Famous Live Forever Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Everybody Knows

by Leonard Cohen
 (co-written by Sharon Robinson)
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded 
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed 
Everybody knows that the war is over 
Everybody knows the good guys lost 
Everybody knows the fight was fixed 
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich 
That's how it goes 
Everybody knows 
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking 
Everybody knows the...Read more of this...

Come On In The Senility Is Fine

by Ogden Nash
 People live forever in Jacksonville and St. Petersburg and Tampa,
But you don't have to live forever to become a grampa.
The entrance requirements for grampahood are comparatively mild,
You only have to live until your child has a child.
From that point on you start looking both ways over your shoulder,
Because sometimes you feel thirty years younger and sometimes
thirty years older.
Now you...Read more of this...

Poems in Three Parts

by Robert Bly
1

Oh on an early morning I think I shall live forever!
I am wrapped in my joyful flesh 
As the grass is wrapped in its clouds of green.

2

Rising from a bed where I dreamt
Of long rides past castles and hot coals 
The sun lies happily on my knees;
I have suffered and survived the night
Bathed in dark water like any blade of...Read more of this...

Do Not Die

by W S Merwin
In each world they may put us
Farther apart
Do not die
As this world is made I might
Live forever...Read more of this...

The Demon In Me

by Marina Tsvetaeva
 The demon in me's not dead,
He's living, and well.
In the body as in a hold,
In the self as in a cell.
The world is but walls.
The exit's the axe.
("All the world's a stage,"
The actor prates.)
And that hobbling buffoon
Is no joker;
In the body as in glory,
In the body as in a toga.
May you live forever!
Cherish your life,
Only poets in bone
Are as...Read more of this...

Something About The Trees

by Linda Pastan
 I remember what my father told me:
There is an age when you are most yourself.
He was just past fifty then,
Was it something about the trees that make him speak?

There is an age when you are most yourself.
I know more than I did once.
Was it something about the trees that make him speak?
Only a single leaf had turned so far.

I...Read more of this...

It Rained The Day They Buried Tito Puente

by Emanuel Xavier
 It rained the day they buried Tito Puente
The eyes of drug dealers following me
as I walked through the streets
past shivering prostitutes
women of every sex
young boys full of piss
and lampposts like ghosts in the night
past Jimmy the hustler boy 
with the really big dick 
cracked out on the sidewalk
wrapped in a blanket donated by the trick
that also gave him genital...Read more of this...

Success

by Emma Lazarus
 Oft have I brooded on defeat and pain, 
The pathos of the stupid, stumbling throng. 
These I ignore to-day and only long 
To pour my soul forth in one trumpet strain, 
One clear, grief-shattering, triumphant song, 
For all the victories of man's high endeavor, 
Palm-bearing, laurel deeds that live forever, 
The splendor clothing him whose will is strong. 
Hast...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 02: 10: Sudden Death

by Conrad Aiken
 'Number four—the girl who died on the table—
The girl with golden hair—'
The purpling body lies on the polished marble.
We open the throat, and lay the thyroid bare . . .

One, who held the ether-cone, remembers
Her dark blue frightened eyes.
He heard the sharp breath quiver, and saw her breast
More hurriedly fall and rise.
Her hands made futile gestures, she turned her...Read more of this...

Losers

by Carl Sandburg
 IF I should pass the tomb of Jonah
I would stop there and sit for awhile;
Because I was swallowed one time deep in the dark
And came out alive after all.

If I pass the burial spot of Nero
I shall say to the wind, “Well, well!”—
I who have fiddled in a world on fire,
I who have done so many stunts not worth...Read more of this...

Wendell P. Bloyd

by Edgar Lee Masters
 They first charged me with disorderly conduct,
There being no statute on blasphemy.
Later they locked me up as insane
Where I was beaten to death by a Catholic guard.
My offense was this:
I said God lied to Adam, and destined him
to lead the life of a fool,
Ignorant that there is evil in the world as well as good.
And when Adam outwitted God...Read more of this...

Horace and Lydia Reconciled

by Eugene Field
 HORACE

When you were mine in auld lang syne,
And when none else your charms might ogle,
I'll not deny,
Fair nymph, that I
Was happier than a Persian mogul.

LYDIA

Before she came--that rival flame!--
(Was ever female creature sillier?)
In those good times,
Bepraised in rhymes,
I was more famed than Mother Ilia!

HORACE

Chloe of Thrace! With what a grace
Does she at song or harp employ her!
I'd gladly die
If...Read more of this...

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