Famous Resolutions Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Ah Poverties Wincings and Sulky Retreats

by Walt Whitman
 AH poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats! 
Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me! 
(For what is my life, or any man’s life, but a conflict with foes—the old, the
 incessant
 war?) 
You degradations—you tussle with passions and appetites; 
You smarts from dissatisfied friendships, (ah wounds, the sharpest of all;)
You toil of painful and choked articulations—you meannesses; 
You...Read more of this...

The Sick Stockrider

by Adam Lindsay Gordon
 Hold hard, Ned! Lift me down once more, and lay me in the shade. 
Old man, you've had your work cut out to guide 
Both horses, and to hold me in the saddle when I swayed, 
All through the hot, slow, sleepy, silent ride. 
The dawn at "Moorabinda" was a mist rack dull and dense, 
The sun-rise was a...Read more of this...

Love Is Not All

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; 
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink 
And rise and sink and rise and sink again; 
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, 
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; 
Yet many a man is making...Read more of this...

Understanding

by Constantine P Cavafy
 The years of my youth, my sensual life --
how clearly I see their meaning now.

What needless repentances, how futile....

But I did not understand the meaning then.

In the dissolute life of my youth
the desires of my poetry were being formed,
the scope of my art was being plotted.

This is why my repentances were never stable.
And my resolutions to control myself, to...Read more of this...

Resolutions

by John Matthew
 Resolutions I have made,
Kept, I have none,
Why do I have to make,
Resolutions anymore?

I pause through endless time,
For this year to pass,
And the lights of celebration to die,
On this New Year day.

Remember those magical days,
When the promise of togetherness, 
Held us together, tentatively,
Alas! No more!

Years just flow by,
As water beneath bridges,
Gathering speed towards,
The great sea of immortality.

There you and I,
Will...Read more of this...

Resolutions

by Robert William Service
 Each New Year's Eve I used to brood
On my misdoings of the past,
And vowed: "This year I'll be so good -
Well, haply better than the last."
My record of reforms I read
To Mum who listened sweetly to it:
"Why plan all this, my son?" she said;
 "Just do it."

Of her wise words I've often thought -
Aye, sometimes with a pang of...Read more of this...

from imperfect Eden

by Rg Gregory
 (1)
and off to scott's (the dockers' restaurant)
burly men packed in round solid tables
but what the helle (drowned in hellespont)
this place for me was rich in its own fables
i'll be the lover sunk if that enables
an awesome sense of just how deep the spells
that put scotts for me beyond the dardanelles

lace-curtained windows (or memory plays me false)
no capped odysseus could...Read more of this...

The Man Who Raised Charlestown

by Henry Lawson
 They were hanging men in Buckland who would not cheer King George – 
The parson from his pulpit and the blacksmith from his forge; 
They were hanging men and brothers, and the stoutest heart was down, 
When a quiet man from Buckland rode at dusk to raise Charlestown. 

Not a young man in his glory filled with patriotic fire,...Read more of this...

Hymn

by Sidney Godolphin
 I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth
and go on out
 over the sea marshes and the brant in bays
and over the hills of tall hickory
and over the crater lakes and canyons
and on up through the spheres of diminishing air
past the blackset noctilucent clouds
 where one wants to stop and look
way past all the...Read more of this...

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