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Famous Sighs Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Crowley, Aleister
...love that swells
Earth's dithyrambs and ocean's oracles.

But this is dawn; my soul shall make its nest
Where your sighs swing from rapture into rest
Love's thurible, your tiger-lily breast....Read more of this...



by Shakespeare, William
...eless hand,
Whose white weighs down the airy scale of praise;
Take all these similes to your own command,
Hallow'd with sighs that burning lungs did raise;
What me your minister, for you obeys,
Works under you; and to your audit comes
Their distract parcels in combined sums.

''Lo, this device was sent me from a nun,
Or sister sanctified, of holiest note;
Which late her noble suit in court did shun,
Whose rarest havings made the blossoms dote;
For she was sought by spirit...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...he Son of Lybian Jove
Now burns with Glory, and then melts with Love;
Now his fierce Eyes with sparkling Fury glow;
Now Sighs steal out, and Tears begin to flow:
Persians and Greeks like Turns of Nature found,
And the World's Victor stood subdu'd by Sound!
The Pow'rs of Musick all our Hearts allow;
And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.

Avoid Extreams; and shun the Fault of such,
Who still are pleas'd too little, or too much.
At ev'ry Trifle scorn to take Offence,
Th...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...ather doth some evil thing through thy fair pleasaunce range?

Nay, nay, thou art the same: 'tis I who seek
To vex with sighs thy simple solitude,
And because fruitless tears bedew my cheek
Would have thee weep with me in brotherhood;
Fool! shall each wronged and restless spirit dare
To taint such wine with the salt poison of own despair!

Thou art the same: 'tis I whose wretched soul
Takes discontent to be its paramour,
And gives its kingdom to the rude control
Of what shoul...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...idst of his own brightness, like the bulk
Of Memnon's image at the set of sun
To one who travels from the dusking East:
Sighs, too, as mournful as that Memnon's harp
He utter'd, while his hands contemplative
He press'd together, and in silence stood.
Despondence seiz'd again the fallen Gods
At sight of the dejected King of day,
And many hid their faces from the light:
But fierce Enceladus sent forth his eyes
Among the brotherhood; and, at their glare,
Uprose Iapetus, and ...Read more of this...



by Alighieri, Dante
...night with all its stars, as night we know, 
 But burdened with an ocean-weight of woe 
 The darkness closed us. 
 Sighs, and wailings loud, 
 Outcries perpetual of recruited pain, 
 Sounds of strange tongues, and angers that remain 
 Vengeless for ever, the thick and clamorous crowd 
 Of discords pressed, that needs I wept to hear, 
 First hearing. There, with reach of hands anear, 
 And voices passion-hoarse, or shrilled with fright, 
 The tumult of the everlasting...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...his destined bride, 
The young forgot him, and the old had died; 
"Yet doth he live!" exclaims the impatient heir, 
And sighs for sables which he must not wear. 
A hundred scutcheons deck with gloomy grace 
The Laras' last and longest dwelling-place; 
But one is absent from the mouldering file, 
That now were welcome to that Gothic pile. 

IV. 

He comes at last in sudden loneliness, 
And whence they know not, why they need not guess; 
They more might marvel, when...Read more of this...

by Gibran, Kahlil
...r this cool and solitary place. 

After a few moments of complete silence, I heard the following words uttered with sighs from weather-bitten lips, "Shed not tears, my beloved; love that opens our eyes and enslaves our hearts can give us the blessing of patience. Be consoled in our delay our delay, for we have taken an oath and entered Love's shrine; for our love will ever grow in adversity; for it is in Love's name that we are suffering the obstacles of poverty and t...Read more of this...

by Ashbery, John
...cannot remove it
Nor wishing bring it back, as long as it remains
The white precipitate of its dream
In the climate of sighs flung across our world,
A cloth over a birdcage. But it is certain that
What is beautiful seems so only in relation to a specific
Life, experienced or not, channeled into some form
Steeped in the nostalgia of a collective past.
The light sinks today with an enthusiasm
I have known elsewhere, and known why
It seemed meaningful, that others felt ...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...handmaids weeping at the gate, 
The Koran-chanters of the hymn of fate, 
The silent slaves with folded arms that wait, 
Sighs in the hall, and shrieks upon the gale, 
Tell him thy tale! 
Thou didst not view thy Selim fall! 
That fearful moment when he left the cave 
Thy heart grew chill: 
He was thy hope — thy joy — thy love — thine all — 
And that last thought on him thou couldst not save 
Sufficed to kill; 

