Famous Lonely(A) Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Lonely(A) poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous lonely(a) poems. These examples illustrate what a famous lonely(a) poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
The drought is down on field and flock,
The river-bed is dry;
And we must shift the starving stock
Before the cattle die.
We muster up with weary hearts
At breaking of the day,
And turn our heads to foreign parts,
To take the stock away.
And it’s hunt ‘em up and dog ‘em,
And it’s get the whip...Read more of this...
by
Robinson Jeffers
Unhappy about some far off things
That are not my affair, wandering
Along the coast and up the lean ridges,
I saw in the evening
The stars go over the lonely ocean,
And a black-maned wild boar
Plowing with his snout on Mal Paso Mountain.
The old monster snuffled, "Here are sweet roots,
Fat grubs, slick beetles and sprouted acorns.
The best nation in Europe has fallen,
And that...Read more of this...
by
Charlotte Bronte
Speak of the North! A lonely moor
Silent and dark and tractless swells,
The waves of some wild streamlet pour
Hurriedly through its ferny dells.
Profoundly still the twilight air,
Lifeless the landscape; so we deem
Till like a phantom gliding near
A stag bends down to drink the stream.
And far away a mountain zone,
A cold, white waste of snow-drifts lies,
And one star, large and soft...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
Since the fern can't go to the sink for a drink of
water, I graciously submit myself to the task, bringing two
glasses from the sink.
And so we sit, the fern and I, sipping water together.
Of course I'm more complex than a fern, full of deep
thoughts as I am. But I lay this aside for the easy company
of an...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
IF God compel thee to this destiny,
To die alone, with none beside thy bed
To ruffle round with sobs thy last word said
And mark with tears the pulses ebb from thee,--
Pray then alone, ' O Christ, come tenderly !
By thy forsaken Sonship in the red
Drear wine-press,--by the wilderness out-spread,--
And the lone garden where thine agony
Fell bloody from thy brow,--by all...Read more of this...
by
Joyce Kilmer
(For My Mother)
The halls that were loud with the merry tread of
young and careless feet
Are still with a stillness that is too drear to seem like holiday,
And never a gust of laughter breaks the calm of the dreaming street
Or rises to shake the ivied walls and frighten the doves away.
The dust is on book and on empty desk,...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
Eighty
Lonely in his great age, Henry's old friend
leaned on his burning cane while hÃs old friend
was hymnéd out of living.
The Abbey rang with sound. Pound white as snow
bowed to them with his thoughts-”it's hard to know them though
for the old man sang no word.
Dry, ripe with pain, busy with loss, let's guess.
Gone. Gone them wine-meetings, gone green grasses
of the...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
The end of the affair is always death.
She's my workshop. Slippery eye,
out of the tribe of myself my breath
finds you gone. I horrify
those who stand by. I am fed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.
Finger to finger, now she's mine.
She's not too far. She's my encounter.
I beat her like a bell....Read more of this...
by
Patrick Kavanagh
O stony grey soil of Monaghan
The laugh from my love you thieved;
You took the gay child of my passion
And gave me your clod-conceived.
You clogged the feet of my boyhood
And I believed that my stumble
Had the poise and stride of Apollo
And his voice my thick tongued mumble.
You told me the plough was immortal!
O green-life conquering plough!
The mandrill stained, your coulter...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Whatever it is -- she has tried it --
Awful Father of Love --
Is not Ours the chastising --
Do not chastise the Dove --
Not for Ourselves, petition --
Nothing is left to pray --
When a subject is finished --
Words are handed away --
Only lest she be lonely
In thy beautiful House
Give her for her Transgression
License to think of us --...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Ah, I have changed, I do not know
Why lonely hours affect me so.
In days of yore, this were not wont,
No loneliness my soul could daunt.
For me too serious for my age,
The weighty tome of hoary sage,
Until with puzzled heart astir,
One God-giv'n night, I dreamed of her.
I loved no woman, hardly knew
More of the sex that strong men woo
Than cloistered monk...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Vincent Benet
There were not many at that lonely place,
Where two scourged hills met in a little plain.
