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Famous Short Desire Poems

Famous Short Desire Poems. Short Desire Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Desire short poems


by Robert Frost
 Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favour fire.
But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.



by William Blake
 Ah Sun-flower! weary of time.
Who countest the steps of the Sun; Seeking after that sweet golden clime Where the travellers journey is done.
Where the Youth pined away with desire, And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow: Arise from their graves and aspire.
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

by Langston Hughes
 The gold moth did not love him
So, gorgeous, she flew away.
But the gray moth circled the flame Until the break of day.
And then, with wings like a dead desire, She fell, fire-caught, into the flame.

by Robert Frost
 It is blue-butterfly day here in spring,
And with these sky-flakes down in flurry on flurry
There is more unmixed color on the wing
Than flowers will show for days unless they hurry.
But these are flowers that fly and all but sing: And now from having ridden out desire They lie closed over in the wind and cling Where wheels have freshly sliced the April mire.

by Dejan Stojanovic
I love the new sounds of love; 
Only the new cures an old love.
Watching the love making of waves and the shore I desire to be the wave of love.
There is no real hate in quarrels, Only stupidity and lack of love.
The Sun shone upon me And I shone upon the world with love.
I fly through memory To find a newborn love.
Sing to me sea, sing to me sky And the hiding world sprang out from love.



by Billy Jno Hope
 folly cracked the mirror
a soul gasping wound
voodoo induced vertigo
psychedelic blackouts
in the cracks
between art and blasphemy
paralyzing paranoia of becoming
the vision that heals
cast shadows to douse the flames
starved enlightenment
i betrayed my muse
i wallowed in nostalgic fumes
blood clots from yesteryears insurrection mad dissident desire found wanting a rage dissipating in the twilight of friendship a facade evolved.

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Virtue runs before the muse
And defies her skill,
She is rapt, and doth refuse
To wait a painter's will.
Star-adoring, occupied, Virtue cannot bend her, Just to please a poet's pride, To parade her splendor.
The bard must be with good intent No more his, but hers, Throw away his pen and paint, Kneel with worshippers.
Then, perchance, a sunny ray From the heaven of fire, His lost tools may over-pay, And better his desire.

by Dorothy Parker
 When I am old, and comforted,
And done with this desire,
With Memory to share my bed
And Peace to share my fire,

I'll comb my hair in scalloped bands
Beneath my laundered cap,
And watch my cool and fragile hands
Lie light upon my lap.
And I will have a sprigged gown With lace to kiss my throat; I'll draw my curtain to the town, And hum a purring note.
And I'll forget the way of tears, And rock, and stir my tea.
But oh, I wish those blessed years Were further than they be!

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Come not, when I am dead,
To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave,
To trample round my fallen head,
And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save.
There let the wind sweep and the plover cry; But thou, go by.
Child, if it were thine error or thy crime I care no longer, being all unblest: Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time, And I desire to rest.
Pass on, weak heart, and leave to where I lie: Go by, go by.

by Christina Rossetti
 Oh why is heaven built so far,
 Oh why is earth set so remote?
I cannot reach the nearest star
 That hangs afloat.
I would not care to reach the moon, One round monotonous of change; Yet even she repeats her tune Beyond my range.
I never watch the scatter'd fire Of stars, or sun's far-trailing train, But all my heart is one desire, And all in vain: For I am bound with fleshly bands, Joy, beauty, lie beyond my scope; I strain my heart, I stretch my hands, And catch at hope.

by Emily Dickinson
 It was a Grave, yet bore no Stone
Enclosed 'twas not of Rail
A Consciousness its Acre, and
It held a Human Soul.
Entombed by whom, for what offence If Home or Foreign born -- Had I the curiosity 'Twere not appeased of men Till Resurrection, I must guess Denied the small desire A Rose upon its Ridge to sow Or take away a Briar.

by Arna Bontemps
 God give the yellow man
an easy breeze at blossom time.
Grant his eager, slanting eyes to cover every land and dream of afterwhile.
Give blue-eyed men their swivel chairs to whirl in tall buildings.
Allow them many ships at sea, and on land, soldiers and policemen.
For black man, God, no need to bother more but only fill afresh his meed of laughter, his cup of tears.
God suffer little men the taste of soul's desire.

by Robert Graves
 Children born of fairy stock
Never need for shirt or frock,
Never want for food or fire,
Always get their hearts desire:
Jingle pockets full of gold,
Marry when they're seven years old.
Every fairy child may keep Two ponies and ten sheep; All have houses, each his own, Built of brick or granite stone; They live on cherries, they run wild-- I'd love to be a Fairy's child.

by A S J Tessimond
 Clothes: to compose
The furtive, lone
Pillar of bone
To some repose.
To let hands shirk Utterance behind A pocket's blind Deceptive smirk.
To mask, belie The undue haste Of breast for breast Or thigh for thigh.
To screen, conserve The pose, when death Half strips the sheath And leaves the nerve.
To edit, glose Lyric desire And slake its fire In polished prose.

