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Famous Optimist Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...waste of Time 
On the world's fairest hope linked with man's foulest crime. 

Nature's dark side is heeded now-- 
(Ah! optimist-cheer dishartened flown)-- 
A child may read the moody brow 
Of yon black mountain lone. 
With shouts the torrents down the gorges go, 
And storms are formed behind the storms we feel: 
The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel....Read more of this...
by Melville, Herman



...Kill off mankind,
And give the Earth a chance!
Nature might find
In her inheritance
The seedlings of a race
Less infinitely base....Read more of this...
by Crowley, Aleister
...This one sits shivering in Fortune’s smile,
Taking his joy with bated, doubtful breath.
This other, gnawed by hunger, all the while
Laughs in the teeth of Death....Read more of this...
by Aldrich, Thomas Bailey
...ords
were a rebellion
I was a friend to earthquakes.

On the day when my words
were bitter apples
I was a friend to the optimist.

But when my words became
honey...
flies covered
my lips!......Read more of this...
by Darwish, Mahmoud
...success,
But took it for an emblem of
Their sudden, new and guilty love
To be observed by, when they kissed,
That rigid optimist.

So he became their patriarch,
Dreadfully mild in the half-dark.
His throat that the sand seemed to choke,
His picket teeth, these left their mark
But never did explain the joke
That so amused him, lying there
While the moon went down to disappear
Along the still and tilted track
That bears the zodiac....Read more of this...
by Nemerov, Howard



...xt River and Track 
Where my lovable characters roam. 

There are lovable characters drag through the scrub, 
Where the Optimist ever prevails; 
There are lovable characters hang round the pub, 
There are lovable jokers at sales 
Where the auctioneer's one of the lovable wags 
(Maybe from his "order" estranged), 
And the beer is on tap, and the pigs in the bags 
Of the purchasing cockies are changed. 

There were lovable characters out in the West, 
Of fifty hot summers, or m...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry
...es your smile so gay and glad?
What opportunity unmissed?
 What golden gain, what pride of place?
What splendid hope? O Optimist!
 What read you in that withered face?

And You, deep shrinking in the gloom,
 What find you in that filmy gaze?
What menace of a tragic doom?
 What dark, condemning yesterdays?
What urge to crime, what evil done?
 What cold, confronting shape of fear?
O haggard, haunted, hidden One
 What see you in the dying year?

And so from face to face I flit,
...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry