Famous Tender Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Ever-Patient Woman

by Andree Chedid
 In the flowing sap
In her growing fever
Parting her veils
Cracking out of her shells
Sliding out of her skins

The ever-patient woman
Slowly
gives herself
life

In her volcanoes
In her orchards
Seeking solidity and measure 
Clasping her most tender flesh
Straining every fine-honed fiber

The ever-patient woman
Slowly
gives herself
light....Read more of this...

The Cry Of The Children

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,
And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows,
The young birds are chirping in the nest,
The young fawns are playing with the shadows,
The young flowers are blowing toward the west— 
But the young, young...Read more of this...

The Message

by Henry Van Dyke
 Waking from tender sleep,
My neighbour's little child
Put out his baby hand to me,
Looked in my face, and smiled.

It seemed as if he came
Home from a happy land,
To tell me something that my heart
Would surely understand.

Somewhere, among bright dreams,
A child that once was mine
Had whispered wordless love to him,
And given him a sign.

Comfort of kindly speech,
And counsel of the wise,
Have...Read more of this...

Sonnet XLII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XLII. Zefiro torna, e 'l bel tempo rimena. RETURNING SPRING BRINGS TO HIM ONLY INCREASE OF GRIEF.  Zephyr returns; and in his jocund trainBrings verdure, flowers, and days serenely clear;Brings Progne's twitter, Philomel's lorn strain,With every bloom that paints the vernal year;Cloudless the skies, and smiling every plain;With joyance...Read more of this...

Whales Weep Not!

by D. H. Lawrence
 They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains
the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.

All the whales in the wider deeps, hot are they, as they urge
on and on, and dive beneath the icebergs.
The right whales, the sperm-whales, the hammer-heads, the killers
there they blow, there they blow, hot wild white breath out of
 the...Read more of this...

Goliath Of Gath

by Phillis Wheatley
 SAMUEL, Chap. xvii.

YE martial pow'rs, and all ye tuneful nine,
Inspire my song, and aid my high design.
The dreadful scenes and toils of war I write,
The ardent warriors, and the fields of fight:
You best remember, and you best can sing
The acts of heroes to the vocal string:
Resume the lays with which your sacred lyre,
Did then the poet and the sage...Read more of this...

Autumn in the Garden

by Henry Van Dyke
 When the frosty kiss of Autumn in the dark
Makes its mark
On the flowers, and the misty morning grieves
Over fallen leaves;
Then my olden garden, where the golden soil
Through the toil
Of a hundred years is mellow, rich, and deep,
Whispers in its sleep.

'Mid the crumpled beds of marigold and phlox,
Where the box
Borders with its glossy green the ancient walks,
There's a voice that...Read more of this...

Childhood

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 HOW I could see through and through you!
So unconscious, tender, kind,
More than ever was known to you
Of the pure ways of your mind.


We who long to rest from strife
Labour sternly as a duty;
But a magic in your life
Charms, unknowing of its beauty.


We are pools whose depths are told;
You are like a mystic fountain,
Issuing ever pure and cold
From the hollows...Read more of this...

The Faceless Man

by Robert William Service
 I'm dead.
Officially I'm dead. Their hope is past.
How long I stood as missing! Now, at last
 I'm dead.

Look in my face -- no likeness can you see,
No tiny trace of him they knew as "me".
How terrible the change!
Even my eyes are strange.
So keyed are they to pain,
That if I chanced to meet
My mother in the street
She'd look at me...Read more of this...

Parables And Riddles

by Friedrich von Schiller
 I.

A bridge of pearls its form uprears
High o'er a gray and misty sea;
E'en in a moment it appears,
And rises upwards giddily.

Beneath its arch can find a road
The loftiest vessel's mast most high,
Itself hath never borne a load,
And seems, when thou draw'st near, to fly.

It comes first with the stream, and goes
Soon as the watery flood is dried.
Where may be...Read more of this...

The Faces of Memory

by George William Russell
 DREAM faces bloom around your face
 Like flowers upon one stem;
The heart of many a vanished race
 Sighs as I look on them.


The sun rich face of Egypt glows,
 The eyes of Eire brood,
With whom the golden Cyprian shows
 In lovely sisterhood.


Your tree of life put forth these flowers
 In ages past away:
They had the love in other hours
...Read more of this...

The Snow Storm

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 No hawk hangs over in this air:
The urgent snow is everywhere.
The wing adroiter than a sail
Must lean away from such a gale,
Abandoning its straight intent,
Or else expose tough ligament
And tender flesh to what before
Meant dampened feathers, nothing more.
Forceless upon our backs there fall
Infrequent flakes hexagonal,
Devised in many a curious style
To charm our safety for a while,
Where close to earth...Read more of this...

Discipline

by D. H. Lawrence
 It is stormy, and raindrops cling like silver bees to the pane, 
The thin sycamores in the playground are swinging with flattened leaves; 
The heads of the boys move dimly through a yellow gloom that stains 
The class; over them all the dark net of my discipline weaves. 

