Famous Short Age Poems
Famous Short Age Poems. Short Age Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Age short poems
by
Nikki Giovanni
Some people forget that love is
tucking you in and kissing you
"Good night"
no matter how young or old you are
Some people don't remember that
love is
listening and laughing and asking
questions
no matter what your age
Few recognize that love is
commitment, responsibility
no fun at all
unless
Love is
You and me
by
Dorothy Parker
Roses, rooted warm in earth,
Bud in rhyme, another age;
Lilies know a ghostly birth
Strewn along a patterned page;
Golden lad and chimbley sweep
Die; and so their song shall keep.
Wind that in Arcadia starts
In and out a couplet plays;
And the drums of bitter hearts
Beat the measure of a phrase.
Sweets and woes but come to print
Quae cum ita sint.
by
Henry David Thoreau
Here lies the body of this world,
Whose soul alas to hell is hurled.
This golden youth long since was past,
Its silver manhood went as fast,
An iron age drew on at last;
'Tis vain its character to tell,
The several fates which it befell,
What year it died, when 'twill arise,
We only know that here it lies.
by
Ogden Nash
Senescence begins
And middle age ends
The day your descendents
Outnumber your friends.
by
William Butler Yeats
God guard me from those thoughts men think
In the mind alone;
He that sings a lasting song
Thinks in a marrow-bone;
From all that makes a wise old man
That can be praised of all;
O what am I that I should not seem
For the song's sake a fool?
I pray -- for word is out
And prayer comes round again --
That I may seem, though I die old,
A foolish, passionate man.
by
Walt Whitman
I SEE in you the estuary that enlarges and spreads itself grandly as it pours in the great
Sea.
by
Li Po
To wash and rinse our souls of their age-old sorrows,
We drained a hundred jugs of wine.
A splendid night it was .
.
.
.
In the clear moonlight we were loath to go to bed,
But at last drunkenness overtook us;
And we laid ourselves down on the empty mountain,
The earth for pillow, and the great heaven for coverlet.
by
Walt Whitman
HOW they are provided for upon the earth, (appearing at intervals;)
How dear and dreadful they are to the earth;
How they inure to themselves as much as to any—What a paradox appears their age;
How people respond to them, yet know them not;
How there is something relentless in their fate, all times;
How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and reward,
And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same great purchase.
by
Adrian Green
There are no lies
in the morning
no cheating of age
an illusion of eye
smoothing skin over bone.
No portrait hidden away
becoming skeletal
and demanding release.
Another day to face,
my confessor, so laugh
at this charting of years.
by
Adelaide Crapsey
But me
They cannot touch,
Old Age and death…the strange
And ignominious end of old
Dead folk!
by
Wang Wei
My heart in middle age found the Way.
And I came to dwell at the foot of this mountain.
When the spirit moves, I wander alone
Amid beauty that is all for me.
.
.
.
I will walk till the water checks my path,
Then sit and watch the rising clouds --
And some day meet an old wood-cutter
And talk and laugh and never return.
by
Friedrich von Schiller
We speak with the lip, and we dream in the soul,
Of some better and fairer day;
And our days, the meanwhile, to that golden goal
Are gliding and sliding away.
Now the world becomes old, now again it is young,
But "The better" 's forever the word on the tongue.
At the threshold of life hope leads us in--
Hope plays round the mirthful boy;
Though the best of its charms may with youth begin,
Yet for age it reserves its toy.
by
Constantine P Cavafy
He's an old man.
Used up and bent,
crippled by time and indulgence,
he slowly walks along the narrow street.
But when he goes inside his house to hide
the shambles of his old age, his mind turns
to the share in youth that still belongs to him.
His verse is now recited by young men.
His visions come before their lively eyes.
Their healthy sensual minds,
their shapely taut bodies
stir to his perception of the beautiful.
Trans.
by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard
by
Charles Bukowski
sway with me, everything sad --
madmen in stone houses
without doors,
lepers steaming love and song
frogs trying to figure
the sky;
sway with me, sad things --
fingers split on a forge
old age like breakfast shell
used books, used people
used flowers, used love
I need you
I need you
I need you:
it has run away
like a horse or a dog,
dead or lost
or unforgiving.
by
Sir Walter Raleigh
Even such is time, which takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust,
Who in the dark and silent grave
When we have wandered all our ways
Shuts up the story of our days,
And from which earth, and grave, and dust
The Lord will raise me up, I trust.
by
Ogden Nash
This one is entering her teens,
Ripe for sentimental scenes,
Has picked a gangling unripe male,
Sees herself in bridal veil,
Presses lips and tosses head,
Declares she's not too young to wed,
Informs you pertly you forget
Romeo and Juliet.
Do not argue, do not shout;
Remind her how that one turned out.
by
Philip Larkin
New eyes each year
Find old books here,
And new books,too,
Old eyes renew;
So youth and age
Like ink and page
In this house join,
Minting new coin.
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
Old age is
a flight of small
cheeping birds
skimming
bare trees
above a snow glaze.
Gaining and failing
they are buffeted
by a dark wind—
But what?
On harsh weedstalks
the flock has rested—
the snow
is covered with broken
seed husks
and the wind tempered
with a shrill
piping of plenty.
by
Edgar Lee Masters
In youth my wings were strong and tireless,
But I did not know the mountains.
In age I knew the mountains
But my weary wings could not follow my vision --
Genius is wisdom and youth.
by
Philip Larkin
They say eyes clear with age,
As dew clarifies air
To sharpen evenings,
As if time put an edge
Round the last shape of things
To show them there;
The many-levelled trees,
The long soft tides of grass
Wrinkling away the gold
Wind-ridden waves- all these,
They say, come back to focus
As we grow old.
by
Sir Walter Scott
Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!
To all the sensual world proclaim,
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.
by
Andrew Marvell
Verses to accompany a portrait of Cromwell
Bright Martial Maid, Queen of the frozen zone,
The northern pole supports thy shining throne.
Behold what furrows age and steel can plough;
The helmet's weight oppressed this wrinkled brow.
Through fate's untrodden paths I move; my hands
Still act my free-born people's bold commands;
Yet this stern shade, to you submits his frowns,
Nor are these looks always severe to crowns.
by
Rabindranath Tagore
A message came from my youth of vanished days, saying, " I wait for
you among the quivering of unborn May, where smiles ripen for tears
and hours ache with songs unsung.
"
It says, "Come to me across the worn-out track of age, through
the gates of death.
For dreams fade, hopes fail, the fathered
fruits of the year decay, but I am the eternal truth, and you shall
meet me again and again in your voyage of life from shore to
shore.
"
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
SHINES the last age the next with hope is seen
To-day slinks poorly off unmarked between:
Future or Past no richer secret folds
O friendless Present! than thy bosom holds.
by
Stephen Crane
In a lonely place,
I encountered a sage
Who sat, all still,
Regarding a newspaper.
He accosted me:
"Sir, what is this?"
Then I saw that I was greater,
Aye, greater than this sage.
I answered him at once,
"Old, old man, it is the wisdom of the age.
"
The sage looked upon me with admiration.