Famous Striven Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Investigating Flora

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 'Twas in scientific circles 
That the great Professor Brown 
Had a world-wide reputation 
As a writer of renown. 
He had striven finer feelings 
In our natures to implant 
By his Treatise on the Morals 
Of the Red-eyed Bulldog Ant. 
He had hoisted an opponent 
Who had trodden unawares 
On his "Reasons for Bare Patches 
On the Female Native Bears"....Read more of this...

Alexander Crummell—dead

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Back to the breast of thy mother,
Child of the earth!
E'en her caress can not smother
What thou hast done.
Follow the trail of the westering sun
Over the earth.
Thy light and his were as one—
Sun, in thy worth.
Unto a nation whose sky was as night,
Camest thou, holily, bearing thy light:
And the dawn came,
In it thy fame
Flashed up in a flame.
Back to the breast...Read more of this...

Tamerlane

by Edgar Allan Poe
 Kind solace in a dying hour!
Such, father, is not (now) my theme-
I will not madly deem that power
Of Earth may shrive me of the sin
Unearthly pride hath revell'd in-
I have no time to dote or dream:
You call it hope- that fire of fire!
It is but agony of desire:
If I can hope- Oh God! I can-
Its fount is holier- more...Read more of this...

Eros Turannos

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 She fears him, and will always ask 
What fated her to choose him; 
She meets in his engaging mask 
All reason to refuse him. 
But what she meets and what she fears 
Are less than are the downward years, 
Drawn slowly to the foamless weirs 
Of age, were she to lose him.

Between a blurred sagacity 
That once had power...Read more of this...

Leipzig

by Thomas Hardy
 "OLD Norbert with the flat blue cap--
A German said to be--
Why let your pipe die on your lap,
Your eyes blink absently?"--

--"Ah!... Well, I had thought till my cheek was wet
Of my mother--her voice and mien
When she used to sing and pirouette,
And touse the tambourine

"To the march that yon street-fiddler plies;
She told me 'twas the same
She'd heard from the trumpets,...Read more of this...

Flammonde

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 The man Flammonde, from God knows where, 
With firm address and foreign air 
With news of nations in his talk 
And something royal in his walk, 
With glint of iron in his eyes, 
But never doubt, nor yet surprise, 
Appeared, adn stayed, and held his head 
As one by kings accredited.

Erect, with his alert repose 
About him, and about...Read more of this...

On Carpaccios Picture: The Dream of St. Ursula

by Amy Lowell
 Swept, clean, and still, across the polished floor
From some unshuttered casement, hid from sight,
The level sunshine slants, its greater light
Quenching the little lamp which pallid, poor,
Flickering, unreplenished, at the door
Has striven against darkness the long night.
Dawn fills the room, and penetrating, bright,
The silent sunbeams through the window pour.
And she lies sleeping, ignorant of Fate,
Enmeshed in listless dreams, her soul...Read more of this...

What Twigs We held by --

by Emily Dickinson
 What Twigs We held by --
Oh the View
When Life's swift River striven through
We pause before a further plunge
To take Momentum --
As the Fringe

Upon a former Garment shows
The Garment cast,
Our Props disclose
So scant, so eminently small
Of Might to help, so pitiful
To sink, if We had labored, fond
The diligence were not more blind

How scant, by everlasting Light
The Discs that satisfied Our...Read more of this...

The Last Supper

by Robert William Service
 Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips,
And the mouth so mocking gay,
A wanton you to the finger-tips,
Who break men's hearts in play;
A thing of dust I have striven for,
Honour and manhood given for,
Headlong to ruin driven for,
And this is the last, you say. . . .

Drinking your wine with dainty sips,
Marie Vaux of the Painted Lips.

Marie Vaux of the Painted...Read more of this...

Hope in Failure

by George William Russell
 THOUGH now thou hast failed and art fallen, despair not because of defeat,
Though lost for a while be thy heaven and weary of earth be thy feet,
For all will be beauty about thee hereafter through sorrowful years,
And lovely the dews for thy chilling and ruby thy heart-drip of tears.


The eyes that had gazed from afar on a beauty that...Read more of this...

Resolution And Independence

by William Wordsworth
 I 

There was a roaring in the wind all night; 
The rain came heavily and fell in floods; 
But now the sun is rising calm and bright; 
The birds are singing in the distant woods; 
Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods; 
The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters; 
And all the air is filled with pleasant...Read more of this...

Emblems of Love

by Lascelles Abercrombie
She

ONLY to be twin elements of joy
In this extravagance of Being, Love,
Were our divided natures shaped in twain;
And to this hour the whole world must consent.
Is it not very marvellous, our lives
Can only come to this out of a long
Strange sundering, with the years of the world between us?

He

Shall life do more than God? for hath not God
Striven with himself,...Read more of this...

