Famous We Hope Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Hope is a strange invention --

by Emily Dickinson
 Hope is a strange invention --
A Patent of the Heart --
In unremitting action
Yet never wearing out --

Of this electric Adjunct
Not anything is known
But its unique momentum
Embellish all we own --...Read more of this...

Hope

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 The Tree of Knowledge we in Eden prov'd; 
The Tree of Life was thence to Heav'n remov'd: 
Hope is the growth of Earth, the only Plant, 
Which either Heav'n, or Paradise cou'd want. 


Hell knows it not, to Us alone confin'd, 
And Cordial only to the Human Mind. 
Receive it then, t'expel these mortal Cares, 
Nor wave a Med'cine,...Read more of this...

Hope is the thing with feathers

by Emily Dickinson
 "Hope" is the thing with feathers --
That perches in the soul --
And sings the tune without the words --
And never stops -- at all --

And sweetest -- in the Gale -- is heard --
And sore must be the storm --
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm --

I've heard it in the chillest land --
And on the...Read more of this...

Hope

by Anne Kingsmill Finch
 Do you believe, in what you see
do you believe in reality
do you believe in the sun that’s bright
do you believe in the stars in the night

Do you believe in the birds that fly
do you believe in clouds and the sky
do you believe in wind that flows
do you believe in moon that glows
do you believe in light

Do you believe the...Read more of this...

Standardization

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 When, darkly brooding on this Modern Age, 
The journalist with his marketable woes 
Fills up once more the inevitable page 
Of fatuous, flatulent, Sunday-paper prose; 

Whenever the green aesthete starts to whoop 
With horror at the house not made with hands 
And when from vacuum cleaners and tinned soup 
Another pure theosophist demands 

Rebirth in other, less industrial stars...Read more of this...

Had I presumed to hope --

by Emily Dickinson
 Had I presumed to hope --
The loss had been to Me
A Value -- for the Greatness' Sake --
As Giants -- gone away --

Had I presumed to gain
A Favor so remote --
The failure but confirm the Grace
In further Infinite --

'Tis failure -- not of Hope --
But Confident Despair --
Advancing on Celestial Lists --
With faint -- Terrestial power --

'Tis Honor --...Read more of this...

In Heaven's name! with what hope does the sage attach

by Omar Khayyam
In Heaven's name! with what hope does the sage attach
his heart to the illusory treasures of this palace of misfortune?
Oh! that the One who gave me the name of
drunkard would recant his error, for how can he see the
tavern's sign from his exalted abode....Read more of this...

To Hope

by John Keats
 When by my solitary hearth I sit,
 And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom;
When no fair dreams before my "mind's eye" flit,
 And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;
 Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,
 And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head!

Whene'er I wander, at the fall of night,
 Where woven boughs shut out...Read more of this...

Now let no charitable hope

by Elinor Wylie
 Now let no charitable hope 
Confuse my mind with images 
Of eagle and of antelope: 
I am by nature none of these. 

I was, being human, born alone; 
I am, being woman, hard beset; 
I live by squeezing from a stone 
What little nourishment I get. 

In masks outrageous and austere 
The years go by in single file; 
But...Read more of this...

Hope

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
De dog go howlin' 'long de road,
De night come shiverin' down;
My back is tiahed of its load,
I cain't be fu' f'om town.
No mattah ef de way is long,
My haht is swellin' wid a song,
No mattah 'bout de frownin' skies,
I'll soon be home to see my Lize.
My shadder staggah on de way,
It's monstous col' to-night;
But I kin hyeah my honey say
"W'y...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...

The Gateway

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 Now the heart sings with all its thousand voices 
To hear this city of cells, my body, sing. 
The tree through the stiff clay at long last forces 
Its thin strong roots and taps the secret spring. 

And the sweet waters without intermission 
Climb to the tips of its green tenement; 
The breasts have borne the grace of their...Read more of this...

Hope is the thing with feathers

by Emily Dickinson
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me....Read more of this...

