Famous Unborn Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Brave New World

by Robert William Service
 One spoke: "Come, let us gaily go
With laughter, love and lust,
Since in a century or so
We'll all be boneyard dust.
When unborn shadows hold the screen,
(Our betters, I'll allow)
'Twill be as if we'd never been,
A hundred years from now. 

When we have played life's lively game
Right royally we'll rot,
And not a soul will care a damn
The why or how we...Read more of this...

In Memoriam 131: O Living Will That Shalt Endure

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 O living will that shalt endure
When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Rise in the spiritual rock,
Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure, 

That we may lift from out of dust
A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquer'd years
To one that with us works, and trust, 

With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can...Read more of this...

Then Was My Neophyte

by Dylan Thomas
 Then was my neophyte,
Child in white blood bent on its knees
Under the bell of rocks,
Ducked in the twelve, disciple seas
The winder of the water-clocks
Calls a green day and night.
My sea hermaphrodite,
Snail of man in His ship of fires
That burn the bitten decks,
Knew all His horrible desires
The climber of the water sex
Calls the green rock of light.

Who in these labyrinths,
This...Read more of this...

To An Unborn Pauper Child

by Thomas Hardy
 Breathe not, hid Heart: cease silently,
And though thy birth-hour beckons thee,
Sleep the long sleep:
The Doomsters heap
Travails and teens around us here,
And Time-Wraiths turn our songsingings to fear.

Hark, how the peoples surge and sigh,
And laughters fail, and greetings die;
Hopes dwindle; yea,
Faiths waste away,
Affections and enthusiasms numb:
Thou canst not mend these things if thou dost come.

Had I the ear of wombed...Read more of this...

Transcience

by Sarojini Naidu
 Nay, do not grieve tho' life be full of sadness,
Dawn will not veil her spleandor for your grief,
Nor spring deny their bright, appointed beauty
To lotus blossom and ashoka leaf.

Nay, do not pine, tho' life be dark with trouble,
Time will not pause or tarry on his way;
To-day that seems so long, so strange, so bitter,
Will soon be some forgotten yesterday.

Nay,...Read more of this...

Sounds of Life and Love

by Dejan Stojanovic
Love: Which is more important: Love or life? 
Life: Without life, there would be no love. 

Love: But without love, life would have no meaning. 
Life: True, but life gives birth to love. 

Love: And what gives birth to life? 
Life: Life gives birth to itself. 

Love: Nothing gives birth to itself automatically, 
There must be some cause, a reason...Read more of this...

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...

The Song of the Smoke

by W. E. B. Du Bois
I am the Smoke King 
I am black! 
I am swinging in the sky, 
I am wringing worlds awry; 
I am the thought of the throbbing mills, 
I am the soul of the soul-toil kills, 
Wraith of the ripple of trading rills; 
Up I’m curling from the sod, 
I am whirling home to God; 
I am the Smoke King 
I...Read more of this...

The Unborn

by Sharon Olds
 Sometimes I can almost see, around our heads,
Like gnats around a streetlight in summer,
The children we could have,
The glimmer of them.

Sometimes I feel them waiting, dozing 
In some antechamber - servants, half-
Listening for the bell. 

Sometimes I see them lying like love letters
In the Dead Letter Office

And sometimes, like tonight, by some black
Second sight I can feel just one...Read more of this...

Haze

by Carl Sandburg
 KEEP a red heart of memories
Under the great gray rain sheds of the sky,
Under the open sun and the yellow gloaming embers.
Remember all paydays of lilacs and songbirds;
All starlights of cool memories on storm paths.

Out of this prairie rise the faces of dead men.
They speak to me. I can not tell you what they say.

Other faces rise on the...Read more of this...

Poem On His Birthday

by Dylan Thomas
 In the mustardseed sun,
By full tilt river and switchback sea
 Where the cormorants scud,
In his house on stilts high among beaks
 And palavers of birds
This sandgrain day in the bent bay's grave
 He celebrates and spurns
His driftwood thirty-fifth wind turned age;
 Herons spire and spear.

 Under and round him go
Flounders, gulls, on their cold, dying trails,
 Doing what they...Read more of this...

The Sun-Dial at Wells College

by Henry Van Dyke
 The shadow by my finger cast
Divides the future from the past:
Before it, sleeps the unborn hour
In darkness, and beyond thy power:
Behind its unreturning line,
The vanished hour, no longer thine:
One hour alone is in thy hands,--
The NOW on which the shadow stands....Read more of this...

Change

by Kathleen Raine
 Change 
Said the sun to the moon, 
You cannot stay. 

Change 
Says the moon to the waters, 
All is flowing. 

Change 
Says the fields to the grass, 
Seed-time and harvest, 
Chaff and grain. 

You must change said, 
Said the worm to the bud, 
Though not to a rose, 

Petals fade 
That wings may rise 
Borne on the wind. 

You...Read more of this...

