Famous True Life Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous True Life poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous true life poems. These examples illustrate what a famous true life poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...GO(D) knows, my Martial, if we two could be
To enjoy our days set wholly free;
To the true life together bend our mind,
And take a furlough from the falser kind.
No rich saloon, nor palace of the great,
Nor suit at law should trouble our estate;
On no vainglorious statues should we look,
But of a walk, a talk, a little book,
Baths, wells and meads, and the veranda shade,
Let all our travels and our toils be made.
Now neither lives unto himsel...Read more of this...
by
Stevenson, Robert Louis
...have often had a dream
(Work it up in your next month's article)
Of man's poor spirit in its progress, still
Losing true life for ever and a day
Through ever trying to be and ever being--
In the evolution of successive spheres--
Before its actual sphere and place of life,
Halfway into the next, which having reached,
It shoots with corresponding foolery
Halfway into the next still, on and off!
As when a traveller, bound from North to South,
Scouts fur in Russia: ...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...I take on trust,
And life from others modelled steal or win;
Or shall I heave to light, and clear of rust
My true life from within?
O, let me be myself! But where, O where,
Under this heap of precedent, this mound
Of customs, modes, and maxims, cumbrance rare,
Shall the Myself be found?
O thou Myself, thy fathers thee debarred
None of their wisdom, but their folly came
Therewith; they smoothed thy path, but made it hard
For thee to quit the ...Read more of this...
by
Ingelow, Jean
...towers fall'n as soon as built—
Oh, if indeed that eye foresee
Or see (in Him is no before)
In more of life true life no more
And Love the indifference to be,
Then might I find, ere yet the morn
Breaks hither over Indian seas,
That Shadow waiting with the keys,
To shroud me from my proper scorn.
XXVII
I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods:
I envy not...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...hence up he flew, and on the tree of life,
The middle tree and highest there that grew,
Sat like a cormorant; yet not true life
Thereby regained, but sat devising death
To them who lived; nor on the virtue thought
Of that life-giving plant, but only used
For prospect, what well used had been the pledge
Of immortality. So little knows
Any, but God alone, to value right
The good before him, but perverts best things
To worst abuse, or to their meanest use.
Beneath him...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...e to repeat;
To always do the same,
Since sameness is so sweet;
In simple things to find
The dearest to his mood.
His true life in his mind
Is oh so good!
Please leave him to his dream,
This old, unweary man,
Who shuns the busy stream
And has outlived his span.
Just leave him on his shelf
To watch the world go by . . .
Because he is--myself:
Yea, such be I....Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...the void night's ear,
Till the storm lose its track,
And all the night go back;
Till, as through sleep false life knows true life near,
Thou know the morning through the night,
And through the thunder silence, and through darkness light."
I set the trumpet to my lips and blow.
The height of night is shaken, the skies break,
The winds and stars and waters come and go
By fits of breath and light and sound, that wake
As out of sleep, and perish as the show
Built up of sleep, ...Read more of this...
by
Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...d ever guarded thee from pain and grief.
Through all my life thou wert its hope and pride,
But now you turn from that true life aside,
And long to wander as a willful child,
In other paths, by luring dreams beguiled.
Not so my love for thee; though e'en the sun
Should disappear, his race of glory run,
And stars like lost souls wand'ring through the sky,
Should vanish as that sun; though worlds should die,
And all the purple clouds should come at eve
And for the eart...Read more of this...
by
Sherrick, Fannie Isabelle
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