Easter Hymn

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 Make no mistake; there will be no forgiveness; 
No voice can harm you and no hand will save; 
Fenced by the magic of deliberate darkness 
You walk on the sharp edges of the wave; 

Trouble with soul again the putrefaction 
Where Lazarus three days rotten lies content. 
Your human tears will be the seed of faction 
Murder the sequel...Read more of this...

The Service without Hope --

by Emily Dickinson
 The Service without Hope --
Is tenderest, I think --
Because 'tis unsustained
By stint -- Rewarded Work --

Has impetus of Gain --
And impetus of Goal --
There is no Diligence like that
That knows not an Until --...Read more of this...

Bird Of Hope

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Soar not too high, O bird of Hope!
Because the skies are fair;
The tempest may come on apace
And overcome thee there.

When far above the mountain tops
Thou soarest, over all –
If, then, the storm should press thee back,
How great would be thy fall!

And thou wouldst lie here at my feet,
A poor and lifeless thing, -
A torn and bleeding birdling,
With limp and...Read more of this...

The School of Night

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 What did I study in your School of Night? 
When your mouth's first unfathomable yes 
Opened your body to be my book, I read 
My answers there and learned the spell aright, 
Yet, though I searched and searched, could never guess 
What spirits it raised nor where their questions led. 

Those others, familiar tenants of your sleep, 
The whisperers,...Read more of this...

Hope Holds to Christ

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 . . . . . . . .
Hope holds to Christ the mind’s own mirror out 
To take His lovely likeness more and more. 
It will not well, so she would bring about 
An ever brighter burnish than before 
And turns to wash it from her welling eyes
And breathes the blots off all with sighs on sighs. 
Her glass...Read more of this...

A Hope For Poetry: Remembering The Sixties

by Barry Tebb
 There was a hope for poetry in the sixties

And for education and society, teachers free

To do as they wanted: I could and did teach

Poetry and art all day and little else -

That was my way.



I threw rainbows against the classroom walls,

Gold and silver dragons in the corridors and

Halls; the children’s eyes were full of stars;

I taught the alphabet in...Read more of this...

The Pleasure of Princes

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 What pleasures have great princes? These: to know 
Themselves reputed mad with pride or power; 
To speak few words -- few words and short bring low 
This ancient house, that city with flame devour;

To make old men, their father's enemies,
Drunk on the vintage of the former age;
To have great painters show their mistresses
Naked to the succeeding time; engage

The cunning...Read more of this...

Observation Car

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 To be put on the train and kissed and given my ticket, 
Then the station slid backward, the shops and the neon lighting, 
Reeling off in a drunken blur, with a whole pound note in my pocket 
And the holiday packed with Perhaps. It used to be very exciting. 

The present and past were enough. I did not mind...Read more of this...

Conquistador

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 I sing of the decline of Henry Clay 
Who loved a white girl of uncommon size. 
Although a small man in a little way, 
He had in him some seed of enterprise. 

Each day he caught the seven-thirty train 
To work, watered his garden after tea, 
Took an umbrella if it looked like rain A 
nd was remarkably like...Read more of this...

Sonnets 12: Cherish You Then The Hope I Shall Forget

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Cherish you then the hope I shall forget
At length, my lord, Pieria?—put away
For your so passing sake, this mouth of clay
These mortal bones against my body set,
For all the puny fever and frail sweat
Of human love,—renounce for these, I say,
The Singing Mountain's memory, and betray
The silent lyre that hangs upon me yet?
Ah, but indeed, some day shall you awake,
Rather,...Read more of this...

Hope

by Friedrich von Schiller
 We speak with the lip, and we dream in the soul,
Of some better and fairer day;
And our days, the meanwhile, to that golden goal
Are gliding and sliding away.
Now the world becomes old, now again it is young,
But "The better" 's forever the word on the tongue.

At the threshold of life hope leads us in--
Hope plays round the mirthful boy;
Though...Read more of this...

Crossing the Frontier

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 Crossing the frontier they were stopped in time, 
Told, quite politely, they would have to wait: 
Passports in order, nothing to declare 
And surely holding hands was not a crime 
Until they saw how, ranged across the gate, 
All their most formidable friends were there. 

Wearing his conscience like a crucifix, 
Her father, rampant, nursed the Family Shame; 
And,...Read more of this...

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