Famous Undying Poems by Famous Poets

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

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No Coward Soul Is Mine

by Emily Brontë
 No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life—that in me has rest,
As I—undying Life—have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one
Holding...Read more of this...

Hiawathas Friends

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Two good friends had Hiawatha, 
Singled out from all the others, 
Bound to him in closest union, 
And to whom he gave the right hand 
Of his heart, in joy and sorrow; 
Chibiabos, the musician,
And the very strong man, Kwasind.
Straight between them ran the pathway, 
Never grew the grass upon it; 
Singing birds, that utter falsehoods, 
Story-tellers, mischief-makers, 
Found...Read more of this...

The Choir Invisible

by George Eliot
 Oh, may I join the choir invisible 
Of those immortal dead who live again 
In minds made better by their presence; live 
In pulses stirred to generosity, 
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
For miserable aims that end with self, 
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 
And with their mild persistence urge men's search 
To...Read more of this...

Unfortunate Coincidence

by Dorothy Parker
 By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying....Read more of this...

Inspiration

by Henry David Thoreau
 Whate'er we leave to God, God does, 
And blesses us; 
The work we choose should be our own, 
God leaves alone. 
If with light head erect I sing, 
Though all the Muses lend their force, 
From my poor love of anything, 
The verse is weak and shallow as its source. 

But if with bended neck I grope 
Listening behind...Read more of this...

To The Memory Of Mary Young

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
God has his plans, and what if we
With our sight be too blind to see
Their full fruition; cannot he,
Who made it, solve the mystery?
One whom we loved has fall'n asleep,
Not died; although her calm be deep,
Some new, unknown, and strange surprise
In Heaven holds enrapt her eyes.
And can you blame her that her gaze
Is turned away from earthly ways,
When to her...Read more of this...

Meditation on a Bone

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 A piece of bone, found at Trondhjem in 1901, with the following runic inscription (about A.D. 1050) cut on it: I loved her as a maiden; I will not trouble Erlend's detestable wife; better she should be a widow. 

Words scored upon a bone, 
Scratched in despair or rage -- 
Nine hundred years have gone; 
Now, in another age,...Read more of this...

II. Safety

by Rupert Brooke
 Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest
He who has found our hid security,
Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest,
And heard our word, `Who is so safe as we?'
We have found safety with all things undying,
The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth,
The deep night, and birds singing, and clouds flying,
And sleep, and freedom,...Read more of this...

So Long

by Walt Whitman
 1
TO conclude—I announce what comes after me; 
I announce mightier offspring, orators, days, and then, for the present, depart. 

I remember I said, before my leaves sprang at all, 
I would raise my voice jocund and strong, with reference to consummations. 

When America does what was promis’d,
When there are plentiful athletic bards, inland and seaboard, 
When through These States...Read more of this...

Safety

by Rupert Brooke
 Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest 
He who has found our hid security, 
Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest, 
And heard our word, 'Who is so safe as we?' 
We have found safety with all things undying, 
The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth, 
The deep night, and birds singing,...Read more of this...

Horace to Melpomene

by Eugene Field
 Lofty and enduring is the monument I've reared,--
Come, tempests, with your bitterness assailing;
And thou, corrosive blasts of time, by all things mortal feared,
Thy buffets and thy rage are unavailing!

I shall not altogether die; by far my greater part
Shall mock man's common fate in realms infernal;
My works shall live as tributes to my genius and my art,--
My works shall be...Read more of this...

Tamerlane

by Edgar Allan Poe
 Kind solace in a dying hour!
Such, father, is not (now) my theme-
I will not madly deem that power
Of Earth may shrive me of the sin
Unearthly pride hath revell'd in-
I have no time to dote or dream:
You call it hope- that fire of fire!
It is but agony of desire:
If I can hope- Oh God! I can-
Its fount is holier- more...Read more of this...

Autumn And Winter

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Three months bade wane and wax the wintering moon
Between two dates of death, while men were fain
Yet of the living light that all too soon
Three months bade wane.

Cold autumn, wan with wrath of wind and rain,
Saw pass a soul sweet as the sovereign tune
That death smote silent when he smote again.

First went my friend, in life's mid light of...Read more of this...

The Irish Guards

by Rudyard Kipling
 1918

We're not so old in the Army List,
 But we're not so young at our trade,
For we had the honour at Fontenoy
 Of meeting the Guards'Brigade.
'Twas Lally, Dillon, Bulkeley, Clare,
 And Lee that led us then,
And after a hundred and seventy years
 We're fighting for France again!
Old Days! The wild geese are flighting,
 Head to fhe sform as they...Read more of this...

