Famous Sooner Or Later Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Song of Brave Men

...n back to the old Home Life. 
Brush trom your Parliament benches the legal chaff and dust: 
Make Federation perfect, as sooner or later you must. 
Scatter your crowded cities, cut up your States – and so 
Give your brave sons of the future the ghost of a White Man's show....Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry


Eviradnus

...age—I dotard to control— 
 Pretended gallants changed to lovers now. 
 So, brother, this being fact for us to know 
 Sooner or later, 'gainst our best intent 
 About her we should quarrel. Evident 
 Is it our compact would be broken through. 
 There is one only thing for us to do, 
 And that is, kill her." 
 
 "Logic very clear," 
 Said musing Joss, "but what of blood shed here?" 
 Then Zeno stooped and lifted from the ground 
 An edge of carpet—groped until he fo...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

Flag of the Southern Cross

...honour in trust for her - 
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross! 
See how the yellow-men next to her lust for her, 
Sooner or later to battle we must for her - 
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross. 

Beg not of England the right to preserve ourselves, 
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross, 
We are the servants best able to serve ourselves, 
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross. 
What are our hearts for, and what are our hands for? 
What are we nourished in th...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry

Fragment

...'s hair went white. You may see 
Where the garden was if you come this way. 
That sun-dial scared him, he said to me; 
"Sooner or later they strike," said he, 
But he knew too much for the life he led.

And who knows all knows everything 
That a patient ghost at last retrieves; 
There's more to be known of his harvesting 
When Time the thresher unbinds the sheaves; 
And there's more to be heard than a wind that grieves 
For Briony now in this ageless oak, 
Driving the first o...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Lost

...ne ever, she faded and pined away, 
But with strength of her great affection she still sought every day. 

"I know that sooner or later I shall find my boy," she said. 
But she came not home one evening, and they found her lying dead. 
And stamped on the poor pale features, as the spirit homeward pass'd, 
Was an angel smile of gladness -- she had found the boy at last....Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton


Never Try To Trick Me With A Kiss

...suave eternal serpents promise bliss
To mortal children longing to be gay;
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.

Sooner or later something goes amiss;
The singing birds pack up and fly away;
So never try to trick me with a kiss:
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this....Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

Nocturne

...sighing);
It is but cowardice to pretend.
Cover with ashes our love's cold crater-
Always I've known that it had to end
Sooner or later.

Always I knew it would come like this
(Pattering rain, and the grasses springing),
Sweeter to you is a new love's kiss
(Flickering sunshine, and young birds singing).
Gone are the raptures that once we knew,
Now you are finding a new joy greater-
Well, I'll be doing the same thing, too,
Sooner or later....Read more of this...
by Parker, Dorothy

Oban

...n, past the old village churchyard,
And as you pass, for the dead have some regard;
For it is the road we've all to go,
Sooner or later, both the high and the low! 

And as you return by the side of the merry little stream,
That comes trotting down the glen most charming to be seen,
Sometimes wimpling along between heather banks,
And slipping coyly away to hide itself in its merry pranks. 

Then on some pleasant evening walk up the Glen Shellach road,
Where numberless sheep t...Read more of this...
by McGonagall, William Topaz

Paradise Lost: Book 10

...id, they both betook them several ways, 
Both to destroy, or unimmortal make 
All kinds, and for destruction to mature 
Sooner or later; which the Almighty seeing, 
From his transcendent seat the Saints among, 
To those bright Orders uttered thus his voice. 
See, with what heat these dogs of Hell advance 
To waste and havock yonder world, which I 
So fair and good created; and had still 
Kept in that state, had not the folly of Man 
Let in these wasteful furies, who impute 
F...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Silent Equality

...as much ink 
To accept all of us at light-speed 
Hurrying into the Promised Land 
Of oblivion that is waiting for us sooner or later. 
No reason for a feverish rush 
For we will all arrive in the same place 
At the right time. Justice will be served. 
There will be no better or worse, 
No big and small, no rewards, no punishment, 
No guilt, no judges, no hierarchies; 
Only silent equality.
...Read more of this...
by Stojanovic, Dejan

