Famous Sustaining Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Sustaining poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous sustaining poems. These examples illustrate what a famous sustaining poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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Better, ah, if now we parted
For the little while remaining;
You would seek when broken-hearted
For the mighty heart’s sustaining.
You would go then gladly turning
From our place of wounds and weeping,
With your soul for comfort burning
To the mother-bosom creeping....Read more of this...
by
Russell, George William
...woven strand
Which grows the multi-coloured tapestry
Of your bright life, and through its tissues lie
A hidden, strong, sustaining, grey-toned band.
I wish to dwell around your daylight dreams,
The railing to the stairway of the clouds,
To guard your steps securely up, where streams
A faery moonshine washing pale the crowds
Of pointed stars. Remember not whereby
You mount, protected, to the far-flung sky....Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...Swings slowly into the ice-blue sky,
Heaving up on the warm air
Like a foam-bubble on a wave,
With feathers slanted and sustaining.
Higher,
Until the earth turns beneath it;
Poised and swinging,
With all the garden flowing beneath it,
Scarlet, and blue, and purple, and white --
Blurred colour reflections in rippled water --
Changing -- streaming --
For the moment that Stella takes to lift her arm.
Then the shuttlecock relinquishes,
Bows,
Descends;
And the sharp blue spears of...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...at Beauty in which all things work and move,
That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse
Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love
Which through the web of being blindly wove
By man and beast and earth and air and sea,
Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of
The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me,
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.
The breath whose might I have invoked in song
Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven
Far from the shore, ...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...fine-pointed rage
must have cool fruits to come down to
before ecstasy and soaring can yield
the unimaginable answers sustaining
the longings all born are bequeathed...Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...having risked his life, maintaining
The cause of justice in the fight
For law appointed,
With years in harness spent sustaining
The royal crown of him by right
His lord anointed,
With feats so mighty that Hispania
Can never make account of all
In number mortal,—
Unto his township of Ocaña
Came Death at last to strike and call
Against his portal:
Speaketh Death
“Good Cavalier,”—he cried,—“divest you
Of all this hollow world of lies
And soft devices;
Let...Read more of this...
by
Manrique, Jorge
...laughter.
Lovely the moonlight was as it glanced and gleamed on the water,
Gleamed on the columns of cypress and cedar sustaining the arches,
Down through whose broken vaults it fell as through chinks in a ruin.
Dreamlike, and indistinct, and strange were all things around them;
And o'er their spirits there came a feeling of wonder and sadness,--
Strange forebodings of ill, unseen and that cannot be compassed.
As, at the tramp of a horse's hoof on the turf of the prairies,
F...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...he shore,
Pav'd with the image of the sky.... The hoar
And aëry Alps towards the North appear'd
Through mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark rear'd
Between the East and West; and half the sky
Was roof'd with clouds of rich emblazonry
Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew
Down the steep West into a wondrous hue
Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent
Where the swift sun yet paus'd in his descent
Among the many-folded hills: they were
Those famous Euganean hills, which...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ter a round
of pretend-tears, Barbie and Ken vowed to try
to make their relationship work. With their good memories
as sustaining as good food, they listened to late-night radio
talk shows, one featuring Doctor Ruth. When all else fails,
just hold each other, the small sex therapist crooned.
Barbie and Ken, on cue, groped in the dark,
their interchangeable skin glowing, the color of Band-Aids.
Then, they let themselves go-- Soon Barbie was begging Ken
to try on her span...Read more of this...
by
Duhamel, Denise
...Sea with faith I plant my feet,
[Pg 111]And wait the sound of that sustaining word
Which long ago the men of Israel heard,
When Pharaoh's host behind them, fierce and fleet,
Raged on, consuming with revengeful heat.
Why are the barrier waters still unstirred?—
That struggling faith may die of hope deferred?
Is God not sitting in His ancient seat?
The billows swirl above my trembling limbs,
And almost chill my anxiou...Read more of this...
by
Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...he well I digged you soon shall pass:
You may but rest with me an hour:
Yet drink, I offer you the glass,
A moment of sustaining power,
And give to you, if it be gain,
Whether in pleasure or annoy,
To see one elemental pain,
One light of everlasting joy....Read more of this...
by
Russell, George William
...them now;
They have absorbed a mind
Which must endure the freezing snow
They endure and, freezing, find
A clear sustaining stream.
He learns to lose
She was afraid
Of everything,
The little Digger girl.
Pah Utes had killed
Her older brother
Who may have been her lover
The way she cried
Over his ring --
The heavy brass
On the heavy hand.
She carried it for weeks
Clenched in her fist
As if it might
Keep out the loneliness
Or the plain fac...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...Let me not, ever, to the marriage in Cana
Of Galilee admit the slightest sentiment
Of doubt about the astonishing and sustaining manna
Of chance and choice to throw a shadow's element
Of disbelief in truth -- Love is not love
Nor is the love of love its truth in consciousness
If it can be made hesitant by any crow or dove or
seeming angel or demon from above or from below
Or made more than it is knows itself to be by the authority
of any ministry of love.
O no -- it is ...Read more of this...
by
Schwartz, Delmore
...rmer's possessions
Have by Demeter been worked into the tapestried plain!
Kindly decree of the law, of the Deity mortal-sustaining,
Since from the brazen world love vanished forever away.
But in freer windings the measured pastures are traversed
(Now swallowed up in the wood, now climbing up to the hills)
By a glimmering streak, the highway that knits lands together;
Over the smooth-flowing stream, quietly glide on the rafts.
Ofttimes resound the bells of the flocks in the f...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...oppression, leaving a solitary woman to whom God had sent, that night, a tiny companion to prevent her from working and sustaining life.
As the mass dispersed and silence was restored to the vicinity, the wretched woman placed the infant on her lap and looked into his face and wept as if she were to baptize him with tears. And with a hunger weakened voice she spoke to the child saying, "Why have you left the spiritual world and come to share with me the bitterness of earthl...Read more of this...
by
Gibran, Kahlil
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