Famous Middle Age Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Middle Age poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous middle age poems. These examples illustrate what a famous middle age poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...ters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.
Let us stifle ...Read more of this...
by
Hall, Donald
...NO more wine? then we'll push back chairs and talk.
A final glass for me, though: cool, i' faith!
We ought to have our Abbey back, you see.
It's different, preaching in basilicas,
And doing duty in some masterpiece
Like this of brother Pugin's, bless his heart!
I doubt if they're half baked, those chalk rosettes,
Ciphers and stucco-twiddlings everyw...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...Senescence begins
And middle age ends
The day your descendents
Outnumber your friends....Read more of this...
by
Nash, Ogden
...ee with a crevice
An owl would build in, were he but sage;
For a lap of moss, like a fine pont-levis
In a castle of the Middle Age,
Joins to a lip of gum, pure amber;
When he'd be private, there might he spend
Hours alone in his lady's chamber:
Into this crevice I dropped our friend.
IV.
Splash, went he, as under he ducked,
---At the bottom, I knew, rain-drippings stagnate:
Next, a handful of blossoms I plucked
To bury him with, my bookshelf's magnate;
Then I went in-doors...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...A MIDDLE-AGE INTERLUDE.
ROSA MUNDI; SEU, FULCITE ME FLORIBUS.
A CONCEIT OF MASTER GYSBRECHT,
CANON-REGULAR OF SAID JODOCUS-BY-THE-BAR,
YPRES CITY. CANTUQUE, _Virgilius._
AND HATH OFTEN BEEN SUNG
AT HOCK-TIDE AND FESTIVALES. GAVISUS
ERAM, _Jessides._
(It would seem to be a glimpse from the
burning of Jacques du Bourg-Mulay, at Paris,
A. D. 1314; as dist...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...with me
When you hear that this is she
Of whose beauty it was sung,
She shall make the old man young,
Keep the middle age at stay,
And let nothing hide decay,
Till she be the reason why
All the world for love may die. ...Read more of this...
by
Jonson, Ben
...The appetite which leads him to her bed
Is not unlike the lust of boys for cake
Except he knows that after he has fed
He'll suffer more than simple belly-ache.
He'll groan to think what others have to pay
As price for his obsessive need to know
That he's a champion still, though slightly grey,
And both his skill and gameness clearly show.
And aft...Read more of this...
by
Scannell, Vernon
...My heart in middle age found the Way.
And I came to dwell at the foot of this mountain.
When the spirit moves, I wander alone
Amid beauty that is all for me....
I will walk till the water checks my path,
Then sit and watch the rising clouds --
And some day meet an old wood-cutter
And talk and laugh and never return....Read more of this...
by
Wei, Wang
...number had come up. When
It happened, I was asleep in bed, and when I woke up,
It was over: I was 38, on the brink of middle age,
A succession of stupid jobs behind me, a loaded gun on my lap....Read more of this...
by
Lehman, David
...manate,
To You, whoe’er you are—a Look.
2
A Traveler of thoughts and years—of peace and war,
Of youth long sped, and middle age declining,
(As the first volume of a tale perused and laid away, and this the second,
Songs, ventures, speculations, presently to close,)
Lingering a moment, here and now, to You I opposite turn,
As on the road, or at some crevice door, by chance, or open’d window,
Pausing, inclining, baring my head, You specially I greet,
To draw and clench ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...d grave, with warriours mixed,
Assemble, and harangues are heard; but soon,
In factious opposition; till at last,
Of middle age one rising, eminent
In wise deport, spake much of right and wrong,
Of justice, or religion, truth, and peace,
And judgement from above: him old and young
Exploded, and had seized with violent hands,
Had not a cloud descending snatched him thence
Unseen amid the throng: so violence
Proceeded, and oppression, and sword-law,
Through all the p...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ed at Faith,
I blasphemed at believers:
Said I: "There's nothing after Death,--
Your priests are just deceivers."
In middle age I was not so
Contemptuous and caustic.
