Famous Resolve Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Memoriam A. H. H.: 44. How fares it with the happy dead?

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 How fares it with the happy dead?
For here the man is more and more;
But he forgets the days before
God shut the doorways of his head.
The days have vanish'd, tone and tint,
And yet perhaps the hoarding sense
Gives out at times (he knows not whence)
A little flash, a mystic hint;
And in the long harmonious years
(If Death so taste Lethean springs),
May some...Read more of this...

Sonnet IX: As Other Men

by Michael Drayton
 As other men, so I myself do muse 
Why in this sort I wrest invention so, 
And why these giddy metaphors I use, 
Leaving the path the greater part do go. 
I will resolve you: I am lunatic, 
And ever this in madmen you shall find, 
What they last thought of when the brain grew sick 
In most distraction...Read more of this...

Resolve

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Build on resolve, and not upon regret, 
The structure of thy future. Do not grope
Among the shadows of old sins, but let
Thine own soul’s light shine on the path of hope
And dissipate the darkness. Waste no tears
Upon the blotted record of lost years, 
But turn the leaf, and smile, oh! smile, to see
The fair white pages that remain for...Read more of this...

On Your Asking

by Omer Tarin
You asked me what it was all about, 
Why men and women dwelt so much 
On the slanting tangents 
Of come vague philosophy
And what I felt it was, and why
It was like this?

Sometimes, then, to answer your questions,
I dress my thoughts in brilliant costumes,
Beautiful, eloquent words, 
But to tell the truth
There is no way I can really say
Anything at all;

People...Read more of this...

Resolve

by Sylvia Plath
 Day of mist: day of tarnish

with hands
unserviceable, I wait
for the milk van

the one-eared cat
laps its gray paw

and the coal fire burns

outside, the little hedge leaves are
become quite yellow
a milk-film blurs
the empty bottles on the windowsill

no glory descends

two water drops poise
on the arched green
stem of my neighbor's rose bush

o bent bow of thorns

the cat unsheathes its claws
the world turns

today
today I...Read more of this...

Escape

by Robert William Service
 Tell me, Tramp, where I may go
To be free from human woe;
Say where I may hope to find
Ease of heart and peace of mind;
Is thee not some isle you know
Where I may leave Care behind?

So spoke one is sore distress,
And I answered softly: "Yes,
There's an isle so sweet and kind
So to clemency inclined,
So serene in loveliness
That the blind may...Read more of this...

Cows

by Robert William Service
 I love to watch my seven cows
In meads of buttercups abrowse,
 With guilded knees;
But even more I love to see
Them chew the cud so tranquilly
 In twilight ease.

Each is the image of content
From fragrant hours in clover spent,
 'Mid leaf and bud;
As up and down without a pause
Mechanically move their jaws
 To chew the cud.

Friend, there's a hope for...Read more of this...

On Love

by Bliss Carman
 TO the assembled folk 
At great St. Kavin’s spoke 
Young Brother Amiel on Christmas Eve; 
I give you joy, my friends, 
That as the round year ends, 
We meet once more for gladness by God’s leave. 

On other festal days 
For penitence or praise 
Or prayer we meet, or fullness of thanksgiving; 
To-night we calendar 
The rising of that...Read more of this...

Underwater Autumn

by Richard Hugo
 Now the summer perch flips twice and glides
a lateral fathom at the first cold rain,
the surface near to silver from a frosty hill.
Along the weed and grain of log he slides his tail.

Nervously the trout (his stream-toned heart
locked in the lake, his poise and nerve disgraced)
above the stirring catfish, curves in bluegill dreams
and curves beyond the sudden thrust of...Read more of this...

Epitaph in a Church-Yard in Charleston South Carolina

by Amy Lowell
 GEORGE AUGUSTUS CLOUGH
A NATIVE OF LIVERPOOL,
DIED SUDDENLY OF "STRANGER'S FEVER"
NOV'R 5th 1843
AGED 22

He died of "Stranger's Fever" when his youth
Had scarcely melted into manhood, so
The chiselled legend runs; a brother's woe
Laid bare for epitaph. The savage ruth
Of a sunny, bright, but alien land, uncouth
With cruel caressing dealt a mortal blow,
And by this summer sea where flowers grow
In tropic splendor,...Read more of this...

The Scribes Prayer

by Robert William Service
 When from my fumbling hand the tired pen falls,
And in the twilight weary droops my head;
While to my quiet heart a still voice calls,
Calls me to join my kindred of the Dead:
Grant that I may, O Lord, ere rest be mine,
Write to Thy praise one radiant, ringing line.

For all of worth that in this clay abides,
The leaping rapture and...Read more of this...

The Sightless Man

by Robert William Service
 Out of the night a crash,
A roar, a rampart of light;
A flame that leaped like a lash,
Searing forever my sight;
Out of the night a flash,
Then, oh, forever the Night!

Here in the dark I sit,
I who so loved the sun;
Supple and strong and fit,
In the dark till my days be done;
Aye, that's the hell of it,
Stalwart and twenty-one.

Marie is stanch...Read more of this...

To Oenone

by Robert Herrick
 WHAT conscience, say, is it in thee,
 When I a heart had one,
To take away that heart from me,
 And to retain thy own?

