Famous Wait Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Wait poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous wait poems. These examples illustrate what a famous wait poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
...nder their forms,
Takes the lesson with calmness, perceives the corpse slowly borne from the house,
Perceives that it waits a little while in the door—that it was fittest for its days,
That its life has descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who approaches,
And that he shall be fittest for his days.
Any period, one nation must lead,
One land must be the promise and reliance of the future.
These States are the amplest poem,
Here is not merely a nation, but a t...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ft no promises unfulfilled and dealt out rings,
riches at his feastings. The hall towered there,
high and horn-wide, awaiting the whelming flames,
the hateful tongues. It was not so long yet
until the blade-hatred must awaken sworn in-laws
after their slaughtering malice. (ll. 74-85)
Then wretchedly a mighty monster
suffered for a space, he who dwelt in darkness,
every day hearing the joy loud in the hall.
The voice of harps was there and the ringing song
of the s...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...I have but the power to kill,
Without—the power to die—
829
Ample make this Bed—
Make this Bed with Awe—
In it wait till Judgment break
Excellent and Fair.
Be its Mattress straight—
Be its Pillow round—
Let no Sunrise' yellow noise
Interrupt this Ground—
986
A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides—
You may have met Him—did you not
His notice sudden is—
The Grass divides as with a Comb—
A spotted shaft is seen—
And then it closes at your f...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...ing the unexultant peace of essence not subdued?
The minor chord which ends the harmony,
And for its answering brother waits in vain
Sobbing for incompleted melody,
Dies a swan's death; but I the heir of pain,
A silent Memnon with blank lidless eyes,
Wait for the light and music of those suns which never rise.
The quenched-out torch, the lonely cypress-gloom,
The little dust stored in the narrow urn,
The gentle XAIPE of the Attic tomb, -
Were not these better far than to re...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...u,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imp...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...heart was mine, for where the further way
Mine anxious eyes explored, a she-wolf lay,
That licked lean flanks, and waited. Such was she
In aspect ruthless that I quaked to see,
And where she lay among her bones had brought
So many to grief before, that all my thought
Aghast turned backward to the sunless night
I left. But while I plunged in headlong flight
To that most feared before, a shade, or man
(Either he seemed), obstructing where I ran,
Called to m...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...cion, whispering Lara's name,
Now daily mutters o'er his blacken'd fame;
Then sudden silent when his form appear'd,
Awaits the absence of the thing it fear'd;
Again its wonted wondering to renew,
And dye conjecture with a darker hue.
VII.
Days roll along, and Otho's wounds are heal'd,
But not his pride; and hate no more conceal'd:
He was a man of power, and Lara's foe,
The friend of all who sought to work him woe,
And from his country's justice now demands
Accou...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...'t get wet.
When George Foreman meets me,
He’ll pay his debt.
I can drown the drink of water, and kill a dead tree.
Wait till you see Muhammad Ali....Read more of this...
by
Ali, Muhammad
...t which will bloom most constantly?
The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring,
Its summer blossoms scent the air;
Yet wait till winter comes again
And who will call the wild-briar fair?
Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now
And deck thee with the holly’s sheen,
That when December blights thy brow
He still may leave thy garland green....Read more of this...
by
Brontë, Emily
...from Sapphic Mitylene
Shall bind thy brows; the myrtle blooms for thee,
In hidden glades by lonely Castaly;
The laurels wait thy coming: all are thine,
And round thy head one perfect wreath will twine.
V.
The pine-tops rocked before the evening breeze
With the hoarse murmur of the wintry seas,
And the tall stems were streaked with amber bright; -
I wandered through the wood in wild delight,
Some startled bird, with fluttering wings and fleet,
Made snow of all the blossoms...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...u only say so. Not another house
Or shelter to put into from this place
To theirs. I’m going to call his wife again.”
“Wait and he may. Let’s see what he will do.
Let’s see if he will think of her again.
But then I doubt he’s thinking of himself
He doesn’t look on it as anything.”
“He shan’t go—there!”
“It is a night, my dear.”