It is no good, dear, gentleness and forbearance, I endured too...Read more of this...

The Assignation

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Hear I the creaking gate unclose?
The gleaming latch uplifted?
No--'twas the wind that, whirring, rose,
Amidst the poplars drifted!
Adorn thyself, thou green leaf-bowering roof,
Destined the bright one's presence to receive,
For her, a shadowy palace-hall aloof
With holy night, thy boughs familiar weave.
And ye sweet flatteries of the delicate air,
Awake and sport her rosy cheek around,
When their light weight the tender feet shall...Read more of this...

O Love! while yet you can, with tender art,

by Omar Khayyam
O Love! while yet you can, with tender art,
Lift sorrow's burden from your lover's heart;
Your wealth of graces will not always last,
But slip from your possession, and depart!...Read more of this...

Whence Cometh Such Tender Rapture?

by Marina Tsvetaeva
 Whence cometh such tender rapture?
Those curls--they are not the first ones
I've smoothened, and I've already
Known lips--that were darker than yours.

The stars have risen and faded,
--Whence cometh such tender rapture?--
And eyes have risen and faded 
In face of these eyes of mine

I'd never yet hearkened unto
Such songs in the depths of darkness,
--Whence cometh such tender rapture?--
My head on the bard's...Read more of this...

from Venus and Adonis

by William Shakespeare
 But, lo! from forth a copse that neighbours by,
A breeding jennet, lusty, young, and proud,
Adonis' trampling courser doth espy,
And forth she rushes, snorts and neighs aloud;
The strong-neck'd steed, being tied unto a tree,
Breaketh his rein, and to her straight goes he.

Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds,
And now his woven girths he breaks asunder;
The bearing earth with his hard...Read more of this...

The Healers

by Laurence Binyon
 In a vision of the night I saw them, 
In the battles of the night. 
'Mid the roar and the reeling shadows of blood 
They were moving like light, 

Light of the reason, guarded 
Tense within the will, 
As a lantern under a tossing of boughs 
Burns steady and still. 

With scrutiny calm, and with fingers 
Patient as swift...Read more of this...

To a Childless Woman

by Siegfried Sassoon
 You think I cannot understand. Ah, but I do... 
I have been wrung with anger and compassion for you. 
I wonder if you’d loathe my pity, if you knew. 

But you shall know. I’ve carried in my heart too long 
This secret burden. Has not silence wrought your wrong— 
Brought you to dumb and wintry middle-age, with grey 
Unfruitful...Read more of this...

The Old Poet

by Amy Levy
 I will be glad because it is the Spring;
I will forget the winter in my heart--
Dead hopes and withered promise; and will wring
A little joy from life ere life depart.

For spendthrift youth with passion-blinded eyes,
Stays not to see how woods and fields are bright;
He hears the phantom voices call, he flies
Upon the track of some unknown delight.

To him the...Read more of this...

Why should his tender form expire

by Kalidasa
Why should his tender form expire,
As blossoms perish in the fire?
How could that gentle life endure
The deadly arrow, sharp and sure?

Restore your arrow to the quiver;
To you were weapons lent
The broken-hearted to deliver,
Not strike the innocent....Read more of this...

Cupid Sleeping

by Mary Darby Robinson
 [Inscribed to Her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire.]


CLOSE in a woodbine's tangled shade, 
The BLOOMING GOD asleep was laid; 
His brows with mossy roses crown'd; 
His golden darts lay scatter'd round; 
To shade his auburn, curled head, 
A purple canopy was spread, 
Which gently with the breezes play'd, 
And shed around a soften'd shade. 
Upon his downy smiling cheek,...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXXXIII

by William Shakespeare
 I never saw that you did painting need
And therefore to your fair no painting set;
I found, or thought I found, you did exceed
The barren tender of a poet's debt;
And therefore have I slept in your report,
That you yourself being extant well might show
How far a modern quill doth come too short,
Speaking of worth, what worth in you doth grow.
This...Read more of this...

Oh Gray And Tender Is The Rain

by Lizette Woodworth Reese
 Oh, gray and tender is the rain,
That drips, drips on the pane!
A hundred things come in the door,
The scent of herbs, the thought of yore.

I see the pool out in the grass,
A bit of broken glass;
The red flags running wet and straight,
Down to the little flapping gate.

Lombardy poplars tall and three,
Across the road I see;
There is no loveliness so...Read more of this...

The Shepherd

by William Blake
 How sweet is the Shepherd's sweet lot,
From the morn to the evening he strays:
He shall follow his sheep all the day
And his tongue shall be filled with praise.

For he hears the lambs innocent call,
And he hears the ewes tender reply,
He is watchful while they are in peace,
For they know when their Shepherd is nigh....Read more of this...

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