Famous Lingers Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

A Brook in the City

by Robert Frost
 The firm house lingers, though averse to square
With the new city street it has to wear A number in.
But what about the brook That held the house as in an elbow-crook?
I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength
And impulse, having dipped a finger length
And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed
A flower to try its currents where...Read more of this...

Boo to Buddha

by Aleister Crowley
 So it is eighteen years,
Helena, since we met!
A season so endears,
Nor you nor I forget
The fresh young faces that once clove
In that most fiery dawn of love.

We wandered to and fro,
Who knew not how to woo,
Those eighteen years ago,
Sweetheart, when I and you
Exchanged high vows in heaven's sight
That scarce survived a summer's night.

What scourge smote from the stars
What madness...Read more of this...

Remembrance

by Maya Angelou
 Your hands easy
weight, teasing the bees
hived in my hair, your smile at the
slope of my cheek. On the
occasion, you press
above me, glowing, spouting
readiness, mystery rapes
my reason

When you have withdrawn
your self and the magic, when
only the smell of your
love lingers between
my breasts, then, only
then, can I greedily consume
your presence....Read more of this...

Mother and sphinx

by Eugene Field
 (EGYPTIAN FOLK-SONG)

Grim is the face that looks into the night
Over the stretch of sands;
A sullen rock in a sea of white--
A ghostly shadow in ghostly light,
Peering and moaning it stands.
"Oh, is it the king that rides this way--
Oh, is it the king that rides so free?
I have looked for the king this many a day,
But the years that mock...Read more of this...

Far In a Western Brookland

by A E Housman
 Far in a western brookland 
That bred me long ago 
The poplars stand and tremble 
By pools I used to know. 

There, in the windless night-time, 
The wanderer, marvelling why, 
Halts on the bridge to hearken 
How soft the poplars sigh. 

He hears: no more remembered 
In fields where I was known, 
Here I lie down in London 
And...Read more of this...

Birthdays

by Robert William Service
 Let us have birthdays every day,
(I had the thought while I was shaving)
Because a birthday should be gay,
And full of grace and good behaving.
We can't have cakes and candles bright,
And presents are beyond our giving,
But let lt us cherish with delight
The birthday way of lovely living.

For I have passed three-score and ten
And I can count upon my fingers
The years...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 03: 08: Coffins: Interlude

by Conrad Aiken
 Wind blows. Snow falls. The great clock in its tower
Ticks with reverberant coil and tolls the hour:
At the deep sudden stroke the pigeons fly . . .
The fine snow flutes the cracks between the flagstones.
We close our coats, and hurry, and search the sky.

We are like music, each voice of it pursuing
A golden separate dream, remote, persistent,
Climbing to fire,...Read more of this...

Poor Withered Rose

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
A SongPoor withered rose, she gave it me,
Half in revenge and half in glee;
Its petals not so pink by half
As are her lips when curled to laugh,
As are her cheeks when dimples gay
In merry mischief o'er them play.
Chorus
Forgive, forgive, it seems unkind
To cast thy petals to the wind;
But it is right, and lest I err
So scatter I all thought of...Read more of this...

Octaves

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I 

We thrill too strangely at the master's touch;
We shrink too sadly from the larger self
Which for its own completeness agitates
And undetermines us; we do not feel -- 
We dare not feel it yet -- the splendid shame
Of uncreated failure; we forget,
The while we groan, that God's accomplishment
Is always and unfailingly at hand. 

II 

Tumultuously void of a clean...Read more of this...

Good Friday 2001 Riding North

by Jennifer Reeser
 Yellow makes a play for green among
the rows of some poor farmer's field outside
the Memphis city limits' northern edge.
A D. J. plays The Day He Wore My Crown,
not knowing it entices into tears
this woman never once disposed to travel
the holiday before. My children squander
unleavened bread brought forth from Taco Bell.
What sacrifice of mine could be worth mention?
Enshroud it. Christ's...Read more of this...

The Undying

by Robert William Service
 She was so wonderful I wondered
If wedding me she had not blundered;
She was so pure, so high above me,
I marvelled how she came to love me:
Or did she? Well, in her own fashion -
Affection, pity, never passion.

I knew I was not worth her love;
Yet oh, how wistfully I strove
To be her equal in some way;
She knew I tried, and...Read more of this...

The Arabian Shawl

by Katherine Mansfield
 "It is cold outside, you will need a coat--
What! this old Arabian shawl!
Bind it about your head and throat,
These steps... it is dark... my hand... you
might fall."

What has happened? What strange, sweet charm
Lingers about the Arabian shawl...
Do not tremble so! There can be no harm
In just remembering--that is all.

"I love you so--I will be your wife,"
Here, in the dark...Read more of this...

Mourning

by Victor Hugo
 ("Charle! ô mon fils!") 
 
 {March, 1871.} 


 Charles, Charles, my son! hast thou, then, quitted me? 
 Must all fade, naught endure? 
 Hast vanished in that radiance, clear for thee, 
 But still for us obscure? 
 
