Famous Unattainable Poems by Famous Poets

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...Oh, that my blood were water, thou athirst,
   And thou and I in some far Desert land,
   How would I shed it gladly, if but first
   It touched thy lips, before it reached the sand.

   Once,—Ah, the Gods were good to me,—I threw
   Myself upon a poison snake, that crept
   Where my Beloved—a lesser love we knew
   Than this which now consumes m...Read more of this...

...ted as the guests
Filed singly in with rare and precious gifts.
Our eager fancies noted all they brought,
The glorious, unattainable delights!
But always there was one unbidden guest
Who cursed the child and left it bitterness.
The fire falls asunder, all is changed,
I am no more a child, and what I see
Is not a fairy tale, but life, my life.
The gifts are there, the many pleasant things:
Health, wealth, long-settled friendships, with a name
Which honors all who bear it, and ...Read more of this...

...O dear sweet rosy 
 unattainable desire 
...how sad, no way 
 to change the mad 
cultivated asphodel, the 
 visible reality... 

and skin's appalling 
 petals--how inspired 
to be so Iying in the living 
 room drunk naked 
and dreaming, in the absence 
 of electricity... 
over and over eating the low root 
 of the asphodel, 
gray fate... 

 rolling in generation 
on the flowery...Read more of this...

...r called forever river and ever...

Keats as Mimi, Camille, and an aging gourmet.
He must also refuse the favors of the unattainable lady
(As Baudelaire refused Madame Sabatier when the fair 
blonde summoned him,

For Jeanne Duval was enough and more than enough, 
although she cuckolded him
With errand boys, servants, waiters; reality was Jeanne Duval.
Had he permitted Madame Sabatier to teach the poet a greater whiteness,
His devotion and conception of the divinity of Beauty...Read more of this...

...ere was no cure
To stop his lonely pain.
For nothing keeps a poet
In his high singing mood
Like unappeasable hunger
For unattainable food.
So fools are glad of the folly
That made them weep and sing,
And Keats is thankful for Fanny Brawne
And Drummond for his king.
They know that on flinty sorrow
And failure and desire
The steel of their souls was hammered
To bring forth the lyric fire.
Lord Byron and Shelley and Plunkett,
McDonough and Hunt and Pearse
See now why their hatre...Read more of this...

...ld is charm.

   Charm irresistible: the lovely something
       We follow in our dreams, but may not reach.
   The unattainable Divine Enchantment,
       Hinted in music, never heard in speech.

   This from the blue design exhales towards me,
       As incense rises from the Homes of Prayer,
   While the unfettered eyes, allured and rested,
       Urge the forbidden lips to stoop and share;

   Share in the sweetness of the rose and azure
       Traced in the ...Read more of this...

...ch voice as few 
 In that grim place had heard, so low, so clear, 
 So toned and cadenced from the Utmost Sphere, 
 The Unattainable Heaven from which she came. 
 'O Mantuan Spirit,' she said, 'whose lasting fame 
 Continues on the earth ye left, and still 
 With Time shall stand, an earthly friend to me, 
 - My friend, not fortune's - climbs a path so ill 
 That all the night-bred fears he hastes to flee 
 Were kindly to the thing he nears. The tale 
 Moved through the peace...Read more of this...

...der

How I have moved so far, how I have moved so little

And yet in essence stayed the same

Always passionate for the unattainable

For Joan Baez to make me her analyst,

To tour Ireland with Eddie and Finbar Furey

To be made a Chevalier des Palmes for translating Milosz.

I remember one road, many roads I did not take

And my heart lurches and my stomach turns

At the vertigo of mystery

At the simplicity of childhood

And its melancholy

At the silence of the moors

Beck...Read more of this...

...anger, lover of unreachable heights, why dwell you among the summits where eagles build their nests? 

Why seek you the unattainable? 

What storms would you trap in your net, 

And what vaporous birds do you hunt in the sky? 

Come and be one of us. 

Descend and appease your hunger with our bread and quench your thirst with our wine." 

In the solitude of their souls they said these things; 

But were their solitude deeper they would have known that I sought but the secret ...Read more of this...

...ss that never will fail;
A pride in our soul that mocks at a goal,
 A manhood that irks at a bond,
And try how we will, unattainable still,
 Behold it, our Land of Beyond!...Read more of this...

...to see her naked and vulnerable,
to see her in the refuse, the discarded
plots of old dreams, the costumes and masks
of unattainable states.
It was as if he were drawn
irresistably to failure."
It was hard to keep reading.
I was tired and wanted to give up.
The book seemed aware of this.
It hinted at changing the subject.
I waited for you to wake not knowing
how long I waited,
and it seemed that I was no longer reading.
I heard the wind passing
like a stream of sighs
and I he...Read more of this...

...Lament of Mahomed Akram

   I would have taken Golden Stars from the sky for your necklace,
   I would have shaken rose-leaves for your rest from all the rose-trees.

   But you had no need; the short sweet grass sufficed for your slumber,
   And you took no heed of such trifles as gold or a necklace.

   There is an hour, at twilight, too heavy ...Read more of this...

...d bush
that the depths, converted into archipelago,
O natural star, green diadem,
alone in your lonesome dynasty,
still unattainable, elusive, desolate
like one drop, like one grape, like the sea....Read more of this...

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