Famous Tidings Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Cave Of The Unborn

by Thomas Hardy
 I rose at night and visited
The Cave of the Unborn,
And crowding shapes surrounded me
For tidings of the life to be,
Who long had prayed the silent Head
To speed their advent morn.

Their eyes were lit with artless trust;
Hope thrilled their every tone:
"A place the loveliest, is it not?
A pure delight, a beauty-spot
Where all is gentle, pure and just
And ??violence?? is unknown?"

My...Read more of this...

Laus Deo

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 It is done!
Clang of bell and roar of gun
Send the tidings up and down.
How the belfries rock and reel!
How the great guns, peal on peal,
Fling the joy from town to town!

Ring, O bells!
Every stroke exulting tells
Of the burial hour of crime.
Loud and long, that all may hear,
Ring for every listening ear
Of Eternity and Time!

Let us kneel:
God's own voice is...Read more of this...

Sonnet V

by Alan Seeger
 A tide of beauty with returning May 
Floods the fair city; from warm pavements fume 
Odors endeared; down avenues in bloom 
The chestnut-trees with phallic spires are gay. 
Over the terrace flows the thronged cafe; 
The boulevards are streams of hurrying sound; 
And through the streets, like veins when they abound, 
The lust for pleasure throbs itself away. 
Here...Read more of this...

68. The Holy Fair

by Robert Burns
 UPON 1 a simmer Sunday morn
 When Nature’s face is fair,
I walked forth to view the corn,
 An’ snuff the caller air.
The rising sun owre Galston muirs
 Wi’ glorious light was glintin;
The hares were hirplin down the furrs,
 The lav’rocks they were chantin
 Fu’ sweet that day.


As lightsomely I glowr’d abroad,
 To see a scene sae gay,
Three hizzies, early...Read more of this...

A Twinkle in Her Eyes

by Majeed Amjad
Who can say

Why her eyes,

Those playmates of the hamlet where Beauty dwells,

Why her eyes smile that way ?

 

When notes arising from her soul,

That Temple-Palace of Music,

And traipsing through the land of glad tidings,

Mirthfully smothering the tinkling of their anklets,

Tip toe up, haltingly, secretively,

To the gates of her lips,

Why her gaze sparkles and smiles ?

 

Leaping over islands of silence

And...Read more of this...

Requiescat In Pace!

by Jean Ingelow
My heart is sick awishing and awaiting:
  The lad took up his knapsack, he went, he went his way;
And I looked on for his coming, as a prisoner through the grating
  Looks and longs and longs and wishes for its opening day.
On the wild purple mountains, all alone with no other,
  The strong terrible mountains he longed,...Read more of this...

To Posterity

by Bertolt Brecht
 Indeed I live in the dark ages!
A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens
A hard heart. He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.

Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!
And he who walks calmly across the street,
Is he not out of reach...Read more of this...

The Chorus of Old Men in Aegus

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Ye gods that have a home beyond the world, 
Ye that have eyes for all man’s agony, 
Ye that have seen this woe that we have seen,— 
Look with a just regard, 
And with an even grace,
Here on the shattered corpse of a shattered king, 
Here on a suffering world where men grow old 
And wander like sad shadows...Read more of this...

The Petition for an Absolute Retreat

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 Give me, O indulgent Fate! 
Give me yet before I die
A sweet, but absolute retreat,
'Mongst paths so lost and trees so high
That the world may ne'er invade
Through such windings and such shade
My unshaken liberty.

No intruders thither come
Who visit but to be from home!
None who their vain moments pass
Only studious of their glass;
News, that charm to list'ning ears,
That false alarm...Read more of this...

Pau-Puk-Keewis

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 You shall hear how Pau-Puk-Keewis,
He, the handsome Yenadizze,
Whom the people called the Storm-Fool,
Vexed the village with disturbance;
You shall hear of all his mischief,
And his flight from Hiawatha,
And his wondrous transmigrations,
And the end of his adventures.
On the shores of Gitche Gumee,
On the dunes of Nagow Wudjoo,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water
Stood the lodge of Pau-Puk-Keewis.
It was he who in his frenzy
Whirled these...Read more of this...

The Battle of the Baltic

by Thomas Campbell
 Of Nelson and the North 
Sing the glorious day's renown, 
When to battle fierce came forth 
All the might of Denmark's crown, 
And her arms along the deep proudly shone;
By each gun the lighted brand 
In a bold determined hand, 
And the Prince of all the land 
Led them on. 

Like leviathans afloat 
Lay their bulwarks on the brine,...Read more of this...

The Task: Book IV The Winter Evening (excerpts)

by William Cowper
 Hark! 'tis the twanging horn! O'er yonder bridge,
That with its wearisome but needful length
Bestrides the wintry flood, in which the moon
Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright,
He comes, the herald of a noisy world,
With spatter'd boots, strapp'd waist, and frozen locks;
News from all nations lumb'ring at his back.
True to his charge, the close-pack'd load behind,
Yet careless what he brings, his...Read more of this...

