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Famous Permanence Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Dickinson, Emily
...owing as they flit
Eternally belong.

How everlasting are the Lips
Known only to the Dew --
These are the Brides of permanence
Supplanting me and you....Read more of this...



by Bogan, Louise
...She has attained the permanence 
She dreamed of, where old stones lie sunning. 
Untended stalks blow over her 
Even and swift, like young men running. 

Always in the heart she loved 
Others had lived, -- she heard their laughter. 
She lies where none has lain before, 
Where certainly none will follow after....Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled ...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ng,
Having hoped for the wrong things or dreaded the wrong things,
Is not in question) are likewise permanent
With such permanence as time has. We appreciate this better
In the agony of others, nearly experienced,
Involving ourselves, than in our own.
For our own past is covered by the currents of action,
But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides.
Time the destroy...Read more of this...

by Kinnell, Galway
...cling to me
hard,
as if clinging could save us. I think
you think
I will never die, I think I exude
to you the permanence of smoke or stars,
even as
my broken arms heal themselves around you.

2

I have heard you tell
the sun, don't go down, I have stood by
as you told the flower, don't grow old,
don't die. Little Maud,

I would blow the flame out of your silver cup,
I would suck the rot from your fingernail,
I would brush your sprouting hair of ...Read more of this...



by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...nd bind,
Of a celestial Ceres, and the Muse?

Ages are thy days,
Thou grand expressor of the present tense,
And type of permanence,
Firm ensign of the fatal Being,
Amid these coward shapes of joy and grief
That will not bide the seeing.
Hither we bring
Our insect miseries to the rocks,
And the whole flight with pestering wing
Vanish and end their murmuring,
Vanish beside these dedicated blocks,
Which, who can tell what mason laid?
Spoils of a front none need restore,
Repl...Read more of this...

by Khayyam, Omar
...O Cupbearer! since time is here, ready to break down
you and me, this world for neither you nor me can be a
place of permanence. But, equally, be well convinced
that while this jug of wine is here 'twixt you and me,
our God is in our hands.
292...Read more of this...

by Scott, Duncan Campbell
...Set within a desert lone,
Circled by an arid sea,
Stands a figure carved in stone,
Where a fountain used to be.

Two abraded, pleading hands
Held below a shapeless mouth,
Human-like the fragment stands,
Tortured by perpetual drouth.

Once the form was drenched with spray,
Deluged with the rainbow flushes;
Surplus water dashed away
To the lotus and ...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...k to you because they are worthless.
Yet we are such creatures of habit that their
Implications are still around en permanence, confusing
Issues. To be serious only about sex
Is perhaps one way, but the sands are hissing
As they approach the beginning of the big slide
Into what happened. This past
Is now here: the painter's
Reflected face, in which we linger, receiving
Dreams and inspirations on an unassigned
Frequency, but the hues have turned metallic,
The curve...Read more of this...

by Nicolson, Adela Florence Cory
...if I carried you home with me, where our Golden Temple stands?
   Yet, this were folly indeed; to bind, in fetters of permanence,
   A passing dream whose enchantment charms because of its trancience.

   Life is ever a slave to Time; we have but an hour to rest,
   Her steam is up and her lighters leave, the vessel that takes me west;
   And never again we two shall meet, as we chance to meet to-night,
   On the Junk, whose painted eyes gaze forth, in desolate want o...Read more of this...

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