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Famous Too Soon Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...l I was to sleep at noon,
  And wake when night is chilly
Beneath the comfortless cold moon;
A fool to pluck my rose too soon,
  A fool to snap my lily.

My garden-plot I have not kept;
  Faded and all-forsaken,
I weep as I have never wept:
Oh it was summer when I slept,
  It's winter now I waken.

Talk what you please of future spring
  And sun-warm'd sweet to-morrow:—
Stripp'd bare of hope and everything,
No more to laugh, no more to sing,
  I sit alone with...Read more of this...
by Rossetti, Christina



...many misfortunes at the hand of Grendel.
God can always perform wonder upon wonder,
the Herdsman of Glory. It was all too soon ago
that I did not hope to expect any cure for my woes
for the width of my life, when the best of houses
stood splattered with blood, dripping with gore,
grief strewn far and wide for every wise man,
broad-souled, who could not conceive how
they could defend this tribal treasure
from its hated foes, ghouls and spectral terrors.
Now a retaine...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,
...This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate a...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...It is full winter now: the trees are bare,
Save where the cattle huddle from the cold
Beneath the pine, for it doth never wear
The autumn's gaudy livery whose gold
Her jealous brother pilfers, but is true
To the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blew

From Saturn's cave; a few thin wisps of hay
Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain
Dr...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...BOOK I

 Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star,
Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung above his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day
Robs not one ligh...Read more of this...
by Keats, John



...ths below 
 Shall claim them. But their lives of righteousness 
 Sufficed not to redeem. The gate decreed, 
 Being born too soon, we did not pass ( for I, 
 Dying unbaptized, am of them). More nor less 
 Our doom is weighed, - to feel of Heaven the need, 
 To long, and to be hopeless." 
 Grief
 was mine 
 That heard him, thinking what great names must be 
 In this suspense around me. "Master, tell," 
 I questioned, "from this outer girth of Hell 
 Pass any to the blessed sphe...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante
...LARA. [1] 

CANTO THE FIRST. 

I. 

The Serfs are glad through Lara's wide domain, [2] 
And slavery half forgets her feudal chain; 
He, their unhoped, but unforgotten lord — 
The long self-exiled chieftain is restored: 
There be bright faces in the busy hall, 
Bowls on the board, and banners on the wall; 
Far chequering o'er the pictured window, plays 
The...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...NEVER seek to tell thy love  
Love that never told can be; 
For the gentle wind doth move 
Silently invisibly.

I told my love I told my love 5 
I told her all my heart  
Trembling cold in ghastly fears.
Ah! she did depart! 

Soon after she was gone from me  
A traveller came by 10 
Silently invisibly: 
He took her with a sigh....Read more of this...
by Blake, William
...(Newdigate prize poem recited in the Sheldonian Theatre Oxford 
June
26th, 1878.

To my friend George Fleming author of 'The Nile Novel' and
'Mirage')


I.


A year ago I breathed the Italian air, -
And yet, methinks this northern Spring is fair,-
These fields made golden with the flower of March,
The throstle singing on the feathered larch,
The cawing roo...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...1
I CELEBRATE myself; 
And what I assume you shall assume; 
For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you. 

I loafe and invite my Soul; 
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes—the shelves are crowded with
 perfumes; 
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it; ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...1
They that in play can do the thing they would,
Having an instinct throned in reason's place,
--And every perfect action hath the grace
Of indolence or thoughtless hardihood--
These are the best: yet be there workmen good
Who lose in earnestness control of face,
Or reckon means, and rapt in effort base
Reach to their end by steps well understood. 
Me whom...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...The IDIOT BOY.   'Tis eight o'clock,—a clear March night,  The moon is up—the sky is blue,  The owlet in the moonlight air,  He shouts from nobody knows where;  He lengthens out his lonely shout,  Halloo! halloo! a long halloo!   —Why bustle thus about your door,&n...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William
...WHILOM*, as olde stories tellen us, *formerly
There was a duke that highte* Theseus. *was called 
Of Athens he was lord and governor,
And in his time such a conqueror
That greater was there none under the sun.
Full many a riche country had he won.
What with his wisdom and his chivalry,
He conquer'd all the regne of Feminie,
That whilom was y-cleped S...Read more of this...
by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...CANTO FIRST.

The Chase.

     Harp of the North! that mouldering long hast hung
        On the witch-elm that shades Saint Fillan's spring
     And down the fitful breeze thy numbers flung,
        Till envious ivy did around thee cling,
     Muffling with verdant ringlet every string,—
        O Minstrel Harp, still must thine accents sleep?
   ...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...The Argument.


Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep

Once meek, and in a perilous path,
The just man kept his course along 
The vale of death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow.
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.

Then the perilous path was planted:
And a river, and a spring
On every cliff and tom...Read more of this...
by Blake, William
...Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
    While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
            Only this and nothing more.”

  ...Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan
...ong
"The thickest billows of the living storm
I plunged, and bared my bosom to the clime
Of that cold light, whose airs too soon deform.--
"Before the chariot had begun to climb
The opposing steep of that mysterious dell,
Behold a wonder worthy of the rhyme
"Of him whom from the lowest depths of Hell
Through every Paradise & through all glory
Love led serene, & who returned to tell
"In words of hate & awe the wondrous story
How all things are transfigured, except Love;
For de...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...se to do, 
Excepting to wind up the sun and moon, 
Or curb a runaway young star or two, 
Or wild colt of a comet, which too soon 
Broke out of bounds o'er th' ethereal blue, 
Splitting some planet with its playful tail, 
As boats are sometimes by a wanton whale. 

III 

The guardian seraphs had retired on high, 
Finding their charges past all care below; 
Terrestrial business fill'd nought in the sky 
Save the recording angel's black bureau; 
Who found, indeed, the facts to m...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...I 
I have loved England, dearly and deeply, 
Since that first morning, shining and pure, 
The white cliffs of Dover I saw rising steeply 
Out of the sea that once made her secure. 
I had no thought then of husband or lover, 
I was a traveller, the guest of a week; 
Yet when they pointed 'the white cliffs of Dover', 
Startled I found there were tears on my ...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer
...Copyright Anna Akhmatova
Copyright English translation by Ilya Shambat (ilya_shambat@yahoo.com)
Origin: http://www.geocities.com/ilya_shambat/akhmatova.html

 * I * 

We thought we were beggars, we thought we had nothing at all
But then when we started to lose one thing after another,
Each day became
A memorial day --
And then we made songs
Of ...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry