Famous Tired Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Tired poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous tired poems. These examples illustrate what a famous tired poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Rupert Brooke
How should I know? The enormous wheels of will
Drove me cold-eyed on tired and sleepless feet.
Night was void arms and you a phantom still,
And day your far light swaying down the street.
As never fool for love, I starved for you;
My throat was dry and my eyes hot to see.
Your mouth so lying was most heaven in view,
And your remembered...Read more of this...
by
Matthew Arnold
Strew on her roses, roses,
And never a spray of yew!
In quiet she reposes;
Ah, would that I did too!
Her mirth the world required;
She bathed it in smiles of glee.
But her heart was tired, tired,
And now they let her be.
Her life was turning, turning,
In mazes of heat and sound.
But for peace her soul was yearning,
And now peace laps her round.
Her cabined...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Sometimes, when I am toil-worn and aweary,
And tired out with working long and well,
And earth is dark, and skies above are dreary,
And heart and soul are all too sick to tell,
These words have come to me like angel fingers
Pressing the spirit's eyelids down in sleep,
'Oh let us not be weary in well doing,
For in due season we shall surely...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
For my mother, born March 1902, died March 1959
and my father, born February 1900, died June 1959
Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June. I am tired of being brave.
We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
myself where the sun...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
O mother-my-love, if you'll give me your hand,
And go where I ask you to wander,
I will lead you away to a beautiful land,--
The Dreamland that's waiting out yonder.
We'll walk in a sweet posie-garden out there,
Where moonlight and starlight are streaming,
And the flowers and the birds are filling the air
With the fragrance and music of dreaming.
There'll be no little tired-out...Read more of this...
by
Delmore Schwartz
Tired and unhappy, you think of houses
Soft-carpeted and warm in the December evening,
While snow's white pieces fall past the window,
And the orange firelight leaps.
A young girl sings
That song of Gluck where Orpheus pleads with Death;
Her elders watch, nodding their happiness
To see time fresh again in her self-conscious eyes:
The servants bring in the coffee, the children go to bed,
Elder...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
No, my heart has never tired of you.
In the time of June, long ago, you said to me: "If I knew, friend, if I knew that my presence one day might be a burden to you— with my poor heart and sorrowful thoughts, I would go away, no matter where."
And gently your forehead rose towards my kiss.
And you said to...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
"Tell Annie I'll be home in time
To help her with her Christmas-tree."
That's what he wrote, and hark! the chime
Of Christmas bells, and where is he?
And how the house is dark and sad,
And Annie's sobbing on my knee!
The page beside the candle-flame
With cruel type was overfilled;
I read and read until a name
Leapt at me and my heart was stilled:
My eye...Read more of this...
by
Claude McKay
O whisper, O my soul! The afternoon
Is waning into evening, whisper soft!
Peace, O my rebel heart! for soon the moon
From out its misty veil will swing aloft!
Be patient, weary body, soon the night
Will wrap thee gently in her sable sheet,
And with a leaden sigh thou wilt invite
To rest thy tired hands and...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,
As to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disablèd
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly doctor-like controlling skill,
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,
And captive good attending captain ill.
Tired...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
HOW cold is that bosom which folly once fired,
How pale is that cheek where the rouge lately glisten’d;
How silent that tongue which the echoes oft tired,
How dull is that ear which to flatt’ry so listen’d!
If sorrow and anguish their exit await,
From friendship and dearest affection remov’d;
How doubly severer, Maria, thy fate,
Thou diedst unwept, as thou...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I HAVE been in the meadows all the day
And gathered there the nosegay that you see
Singing within myself as bird or bee
When such do field-work on a morn of May.
But, now I look upon my flowers, decay
Has met them in my hands more fatally
Because more warmly clasped,--and sobs are free
To come instead of songs. What do you say,
Sweet counsellors,...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Because my teeth are feebly few
I cannot bolt my grub like you,
But have to chew and chew and chew
As you can see;
Yet every mouthful seems so good
I would not haste it if I could,
And so I salivate my food
With ecstasy.