Burst forth in one wild cry — and all was still. 
Peace to thy...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...ek change tempestuously—his heart
Unknowing of its cause of agony.
But she in these fond feelings had no share:
Her sighs were not for him; to her he was
Even as a brother—but no more; 'twas much,
For brotherless she was, save in the name
Her infant friendship had bestowed on him;
Herself the solitary scion left
Of a time-honoured race.—It was a name
Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not—and why?
Time taught him a deep answer—when she loved
Another; even now she ...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...spring  In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still  Full of meek sympathy must heave their sighs  O'er Philomela's pity-pleading strains.  My Friend, and my Friend's Sister! we have learnt  A different lore: we may not thus profane  Nature's sweet voices always full of love  And joyance! Tis the merry Nightingale   That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates<...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...e briar-rose fell in streamers green,
     kind creeping shrubs of thousand dyes
     Waved in the west-wind's summer sighs.
     XII.

     Boon nature scattered, free and wild,
     Each plant or flower, the mountain's child.
     Here eglantine embalmed the air,
     Hawthorn and hazel mingled there;
     The primrose pale and violet flower
     Found in each cliff a narrow bower;
     Foxglove and nightshade, side by side,
     Emblems of punishment and pride,...Read more of this...

by Thomson, James
...Hinges creak. 

THEN, too, they say, thro' all the burthen'd Air,
Long Groans are heard, shrill Sounds, and distant Sighs,
That, murmur'd by the Demon of the Night,
Warn the devoted Wretch of Woe, and Death!
Wild Uproar lords it wide: the Clouds commixt, 
With Stars, swift-gliding, sweep along the Sky.
All Nature reels. -- But hark! the Almighty speaks:
Instant, the chidden Storm begins to pant,
And dies, at once, into a noiseless Calm.

AS yet, 'tis Midnight'...Read more of this...

by Strand, Mark
...ot knowing
how long I waited,
and it seemed that I was no longer reading.
I heard the wind passing
like a stream of sighs
and I heard the shiver of leaves
in the trees outside the window.
It would be in the book.
Everything would be there.
I looked at your face
and I read the eyes, the nose, the mouth . . .

5
If only there were a perfect moment in the book;
if only we could live in that moment,
we could being the book again
as if we had not writte...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...g their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray
Burned slow & inconsumably, & sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air,
And in succession due, did Continent,
Isle, Ocean, & all things that in them wear
The form & character of mortal mould
Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear
Their portion of the toil which he of old
Took as his own & then imposed on them;
But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold
Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...
And from the sedge of the stream smilingly signs the blue god.
Crushingly falls the axe on the tree, the Dryad sighs sadly;
Down from the crest of the mount plunges the thundering load.
Winged by the lever, the stone from the rocky crevice is loosened;
Into the mountain's abyss boldly the miner descends.
Mulciber's anvil resounds with the measured stroke of the hammer;
Under the fist's nervous blow, spurt out the sparks of the steel.
Brilliantly twines th...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying "Stetson!
"You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! 
"That corpse you pla...Read more of this...

by Miller, Alice Duer
...he newel post, 
The panelled upper gallery where 
They told me you heard the family ghost— 
'A gentle unhappy ghost who sighs 
Outside one's door on the night one dies.' 
'Not,' Lady Jean explained, 'at all 
Like the ghost at my father's place, St. Kitts, 
That clanks and screams in the great West Hall 
And frightens strangers out of their wits.' 
I smiled politely, not thinking I 
Would hear one midnight that long sad sigh. 

I saw the gardens, after our tea
...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ams, as thick as summer flies,
Chasing the rapid smiles that would not stay,
And drinking the warm tears, and the sweet sighs
Inhaling, which with busy murmur vain
They has aroused from that full heart and brain.

And ever down the prone vale, like a cloud
Upon a stream of wind, the pinnace went:
Now lingering on the pools, in which abode
The calm and darkness of the deep content
In which they paused; now o'er the shallow road
Of white and dancing waters, all besprent
Wit...Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things