Famous Nevermore Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Squaw Man

by Robert William Service
 The cow-moose comes to water, and the beaver's overbold,
The net is in the eddy of the stream;
The teepee stars the vivid sward with russet, red and gold,
And in the velvet gloom the fire's a-gleam.
The night is ripe with quiet, rich with incense of the pine;
From sanctuary lake I hear the loon;
The peaks are bright against the blue, and drenched...Read more of this...

Finite -- to fail but infinite to Venture --

by Emily Dickinson
 Finite -- to fail, but infinite to Venture --
For the one ship that struts the shore
Many's the gallant -- overwhelmed Creature
Nodding in Navies nevermore --...Read more of this...

Freedoms Fool

by Robert William Service
 To hell with Government I say;
I'm sick of all the piddling pack.
I'd like to scram, get clean away,
And never, nevermore come back.
With heart of hope I long to go
To some lost island of the sea,
And there get drunk with joy to know
No one on earth is over me. 

There will be none to say me nay,
So from my lexicon...Read more of this...

A Tale Of The Thirteenth Floor

by Ogden Nash
 The hands of the clock were reaching high
In an old midtown hotel;
I name no name, but its sordid fame
Is table talk in hell.
I name no name, but hell's own flame
Illumes the lobby garish,
A gilded snare just off Times Square
For the maidens of the parish.

The revolving door swept the grimy floor
Like a crinoline grotesque,
And a lowly bum from an ancient...Read more of this...

The Santa-Fe Trail (A Humoresque)

by Vachel Lindsay
 I asked the old *****, "What is that bird that sings so well?" He answered: "That is the Rachel-Jane." "Hasn't it another name, lark, or thrush, or the like?" "No. Jus' Rachel-Jane."


I. IN WHICH A RACING AUTO COMES FROM THE EAST

This is the order of the music of the morning: —
First, from the far East comes but a crooning.
The...Read more of this...

The Lacking Sense Scene.--A sad-coloured landscape Waddon Vale

by Thomas Hardy
 I 

"O Time, whence comes the Mother's moody look amid her labours, 
 As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves? 
 Why weaves she not her world-webs to according lutes and tabors, 
With nevermore this too remorseful air upon her face, 
 As of angel fallen from grace?" 

II 

- "Her look is but her...Read more of this...

Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

by Walt Whitman
 1
OUT of the cradle endlessly rocking, 
Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle, 
Out of the Ninth-month midnight, 
Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the child, leaving his bed, wander’d
 alone, bare-headed, barefoot, 
Down from the shower’d halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows, twining and twisting as if they were alive, 
Out from the...Read more of this...

The Tide Rises the Tide Falls

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The tide rises, the tide falls, 
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls; 
Along the sea-sands damp and brown 
The traveller hastens toward the town, 
  And the tide rises, the tide falls. 

Darkness settles on roofs and walls, 
But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls; 
The little waves, with their soft, white hands, 
Efface the footprints in...Read more of this...

Fleurette

by Robert William Service
 (The Wounded Canadian Speaks)

My leg? It's off at the knee.
Do I miss it? Well, some. You see
 I've had it since I was born;
 And lately a devilish corn.
(I rather chuckle with glee
 To think how I've fooled that corn.)

But I'll hobble around all right.
 It isn't that, it's my face.
Oh I know I'm a hideous sight,
 Hardly a...Read more of this...

Roulette

by Robert William Service
 I'll wait until my money's gone
Before I take the sleeping pills;
Then when they find me in the dawn,
Remote from earthly ails and ills
They'll say: "She's broke, the foreign *****!"
And dump me in the common ditch.

So thought I, of all hope bereft,
And by my evil fate obsessed;
A thousand franks was all I'd left
Of that fair fortune I possessed.
...I throw it...Read more of this...

Lottery Ticket

by Robert William Service
 'A ticket for the lottery
I've purchased every week,' said she
 'For years a score
Though desperately poor am I,
Oh how I've scrimped and scraped to buy
 One chance more.

Each week I think I'll gain the prize,
And end my sorrows and my sighs,
 For I'll be rich;
Then nevermore I'll eat bread dry,
With icy hands to cry and cry
 And stitch and...Read more of this...

They Who Tread the Path of Labor

by Henry Van Dyke
 They who tread the path of labor follow where My feet have trod; 
They who work without complaining, do the holy will of God; 
Nevermore thou needest seek me; I am with thee everywhere; 
Raise the stone, and thou shalt find Me, clease the wood and I am there. 

Where the many toil together, there am I among My...Read more of this...

