Famous Perpetual Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Perpetual poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous perpetual poems. These examples illustrate what a famous perpetual poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...rs and their
children.
That is why he came to this dry place where the bones have come
to life.
To live in a state of perpetual war puts a tremendous burden on the
population. As a visitor he felt he had to share that burden.
With his gift for codes and ciphers, he joined the counter-
terrorism unit of army intelligence.
Contrary to what the spook novels say, he found it possible to
avoid betraying either his country or his lover.
This was the life: strange bedrooms, the...Read more of this...
by
Lehman, David
...s heart;
To pity, to forgive, to save,
Witness En-gedi's conscious cave,
And Shimei's blunted dart.
IX
Clean—if perpetual prayer be pure,
And love, which could itself inure
To fasting and to fear—
Clean in his gestures, hands, and feet,
To smite the lyre, the dance complete,
To play the sword and spear.
X
Sublime—invention ever young,
Of vast conception, tow'ring tongue,
To God th'eternal theme;
Notes from yon exaltations caught,
Unrival'd royalty of t...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...nowers;
There will shortly be no more priests—I say their work is done,
Death is without emergencies here, but life is perpetual emergencies here,
Are your body, days, manners, superb? after death you shall be superb;
Justice, health, self-esteem, clear the way with irresistible power;
How dare you place anything before a man?
14
Fall behind me, States!
A man before all—myself, typical before all.
Give me the pay I have served for!
Give me to sing the song of the gre...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...at Grendel struggled
a long while against Hrothgar, wearing malicious hatred,
felony and feud for many long years,
a perpetual strife—he wished for no accord
with any man among the host of the Danes,
to turn aside the soul-slaying or settle it with payment,
nor need any of the counselors expect
to receive bright gifts from the hands of a killer. (ll. 144-58)
Yet the monster was persecuting young and old,
the dark shadow of death, lurking and entrapping them.
In en...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...light;
For the soothsayers old saw yesternight
Good visions in the air,--whence will befal,
As say these sages, health perpetual
To shepherds and their flocks; and furthermore,
In Dian's face they read the gentle lore:
Therefore for her these vesper-carols are.
Our friends will all be there from nigh and far.
Many upon thy death have ditties made;
And many, even now, their foreheads shade
With cypress, on a day of sacrifice.
New singing for our maids shalt thou devise,
And p...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...t gardens,
Stood the houses of planters, with *****-cabins and dove-cots.
They were approaching the region where reigns perpetual summer,
Where through the Golden Coast, and groves of orange and citron,
Sweeps with majestic curve the river away to the eastward.
They, too, swerved from their course; and, entering the Bayou of Plaquemine,
Soon were lost in a maze of sluggish and devious waters,
Which, like a network of steel, extended in every direction.
Over their heads the to...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...ht we know,
But burdened with an ocean-weight of woe
The darkness closed us.
Sighs, and wailings loud,
Outcries perpetual of recruited pain,
Sounds of strange tongues, and angers that remain
Vengeless for ever, the thick and clamorous crowd
Of discords pressed, that needs I wept to hear,
First hearing. There, with reach of hands anear,
And voices passion-hoarse, or shrilled with fright,
The tumult of the everlasting night,
As sand that dances in continua...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...be, we are at worst
On this side nothing; and by proof we feel
Our power sufficient to disturb his Heaven,
And with perpetual inroads to alarm,
Though inaccessible, his fatal throne:
Which, if not victory, is yet revenge."
He ended frowning, and his look denounced
Desperate revenge, and battle dangerous
To less than gods. On th' other side up rose
Belial, in act more graceful and humane.
A fairer person lost not Heaven; he seemed
For dignity composed, and high ex...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...rother, first were known.
Far be it, that I should write thee sin or blame,
Or think thee unbefitting holiest place,
Perpetual fountain of domestick sweets,
Whose bed is undefiled and chaste pronounced,
Present, or past, as saints and patriarchs used.
Here Love his golden shafts employs, here lights
His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings,
Reigns here and revels; not in the bought smile
Of harlots, loveless, joyless, unendeared,
Casual fruition; nor in court-a...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...who out of darkness called up light.
Air, and ye Elements, the eldest birth
Of Nature's womb, that in quaternion run
Perpetual circle, multiform; and mix
And nourish all things; let your ceaseless change
Vary to our great Maker still new praise.
Ye Mists and Exhalations, that now rise
From hill or steaming lake, dusky or gray,
Till the sun paint your fleecy skirts with gold,
In honour to the world's great Author rise;
Whether to deck with clouds the uncoloured sky, ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...d the Virgin, and the Scales,
As deep as Capricorn; to bring in change
Of seasons to each clime; else had the spring
Perpetual smiled on earth with vernant flowers,
Equal in days and nights, except to those
Beyond the polar circles; to them day
Had unbenighted shone, while the low sun,
To recompense his distance, in their sight
Had rounded still the horizon, and not known
Or east or west; which had forbid the snow
From cold Estotiland, and south as far
Beneath Mage...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...bad I say of myself, I say of them.
And I know I am solid and sound;
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow;
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.
I know I am deathless;
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by the carpenter’s compass;
I know I shall not pass like a child’s carlacue cut with a burnt stick at
night.
I know I am august;
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood;
I ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...loping in the desert, without a sensation approaching to rapture, which was indescribable.
(39) "Jannat al Aden," the perpetual abode, the Mussulman paradise.
(40) A turban is carved in stone above the graves of men only.
(41) The death-song of the Turkish women. The "silent slaves" are the men, whose notions of decorum forbid complain in public.
(42) "I came to the place of my birth, and cried, 'The friends of my youth, where are they?' and an Echo answered, 'Where a...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
... As if because her tale was at an end She wept;—because she had no more to say Of that perpetual weight which on her spirit lay....Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...love,
My strength, my pride, my grace, my skill untaught,
My faith here upon earth, my hope above,
My contemplation and perpetual thought:
The pleasure of my fancy, my heart's fire,
My joy, my peace, my praise, my happy theme,
The aim of all my doing, my desire
Of being, my life by day, by night my dream:
Love, my sweet melancholy, my distress,
My pain, my doubt, my trouble, my despair,
My only folly and unhappiness,
And in my careless moments still my care:
O love, sweet lo...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...uction,
Would have caused quite a thrill in Society),
"As to temper the Jubjub's a desperate bird,
Since it lives in perpetual passion:
Its taste in costume is entirely absurd--
It is ages ahead of the fashion:
"But it knows any friend it has met once before:
It never will look at a bride:
And in charity-meetings it stands at the door,
And collects--though it does not subscribe.
"Its flavour when cooked is more exquisite far
Than mutton, or oysters, or eggs:
(Some th...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...rn,
And have them carried soft unto the tent
Of Theseus, and he full soon them sent
To Athens, for to dwellen in prison
Perpetually, he *n'olde no ranson*. *would take no ransom*
And when this worthy Duke had thus y-done,
He took his host, and home he rit anon
With laurel crowned as a conquerour;
And there he lived in joy and in honour
Term of his life; what needeth wordes mo'?
And in a tower, in anguish and in woe,
Dwellen this Palamon, and eke Arcite,
For evermore, there ma...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ny."--
"Whence camest thou & whither goest thou?
How did thy course begin," I said, "& why?
"Mine eyes are sick of this perpetual flow
Of people, & my heart of one sad thought.--
Speak."--"Whence I came, partly I seem to know,
"And how & by what paths I have been brought
To this dread pass, methinks even thou mayst guess;
Why this should be my mind can compass not;
"Whither the conqueror hurries me still less.
But follow thou, & from spectator turn
Actor or victim in this wre...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...t enter me, cold, alien, like an instrument.
And that mad, hard face at the end of it, that O-mouth
Open in its gape of perpetual grieving.
It is she that drags the blood-black sea around
Month after month, with its voices of failure.
I am helpless as the sea at the end of her string.
I am restless. Restless and useless. I, too, create corpses.
I shall move north. I shall move into a long blackness.
I see myself as a shadow, neither man nor woman,
Neither a woman, happy to b...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...not nothing,
The infected in the immigrant hospital are not nothing—the murderer or mean person is
not
nothing,
The perpetual successions of shallow people are not nothing as they go,
The lowest prostitute is not nothing—the mocker of religion is not nothing as he
goes.
9
Of and in all these things,
I have dream’d that we are not to be changed so much, nor the law of us changed,
I have dream’d that heroes and good-doers shall be under the present and past law,
And t...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
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