Famous Ripened Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Champagne 1914-15

by Alan Seeger
 In the glad revels, in the happy fetes, 
When cheeks are flushed, and glasses gilt and pearled 
With the sweet wine of France that concentrates 
The sunshine and the beauty of the world, 

Drink sometimes, you whose footsteps yet may tread 
The undisturbed, delightful paths of Earth, 
To those whose blood, in pious duty shed, 
Hallows the soil where...Read more of this...

On the Religious Memory of Mrs. Catherine Thomson my Christian Friend Deceased Dec. 16 1646

by John Milton
 When Faith and Love, which parted from thee never, 
Had ripened thy just soul to dwell with God, 
Meekly thou didst resign this earthly load 
Of death, called life, which us from life doth sever. 
Thy works, and alms, and all thy good endeavour, 
Stayed not behind, nor in the grave were trod; 
But, as Faith pointed with her...Read more of this...

The Fire At Rosss Farm

by Henry Lawson
 The squatter saw his pastures wide 
Decrease, as one by one 
The farmers moving to the west 
Selected on his run; 
Selectors took the water up 
And all the black soil round; 
The best grass-land the squatter had 
Was spoilt by Ross's Ground. 

Now many schemes to shift old Ross 
Had racked the squatter's brains, 
But Sandy had the...Read more of this...

Hiawathas Fasting

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 You shall hear how Hiawatha 
Prayed and fasted in the forest, 
Not for greater skill in hunting, 
Not for greater craft in fishing, 
Not for triumphs in the battle, 
And renown among the warriors, 
But for profit of the people, 
For advantage of the nations.
First he built a lodge for fasting, 
Built a wigwam in the forest, 
By the...Read more of this...

Parting from Abbot Zan

by Du Fu
 Hundred river daily east flow Traveller go again not rest My life bitter float drift What time have end limit Zan abbot Buddhism old Banish come capital Still by earth dust bother Fairly show emaciated appearance Willow twig morning in hand Bean fruit rain thereafter ripe This body like float cloud What can boundary south north Different...Read more of this...

Comrades

by Robert William Service
 Oh bear with me, for I am old
And count on fingers five
The years this pencil I may hold
And hope to be alive;
How sadly soon our dreaming ends!
How brief the sunset glow!
Be kindly to the old, my friends:
You'll miss them when they go. 

I've seen so many disappear
That I can scarce forget,
For death has made them doubly dear
And ripened my...Read more of this...

To Thyrza: And Thou Art Dead

by George (Lord) Byron
 And thou art dead, as young and fair
As aught of mortal birth;
And form so soft and charm so rare
Too soon returned to Earth!
Though Earth received them in her bed,
And o'er the spot the crowd may tread
In carelessness or mirth,
There is an eye which could not brook
A moment on that grave to look.

I will not ask where thou liest low,
Nor...Read more of this...

The Old

by Robert William Service
 Oh bear with me, for I am old
And count on fingers five
The years this pencil I may hold
And hope to be alive;
How sadly soon our dreaming ends!
How brief the sunset glow!
Be kindly to the old, my friends:
You'll miss them when they go. 

I've seen so many disappear
That I can scarce forget,
For death has made them doubly dear
And ripened my...Read more of this...

Ode To Silence

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Aye, but she?
Your other sister and my other soul
Grave Silence, lovelier
Than the three loveliest maidens, what of her?
Clio, not you,
Not you, Calliope,
Nor all your wanton line,
Not Beauty's perfect self shall comfort me
For Silence once departed,
For her the cool-tongued, her the tranquil-hearted,
Whom evermore I follow wistfully,
Wandering Heaven and Earth and Hell and the four seasons through;
Thalia, not you,
Not you, Melpomene,
Not...Read more of this...

On Carpaccios Picture: The Dream of St. Ursula

by Amy Lowell
 Swept, clean, and still, across the polished floor
From some unshuttered casement, hid from sight,
The level sunshine slants, its greater light
Quenching the little lamp which pallid, poor,
Flickering, unreplenished, at the door
Has striven against darkness the long night.
Dawn fills the room, and penetrating, bright,
The silent sunbeams through the window pour.
And she lies sleeping, ignorant of Fate,
Enmeshed in listless dreams, her soul...Read more of this...

Song of the Son

by Jean Toomer
 Pour O pour that parting soul in song
O pour it in the sawdust glow of night
Into the velvet pine-smoke air tonight,
And let the valley carry it along.
And let the valley carry it along.
O land and soil, red soil and sweet-gum tree,
So scant of grass, so proligate of pines,
Now hust before an epoch's sun declines
Thy son, in time, I have...Read more of this...

