Famous Old Days Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Old Days poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous old days poems. These examples illustrate what a famous old days poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
...
Fled, with each returning spring-tide from its ills
To the Hills.
From the clammy fogs of morning, from the blaze
Of old days,
From the sickness of the noontide, from the heat,
Beat retreat;
For the country from Peshawur to Ceylon
Was their own.
But the Merchant risked the perils of the Plain
For his gain.
Now the resting-place of Charnock, 'neath the palms,
Asks an alms,
And the burden of its lamentation is, Briefly, this:
"Because for certain months, we boil and stew...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...arrior-guest
from far, a hall-thane heralded forth,
who by custom courtly cared for all
needs of a thane as in those old days
warrior-wanderers wont to have.
So slumbered the stout-heart. Stately the hall
rose gabled and gilt where the guest slept on
till a raven black the rapture-of-heaven {25b}
blithe-heart boded. Bright came flying
shine after shadow. The swordsmen hastened,
athelings all were eager homeward
forth to fare; and far from thence
the great-hearted ...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...
That long has passed away,
She must have kept a weary while
Just as it is to-day.
The parasol of days gone by --
Old days that seemed the best --
The hymn and prayer books carried high
Against her warm, thin breast;
As she had clasped -- come smiles come tears,
Come hardship, aye, and worse --
On market days, through faded years,
The slender household purse.
Although the road is rough and steep,
She takes it with a will,
For, since she hushed her first to sle...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...
Declaring them divine, until each name
In Italy's fine sonnets met with praise.
The ancient hierarch in those old days
Had custom strange, a now forgotten thing,
It was a European plan that King
Of France was marquis, and th' imperial head
Of Germany was duke; there was no need
To class the other kings, but barons they,
Obedient vassals unto Rome, their stay.
The King of Poland was but simple knight,
Yet now, for once, had strange unwonted ri...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...Fair cheeks, and fine bodies;
fortitude as never before
frankness as never before,
disillusions as never told in the old days,
hysterias, trench confessions,
laughter out of dead bellies.
V.
There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old ***** gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization.
Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,
For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books.
Yeux Glauques
Gladstone was...Read more of this...
by
Pound, Ezra
...yes
The soul has fled:
When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead!
Then, pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame;
Walk backward, with averted gaze,
And hide the shame!
...Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...I cannot last till morn.
Thou therefore take my brand Excalibur,
Which was my pride: for thou rememberest how
In those old days, one summer noon, an arm
Rose up from out the bosom of the lake,
Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,
Holding the sword--and how I row'd across
And took it, and have worn it, like a king;
And, wheresoever I am sung or told
In aftertime, this also shall be known:
But now delay not: take Excalibur,
And fling him far into the middle mere:
Watch ...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...d Earth!
And I!- to-night my heart is light!- no dirge will I upraise,
But waft the angel on her flight with a Paean of old days!"...Read more of this...
by
Poe, Edgar Allan
...It was in the old days,
When she used to hang out at a place
Called Club Zombie,
A black cabaret that the police liked
To raid now and then. As she
Stepped through the door, the light
Would hit her platinum hair,
And believe me, heads would turn. Maestro
Loved it; he'd have her by
The arm as he led us through the packed crowd
To a private corner
Where her secluded oak tab...Read more of this...
by
John, David St
...ut Fishing in America Shorty's back in town,
but I don't think it's going to be the same as it was before.
Those good old days are over because Trout Fishing in Am-
erica Shorty is famous. The movies have discovered him.
Last week "The New Wave" took him out of his wheel-
chair and laid him out in a cobblestone alley. Then they shot
some footage of him. He ranted and raved and they put it
down on film.
Later on, probably, a different voice will be dubbed in.
It wil...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...the ladies than the gents. He was leaking
blood like those capsules we used to use with oleomargarine,
in those good old days when oleo was white like lard.
The huge black car pulled out and went up the street, bat-
light shining off the top. It stopped in front of the ice-cream
parlor at Filbert and Stockton.
An agent got out and went in and bought two hundred
double-decker ice-cream cones. He needed a wheelbarrow
to get them back to the car.
THE LAST TIM...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...n Bell
ended the day unchanged. Analyst Richard Howard
recommended buying May Swenson and selling Anne Sexton.
In the old days, you liked either Walt Whitman or Anne Sexton,
not both. Ted Berrigan changed that just by going to a ballgame with
Marianne Moore.
And one day Philip Levine looked in the mirror and saw Marvin Bell....Read more of this...
by
Lehman, David
...boyhood knew;
And dear and early friends -- the few
Who yet remain -- shall pause to view
These Flemish pictures of old days;
Sit with me by the homestead hearth
And stretch the hands of memory forth
To warm them at the wood-fire's blaze!
And thanks untraced to lips unknown
Shall greet me like the odors blown
From unseen meadows newly mown,
Or lilies floating in some pond,
Wood-fringed, the wayside gaze beyond;
The traveller owns the grateful sense
Of sweetness ...Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...ound
With Hatred and Contention; Pain was mixed
In all which was served up to him, until,
Like to the Pontic monarch of old days,
He fed on poisons, and they had no power,
But were a kind of nutriment; he lived
Through that which had been death to many men,
And made him friends of mountains; with the stars
And the quick Spirit of the Universe
He held his dialogues: and they did teach
To him the magic of their mysteries;
To him the book of Night was opened wide,
And voices fro...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...Waterloo, M'sieu Charles."
"Sacre Bleu! Don't mention Waterloo, and the damned grinning
British.
We didn't run in the old days.
There wasn't any running at Jena.
Those were decent days,
And decent men, who stood up and fought.
We never got beaten, because we wouldn't be.
See!"
"You would have taught them, wouldn't you, Sergeant Boignet?
But to-day it's everyone for himself,
And the Emperor isn't what he was."
"How the Devil do you know that?
If he was beaten, the cause
Is t...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...eak to me, comely Faun, as you would speak
To tree, or zephyr, or untrodden grass.
Have you, O Greek, O mocker of old days,
Have you not sometimes with that oblique eye
Winked at the Farnese Hercules?—Alone,
Have you, O Faun, considerately turned
From side to side when counsel-seekers came,
And now advised as shepherd, now as satyr?—
Have you sometimes, upon this very bench,
Seen, at mid-day, Vincent de Paul instilling
Grace into Gondi?—Have you ...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...spell of summer drought,
Lying awake and listening to the rain.
. . . .
I’d like to be the simpleton I was
In the old days when I was whipping-in
To a little harrier-pack in Worcestershire,
And loved a dairymaid, but never knew it
Until she’d wed another. So I’ve loved
My life; and when the good years are gone down,
Discover what I’ve lost.
I never broke
Out of my blundering self into the world,
But let it all go past me, like a man
Half asleep in a land that’s ...Read more of this...
by
Sassoon, Siegfried
...obs,
Melissa knelt; but Lady Blanche erect
Stood up and spake, an affluent orator.
'It was not thus, O Princess, in old days:
You prized my counsel, lived upon my lips:
I led you then to all the Castalies;
I fed you with the milk of every Muse;
I loved you like this kneeler, and you me
Your second mother: those were gracious times.
Then came your new friend: you began to change--
I saw it and grieved--to slacken and to cool;
Till taken with her seeming openness
Y...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...e lip and what brightens the eye,
What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie?
Oh, fruit loved of boyhood! the old days recalling,
When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling!
When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin,
Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!
When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts all in tune,
Our chair a broad pumpkin, -- our lantern the moon,
Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like steam
In a pumpkin-shell...Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...e great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield....Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Old Days poems.