Famous Link Poems by Famous Poets

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

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I Grant You Ample Leave

by George Eliot
 "I grant you ample leave 
To use the hoary formula 'I am' 
Naming the emptiness where thought is not; 
But fill the void with definition, 'I' 
Will be no more a datum than the words 
You link false inference with, the 'Since' & 'so' 
That, true or not, make up the atom-whirl. 
Resolve your 'Ego', it is all one...Read more of this...

The Boundaries Of Humanity

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 WHEN the primeval
All-holy Father
Sows with a tranquil hand
From clouds, as they roll,
Bliss-spreading lightnings
Over the earth,
Then do I kiss the last
Hem of his garment,
While by a childlike awe
Fiil'd is my breast.

For with immortals
Ne'er may a mortal
Measure himself.
If he soar upwards
And if he touch
With his forehead the stars,
Nowhere will rest then
His insecure feet,
And with him sport
Tempest and cloud.

Though with firm sinewy
Limbs...Read more of this...

Memory

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
A treasured link of shining pearls,
  A by-gone melody,
A shower of tears with smiles between—
  And this is memory.
A thing so light a breath of air
  May waft its life away;
A thing so dark that moments of pain
  Seem like some endless day.
A careless word may wound the heart,
  And quickly it may die;
Yet in...Read more of this...

The Little Lives Of Earth And Form

by Philip Larkin
 The little lives of earth and form,
Of finding food, and keeping warm,
 Are not like ours, and yet
A kinship lingers nonetheless:
We hanker for the homeliness
 Of den, and hole, and set.

And this identity we feel
- Perhaps not right, perhaps not real -
 Will link us constantly;
I see the rock, the clay, the chalk,
The flattened grass, the swaying stalk,
 And...Read more of this...

The Complaint Of Ceres

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Does pleasant spring return once more?
Does earth her happy youth regain?
Sweet suns green hills are shining o'er;
Soft brooklets burst their icy chain:
Upon the blue translucent river
Laughs down an all-unclouded day,
The winged west winds gently quiver,
The buds are bursting from the spray;
While birds are blithe on every tree;
The Oread from the mountain-shore
Sighs, "Lo! thy flowers come back to thee--
Thy child,...Read more of this...

Death And Birth

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Death and birth should dwell not near together:
Wealth keeps house not, even for shame, with dearth:
Fate doth ill to link in one brief tether
Death and birth.

Harsh the yoke that binds them, strange the girth
Seems that girds them each with each: yet whether
Death be best, who knows, or life on earth?

Ill the rose-red and the sable feather
Blend in one crown's...Read more of this...

In Memoriam 131: O Living Will That Shalt Endure

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 O living will that shalt endure
When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Rise in the spiritual rock,
Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure, 

That we may lift from out of dust
A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquer'd years
To one that with us works, and trust, 

With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can...Read more of this...

Daffy Duck In Hollywood

by John Ashbery
 Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
Of Rumford's Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy
Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller's fertile
Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged
Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis
Where Pistachio Avenue...Read more of this...

The Disabled Debauchee

by John Wilmot
 As some brave admiral, in former war,
Deprived of force, but pressed with courage still,
Two rival fleets appearing from afar,
Crawls to the top of an adjacent hill;

From whence (with thoughts full of concern) he views
The wise and daring conduct of the fight,
And each bold action to his mind renews
His present glory, and his past delight;

From his fierce eyes, flashes of...Read more of this...

The Sycamores

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 In the outskirts of the village 
On the river's winding shores 
Stand the Occidental plane-trees, 
Stand the ancient sycamores. 

One long century hath been numbered, 
And another half-way told 
Since the rustic Irish gleeman 
Broke for them the virgin mould. 

Deftly set to Celtic music 
At his violin's sound they grew, 
Through the moonlit eves of summer, 
Making Amphion's...Read more of this...

To This Moment a Rebel

by John Wilmot
 To this moment a rebel I throw down my arms,
Great Love, at first sight of Olinda's bright charms.
Make proud and secure by such forces as these,
You may now play the tyrant as soon as you please.

When Innocence, Beauty, and Wit do conspire
To betray, and engage, and inflame my Desire,
Why should I decline what I cannot avoid?
And let pleasing Hope...Read more of this...

Stuff

by Ntozake Shange
somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff ?not my poems or a dance i gave up in the street? but somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff

like a kleptomaniac workin hard & forgettin while stealin? this is mine/this aint yr stuff/?now why don’t you put me back & let me hang out in my own self

somebody almost walked...Read more of this...

Meditation under Stars

by George Meredith
 What links are ours with orbs that are
So resolutely far:
The solitary asks, and they
Give radiance as from a shield:
Still at the death of day,
The seen, the unrevealed.
Implacable they shine
To us who would of Life obtain
An answer for the life we strain
To nourish with one sign.
Nor can imagination throw
The penetrative shaft: we pass
The breath of thought, who would divine
If haply...Read more of this...

