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Famous Short Life Poems

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


by Tupac Shakur
Life through my bloodshot eyes
would scare a square 2 death
poverty,murder,violence
and never a moment 2 rest
Fun and games are few
but treasured like gold 2 me
cuz I realize that I must return
2 my spot in poverty
But mock my words when I say
my heart will not exist
unless my destiny comes through
and puts an end 2 all of this 



by Emily Dickinson
I had no time to hate, because
The grave would hinder me,
And life was not so ample I
Could finish enmity.
Nor had I time to love, but since Some industry must be, The little toil of love, I thought, Was large enough for me.

by Carl Sandburg
 I ASKED the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell
me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

Always  Create an image from this poem
by Pablo Neruda
 I am not jealous
of what came before me.
Come with a man on your shoulders, come with a hundred men in your hair, come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet, come like a river full of drowned men which flows down to the wild sea, to the eternal surf, to Time! Bring them all to where I am waiting for you; we shall always be alone, we shall always be you and I alone on earth to start our life!

Words  Create an image from this poem
by Sylvia Plath
Axes 
After whose stroke the wood rings, 
And the echoes! 
Echoes traveling 
Off from the center like horses.
The sap Wells like tears, like the Water striving To re-establish its mirror Over the rock That drops and turns, A white skull, Eaten by weedy greens.
Years later I Encounter them on the road--- Words dry and riderless, The indefatigable hoof-taps.
While From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars Govern a life.



by Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
silence

.
is a looking bird:the turn ing;edge of life (inquiry before snow

by Ben Jonson
Consider this small dust here running in the glass,
By atoms moved;
Could you believe that this the body was 
Of one that loved?
And in his mistress' flame, playing like a fly,
Turned to cinders by her eye:
Yes; and in death, as life, unblessed,
To have it expressed,
Even ashes of lovers find no rest.

by Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
i shall imagine life

is not worth dying if
(and when)roses complain
their beauties are in vain

but though mankind persuades
itself that every weed's
a rose roses(you feel
certain)will only smile

Cake  Create an image from this poem
by Roger McGough
 i wanted one life
you wanted another
we couldn't have our cake
so we ate eachother.

by Linda Pastan
 Into the gravity of my life,
the serious ceremonies
of polish and paper
and pen, has come

this manic animal
whose innocent disruptions
make nonsense
of my old simplicities--

as if I needed him
to prove again that after
all the careful planning,
anything can happen.

by Louise Gluck
 The great man turns his back on the island.
Now he will not die in paradise nor hear again the lutes of paradise among the olive trees, by the clear pools under the cypresses.
Time begins now, in which he hears again that pulse which is the narrative sea, ar dawn when its pull is stongest.
What has brought us here will lead us away; our ship sways in the tined harbor water.
Now the spell is ended.
Giove him back his life, sea that can only move forward.

by Sylvia Plath
 I have no wit, I have no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numbed too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
A lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is like the falling leaf;
O Jesus, quicken me.

by Edward Lear
There was an old person of Fife,
Who was greatly disgusted with life;
They sang him a ballad, and fed him on salad,
Which cured that old person of Fife.

by Lewis Carroll
 Little maidens, when you look 
On this little story-book, 
Reading with attentive eye 
Its enticing history, 
Never think that hours of play 
Are your only HOLIDAY, 
And that in a HOUSE of joy 
Lessons serve but to annoy: 
If in any HOUSE you find 
Children of a gentle mind, 
Each the others pleasing ever-- 
Each the others vexing never-- 
Daily work and pastime daily 
In their order taking gaily-- 
Then be very sure that they 
Have a life of HOLIDAY.

by Raymond Carver
 And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.

by Emily Dickinson
 A Clock stopped --
Not the Mantel's --
Geneva's farthest skill
Can't put the puppet bowing --
That just now dangled still --

An awe came on the Trinket!
The Figures hunched, with pain --
Then quivered out of Decimals --
Into Degreeless Noon --

It will not stir for Doctors --
This Pendulum of snow --
This Shopman importunes it --
While cool -- concernless No --

Nods from the Gilded pointers --
Nods from the Seconds slim --
Decades of Arrogance between
The Dial life --
And Him --

by Adelaide Crapsey
With swift
Great sweep of her
Magnificent arm my pain
Clanged back the doors that shut my soul
From life.

by A R Ammons
 One failure on
Top of another

by Gopabandhu Das
Let my body mingle with the dust of this Land,
And let my countrymen walk along my back;
Let all the holes in the road of freedom be filled with my blood & bone,
And let my life be sacrificed when my people awake into freedom.

by Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
(once like a spark)

if strangers meet
life begins-
not poor not rich
(only aware)
kind neither
nor cruel
(only complete)
i not not you
not possible;
only truthful
-truthfully once
if strangers(who
deep our most are
selves)touch:
forever

(and so to dark)


by James Whitcomb Riley
 What delightful hosts are they -- 
 Life and Love! 
Lingeringly I turn away, 
 This late hour, yet glad enough 
They have not withheld from me 
 Their high hospitality.
So, with face lit with delight And all gratitude, I stay Yet to press their hands and say, "Thanks.
-- So fine a time! Good night.
"

by Mary Shelley
——— for what should I do here,
Like a decaying flower, still withering
Under his bitter words, whose kindly heat
Should give my poor heart life?

by Henry David Thoreau
 On fields o'er which the reaper's hand has pass'd
Lit by the harvest moon and autumn sun,
My thoughts like stubble floating in the wind
And of such fineness as October airs,
There after harvest could I glean my life
A richer harvest reaping without toil,
And weaving gorgeous fancies at my will
In subtler webs than finest summer haze.

by Linda Pastan
 When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.

by Robert Frost
 Dust always blowing about the town,
Except when sea-fog laid it down,
And I was one of the children told
Some of the blowing dust was gold.
All the dust the wind blew high Appeared like god in the sunset sky, But I was one of the children told Some of the dust was really gold.
Such was life in the Golden Gate: Gold dusted all we drank and ate, And I was one of the children told, 'We all must eat our peck of gold.
'


Book: Shattered Sighs