Turn O Libertad

by Walt Whitman
 TURN, O Libertad, for the war is over, 
(From it and all henceforth expanding, doubting no more, resolute, sweeping the world,) 
Turn from lands retrospective, recording proofs of the past; 
From the singers that sing the trailing glories of the past; 
From the chants of the feudal world—the triumphs of kings, slavery, caste;
Turn to the world, the triumphs reserv’d...Read more of this...

The Undying

by Robert William Service
 She was so wonderful I wondered
If wedding me she had not blundered;
She was so pure, so high above me,
I marvelled how she came to love me:
Or did she? Well, in her own fashion -
Affection, pity, never passion.

I knew I was not worth her love;
Yet oh, how wistfully I strove
To be her equal in some way;
She knew I tried, and...Read more of this...

The Indian Upon God

by William Butler Yeats
 I passed along the water's edge below the humid trees,
My spirit rocked in evening light, the rushes round my knees,
My spirit rocked in sleep and sighs; and saw the moor-fowl pace
All dripping on a grassy slope, and saw them cease to chase
Each other round in circles, and heard the eldest speak:
Who holds the world between His bill and made...Read more of this...

Fames Penny-Trumpet

by Lewis Carroll
 Blow, blow your trumpets till they crack,
Ye little men of little souls!
And bid them huddle at your back -
Gold-sucking leeches, shoals on shoals! 

Fill all the air with hungry wails -
"Reward us, ere we think or write!
Without your Gold mere Knowledge fails
To sate the swinish appetite!" 

And, where great Plato paced serene,
Or Newton paused with wistful eye,
Rush to the...Read more of this...

The Dragon and The Undying

by Siegfried Sassoon
 All night the flares go up; the Dragon sings 
And beats upon the dark with furious wings; 
And, stung to rage by his own darting fires, 
Reaches with grappling coils from town to town; 
He lusts to break the loveliness of spires, 
And hurls their martyred music toppling down. 
Yet, though the slain are homeless as the breeze, 

Vocal...Read more of this...

In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport

by Emma Lazarus
 Here, where the noises of the busy town, 
The ocean's plunge and roar can enter not,
We stand and gaze around with tearful awe,
And muse upon the consecrated spot.

No signs of life are here: the very prayers
Inscribed around are in a language dead;
The light of the "perpetual lamp" is spent
That an undying radiance was to shed.

What prayers were in this...Read more of this...

1914 II: Safety

by Rupert Brooke
 Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest 
He who has found our hid security, 
Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest, 
And heard our word, 'Who is so safe as we?' 
We have found safety with all things undying, 
The winds, and morning, tears of men and mirth, 
The deep night, and birds singing,...Read more of this...

The Seven Old Men

by Charles Baudelaire
 O SWARMING city, city full of dreams, 
Where in a full day the spectre walks and speaks; 
Mighty colossus, in your narrow veins 
My story flows as flows the rising sap. 

One morn, disputing with my tired soul, 
And like a hero stiffening all my nerves, 
I trod a suburb shaken by the jar 
Of rolling wheels, where the...Read more of this...

Earendil

by J R R Tolkien
 Earendil was a mariner
that tarried in Arvernien;
he built a boat of timber felled
in Nimbrethil to journey in;
her sails he wove of silver fair,
of silver were her lanterns made,
her prow was fashioned like a swan
and light upon her banners laid.

In panolpy of ancient kings,
in chained rings he armoured him;
his shining shield was scored with runes
to ward all wounds and harm...Read more of this...

Early Poems

by Victor Hugo
 MOSES ON THE NILE. 
 
 ("Mes soeurs, l'onde est plus fraiche.") 
 
 {TO THE FLORAL GAMES, Toulouse, Feb. 10, 1820.} 


 "Sisters! the wave is freshest in the ray 
 Of the young morning; the reapers are asleep; 
 The river bank is lonely: come away! 
 The early murmurs of old Memphis creep 
 Faint on...Read more of this...

His Confidence

by William Butler Yeats
 Undying love to buy
I wrote upon
The corners of this eye
All wrongs done.
What payment were enough
For undying love?

I broke my heart in two
So hard I struck.
What matter? for I know
That out of rock,
Out of a desolate source,
Love leaps upon its course....Read more of this...

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