Famous Uplift Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Music

by Charles Baudelaire
 MUSIC doth uplift me like a sea 
Towards my planet pale, 
Then through dark fogs or heaven's infinity 
I lift my wandering sail. 

With breast advanced, drinking the winds that flee, 
And through the cordage wail, 
I mount the hurrying waves night hides from me 
Beneath her sombre veil. 

I feel the tremblings of all passions known 
To ships...Read more of this...

An Emu Hunt

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 West of Dubbo the west begins 
The land of leisure and hope and trust, 
Where the black man stalks with his dogs and gins 
And Nature visits the settlers' sins 
With the Bogan shower, that is mostly dust. 
When the roley-poley's roots dry out 
With the fierce hot winds and the want of rain, 
They come uprooted and bound...Read more of this...

Mesmerism

by Robert Browning
 I.

All I believed is true!
I am able yet
All I want, to get
By a method as strange as new:
Dare I trust the same to you?

II.

If at night, when doors are shut,
And the wood-worm picks,
And the death-watch ticks,
And the bar has a flag of smut,
And a cat's in the water-butt---

III.

And the socket floats and flares,
And the house-beams groan,
And a foot unknown
Is...Read more of this...

The small happenings

by Emile Verhaeren
The small happenings, the thousand nothings, a letter, a date, a humble anniversary, a word said once again as in days long ago uplift your heart and mine in these long evenings.
And we celebrate for ourselves these simple things, and we count and recount our old treasures, so that the little of us that we still keep may remain steadfast...Read more of this...

Longing

by Mihai Eminescu
Come to the forest spring where wavelets 
Trembling o'er the pebbles glide 
And the drooping willow branches 
Its secluded threshold hide. 

Eagerly your arms outstreching, 
Hurry dear to my embrace, 
That the breeze your hair will gather 
And uplift it from your face. 

On my knees you will be seated 
Just we two alone, alone 
While upon your curls disordered...Read more of this...

Young Mans Song

by William Butler Yeats
 'She will change,' I cried.
'Into a withered crone.'
The heart in my side,
That so still had lain,
In noble rage replied
And beat upon the bone:

'Uplift those eyes and throw
Those glances unafraid:
She would as bravely show
Did all the fabric fade;
No withered crone I saw
Before the world was made.'

Abashed by that report,
For the heart cannot lie,
I knelt in the dirt.
And all shall bend...Read more of this...

Dæmonic Love

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Man was made of social earth,
Child and brother from his birth;
Tethered by a liquid cord
Of blood through veins of kindred poured,
Next his heart the fireside band
Of mother, father, sister, stand;
Names from awful childhood heard,
Throbs of a wild religion stirred,
Their good was heaven, their harm was vice,
Till Beauty came to snap all ties,
The maid, abolishing the past,
With lotus-wine obliterates
Dear memory's...Read more of this...

To A Tycoon

by Robert William Service
 Since much has been your mirth
 And fair your fate,
Friend, leave your lot of earth
 Less desolate.
With frailing overdue,
 Why don't you try
The bit of God in you
 To justify?

Try to discern the grace
 All greed above,
That may uplift the race
 To realm of love.
For in you is a spark,
 A heaven-glow,
That will illume the dark
 Before you go.

Aye,...Read more of this...

Wine Bibber

by Robert William Service
 I would rather drink than eat,
 And though I superbly sup,
Food, I feel, can never beat
 Delectation of the cup.
Wine it is that crowns the feast;
 Fish and fowl and fancy meat
Are of my delight the least:
 I would rather drink than eat.

Though no Puritan I be,
 And have doubts of Kingdom Come,
With those fellows I agree
 Who deplore...Read more of this...

The Song Of The Camp-Fire

by Robert William Service
 Heed me, feed me, I am hungry, I am red-tongued with desire;
Boughs of balsam, slabs of cedar, gummy fagots of the pine,
Heap them on me, let me hug them to my eager heart of fire,
Roaring, soaring up to heaven as a symbol and a sign.
Bring me knots of sunny maple, silver birch and tamarack;
Leaping, sweeping, I will lap them...Read more of this...

War Song

by John Davidson
 In anguish we uplift 
A new unhallowed song: 
The race is to the swift; 
The battle to the strong. 

Of old it was ordained 
That we, in packs like curs, 
Some thirty million trained 
And licensed murderers, 

In crime should live and act, 
If cunning folk say sooth 
Who flay the naked fact 
And carve the heart of truth....Read more of this...

Midnight in Camp

by Lucy Maud Montgomery
 Night in the unslumbering forest! From the free,
Vast pinelands by the foot of man untrod,
Blows the wild wind, roaming rejoicingly
This wilderness of God;
And the tall firs that all day long have flung
Balsamic odors where the sunshine burned,
Chant to its harping primal epics learned
When this old world was young. 

Beyond the lake, white, girdling peaks uplift
Untroubled brows to virgin skies...Read more of this...