Fire and Sleet and Candlelight

by Elinor Wylie
 For this you've striven 
Daring, to fail: 
Your sky is riven 
Like a tearing veil.

For this, you've wasted 
Wings of your youth; 
Divined, and tasted 
Bitter springs of truth.

From sand unslakèd 
Twisted strong cords, 
And wandering naked 
Among trysted swords.

There's a word unspoken, 
A knot untied. 
Whatever is broken 
The earth may hide.

The road was jagged 
Over sharp stones:...Read more of this...

Ode to the West Wind

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being¡ª 
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead 
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, 
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, 
Pestilence-stricken multitudes!¡ªO thou 5 
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed 
The wing¨¨d seeds, where they lie cold and low, 
Each like a corpse within its grave,...Read more of this...

The Unforgiven

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 When he, who is the unforgiven, 
Beheld her first, he found her fair: 
No promise ever dreamt in heaven 
Could have lured him anywhere 
That would have nbeen away from there; 
And all his wits had lightly striven, 
Foiled with her voice, and eyes, and hair.

There's nothing in the saints and sages 
To meet the shafts her glances had,...Read more of this...

Enamored Architect Of Airy Rhyme

by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Enamored architect of airy rhyme,
Build as thou wilt, heed not what each man says.
Good souls, but innocent of dreamers’ ways,
Will come, and marvel why thou wastest time;
Others, beholding how thy turrets climb
’Twixt theirs and heaven, will hate thee all thy days;
But most beware of those who come to praise.
O Wondersmith, O worker in sublime
And heaven-sent dreams, let art be all...Read more of this...

Stanzas To A Lady On Leaving England

by George (Lord) Byron
 'Tis done---and shivering in the gale
The bark unfurls her snowy sail;
And whistling o'er the bending mast,
Loud sings on high the fresh'ning blast;
And I must from this land be gone,
Because I cannot love but one.

But could I be what I have been,
And could I see what I have seen---
Could I repose upon the breast
Which once my warmest wishes blest---
I should...Read more of this...

The Mother

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Here I lean over you, small son, sleeping
Warm in my arms,
And I con to my heart all your dew-fresh charms,
As you lie close, close in my hungry hold . . . 
Your hair like a miser's dream of gold,
And the white rose of your face far fairer,
Finer, and rarer
Than all the flowers in the young year's keeping;
Over lips half...Read more of this...

Death and the Lady

by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
 TURN in, my lord, she said ;
As it were the Father of Sin
I have hated the Father of the Dead,
The slayer of my kin ;
By the Father of the Living led,
Turn in, my lord, turn in.

We were foes of old ; thy touch was cold,
But mine is warm as life ;
I have struggled and made thee loose thy hold,
I...Read more of this...

An Ode in Time of Hesitation

by William Vaughn Moody
 After seeing at Boston the statue of Robert Gould Shaw, killed while storming Fort Wagner, July 18, 1863, at the head of the first enlisted ***** regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts.


I 

Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made 
To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe, 
And set here in the city's talk and trade 
To the good memory of...Read more of this...

Testament

by Wendell Berry
 1.
Dear relatives and friends, when my last breath
Grows large and free in air, don't call it death --
A word to enrich the undertaker and inspire
His surly art of imitating life; conspire
Against him. Say that my body cannot now
Be improved upon; it has no fault to show
To the sly cosmetician. Say that my flesh
Has a perfect compliance with the grass
Truer...Read more of this...

Magrady Graham

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Tell me, was Altgeld elected Governor?
For when the returns began to come in
And Cleveland was sweeping the East,
It was too much for you, poor old heart,
Who had striven for democracy
In the long, long years of defeat.
And like a watch that is worn
I felt you growing slower until you stopped.
Tell me, was Altgeld elected,
And what did he do?
Did they bring...Read more of this...

Banishment

by Siegfried Sassoon
 I am banished from the patient men who fight 
They smote my heart to pity, built my pride. 
Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side, 
They trudged away from life’s broad wealds of light. 
Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sight
They went arrayed in honour. But they died,— 
Not one by one: and mutinous I cried 
To...Read more of this...

Self-Interrogation

by Emily Brontë
 The evening passes fast away,
'Tis almost time to rest;
What thoughts has left the vanished day,
What feelings, in thy breast? 

"The vanished day? It leaves a sense 
Of labour hardly done;
Of little, gained with vast expense, -
A sense of grief alone! 

"Time stands before the door of Death,
Upbraiding bitterly;
And Conscience, with exhaustless breath,
Pours black reproach on me: 

"And though I've...Read more of this...

Resolution And Independence

by William Wordsworth
 I 

There was a roaring in the wind all night; 
The rain came heavily and fell in floods; 
But now the sun is rising calm and bright; 
The birds are singing in the distant woods; 
Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods; 
The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters; 
And all the air is filled with pleasant...Read more of this...

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