Famous Sufficed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Leisure

by Amy Lowell
 Leisure, thou goddess of a bygone age,
When hours were long and days sufficed to hold
Wide-eyed delights and pleasures uncontrolled
By shortening moments, when no gaunt presage
Of undone duties, modern heritage,
Haunted our happy minds; must thou withhold
Thy presence from this over-busy world,
And bearing silence with thee disengage
Our twined fortunes? Deeps of unhewn woods
Alone can cherish thee, alone possess
Thy quiet, teeming vigor....Read more of this...

Sonnet CCXXIV

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CCXXIV. Cara la vita, e dopo lei mi pare. HONOUR TO BE PREFERRED TO LIFE.  Methinks that life in lovely woman first,And after life true honour should be dear;Nay, wanting honour—of all wants the worst—Friend! nought remains of loved or lovely here.And who, alas! has honour's barrier burst,Unsex'd and...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXV

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LXV. Io avrò sempre in odio la fenestra. BETTER IS IT TO DIE HAPPY THAN TO LIVE IN PAIN.  Always in hate the window shall I bear,Whence Love has shot on me his shafts at will,Because not one of them sufficed to kill:For death is good when life is bright and...Read more of this...

To the Unattainable:

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Lament of Mahomed Akram

   I would have taken Golden Stars from the sky for your necklace,
   I would have shaken rose-leaves for your rest from all the rose-trees.

   But you had no need; the short sweet grass sufficed for your slumber,
   And you took no heed of such trifles...Read more of this...

All Roads That Lead To God Are Good

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 All roads that lead to God are good.
What matters it, your faith, or mine?
Both centre at the goal divine
Of love’s eternal Brotherhood.

The kindly life in house or street –
The life of prayer and mystic rite –
The student’s search for truth and light –
These paths at one great Junction meet.

Before the oldest book was writ,
Full many a prehistoric soul
Arrived at...Read more of this...

Interior Portrait

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 You don't survive in me
because of memories;
nor are you mine because
of a lovely longing's strength.

What does make you present
is the ardent detour
that a slow tenderness
traces in my blood.

I do not need
to see you appear;
being born sufficed for me
to lose you a little less....Read more of this...

Fragment of a Greek Tragedy

by A E Housman
 CHORUS: O suitably-attired-in-leather-boots
Head of a traveller, wherefore seeking whom
Whence by what way how purposed art thou come
To this well-nightingaled vicinity?
My object in inquiring is to know.
But if you happen to be deaf and dumb
And do not understand a word I say,
Then wave your hand, to signify as much.

ALCMAEON: I journeyed hither a Boetian road.
CHORUS: Sailing on horseback, or with...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXXVII

by William Shakespeare
 As a decrepit father takes delight
To see his active child do deeds of youth,
So I, made lame by fortune's dearest spite,
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.
For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,
Or any of these all, or all, or more,
Entitled in thy parts do crowned sit,
I make my love engrafted to this store:
So then I...Read more of this...

A Dew sufficed itself --

by Emily Dickinson
 A Dew sufficed itself --
And satisfied a Leaf
And felt "how vast a destiny" --
"How trivial is Life!"

The Sun went out to work --
The Day went out to play
And not again that Dew be seen
By Physiognomy

Whether by Day Abducted
Or emptied by the Sun
Into the Sea in passing
Eternally unknown

Attested to this Day
That awful Tragedy
By Transport's instability
And Doom's celerity....Read more of this...

Conversion

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 When this world's pleasures for my soul sufficed, 
Ere my heart's plummet sounded depths of pain, 
I call on Reason to control my brain, 
And scoffed at that old story of Christ.

But when o'er burning wastes my feet had trod, 
And all my life was desolate with loss, 
With bleeding hands I clung about the cross, 
And cried aloud,...Read more of this...

The Robe of Christ

by Joyce Kilmer
 (For Cecil Chesterton)

At the foot of the Cross on Calvary
Three soldiers sat and diced,
And one of them was the Devil
And he won the Robe of Christ.
When the Devil comes in his proper form
To the chamber where I dwell,
I know him and make the Sign of the Cross
Which drives him back to Hell.
And when he comes like a friendly man
And...Read more of this...

El Extraviado

by Alan Seeger
 Over the radiant ridges borne out on the offshore wind, 
I have sailed as a butterfly sails whose priming wings unfurled 
Leave the familiar gardens and visited fields behind 
To follow a cloud in the east rose-flushed on the rim of the world. 


I have strayed from the trodden highway for walking with upturned eyes 
On the way of...Read more of this...

To Helen

by Delmore Schwartz
 (After Valery)


O Sea! ... 'Tis I, risen from death once more
To hear the waves' harmonious roar
And see the galleys, sharp, in dawn's great awe
Raised from the dark by the rising and gold oar.

My fickle hands sufficed to summon kings
Their salt beards amused my fingers, deft and pure.
I wept. They sang of triumphs now obscure:
And the first abyss flooded the...Read more of this...

Sonnet 37: As a decrepit father takes delight

by William Shakespeare
 As a decrepit father takes delight
To see his active child do deeds of youth,
So I, made lame by Fortune's dearest spite,
Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.
For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,
Or any of these all, or all, or more,
Entitled in thy parts, do crownèd sit,
I make my love engrafted to this store.
So then I...Read more of this...

When my nature has seemed disposed to fasting and

by Omar Khayyam
When my nature has seemed disposed to fasting and
prayer, I have a moment's hope that I am going to attain
the aim of my desires; but alas! a breath of wind has
sufficed to destroy the efficacy of my ablutions, and a
mouthful of wine has annihilated my fast....Read more of this...

In The Bleak Midwinter

by Christina Rossetti
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for...Read more of this...

Divine Detachment

by Robert William Service
 One day the Great Designer sought
His Clerk of Birth and Death.
Said he: "Two souls are in my thought,
to whom I gave life-breath.
I deemed my work was fitly done,
But yester-eve I saw
That in the finished brain of one
There was a tiny flaw.

"It worried me, and I would know,
Since I am all to blame,
What happened to them down below,
Of honour or...Read more of this...

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