The Black Cottage

...Done sadly from an old daguerreotype. 
"That was the father as he went to war. 
She always, when she talked about war, 
Sooner or later came and leaned, half knelt 
Against the lounge beside it, though I doubt 
If such unlifelike lines kept power to stir 
Anything in her after all the years. 
He fell at Gettysburg or Fredericksburg, 
I ought to know--it makes a difference which: 
Fredericksburg wasn't Gettysburg, of course. 
But what I'm getting to is how forsaken 
A little c...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

The Swimmer

...in;
Then the lesser life shall be as the greater,
And the lover of light shall join the hater,
And the one thing cometh sooner or later,
And no one knoweth the loss or gain.

Love of my life! we had lights in season --
Hard to part with, harder to keep --
We had strength to labour and souls to reason,
And seed to scatter and fruits to reap.
Though time estranges and fate disperses,
We have had our loves and loving mercies.
Though the gifts of the light in the end are curses,
...Read more of this...
by Gordon, Adam Lindsay

The Undertakers Horse

...t hammers out the unrelenting text,
And I hear it hard behind me
In what place soe'er I find me: --
"'Sure to catch you sooner or later. Who's the next?"...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The White Cliffs

...
I were a cross between parrot and eel. 
I thought her blank and cold and stiff.

XVI 
And presently she said as they 
Sooner or later always say: 
'You're an American, Miss Dunne? 
Really you do not speak like one.' 
She seemed to think she'd said a thing 
Both courteous and flattering. 
I answered though my wrist were weak 
With anger: 'Not at all, I speak— 
At least I've always thought this true— 
As educated people do 
In any country-even mine.' 
'Really?' I saw her head...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer

thirteeners

...to beauty in a cellophane wrap
spending their rights for a rich illusion

people demean themselves before a throne
but sooner or later have to let the sap
earthed in them rise to a new extrusion
art's not in the show (a lovely touch of clap)
but in the tough fusion of blood and bone

dreams may be soured in the drab confusion
but everywhere's the making of a map
charting today's unimaginable zone

42
what appals me daily is the unintelligence of those
who sit on the commodes...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg

Thoughts

...OF Public Opinion; 
Of a calm and cool fiat, sooner or later, (How impassive! How certain and final!) 
Of the President with pale face, asking secretly to himself, What will the people say
 at
 last? 
Of the frivolous Judge—Of the corrupt Congressman, Governor, Mayor—Of such as
 these,
 standing helpless and exposed; 
Of the mumbling and screaming priest—(soon, soon deserted;)
Of the lessening, year by...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

To a President

...e, impartiality; 
You have not seen that only such as they are for These States, 
And that what is less than they, must sooner or later lift off from These States....Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

What Almost Every Woman Knows Sooner Or Later

...Husbands are things that wives have to get used to putting up with.
And with whom they breakfast with and sup with.
They interfere with the discipline of nurseries,
And forget anniversaries,
And when they have been particularly remiss
They think they can cure everything with a great big kiss,
And when you tell them about something awful they have done they...Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden

When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd

...soothing Death, 
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, 
In the day, in the night, to all, to each, 
Sooner or later, delicate Death. 

Prais’d be the fathomless universe,
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious; 
And for love, sweet love—But praise! praise! praise! 
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death. 

Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft feet, 
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?

Then ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Zeroing In

...olent depths."
"I know," she said. "When I set forth
to walk in myself, as it might be
on a fine afternoon, forgetting,
sooner or later I come to where sedge
and clumps of white flowers, rue perhaps,
mark the bogland, and I know
there are quagmires there that can pull you
down, and sink you in bubbling mud."
"We had an old dog," he told her, "when I was a boy,
a good dog, friendly. But there was an injured spot
on his head, if you happened
just to touch it he'd jump up yelpin...Read more of this...
by Levertov, Denise

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