Mistress Gurtons Cat

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Old MISTRESS GURTON had a Cat,
A Tabby, loveliest of the race,
Sleek as a doe, and tame, and fat
With velvet paws, and whisker'd face;
The Doves of VENUS not so fair,
Nor JUNO'S Peacocks half so grand
As MISTRESS GURTON'S Tabby rare,
The proudest of the purring band;
So dignified in all her paces--
She seem'd, a pupil of the Graces!
There never was a finer creature
In...Read more of this...

Storm and Sunlight

by Siegfried Sassoon
 I

In barns we crouch, and under stacks of straw, 
Harking the storm that rides a hurtling legion 
Up the arched sky, and speeds quick heels of panic 
With growling thunder loosed in fork and clap 
That echoes crashing thro’ the slumbrous vault.
The whispering woodlands darken: vulture Gloom 
Stoops, menacing the skeltering flocks of Light, 
Where the gaunt shepherd shakes...Read more of this...

Mary and Gabriel

by Rupert Brooke
 Young Mary, loitering once her garden way,
Felt a warm splendour grow in the April day,
As wine that blushes water through. And soon,
Out of the gold air of the afternoon,
One knelt before her: hair he had, or fire,
Bound back above his ears with golden wire,
Baring the eager marble of his face.
Not man's nor woman's was the immortal grace
Rounding the limbs...Read more of this...

Or from that Sea of Time

by Walt Whitman
 1
OR, from that Sea of Time, 
Spray, blown by the wind—a double winrow-drift of weeds and shells; 
(O little shells, so curious-convolute! so limpid-cold and voiceless! 
Yet will you not, to the tympans of temples held, 
Murmurs and echoes still bring up—Eternity’s music, faint and far,
Wafted inland, sent from Atlantica’s rim—strains for the Soul of the Prairies, 
Whisper’d reverberations—chords...Read more of this...

There came a Wind like a Bugle --

by Emily Dickinson
 There came a wind like a bugle
It quivered through the GRASS,
And a green chill upon the heat

So ominous did pass
We barred the windows and the doors
As from an emerald GHOST
The doom's electric moccasin
That very instant passed.

On a strange mob of panting trees,
And fences fled away, and rivers where 
The houses ran the living looked that day (THAT DAY).
The bell...Read more of this...

Dream Song 124: Behold I bring you tidings of great joy

by John Berryman
 Behold I bring you tidings of great joy-”
especially now that the snow & gale are still-”
for Henry is delivered.
Not only is he delivered from the gale
but he has a little one. He's out of jail
also. It is a boy.

Henry's pleasure in this unusual event
reminds me of the extra told at Hollywood & Vine
that TV cameras
were focussed on him personally...Read more of this...

The Faerie Queene: Book I Canto I

by Edmund Spenser
Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,
As time her taught in lowly Shepheards weeds,
Am now enforst a far unfitter taske,
For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,
And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds;
Whose prayses having slept in silence long,
Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds
To blazon broad emongst her learned throng:
Fierce warres and faithful loves shall...Read more of this...

Beyond

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Beyond yon dim old mountain's shadowy height,
  The restless sun droops low his grand old face;
While downward sweeps the trembling veil of night,
  To hide the earth; the frost king's filmy lace
Rests on the mountain's hoary snow-crowned head,
  And adds to it a softened grace; the light
Which dies afar in faint and fading red
  In purple...Read more of this...

A Legend of Service

by Henry Van Dyke
 It pleased the Lord of Angels (praise His name!)
To hear, one day, report from those who came
With pitying sorrow, or exultant joy,
To tell of earthly tasks in His employ:
For some were sorry when they saw how slow
The stream of heavenly love on earth must flow;
And some were glad because their eyes had seen,
Along its banks, fresh flowers and living...Read more of this...

One of the Shepherds

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 We were out on the hills that night 
To watch our sheep; 
Drowsily by the fire we lay 
Where the waning flame did flicker and leap, 
And some were weary and half asleep, 
And some talked low of their flocks and the fright 
Of a lion that day. 

But I had drawn from the others apart; 
I was only...Read more of this...

Bonny Dundee

by Sir Walter Scott
 To the Lords of Convention ’twas Claver’se who spoke. 
‘Ere the King’s crown shall fall there are crowns to be broke; 
So let each Cavalier who loves honour and me, 
Come follow the bonnet of Bonny Dundee. 
Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can,
Come saddle your horses, and call up your men; 
Come open the West...Read more of this...

The Ghosts

by Robert William Service
 Smith, great writer of stories, drank; found it immortalized his pen;
Fused in his brain-pan, else a blank, heavens of glory now and then;
Gave him the magical genius touch; God-given power to gouge out, fling
Flat in your face a soul-thought -- Bing!
Twiddle your heart-strings in his clutch. "Bah!" said Smith, "let my body lie
 stripped to the buff in swinish...Read more of this...

As Consequent Etc

by Walt Whitman
 AS consequent from store of summer rains, 
Or wayward rivulets in autumn flowing, 
Or many a herb-lined brook’s reticulations, 
Or subterranean sea-rills making for the sea, 
Songs of continued years I sing.

Life’s ever-modern rapids first, (soon, soon to blend, 
With the old streams of death.) 

Some threading Ohio’s farm-fields or the woods, 
Some down Colorado’s cañons from sources of...Read more of this...

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