Famous Unfailing Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Before I Knocked

by Dylan Thomas
 Before I knocked and flesh let enter,
With liquid hands tapped on the womb,
I who was as shapeless as the water
That shaped the Jordan near my home
Was brother to Mnetha's daughter
And sister to the fathering worm.

I who was deaf to spring and summer,
Who knew not sun nor moon by name,
Felt thud beneath my flesh's armour,
As yet was in a molten...Read more of this...

The Small Hours

by Dorothy Parker
 No more my little song comes back;
And now of nights I lay
My head on down, to watch the black
And wait the unfailing gray.

Oh, sad are winter nights, and slow;
And sad's a song that's dumb;
And sad it is to lie and know
Another dawn will come....Read more of this...

Caput Mortuum

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Not even if with a wizard force I might 
Have summoned whomsoever I would name, 
Should anyone else have come than he who came, 
Uncalled, to share with me my fire that night; 
For though I should have said that all was right,
Or right enough, nothing had been the same 
As when I found him there before the flame,...Read more of this...

The Hostage

by Friedrich von Schiller
 The tyrant Dionys to seek,
Stern Moerus with his poniard crept;
The watchful guard upon him swept;
The grim king marked his changeless cheek:
"What wouldst thou with thy poniard? Speak!"
"The city from the tyrant free!"
"The death-cross shall thy guerdon be."

"I am prepared for death, nor pray,"
Replied that haughty man, "I to live;
Enough, if thou one grace wilt give
For three brief suns the...Read more of this...

Sonnet XV

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XV. Discolorato hai, Morte, il più bel volto. HER PRESENCE IN VISIONS IS HIS ONLY CONSOLATION.  Death, thou of fairest face hast 'reft the hue,And quench'd in deep thick night the brightest eyes,[Pg 247]And loosed from all its tenderest, closest tiesA spirit to faith and ardent virtue true.Read more of this...

Frances

by Charlotte Bronte
 SHE will not sleep, for fear of dreams, 
But, rising, quits her restless bed, 
And walks where some beclouded beams 
Of moonlight through the hall are shed.

Obedient to the goad of grief, 
Her steps, now fast, now lingering slow, 
In varying motion seek relief 
From the Eumenides of woe.

Wringing her hands, at intervals­ 
But long as mute as phantom...Read more of this...

Mans Injustice Towards Providence

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 A Thriving Merchant, who no Loss sustained, 
In little time a mighty Fortune gain'd. 
No Pyrate seiz'd his still returning Freight; 
Nor foundring Vessel sunk with its own Weight: 
No Ruin enter'd through dissever'd Planks; 
No Wreck at Sea, nor in the Publick Banks. 
Aloft he sails, above the Reach of Chance, 
And do's in Pride, as fast as...Read more of this...

A Day Off

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Let us put awhile away 
All the cares of work-a-day, 
For a golden time forget, 
Task and worry, toil and fret, 
Let us take a day to dream 
In the meadow by the stream. 

We may lie in grasses cool 
Fringing a pellucid pool, 
We may learn the gay brook-runes 
Sung on amber afternoons, 
And the keen wind-rhyme that...Read more of this...

Love Songs In Age

by Philip Larkin
 She kept her songs, they kept so little space, 
 The covers pleased her: 
One bleached from lying in a sunny place, 
One marked in circles by a vase of water, 
One mended, when a tidy fit had seized her, 
 And coloured, by her daughter - 
So they had waited, till, in widowhood 
She found them, looking for...Read more of this...

To You

by Walt Whitman
 WHOEVER you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams, 
I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands; 
Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume,
 crimes, dissipate away from you, 
Your true Soul and Body appear before me, 
They stand forth out of affairs—out of commerce,...Read more of this...

To the Honourable T. H. Esq; on the Death of his Daughter

by Phillis Wheatley
While deep you mourn beneath the cypress-shade
The hand of Death, and your dear daughter laid
In dust, whose absence gives your tears to flow,
And racks your bosom with incessant woe,
Let Recollection take a tender part,
Assuage the raging tortures of your heart,
Still the wild tempest of tumultuous grief,
And pour the heav'nly nectar of relief:
Suspend the sigh, dear Sir, and check the groan,
Divinely...Read more of this...

Bewick Finzer

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Time was when his half million drew 
The breath of six per cent; 
But soon the worm of what-was-not 
Fed hard on his content; 
And something crumbled in his brain 
When his half million went. 

Time passed, and filled along with his 
The place of many more; 
Time came, and hardly one of us 
Had credence to restore, 
From...Read more of this...

Fit the Fifth ( Hunting of the Snark )

by Lewis Carroll
 The Beaver's Lesson 

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care; 
They pursued it with forks and hope; 
They threatened its life with a railway-share; 
They charmed it with smiles and soap. 

Then the Butcher contrived an ingenious plan 
For making a separate sally; 
And fixed on a spot unfrequented by man, 
A dismal and desolate valley....Read more of this...

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