The Jewish Cemetery at Newport

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,
Close by the street of this fair seaport town,
Silent beside the never-silent waves,
At rest in all this moving up and down!

The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep
Wave their broad curtains in the southwind's breath,
While underneath these leafy tents they keep
The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.

And these sepulchral stones,...Read more of this...

The Rhyme Of The Remittance Man

by Robert William Service
 There's a four-pronged buck a-swinging in the shadow of my cabin,
 And it roamed the velvet valley till to-day;
But I tracked it by the river, and I trailed it in the cover,
 And I killed it on the mountain miles away.
Now I've had my lazy supper, and the level sun is gleaming
 On the water where the silver salmon...Read more of this...

Primrose

by Patrick Kavanagh
 Upon a bank I sat, a child made seer
Of one small primrose flowering in my mind.
Better than wealth it is, I said, to find
One small page of Truth's manuscript made clear.
I looked at Christ transfigured without fear--
The light was very beautiful and kind,
And where the Holy Ghost in flame had signed
I read it through the lenses of a tear.
And...Read more of this...

Sonnets from the Portuguese iii

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
GO from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand 
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore 
Alone upon the threshold of my door 
Of individual life I shall command 
The uses of my soul nor lift my hand 5 
Serenely in the sunshine as before  
Without the sense of that which I forbore¡ª 
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest...Read more of this...

Song of Karen the Dancing Child

by Katherine Mansfield
 (O little white feet of mine)
Out in the storm and the rain you fly;
(Red, red shoes the colour of wine)
Can the children hear my cry?

(O little white feet of mine)
Never a child in the whole great town;
(Red, red shoes the colour of wine)
Lights out and the blinds pulled down.

(O little white feet of mine)
Never a light on a window...Read more of this...

Travels With John Hunter

by Les Murray
 We who travel between worlds 
lose our muscle and bone. 
I was wheeling a barrow of earth 
when agony bayoneted me. 

I could not sit, or lie down, 
or stand, in Casualty. 
Stomach-calming clay caked my lips, 
I turned yellow as the moon 

and slid inside a CAT-scan wheel 
in a hospital where I met no one 
so much...Read more of this...

A Florida Sunday

by Sidney Lanier
 From cold Norse caves or buccaneer Southern seas
Oft come repenting tempests here to die;
Bewailing old-time wrecks and robberies,
They shrive to priestly pines with many a sigh,
Breathe salutary balms through lank-lock'd hair
Of sick men's heads, and soon -- this world outworn --
Sink into saintly heavens of stirless air,
Clean from confessional. One died, this morn,
And willed the world to wise Queen...Read more of this...

Do You Remember Once . .

by Alan Seeger
 Do you remember once, in Paris of glad faces, 
The night we wandered off under the third moon's rays 
And, leaving far behind bright streets and busy places, 
Stood where the Seine flowed down between its quiet quais? 


The city's voice was hushed; the placid, lustrous waters 
Mirrored the walls across where orange windows burned. 
Out of the starry...Read more of this...

The Mother Mourns

by Thomas Hardy
 When mid-autumn's moan shook the night-time, 
 And sedges were horny, 
And summer's green wonderwork faltered 
 On leaze and in lane, 

I fared Yell'ham-Firs way, where dimly 
 Came wheeling around me 
Those phantoms obscure and insistent 
 That shadows unchain. 

Till airs from the needle-thicks brought me 
 A low lamentation, 
As 'twere of a tree-god disheartened,...Read more of this...

Galahad Knight Who Perished

by Vachel Lindsay
 A POEM DEDICATED TO ALL CRUSADERS AGAINST THE INTERNATIONAL AND INTERSTATE TRAFFIC IN YOUNG GIRLS


Galahad . . . soldier that perished . . . ages ago,
Our hearts are breaking with shame, our tears overflow.
Galahad . . . knight who perished . . . awaken again,
Teach us to fight for immaculate ways among men.
Soldiers fantastic, we pray to the star...Read more of this...

August

by Elinor Wylie
 When my eyes are weeds,
And my lips are petals, spinning
Down the wind that has beginning
Where the crumpled beeches start
In a fringe of salty reeds;
When my arms are elder-bushes,
And the rangy lilac pushes
Upward, upward through my heart;

Summer, do your worst!
Light your tinsel moon, and call on
Your performing stars to fall on
Headlong through your paper sky;
Nevermore shall I be cursed
By a...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...

Lenore

by Edgar Allan Poe
 Ah, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!
Let the bell toll!- a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river;
And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear?- weep now or nevermore!
See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!
Come! let the burial rite be read- the funeral song be sung!-
An anthem for the queenliest dead...Read more of this...

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