The Christ of the Never

by Henry Lawson
 With eyes that are narrowed to pierce
To the awful horizons of land,
Through the blaze of hot days, and the fierce
White heat-waves that flow on the sand;
Through the Never Land westward and nor'ward,
Bronzed, bearded, and gaunt on the track,
Low-voiced and hard-knuckled, rides forward
The Christ of the Outer Out-back.

For the cause that will ne'er be relinquished
Despite all the cynics on earth---
In...Read more of this...

Pain

by Thomas Edward Brown
 The Man that hath great griefs I pity not; 
’Tis something to be great 
In any wise, and hint the larger state, 
Though but in shadow of a shade, God wot! 

Moreover, while we wait the possible, 
This man has touched the fact, 
And probed till he has felt the core, where, packed 
In pulpy folds, resides the ironic...Read more of this...

A Sad State Of Freedom

by Nazim Hikmet
 You waste the attention of your eyes, 
the glittering labour of your hands, 
and knead the dough enough for dozens of loaves 
of which you'll taste not a morsel; 
you are free to slave for others-- 
you are free to make the rich richer. 

The moment you're born 
they plant around you 
mills that grind lies 
lies to last...Read more of this...

Flammonde

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 The man Flammonde, from God knows where, 
With firm address and foreign air 
With news of nations in his talk 
And something royal in his walk, 
With glint of iron in his eyes, 
But never doubt, nor yet surprise, 
Appeared, adn stayed, and held his head 
As one by kings accredited.

Erect, with his alert repose 
About him, and about...Read more of this...

Sorrow

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 SORROW, on wing through the world for ever,
Here and there for awhile would borrow
Rest, if rest might haply deliver
Sorrow.

One thought lies close in her heart gnawn thorough
With pain, a weed in a dried-up river,
A rust-red share in an empty furrow.

Hearts that strain at her chain would sever
The link where yesterday frets to-morrow:
All things pass in the world, but never
Sorrow....Read more of this...

Ida Frickey

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Nothing in life is alien to you:
I was a penniless girl from Summum
Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River.
All the houses stood before me with closed doors
And drawn shades -- I was barred out;
I had no place or part in any of them.
And I walked past the old McNeely mansion,
A castle of stone 'mid walks and gardens,
With...Read more of this...

Sounds from the Convent

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
"Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,
 Sober, steadfast and demure."
— [Milton]

White-robed nun, I pray thee tell me
  Whatsoe'er my life shall be;
Thou of God art purely chosen,
  Ne'er can I be like to thee.
There is sunlight in the shadow
  Of the lives we live below;
There is starlight in the darkness
  Of the night of human woe.
Yet...Read more of this...

Loves Vicissitudes

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 AS Love and Hope together
Walk by me for a while,
Link-armed the ways they travel
For many a pleasant mile -
Link-armed and dumb they travel,
They sing not, but they smile.

Hope leaving, Love commences
To practise on the lute;
And as he sings and travels
With lingering, laggard foot,
Despair plays obligato
The sentimental flute.

Until in singing garments
Comes royally, at call -
Comes limber-hipped Indiff'rence
Free stepping, straight and...Read more of this...

The Eleusinian Festival

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Wreathe in a garland the corn's golden ear!
With it, the Cyane [31] blue intertwine
Rapture must render each glance bright and clear,
For the great queen is approaching her shrine,--
She who compels lawless passions to cease,
Who to link man with his fellow has come,
And into firm habitations of peace
Changed the rude tents' ever-wandering home.

Shyly in the mountain-cleft
Was the Troglodyte concealed;
And the...Read more of this...

Employment (I)

by George Herbert
 If as a flower doth spread and die, 
Thou wouldst extend me to some good, 
Before I were by frost's extremity
Nipt in the bud; 

The sweetness and the praise were thine; 
But the extension and the room, 
Which in thy garland I should fill, were mine
At thy great doom.

For as thou dost impart thy grace, 
The greater shall our...Read more of this...

Continual Conversation With A Silent Man

by Wallace Stevens
 The old brown hen and the old blue sky,
Between the two we live and die--
The broken cartwheel on the hill.

As if, in the presence of the sea,
We dried our nets and mended sail
And talked of never-ending things,

Of the never-ending storm of will,
One will and many wills, and the wind,
Of many meanings in the leaves,

Brought down to one below the...Read more of this...

Uncle Harry

by Henry Lawson
 Oh, never let on to your own true love 
That ever you drank a drop; 
That ever you played in a two-up school 
Or slept in a sly-grog shop; 
That ever a bad girl nursed you round – 
That ever you sank so low. 
But she pulled you through, and it's only you 
And your old mate Harry know....Read more of this...

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