Famous Overmuch Poems by Famous Poets

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

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All That Love Asks

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 All that I ask, 'says Love, 'is just to stand
And gaze, unchided, deep in thy dear eyes;
For in their depths lies largest Paradise.
Yet, if perchance one pressure of thy hand
Be granted me, then joy I thought complete
Were still more sweet.

'All that I ask, ' says Love, 'all that I ask,
Is just thy hand clasp. Could I brush thy cheek
As...Read more of this...

The Second Voyage

by Rudyard Kipling
 We've sent our little Cupids all ashore --
 They were frightened, they were tired, they were cold:
Our sails of silk and purple go to store,
 And we've cut away our mast of beaten gold
  (Foul weather!)
Oh 'tis hemp and singing pine for to stand against the brine,
 But Love he is our master as of old!

The sea has...Read more of this...

To Be In Love

by Gwendolyn Brooks
 To be in love 
Is to touch with a lighter hand. 
In yourself you stretch, you are well. 
You look at things 
Through his eyes. 
A cardinal is red. 
A sky is blue. 
Suddenly you know he knows too. 
He is not there but 
You know you are tasting together 
The winter, or a light spring weather. 
His hand...Read more of this...

Strong Mercy

by Rabindranath Tagore
 My desires are many and my cry is pitiful, 
but ever didst thou save me by hard refusals; 
and this strong mercy has been wrought into my life through and through. 

Day by day thou art making me worthy of the simple, 
great gifts that thou gavest to me unasked---this sky and the light, this body and the 
life...Read more of this...

Insensibility

by Wilfred Owen
 I

Happy are men who yet before they are killed
Can let their veins run cold.
Whom no compassion fleers
Or makes their feet
Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
The front line withers,
But they are troops who fade, not flowers
For poets' tearful fooling:
Men, gaps for filling
Losses who might have fought
Longer; but no one bothers.


 II

And some cease feeling
Even themselves or for themselves.
Dullness...Read more of this...

The Deserted Garden

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I MIND me in the days departed, 
How often underneath the sun 
With childish bounds I used to run 
To a garden long deserted. 

The beds and walks were vanish'd quite; 5 
And wheresoe'er had struck the spade, 
The greenest grasses Nature laid, 
To sanctify her right. 

I call'd the place my wilderness, 
For no one enter'd there but I....Read more of this...

Milton's Appeal To Cromwell

by Victor Hugo
 ("Non! je n'y puis tenir.") 
 
 {CROMWELL, Act III. sc. iv.} 


 Stay! I no longer can contain myself, 
 But cry you: Look on John, who bares his mind 
 To Oliver—to Cromwell, Milton speaks! 
 Despite a kindling eye and marvel deep 
 A voice is lifted up without your leave; 
 For I was never...Read more of this...

To Be In Love

by Gwendolyn Brooks
 To be in love 
Is to touch with a lighter hand. 
In yourself you stretch, you are well. 
You look at things 
Through his eyes. 
A cardinal is red. 
A sky is blue. 
Suddenly you know he knows too. 
He is not there but 
You know you are tasting together 
The winter, or a light spring weather. 
His hand...Read more of this...

He Never Expected Much

by Thomas Hardy
 Well, World, you have kept faith with me, 
Kept faith with me; 
Upon the whole you have proved to be 
Much as you said you were. 
Since as a child I used to lie 
Upon the leaze and watch the sky, 
Never, I own, expected I 
That life would all be fair. 

'Twas then you said, and since have...Read more of this...

In the depth of our love dwells all faith

by Emile Verhaeren
In the depth of our love dwells all faith; we bind up a glowing thought together with the least things: the awakening of a bud, the decline of a rose, the flight of a frail and beautiful bird that, by turns, appears or disappears in the shadow or the light.
A nest falling to pieces on the mossy edge of a...Read more of this...

God-Forgotten

by Thomas Hardy
 I towered far, and lo! I stood within 
 The presence of the Lord Most High, 
Sent thither by the sons of earth, to win 
 Some answer to their cry. 

 --"The Earth, say'st thou? The Human race? 
 By Me created? Sad its lot? 
Nay: I have no remembrance of such place: 
 Such world I fashioned...Read more of this...

Nero's Incendiary Song

by Victor Hugo
 ("Amis! ennui nous tue.") 
 
 {Bk. IV. xv., March, 1825.} 


 Aweary unto death, my friends, a mood by wise abhorred, 
 Come to the novel feast I spread, thrice-consul, Nero, lord, 
 The Caesar, master of the world, and eke of harmony, 
 Who plays the harp of many strings, a chief of minstrelsy. 
 
 My...Read more of this...

A Prayer For My Daughter

by William Butler Yeats
 Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind.
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for...Read more of this...

A Clasp Of Hands

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 SOFT, small, and sweet as sunniest flowers
That bask in heavenly heat
When bud by bud breaks, breathes, and cowers,
Soft, small, and sweet.

A babe's hands open as to greet
The tender touch of ours
And mock with motion faint and fleet

The minutes of the new strange hours
That earth, not heaven, must mete;
Buds fragrant still from heaven's own bowers,
Soft, small, and sweet.

A velvet vice...Read more of this...

The Auction Sale

by Robert William Service
 Her little head just topped the window-sill;
She even mounted on a stool, maybe;
She pressed against the pane, as children will,
And watched us playing, oh so wistfully!
And then I missed her for a month or more,
And idly thought: "She's gone away, no doubt,"
Until a hearse drew up beside the door . . .
I saw a tiny coffin carried out.

And after...Read more of this...

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