Dont Cheer

by Robert William Service
 Don't cheer, damn you! Don't cheer!
Silence! Your bitterest tear
Is fulsomely sweet to-day. . . .
Down on your knees and pray.

See, they sing as they go,
Marching row upon row.
Who will be spared to return,
Sombre and starkly stern?
Chaps whom we knew - s0 strange,
Distant and dark with change;
Silent as those they slew,
Something in them dead too.
Who will return this way,
To sing...Read more of this...

The Wizard Way

by Aleister Crowley
 [Dedicated to General J.C.F. Fuller]


Velvet soft the night-star glowed 
Over the untrodden road, 
Through the giant glades of yew 
Where its ray fell light as dew 
Lighting up the shimmering veil 
Maiden pure and aery frail 
That the spiders wove to hide 
Blushes of the sylvan bride 
Earth, that trembled with delight 
At the male caress of Night. 

Velvet...Read more of this...

Love Poem

by Kathleen Raine
 Yours is the face that the earth turns to me,
Continuous beyond its human features lie
The mountain forms that rest against the sky.
With your eyes, the reflecting rainbow, the sun's light
Sees me; forest and flower, bird and beast
Know and hold me forever in the world's thought,
Creation's deep untroubled retrospect.

When your hand touches mine it is the earth
That takes me--the green...Read more of this...

Women And Roses

by Robert Browning
 I.

I dream of a red-rose tree.
And which of its roses three
Is the dearest rose to me?

II.

Round and round, like a dance of snow
In a dazzling drift, as its guardians, go
Floating the women faded for ages,
Sculptured in stone, on the poet's pages.
Then follow women fresh and gay,
Living and loving and loved to-day.
Last, in the rear, flee the multitude of maidens,
Beauties...Read more of this...

The Spirit Of The Unborn Babe

by Robert William Service
 The Spirit of the Unborn Babe peered through the window-pane,
Peered through the window-pane that glowed like beacon in the night;
For, oh, the sky was desolate and wild with wind and rain;
And how the little room was crammed with coziness and light!
Except the flirting of the fire there was no sound at all;
The Woman sat beside the hearth, her knitting...Read more of this...

The Valley of the Shadow

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 There were faces to remember in the Valley of the Shadow, 
There were faces unregarded, there were faces to forget; 
There were fires of grief and fear that are a few forgotten ashes, 
There were sparks of recognition that are not forgotten yet. 
For at first, with an amazed and overwhelming indignation
At a measureless malfeasance that obscurely willed it...Read more of this...

On The Death Of Dr. Samuel Marshall

by Phillis Wheatley
 THROUGH thickest glooms look back, immortal
shade,
On that confusion which thy death has made:
Or from Olympus' height look down, and see
A Town involv'd in grief bereft of thee.
Thy Lucy sees thee mingle with the dead,
And rends the graceful tresses from her head,
Wild in her woe, with grief unknown opprest
Sigh follows sigh deep heaving from her breast.
Too quickly fled, ah! whither...Read more of this...

The Count Of Hapsburg

by Friedrich von Schiller
 At Aix-la-Chapelle, in imperial array,
In its halls renowned in old story,
At the coronation banquet so gay
King Rudolf was sitting in glory.
The meats were served up by the Palsgrave of Rhine,
The Bohemian poured out the bright sparkling wine,
And all the Electors, the seven,
Stood waiting around the world-governing one,
As the chorus of stars encircle the sun,
That honor might duly be given.

And...Read more of this...

God Gave To Me A Child In Part

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 GOD gave to me a child in part,
Yet wholly gave the father's heart:
Child of my soul, O whither now,
Unborn, unmothered, goest thou?

You came, you went, and no man wist;
Hapless, my child, no breast you kist;
On no dear knees, a privileged babbler, clomb,
Nor knew the kindly feel of home.

My voice may reach you, O my dear-
A father's voice perhaps the...Read more of this...

The Law Of The Yukon

by Robert William Service
 This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:
"Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane --
Strong for the red rage of battle; sane for I harry them sore;
Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core;
Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the...Read more of this...

Twas a long Parting -- but the time

by Emily Dickinson
 'Twas a long Parting -- but the time
For Interview -- had Come --
Before the Judgment Seat of God --
The last -- and second time

These Fleshless Lovers met --
A Heaven in a Gaze --
A Heaven of Heavens -- the Privilege
Of one another's Eyes --

No Lifetime -- on Them --
Appareled as the new
Unborn -- except They had beheld --
Born infiniter --...Read more of this...

Lambert Hutchins

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I have two monuments besides this granite obelisk:
One, the house I built on the hill,
With its spires, bay windows, and roof of slate;
The other, the lake-front in Chicago,
Where the railroad keeps a switching yard,
With whistling engines and crunching wheels,
And smoke and soot thrown over the city,
And the crash of cars along the boulevard, --
A blot like a hog-pen on...Read more of this...

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