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 Encircled by her arms as by a shell,
she hears her being murmur,
while forever he endures
the outrage of his too pure image.
.
.
Wistfully following their example, nature re-enters herself; contemplating its own sap, the flower becomes too soft, and the boulder hardens.
.
.
It's the return of all desire that enters toward all life embracing itself from afar.
.
.
Where does it fall? Under the dwindling surface, does it hope to renew a center?

Echoes  Create an image from this poem
by Emma Lazarus
 THE MIGHT that shaped itself through storm and stress
In chaos, here is lulled in breathing sweet;
Under the long brown ridge in gentleness
 Its fierce old pulses beat.
Quiet and sad we go at eve; the fire That woke exultant in an earlier day Is dead; the memories of old desire Only in shadows play.
We liken love to this and that; our thought The echo of a deeper being seems: We kiss, because God once for beauty sought Within a world of dreams.

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 AS when the hunt by holt and field
Drives on with horn and strife,
Hunger of hopeless things pursues
Our spirits throughout life.
The sea's roar fills us aching full Of objectless desire - The sea's roar, and the white moon-shine, And the reddening of the fire.
Who talks to me of reason now? It would be more delight To have died in Cleopatra's arms Than be alive to-night.

by Lisel Mueller
 WE must pass like smoke or live within the spirit’s fire;
For we can no more than smoke unto the flame return
If our thought has changed to dream, our will unto desire,
 As smoke we vanish though the fire may burn.
Lights of infinite pity star the grey dusk of our days: Surely here is soul: with it we have eternal breath: In the fire of love we live, or pass by many ways, By unnumbered ways of dream to death.

by A E Housman
 Ho, everyone that thirsteth
And hath the price to give,
Come to the stolen waters,
Drink and your soul shall live.
Come to the stolen waters, And leap the guarded pale, And pull the flower in season Before desire shall fail.
It shall not last for ever, No more than earth and skies; But he that drinks in season Shall live before he dies.
June suns, you cannot store them To warm the winter's cold, The lad that hopes for heaven Shall fill his mouth with mold.

by Sara Teasdale
 Oh, I have sown my love so wide
 That he will find it everywhere;
It will awake him in the night,
 It will enfold him in the air.
I set my shadow in his sight And I have winged it with desire, That it may be a cloud by day, And in the night a shaft of fire.

by Dimitris P Kraniotis
 The savour of fruits
still remains
in my mouth,
but the bitterness of words
demolishes the clouds
and wrings the snow
counting the pebbles.
But you never told me why you deceived me, why with pain and injustice did you desire to say that the end always in tears is cast to flames.

by Federico García Lorca
 In the green morning
I wanted to be a heart.
A heart.
And in the ripe evening I wanted to be a nightingale.
A nightingale.
(Soul, turn orange-colored.
Soul, turn the color of love.
) In the vivid morning I wanted to be myself.
A heart.
And at the evening's end I wanted to be my voice.
A nightingale.
Soul, turn orange-colored.
Soul, turn the color of love.

by Emily Dickinson
 So proud she was to die
It made us all ashamed
That what we cherished, so unknown
To her desire seemed --
So satisfied to go
Where none of us should be
Immediately -- that Anguish stooped
Almost to Jealousy --

Fool  Create an image from this poem
by Rabindranath Tagore
 O Fool, try to carry thyself upon thy own shoulders! 
O beggar, to come beg at thy own door! 

Leave all thy burdens on his hands who can bear all, 
and never look behind in regret.
Thy desire at once puts out the light from the lamp it touches with its breath.
It is unholy---take not thy gifts through its unclean hands.
Accept only what is offered by sacred love.

by Thomas Hardy
 If hours be years the twain are blest, 
For now they solace swift desire 
By bonds of every bond the best, 
If hours be years.
The twain are blest Do eastern stars slope never west, Nor pallid ashes follow fire: If hours be years the twain are blest, For now they solace swift desire.


Book: Shattered Sighs