“One thing: he didn’t drag God into it.”
“He don’t consider it a case for God.”
“You think so, do you? You don’t know the kind.
He’s getting up ...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...y own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and
contenders;
I have no mockings or arguments—I witness and wait.
5
I believe in you, my Soul—the other I am must not abase itself to you;
And you must not be abased to the other.
Loafe with me on the grass—loose the stop from your throat;
Not words, not music or rhyme I want—not custom or lecture, not even the
best;
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
I mind how once we lay, such ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...owling ships,
Though in black jest it bows and nods
Under the moons with silver rods,
I know it is roaring at the gods,
Waiting the last eclipse.
"And in the last eclipse the sea
Shall stand up like a tower,
Above all moons made dark and riven,
Hold up its foaming head in heaven,
And laugh, knowing its hour.
"And the high ones in the happy town
Propped of the planets seven,
Shall know a new light in the mind,
A noise about them and behind,
Shall hear an awful voice, and fin...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...he weight
Of her rich burden sleeps on the infinite seas
Becalm'd, and cannot stir her golden freight.
6
While yet we wait for spring, and from the dry
And blackening east that so embitters March,
Well-housed must watch grey fields and meadows parch,
And driven dust and withering snowflake fly;
Already in glimpses of the tarnish'd sky
The sun is warm and beckons to the larch,
And where the covert hazels interarch
Their tassell'd twigs, fair beds of primrose lie.
Beneath th...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
... That happy time all past and gone, "How can it be he is so late? The Doctor he has made him wait, Susan! they'll both be here anon." And Susan's growing worse and worse, And Betty's in a sad quandary; And then there's nobody to say If she must go or she must stay: —She's in a sad quandary. The clock is on the stroke of one; But neither Doctor nor...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...e.
His hand, reclined upon the wire,
Seemed watching the awakening fire;
So still he sat as those who wait
Till judgment speak the doom of fate;
So still, as if no breeze might dare
To lift one lock of hoary hair;
So still, as life itself were fled
In the last sound his harp had sped.
V.
Upon a rock with lichens wild,
Beside him Ellen sat and smiled.—
Smiled she to see the stately drake
Lead forth...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...the cave.
He answered her he knew not what:
Like shaft from bow at random shot,
He spoke, but she regarded not.
She waited not for his reply,
But with a downward leaden eye
Went on as if he were not by
Sound argument and grave defence,
Strange questions raised on "Why?" and "Whence?"
And wildly tangled evidence.
When he, with racked and whirling brain,
Feebly implored her to explain,
She simply said it all again.
Wrenched with an agony intense,
He spake, neglecting ...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...tomb
Give licence to the humblest beggar's head
To lift itself against the loftiest.' — 'Some,'
Said Wilkes, 'don't wait to see them laid in lead,
For such a liberty — and I, for one,
Have told them what I though beneath the sun.'
LXX
'Above the sun repeat, then, what thou hast
To urge against him,' said the Archangel. 'Why,'
Replied the spirit, 'since old scores are past,
Must I turn evidence? In faith, not I.
Besides, I beat him hollow at the last,
With all h...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...it, and I drown utterly?
I talk to myself, myself only, set apart--
Swabbed and lurid with disinfectants, sacrificial.
Waiting lies heavy on my lids. It lies like sleep,
Like a big sea. Far off, far off, I feel the first wave tug
Its cargo of agony toward me, inescapable, tidal.
And I, a shell, echoing on this white beach
Face the voices that overwhelm, the terrible element.
THIRD VOICE:
I am a mountain now, among mountainy women.
The doctors move among us as if our bigness...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...repeat --
Oh, if you could one moment tire of it!
The killer's sleep is haunted, dead man said,
Death's angel thus awaits me at deathbed.
Forgive me now. Lord teaches to forgive.
In burning agony my flesh does live,
And already the spirit gently sleeps,
A garden I recall, tender with autumn leaves
And cries of cranes, and the black fields around..
How sweet it would be with you underground!
x x x
The muse has left along narrow
And winding street,
And wit...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Wait poems.