were not more fair
Than these blue flickering glades, where childhood in its glee
Re-echoes with fresh voice the heaven-lit...Read more of this...

185. The Humble Petition of Bruar Water

by Robert Burns
 MY lord, I know your noble ear
 Woe ne’er assails in vain;
Embolden’d thus, I beg you’ll hear
 Your humble slave complain,
How saucy Phoebus’ scorching beams,
 In flaming summer-pride,
Dry-withering, waste my foamy streams,
 And drink my crystal tide. 1


The lightly-jumping, glowrin’ trouts,
 That thro’ my waters play,
If, in their random, wanton spouts,
 They near the margin stray;
If, hapless chance! they...Read more of this...

Resignation

by Walter Savage Landor
 WHY, why repine, my pensive friend, 
 At pleasures slipp'd away? 
Some the stern Fates will never lend, 
 And all refuse to stay. 

I see the rainbow in the sky, 
 The dew upon the grass; 
I see them, and I ask not why 
 They glimmer or they pass. 

With folded arms I linger not 
 To...Read more of this...

The White Lilies

by Louise Gluck
 As a man and woman make
a garden between them like
a bed of stars, here
they linger in the summer evening
and the evening turns
cold with their terror: it
could all end, it is capable
of devastation. All, all
can be lost, through scented air
the narrow columns
uselessly rising, and beyond,
a churning sea of poppies--

Hush, beloved. It doesn't matter to me
how many summers I live to...Read more of this...

Come-by-Chance

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 As I pondered very weary o'er a volume long and dreary -- 
For the plot was void of interest; 'twas the Postal Guide, in fact -- 
There I learnt the true location, distance, size and population 
Of each township, town, and village in the radius of the Act. 
And I learnt that Puckawidgee stands beside the Murrumbidgee, 
And the...Read more of this...

To Contemplation

by Robert Southey
 Faint gleams the evening radiance thro' the sky,
The sober twilight dimly darkens round;
In short quick circles the shrill bat flits by,
And the slow vapour curls along the ground.

Now the pleas'd eye from yon lone cottage sees
On the green mead the smoke long-shadowing play;
The Red-breast on the blossom'd spray
Warbles wild her latest lay,
And sleeps along the dale the silent breeze.
Calm...Read more of this...

The Wood Pool

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Here is a voice that soundeth low and far
And lyric­voice of wind among the pines,
Where the untroubled, glimmering waters are,
And sunlight seldom shines. 

Elusive shadows linger shyly here,
And wood-flowers blow, like pale, sweet spirit-bloom, 
And white, slim birches whisper, mirrored clear
In the pool's lucent gloom. 

Here Pan might pipe, or wandering dryad kneel
To view her loveliness beside the brim,
Or...Read more of this...

All Thats Not Love . .

by Alan Seeger
 All that's not love is the dearth of my days, 
The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit, 
The temple in times without prayer, without praise, 
The altar unset and the candle unlit. 


Let me survive not the lovable sway 
Of early desire, nor see when it goes 
The courts of Life's abbey in ivied decay, 
Whence sometime sweet...Read more of this...

The Portrait

by Robert William Service
 The portrait there above my bed
They tell me is a work of art;
My Wife,--since twenty years she's dead:
Her going nearly broke my heart.
Alas! No little ones we had
To light our hearth with joy and glee;
Yet as I linger lone and sad
 I know she's waiting me.

The picture? Sargent painted it,
And it has starred in many a show.
Her eyes are...Read more of this...

The Bard

by Thomas Gray
 Pindaric Ode

"Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!
Confusion on thy banners wait!
Tho' fanned by Conquest's crimson wing,
They mock the air with idle state.
Helm, nor hauberk's twisted mail,
Nor e'en thy virtues, Tyrant, shall avail
To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears!"
Such were the sounds that o'er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scattered wild dismay,
As down the...Read more of this...

Reverie of Mahomed Akram at the Tamarind Tank

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   The Desert is parched in the burning sun
   And the grass is scorched and white.
   But the sand is passed, and the march is done,
   We are camping here to-night.
        I sit in the shade of the Temple walls,
     ...Read more of this...

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