Because my purse is poor in pence
I spend my dough with common-sense,
And live without the least pretence
In...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
If she would come to me here,
Now the sunken swaths
Are glittering paths
To the sun, and the swallows cut clear
Into the low sun--if she came to me here!
If she would come to me now,
Before the last mown harebells are dead,
While that vetch clump yet burns red;
Before all the bats have dropped from the...Read more of this...
by
James Wright
Relieved, I let the book fall behind a stone.
I climb a slight rise of grass.
I do not want to disturb the ants
Who are walking single file up the fence post,
Carrying small white petals,
Casting shadows so frail that I can see through them.
I close my eyes for a moment and listen.
The old grasshoppers
Are tired, they leap heavily now,
Their thighs are...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I never kill a fly because
I think that what we have of laws
To regulate and civilize
Our daily life - we owe to flies.
Apropos, I'll tell you of Choo, the spouse
Of the head of the hunters, Wung;
Such a beautiful cave they had for a house,
And a brood of a dozen young.
And Wung would start by the dawn's red light
On the...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart !
Unlike our uses and our destinies.
Our ministering two angels look surprise
On one another, as they strike athwart
Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art
A guest for queens to social pageantries,
With gages from a hundred brighter eyes
Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part
Of chief musician. What hast thou to do
With...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
Tired of waiting, you burst your bonds, impatient flowers, before
the winter had gone. Glimpses of the unseen comer reached your
wayside watch, and you rushed out running and panting, impulsive
jasmines, troops of riotous roses.
You were the first to march to the breach of death, your
clamour of colour and perfume troubled the air. You laughed and
pressed and pushed each other, bared...Read more of this...
by
T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering...Read more of this...
by
Galway Kinnell
-- for Jane kenyon
It is a day after many days of storms.
Having been washed and washed, the air glitters;
small heaped cumuli blow across the sky; a shower
visible against the firs douses the crocuses.
We knew it would happen one day this week.
Now, when I learn you have died, I go
to the open door and look across at New Hampshire
and see...Read more of this...
by
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
'Tis eventide; the noisy brook is hushed
Or murmurs only as a tired child,
Worn out with play; the tangled weeds lie still
Within the marshy hollow. Quaint and dark
The willows bend above the brooklet's tide,
Reflecting shadowy images therein.
The dark-browed trees, with faces to the sky,
Shut out the light that fades in crimson lines
Along the western sky. And yonder shade
Of purple marks the...Read more of this...
by
Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
You are tired
(I think)
Of the always puzzle of living and doing;
And so am I.
Come with me then
And we'll leave it far and far away-
(Only you and I understand!)
You have played
(I think)
And broke the toys you were fondest of
And are a little tired now;
Tired of things that break and-
Just tired.
So am I.
But I come with a dream...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The Wind -- tapped like a tired Man --
And like a Host -- "Come in"
I boldly answered -- entered then
My Residence within
A Rapid -- footless Guest --
To offer whom a Chair
Were as impossible as hand
A Sofa to the Air --
No Bone had He to bind Him --
His Speech was like the Push
Of numerous Humming Birds at once
From a superior...Read more of this...
by
Weldon Kees
Not a third that walks beside me,
But five or six or more.
Whether at dusk or daybreak
Or at blinding noon, a retinue
Of shadows that no door
Excludes.--One like a kind of scrawl,
Hands scrawled trembling and blue,
A harelipped and hunchbacked dwarf
With a smile like a grapefruit rind,
Who jabbers the way I do
When the brain is empty and tired
And the guests no longer...Read more of this...
by
Amy Levy
To J. De P.
Deep in the grass outstretched I lie,
Motionless on the hill;
Above me is a cloudless sky,
Around me all is still:
There is no breath, no sound, no stir,
The drowsy peace to break:
I close my tired eyes--it were
So simple not to wake....Read more of this...
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