Thought I: "There's much I do not know:
I'd better be agnostic.
The hope of immortality
'Tis foolish to be flouting."
So in the end I came to be
A doubter of my doubting.
Now I am old, with steps inclined
To hesitate and falter;
I find I get such peace of mind
Just sitting by an altar.
So Friends, don'...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...didn't understand
exactly, until just now, years later
in spring, with the trees already lacy
and camellias blowsy with middle age,
I looked out and saw what a cold front had done
to the garden, sweeping in like common language,
unexpected in the sensuous
extravagance of a Maryland spring.
There was a dark edge around each flower
as if it had been outlined in ink
instead of frost, and the tension I felt
between the expected and actual
was like that time I came to you, ready
t...Read more of this...
by
Pastan, Linda
...till ignorant of Him, my arms, and my legs worked,
and I grew, I grew,
I wore rubies and bought tomatoes
and now, in my middle age,
about nineteen in the head I'd say,
I am rowing, I am rowing
though the oarlocks stick and are rusty
and the sea blinks and rolls
like a worried eyebal,
but I am rowing, I am rowing,
though the wind pushes me back
and I know that that island will not be perfect,
it will have the flaws of life,
the absurdities of the dinner table,
but there will b...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...ell.
With the haughty you can be
Insolent and bold:
Young man, if you would be free
Gather gear and gold.
Mellow man o middle age,
Buy a little farm;
Then let revolution rage,
you will take no ham.
Cold and hunger, hand in hand
May red ruin spread;
With your little bit of land
You'll be warm and fed.
Old Ma, seek the smiling sun,
Wall yourself away;
Dream aloof from everyone
IN a garden gay.
Let no grieving mar your mood,
Have no truck with tears;
Greet each day with gratit...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...you doing, you ruffianly red-trickled waves?
Will you kill the courageous giant? Will you kill him in the prime of his middle age?
Steady and long he struggles,
He is baffled, bang’d, bruis’d—he holds out while his strength holds out,
The slapping eddies are spotted with his blood—they bear him away—they roll him,
swing
him, turn him,
His beautiful body is borne in the circling eddies, it is continually bruis’d on
rocks,
Swiftly and out of sight is borne the brave co...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ter
Asked himself what were the pleasures in season,
And found, since the calendar bade him be hearty,
He should do the Middle Age no treason
In resolving on a hunting-party.
Always provided, old books showed the way of it!
What meant old poets by their strictures?
And when old poets had said their say of it,
How taught old painters in their pictures?
We must revert to the proper channels,
Workings in tapestry, paintings on panels,
And gather up woodcraft's authentic traditio...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...eant Death's Arrests:
3.89 Thus I have said, and what I've said you see,
3.90 Childhood and youth is vain, yea vanity.
Middle Age.
4.1 Childhood and youth forgot, sometimes I've seen,
4.2 And now am grown more staid that have been green,
4.3 What they have done, the same was done by me:
4.4 As was their praise, or shame, so mine must be.
4.5 Now age is more, more good ye do expect;
4.6 But more my age, the more is my defect.
4.7 But what's of worth, your eyes shall first ...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...
Not his the form, nor his the eye,
That youthful maidens wont to fly.
XXI.
On his bold visage middle age
Had slightly pressed its signet sage,
Yet had not quenched the open truth
And fiery vehemence of youth;
Forward and frolic glee was there,
The will to do, the soul to dare,
The sparkling glance, soon blown to fire,
Of hasty love or headlong ire.
His limbs were cast in manly could
For hardy spor...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...le: French "propos".
4. "Peace" rhymed with "lese" and "chese", the old forms of
"lose" and "choose".
5. According to Middle Age writers there were two motions of
the first heaven; one everything always from east to west above
the stars; the other moving the stars against the first motion,
from west to east, on two other poles.
6. Atyzar: the meaning of this word is not known; but "occifer",
murderer, has been suggested instead by Urry, on the authority
of a marginal readi...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
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