 My sunset lingers, boy, thy morn declines! 
 Sweet mutual love we've known; 
 For man, alas! plans,...Read more of this...

Homeward Bound

by Henry Van Dyke
 Home, for my heart still calls me;
Home, through the danger zone;
Home, whatever befalls me,
I will sail again to my own! 

Wolves of the sea are hiding
Closely along the way,
Under the water biding
Their moment to rend and slay. 

Black is the eagle that brands them,
Black are their hearts as the night,
Black is the hate that sends them
To murder but not...Read more of this...

A Message From My Lodge At Wangchuan To Pei Di

by Wang Wei
The mountains are cold and blue now 
And the autumn waters have run all day. 
By my thatch door, leaning on my staff, 
I listen to cicadas in the evening wind. 
Sunset lingers at the ferry, 
Supper-smoke floats up from the houses. 
...Oh, when shall I pledge the great Hermit again 
And sing a wild poem at Five Willows? ...Read more of this...

The Rosary

by Robert Herrick
 Not on the lute, nor harp of many strings
Shall all men praise the Master of all song.
Our life is brief, one saith, and art is long;
And skilled must be the laureates of kings.
Silent, O lips that utter foolish things!
Rest, awkward fingers striking all notes wrong!
How from your toil shall issue, white and strong,
Music like that God's chosen poet sings?
There...Read more of this...

The Passing Strange

by John Masefield
 Out of the earth to rest or range
Perpetual in perpetual change,
The unknown passing through the strange.

Water and saltness held together
To tread the dust and stand the weather,
And plough the field and stretch the tether,

To pass the wine-cup and be witty,
Water the sands and build the city,
Slaughter like devils and have pity,

Be red with rage and pale with lust,
Make beauty...Read more of this...

To love with our eyes

by Emile Verhaeren
To love with our eyes, let us lave our gaze of the gaze of those whose glances we have crossed, by thousands, in life that is evil and enthralled.
The dawn is of flowers and dew and the mildest sifted light; soft plumes of silver and sun seem through the mists to brush and caress the mosses in the garden.
Our blue...Read more of this...

Envoy For A Childs Garden Of Verses

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 WHETHER upon the garden seat
You lounge with your uplifted feet
Under the May's whole Heaven of blue;
Or whether on the sofa you,
No grown up person being by,
Do some soft corner occupy;
Take you this volume in your hands
And enter into other lands,
For lo! (as children feign) suppose
You, hunting in the garden rows,
Or in the lumbered attic, or
The cellar - a nail-studded...Read more of this...

Bird Watcher

by Robert William Service
 In Wall Street once a potent power,
 And now a multi-millionaire
Alone within a shady bower
 In clothes his valet would not wear,
He watches bird wings bright the air.

The man who mighty mergers planned,
 And oil and coal kinglike controlled,
With field-glasses in failing hand
 Spies downy nestlings five days old,
With joy he could not buy for gold.

Aye, even childlike is...Read more of this...

Tema con Variazioni

by Lewis Carroll
 Why is it that Poetry has never yet been subjected to that process of Dilution which has proved so advantageous to her sister-art Music? The Diluter gives us first a few notes of some well-known Air, then a dozen bars of his own, then a few more notes of the Air, and so on alternately: thus saving the listener,...Read more of this...

Sonnet 01

by Robert Southey
 Go Valentine and tell that lovely maid
Whom Fancy still will pourtray to my sight,
How her Bard lingers in this sullen shade,
This dreary gloom of dull monastic night.
Say that from every joy of life remote
At evening's closing hour he quits the throng,
Listening alone the ring-dove's plaintive note
Who pours like him her solitary song.
Say that her absence calls the sorrowing sigh,
Say...Read more of this...

Halved

by Spike Milligan
 The essence of true beauty
Lingers in all-encompassing rainbows
Of your joy and laughter

You hold my hand and smile
As we ensconce ourselves in our world of fire
Our love is all there is

I touch your face
Your gentleness astounds me
I'm held in the honour of your love

Then overnight, the wrold truns suor
61 mInnIts past the ELevenTHH HouRR
I'M A L 0 N E...Read more of this...

Girlhood

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Girlhood, the dearest time of joy and love,
The sunny spring of gladness and of peace,
The time that joins its links with heaven above,
And all that's pure below; a running ease
Of careless thought beguiles the murmuring stream
Of girlish life, and as some sweet, vague dream,
The fleeting days go by; fair womanhood
Comes oft to lure the girlish feet away,
But by the brooklet...Read more of this...

Sea Lullaby

by Elinor Wylie
 The old moon is tarnished 
With smoke of the flood, 
The dead leaves are varnished 
With colour like blood. 

A treacherous smiler 
With teeth white as milk, 
A savage beguiler 
In sheathings of silk 

The sea creeps to pillage, 
She leaps on her prey; 
A child of the village 
Was murdered today. 

She came up to meet him 
In...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Lingers poems.

Get a Premium Membership
Turn off ads, get more exposure for your poetry, and get more features with a Premium Membership.
Book: Diverse Voices: The Poetry of Human Rights and the Pursuit of Peace