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Famous Stoics Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...sophistry condemn'd, 
As ignorance and foolishness of men. 
Let her philosophers debate no more 
In the Lyceum, or the Stoics porch, 
Holding high converse, but in error lost 
Of pain, and happiness, and fate supreme. 
Fair truth from heav'n draws all their reas'ning high 
In captive chains bound at her chariot wheels. 


Now Rome imperial, mistress of the world 
Drinks the pure lustre of the orient ray 
Assuaging her fierce thirst of bloody war, 
Dominion boundless, victory...Read more of this...
by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry



...dless,
halcyon days. The lull dispassion is upon us.
Serenity has triumphed in its mindless, atrophied way.
A school of Stoics walks by, eager, in its phlegmatic way,
to observe human degradation, lust and debauchery
at close quarters. They are disappointed,
but it barely shows on their faces. They are late Stoa,
very late. They missed the bus. They should have
been here last night. The joint was jumping.
But people change, they grow up, they fly around.
It's the same old sto...Read more of this...
by Taylor, Edward
...dless,
halcyon days. The lull dispassion is upon us.
Serenity has triumphed in its mindless, atrophied way.
A school of Stoics walks by, eager, in its phlegmatic way,
to observe human degradation, lust and debauchery
at close quarters. They are disappointed,
but it barely shows on their faces. They are late Stoa,
very late. They missed the bus. They should have
been here last night. The joint was jumping.
But people change, they grow up, they fly around.
It's the same old sto...Read more of this...
by Tate, James
...w'r 
Awake his torpid sense, his slumb'ring thought, 
Tel1 him ADVERSITY'S unpitied hour 
A brighter lesson gives, than Stoics taught: 
Tell him that WEALTH no blessing can impart 
So sweet as PITY'S tear­that bathes the wounded Heart. 

Go tell the vain, the insolent, and fair, 
That life's best days are only days of care; 
That BEAUTY, flutt'ring like a painted fly, 
Owes to the spring of youth its rarest die; 
When Winter comes, its charms shall fade away, 
And the poor in...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Mary Darby
...t your toil
Too much, and if I be away from you, 
Think of me as a brother to yourselves, 
Of many blemishes. Beware of stoics, 
And give your left hand to grammarians; 
And when you seem, as many a time you may,
To have no other friend than hope, remember 
That you are not the first, or yet the last. 

The best of life, until we see beyond 
The shadows of ourselves (and they are less 
Than even the blindest of indignant eyes
Would have them) is in what we do not know. 
Make,...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington



...mind.
And he that know the most doth still bemoan
He knows not all that here is to be known.
What is it then? To do as stoics tell,
Nor laugh, nor weep, let things go ill or well?
Such stoics are but stocks, such teaching vain,
While man is man, he shall have ease or pain.
If not in honor, beauty, age, nor treasure,
Nor yet in learning, wisdom, youth, nor pleasure,
Where shall I climb, sound, seek, search, or find
That summum bonum which may stay my mind?
There is a path no ...Read more of this...
by Bradstreet, Anne
...pursue
Do but insinuate what is true.
Now, should my praises owe their truth
To beauty, dress, or paint, or youth,
What stoics call without our power,
They could not be ensured an hour;
'Twere grafting on an annual stock,
That must our expectation mock,
And, making one luxuriant shoot,
Die the next year for want of root:
Before I could my verses bring,
Perhaps you're quite another thing.
So Maevius, when he drained his skull
To celebrate some suburb trull,
His similes in orde...Read more of this...
by Swift, Jonathan

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things