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

by Rudyard Kipling
 1919

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
Make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
'eering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

Ne were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us,...Read more of this...

Pagan Passion

by Luis G. Dato
I am sweetly perplexed by love sallies, releases,
By the countless retreats and the numberless captures,
By the petulant coldness and agreeable raptures,
By the whisper of phrases that hurts and then pleases,
I am drunk by the prodigal total of leases
From her body and spirit, her soul and her senses,
I revel in approaches and artless offenses,
In her challenging taunts and her tenderly teases.
Now...Read more of this...

Red-Tiled Roof

by Robert William Service
 Poets may praise a wattle thatch
Doubtfully waterproof;
Let me uplift my lowly latch
Beneath a rose-tiled roof.
Let it be gay and rich in hue,
Soft bleached by burning days,
Where skies ineffably are blue,
And seas a golden glaze.

But set me in the surly North
Beneath a roof of slate,
And as I sourly sally forth
My heart will hum with hate;
And I will brood beneath a...Read more of this...

Veni Creator

by Bliss Carman
 I

LORD of the grass and hill, 
Lord of the rain, 
White Overlord of will, 
Master of pain, 

I who am dust and air 
Blown through the halls of death, 
Like a pale ghost of prayer,— 
I am thy breath. 

Lord of the blade and leaf, 
Lord of the bloom, 
Sheer Overlord of grief, 
Master of doom, 

Lonely as wind...Read more of this...

The Spirit of Poetry

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 There is a quiet spirit in these woods,
That dwells where'er the gentle south-wind blows;
Where, underneath the white-thorn, in the glade,
The wild flowers bloom, or, kissing the soft air,
The leaves above their sunny palms outspread.
With what a tender and impassioned voice
It fills the nice and delicate ear of thought,
When the fast ushering star of morning comes
O'er-riding the gray hills with...Read more of this...

Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (Part I)

by Ezra Pound
 "Vocat aestus in umbram" 
Nemesianus Es. IV. 

E. P. Ode pour l'élection de son sépulchre 

For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start --

No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on...Read more of this...

The Prospector

by Robert William Service
 I strolled up old Bonanza, where I staked in ninety-eight,
A-purpose to revisit the old claim.
I kept thinking mighty sadly of the funny ways of Fate,
And the lads who once were with me in the game.
Poor boys, they're down-and-outers, and there's scarcely one to-day
Can show a dozen colors in his poke;
And me, I'm still prospecting, old and battered, gaunt and...Read more of this...

Modern Love XXXII: Full Faith I Have

by George Meredith
 Full faith I have she holds that rarest gift 
To beauty, Common Sense. To see her lie 
With her fair visage an inverted sky 
Bloom-covered, while the underlids uplift, 
Would almost wreck the faith; but when her mouth 
(Can it kiss sweetly? sweetly!) would address 
The inner me that thirsts for her no less, 
And has so long been...Read more of this...

Lord of my Hearts Elation

by Bliss Carman
 Lord of my heart's elation,
Spirit of things unseen,
Be thou my aspiration
Consuming and serene!
Bear up, bear out, bear onward
This mortal soul alone,
To selfhood or oblivion,
Incredibly thine own,—
As the foamheads are loosened
And blown along the sea,
Or sink and merge forever
In that which bids them be.

I, too, must climb in wonder,
Uplift at thy command,—
Be one with my frail fellows
Beneath the wind's strong...Read more of this...

Moonlight

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 As a pale phantom with a lamp 
Ascends some ruin's haunted stair, 
So glides the moon along the damp 
Mysterious chambers of the air. 

Now hidden in cloud, and now revealed, 
As if this phantom, full of pain, 
Were by the crumbling walls concealed, 
And at the windows seen again. 

Until at last, serene and proud 
In all the...Read more of this...

Longing

by Mihai Eminescu
Come to the forest spring where wavelets 
Trembling o'er the pebbles glide 
And the drooping willow branches 
Its secluded threshold hide. 

Eagerly your arms outstreching, 
Hurry dear to my embrace, 
That the breeze your hair will gather 
And uplift it from your face. 

On my knees you will be seated 
Just we two alone, alone 
While upon your curls disordered...Read more of this...

The Healers

by Laurence Binyon
 In a vision of the night I saw them, 
In the battles of the night. 
'Mid the roar and the reeling shadows of blood 
They were moving like light, 

Light of the reason, guarded 
Tense within the will, 
As a lantern under a tossing of boughs 
Burns steady and still. 

With scrutiny calm, and with fingers 
Patient as swift...Read more of this...

Tower Grove

by Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
Oh tell me not of the lands so old
Where the Orient treasures its hills of gold,
And the rivers lie in the sun's bright rays
Forever singing the old world's praise.
Nor proudly boast of the gardens grand
That spring to earth at a king's command;
There are treasures here in the far great West
That rival the hills on the Orient's crest.
Far from the sight...Read more of this...

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