The Teachers Monologue

by Charlotte Bronte
 The room is quiet, thoughts alone 
People its mute tranquillity; 
The yoke put on, the long task done,­ 
I am, as it is bliss to be, 
Still and untroubled. Now, I see, 
For the first time, how soft the day 
O'er waveless water, stirless tree, 
Silent and sunny, wings its way. 
Now, as I watch that distant hill, 
So...Read more of this...

The Broken Balance

by Robinson Jeffers
 I. Reference to a Passage in Plutarch's Life of Sulla

The people buying and selling, consuming pleasures, talking in the archways,
Were all suddenly struck quiet
And ran from under stone to look up at the sky: so shrill and mournful,
So fierce and final, a brazen
Pealing of trumpets high up in the air, in the summer blue over Tuscany.
They marvelled; the soothsayers...Read more of this...

Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep

by Mary Elizabeth Frye
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine...Read more of this...

Greek Love-Talk

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 What I have already learned as a lover,
I see you, beloved, learning angrily;
then for you it distantly departed,
now your destiny stands in all the stars.

Over your breasts we will together contend:
since as glowingly shining they've ripened,
so also your hands desire to touch them
and their own pleasure superintend....Read more of this...

Two Lyrics From Kilroys Carnival: A Masque

by Delmore Schwartz
 I Aria

"--Kiss me there where pride is glittering
Kiss me where I am ripened and round fruit
Kiss me wherever, however, I am supple, bare and flare
(Let the bell be rung as long as I am young:
 let ring and fly like a great bronze wing!)

"--I'll kiss you wherever you think you are poor, 
Wherever you shudder, feeling striped or barred,...Read more of this...

he and the hilltown

by Rg Gregory
 when they look into his mind they find a hill town
somewhat surprised they go off to their learned books
outside (architecturally) he’d seems a little wind-blown
not special – a common sort of shackman by his looks
not the sure kind to want the sun to get its hooks
into his self-containment (his bunched-up notions)
thoughts crammed like the heads of ripened corn in...Read more of this...

Delicatessen

by Joyce Kilmer
 Why is that wanton gossip Fame
So dumb about this man's affairs?
Why do we titter at his name
Who come to buy his curious wares?
Here is a shop of wonderment.
From every land has come a prize;
Rich spices from the Orient,
And fruit that knew Italian skies,
And figs that ripened by the sea
In Smyrna, nuts from hot Brazil,
Strange pungent meats from Germany,
And currants...Read more of this...

Part Of Speech

by Joseph Brodsky
 ...and when "the future" is uttered, swarms of mice
rush out of the Russian language and gnaw a piece
of ripened memory which is twice 
as hole-ridden as real cheese.
After all these years it hardly matters who
or what stands in the corner, hidden by heavy drapes,
and your mind resounds not with a seraphic "doh",
only their rustle. Life, that no one dares
to...Read more of this...

The Apple Orchard

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Come let us watch the sun go down
and walk in twilight through the orchard's green.
Does it not seem as if we had for long
collected, saved and harbored within us
old memories? To find releases and seek
new hopes, remembering half-forgotten joys,
mingled with darkness coming from within,
as we randomly voice our thoughts aloud
wandering beneath these harvest-laden trees
reminiscent of Durer woodcuts, branches
which, bent...Read more of this...

Voices Of the Night

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 PRELUDE.

Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene,
Where, the long drooping boughs between
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
Alternate come and go;

Or where the denser grove receives
No sunlight from above
But the dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
The shadows hardly move.

Beneath some patriarchal tree
I lay upon the ground;
His...Read more of this...

Prelude

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene.
Where, the long drooping boughs between,
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
Alternate come and go;

Or where the denser grove receives
No sunlight from above,
But the dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
The shadows hardly move.

Beneath some patriarchal tree
I lay upon the ground;
His...Read more of this...

On A Picture Of A Black Centaur By Edmund Dulac

by William Butler Yeats
 Your hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood,
Even where horrible green parrots call and swing.
My works are all stamped down into the sultry mud.
I knew that horse-play, knew it for a murderous thing.
What wholesome sun has ripened is wholesome food to eat,
And that alone; yet I, being driven half insane
Because of some green wing, gathered old...Read more of this...

Summer

by John Clare
 Remember the days of our first happiness,
how strong we were, how dazed by passion,
lying all day, then all night in the narrow bed,
sleeping there, eating there too: it was summer,
it seemed everything had ripened
at once. And so hot we lay completely uncovered.
Sometimes the wind rose; a willow brushed the window.

But we were lost in a way, didn't you feel...Read more of this...

The Unconquered Dead

by John McCrae
 ". . . defeated, with great loss."



Not we the conquered! Not to us the blame
Of them that flee, of them that basely yield;
Nor ours the shout of victory, the fame
Of them that vanquish in a stricken field.

That day of battle in the dusty heat
We lay and heard the bullets swish and sing
Like scythes amid the over-ripened wheat,
And we the...Read more of this...

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