The wind cried loud in gusts, then low again.
Three pines strained darkly, runners in a race
Unseen by any. Toward the further woods
A dim harsh noise of voices rose and ceased.
-- We were most silent in those solitudes --...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
One without looks in tonight
Through the curtain-chink
From the sheet of glistening white;
One without looks in tonight
As we sit and think
By the fender-brink.
We do not discern those eyes
Watching in the snow;
Lit by lamps of rosy dyes
We do not discern those eyes
Wandering, aglow
Four-footed, tiptoe....Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
The roving breezes come and go, the reed-beds sweep and sway,
The sleepy river murmers low,and loiters on its way,
It is the land of lots o'time along the Castlereagh.
. . .. . . . .
The old man's son had left the farm, he found it full and slow,
He drifted to the great North-west, where all...Read more of this...
by
Suleiman the Magnificent
Throne of my lonely niche, my wealth, my love, my moonlight.
My most sincere friend, my confidant, my very existence, my Sultan
The most beautiful among the beautiful...
My springtime, my merry faced love, my daytime, my sweetheart, laughing leaf...
My plants, my sweet, my rose, the one only who does not distress me in this world...
My Istanbul, my Caraman, the earth of my...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
Henry in trouble whirped out lonely whines.
When ich when was ever not in trouble?
But did he whip out whines
afore? And when check in wif ales & lifelines
anyone earlier O?-”Some, now, Mr Bones,
many.-”I am fleeing double:
Mr Past being no friends of mine,
all them around: Sir Future Dubious,
calamitous & grand:
I can no foothold here; wherefore I pines
for Dr Present, who won't...Read more of this...
by
William Allingham
I heard the dogs howl in the moonlight night;
I went to the window to see the sight;
All the Dead that ever I knew
Going one by one and two by two.
On they pass'd, and on they pass'd;
Townsfellows all, from first to last;
Born in the moonlight of the lane,
Quench'd in the heavy shadow again.
Schoolmates,...Read more of this...
by
William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
(What the Mendicant Said )
The moon's a monk, unmated,
Who walks his cell, the sky.
His strength is that of heaven-vowed men
Who all life's flames defy.
They turn to stars or shadows,
They go like snow or dew—
Leaving behind no sorrow—
Only the arching blue....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I know some lonely Houses off the Road
A Robber'd like the look of --
Wooden barred,
And Windows hanging low,
Inviting to --
A Portico,
Where two could creep --
One -- hand the Tools --
The other peep --
To make sure All's Asleep --
Old fashioned eyes --
Not easy to surprise!
How orderly the Kitchen'd look, by night,
With just a Clock --
But they could gag the Tick...Read more of this...
by
William Blake
The little boy lost in the lonely fen,
Led by the wand'ring light,
Began to cry, but God ever nigh,
Appeared like his father in white.
He kissed the child & by the hand led
And to his mother brought,
Who in sorrow pale. thro' the lonely dale
Her little boy weeping sought....Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
And do not be indiscreet or unconventional. Play it safe.
Listen here. I've never played it safe
in spite of what the critics say.
Ask my imaginary brother, that waif,
that childhood best friend who comes to play
dress-up and stick-up and jacks and Pick-Up-Sticks,
bike downtown, stick out tongues at the Catholics.
Or form a Piss Club where we all go
in the bushes and peek...Read more of this...
by
Leonard Cohen
It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that it ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to...Read more of this...
by
Stephen Crane
In a lonely place,
I encountered a sage
Who sat, all still,
Regarding a newspaper.
He accosted me:
"Sir, what is this?"
Then I saw that I was greater,
Aye, greater than this sage.
I answered him at once,
"Old, old man, it is the wisdom of the age."
The sage looked upon me with admiration....Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
I'm scared a lonely. Never see my son,
easy be not to see anyone,
combers out to sea
know they're goin somewhere but not me.
Got a little poison, got a little gun,
I'm scared a lonely.
I'm scared a only one thing, which is me,
from othering I don't take nothin, see,
for any hound dog's sake.
But this is where I livin, where I rake
my leaves...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Lonely(A) poems.