For shame or pity now incline
 To play a loving part;
Either to send me kindly thine,
 Or give me back my heart.

Covet not both; but if thou dost
 Resolve to part with neither,
Why, yet to show...Read more of this...

Memoir

by Carl Sandburg
 We look on the shoulders filling the stage of the Chicago Auditorium.

A fat mayor has spoken much English and the mud of his speech is crossed with quicksilver hisses elusive and rapid from floor and gallery.

A neat governor speaks English and the listeners ring chimes to his clear thoughts.

Joffre speaks a few words in French; this is a voice...Read more of this...

The Definition of Gardening

by James Tate
 Jim just loves to garden, yes he does. 
He likes nothing better than to put on 
his little overalls and his straw hat. 
He says, "Let's go get those tools, Jim." 
But then doubt begins to set in.
He says, "What is a garden, anyway?"
And thoughts about a "modernistic" garden
begin to trouble him, eat away at his resolve. 
He stands...Read more of this...

Hudsons Last Voyage

by Henry Van Dyke
 June 22, 1611 

THE SHALLOP ON HUDSON BAY 

One sail in sight upon the lonely sea
And only one, God knows! For never ship 
But mine broke through the icy gates that guard 
These waters, greater grown than any since
We left the shores of England. We were first, 
My men, to battle in between the bergs
And floes to these wide...Read more of this...

The World

by Katherine Philips
 Wee falsely think it due unto our friends,
That we should grieve for their too early ends:
He that surveys the world with serious eys,
And stripps Her from her grosse and weak disguise,
Shall find 'tis injury to mourn their fate;
He only dy's untimely who dy's Late.
For if 'twere told to children in the womb,
To what a stage of mischief they must...Read more of this...

Alphonso Of Castile

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 I Alphonso live and learn,
Seeing nature go astern.
Things deteriorate in kind,
Lemons run to leaves and rind,
Meagre crop of figs and limes,
Shorter days and harder times.
Flowering April cools and dies
In the insufficient skies;
Imps at high Midsummer blot
Half the sun's disk with a spot;
'Twill not now avail to tan
Orange cheek, or skin of man:
Roses bleach, the goats are dry,
Lisbon quakes, the...Read more of this...

On The Death Of A Fair Infant Dying Of A Cough

by John Milton
 I

O fairest flower no sooner blown but blasted,
Soft silken Primrose fading timelesslie,
Summers chief honour if thou hadst outlasted
Bleak winters force that made thy blossome drie;
For he being amorous on that lovely die
That did thy cheek envermeil, thought to kiss
But kill'd alas, and then bewayl'd his fatal bliss.

II

For since grim Aquilo his charioter
By boistrous rape th' Athenian damsel got,
He thought...Read more of this...

I Grant You Ample Leave

by George Eliot
 "I grant you ample leave 
To use the hoary formula 'I am' 
Naming the emptiness where thought is not; 
But fill the void with definition, 'I' 
Will be no more a datum than the words 
You link false inference with, the 'Since' & 'so' 
That, true or not, make up the atom-whirl. 
Resolve your 'Ego', it is all one...Read more of this...

In A Word

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 THUS to be chain'd for ever, can I bear?

A very torment that, in truth, would be.

This very day my new resolve shall see.--
I'll not go near the lately-worshipp'd Fair.

Yet what excuse, my heart, can I prepare

In such a case, for not consulting thee?

But courage! while our sorrows utter we
In tones where love, grief, gladness have a share.

But see! the...Read more of this...

The Ideal And The Actual Life

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Forever fair, forever calm and bright,
Life flies on plumage, zephyr-light,
For those who on the Olympian hill rejoice--
Moons wane, and races wither to the tomb,
And 'mid the universal ruin, bloom
The rosy days of Gods--With man, the choice,
Timid and anxious, hesitates between
The sense's pleasure and the soul's content;
While on celestial brows, aloft and sheen,
The beams of both are blent.

Seekest thou on...Read more of this...

Poems to Mulgrave and Scroope

by John Wilmot
 Deare Friend. 

I heare this Towne does soe abound, 
With sawcy Censurers, that faults are found, 
With what of late wee (in Poetique Rage) 
Bestowing, threw away on the dull Age; 
But (howsoe're Envy, their Spleen may raise, 
To Robb my Brow, of the deserved Bays) 
Their thanks at least I merit since through me, 
They are Partakers of...Read more of this...

Lincoln The Man Of The People

by Edwin Markham
 WHEN the Norn Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour 
Greatening and darkening as it hurried on, 
She left the Heaven of Heroes and came down 
To make a man to meet the mortal need. 
She took the tried clay of the common road-- 
Clay warm yet with the genial heat of earth, 
Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy;...Read more of this...

New Years Morning

by Helen Hunt Jackson
 Only a night from old to new! 
Only a night, and so much wrought! 
The Old Year's heart all weary grew, 
But said: The New Year rest has brought." 
The Old Year's hopes its heart laid down, 
As in a grave; but trusting, said: 
"The blossoms of the New Year's crown 
Bloom from the ashes of the dead." 
The...Read more of this...

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