Famous Whence Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Whence poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous whence poems. These examples illustrate what a famous whence poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Thomas Hardy
Song of the Soldiers
What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away
Ere the barn-cocks say
Night is growing gray,
To hazards whence no tears can win us;
What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away!
Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
Friend with the musing eye
Who watch us...Read more of this...
by
Sir Henry Newbolt
It fell in the year of Mutiny,
At darkest of the night,
John Nicholson by Jal?ndhar came,
On his way to Delhi fight.
And as he by Jal?ndhar came,
He thought what he must do,
And he sent to the Rajah fair greeting,
To try if he were true.
"God grant your Highness length of days,
And friends when...Read more of this...
by
Lewis Carroll
I
There was an ancient City, stricken down
With a strange frenzy, and for many a day
They paced from morn to eve the crowded town,
And danced the night away.
I asked the cause: the aged man grew sad:
They pointed to a building gray and tall,
And hoarsely answered "Step inside, my lad,
And then you'll see it all."
Yet what are all...Read more of this...
by
William Wordsworth
I
There was a roaring in the wind all night;
The rain came heavily and fell in floods;
But now the sun is rising calm and bright;
The birds are singing in the distant woods;
Over his own sweet voice the Stock-dove broods;
The Jay makes answer as the Magpie chatters;
And all the air is filled with pleasant...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
I.--VENTIMIGLIA
The sky and sea glared hard and bright and blank:
Down the one steep street, with slow steps firm and free,
A tall girl paced, with eyes too proud to thank
The sky and sea.
One dead flat sapphire, void of wrath or glee,
Through bay on bay shone blind from bank to bank
The weary Mediterranean, drear to see.
More deep, more living, shone her...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
(BISMARCK AND NAPOLEON III.)
("Un jour, sentant un royal appétit.")
{Bk. III. iii., Jersey, September, 1852.}
One fasting day, itched by his appetite,
A monkey took a fallen tiger's hide,
And, where the wearer had been savage, tried
To overpass his model. Scratch and bite
Gave place, however, to mere...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
I
IN EXCELSIS
Two dwellings, Peace, are thine.
One is the mountain-height,
Uplifted in the loneliness of light
Beyond the realm of shadows,--fine,
And far, and clear,--where advent of the night
Means only glorious nearness of the stars,
And dawn, unhindered, breaks above the bars
That long the lower world in twilight keep.
Thou sleepest not, and hast no need of sleep,
For all thy cares and fears have dropped...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
THERE were two youths of equal age,
Wit, station, strength, and parentage;
They studied at the self-same schools,
And shaped their thoughts by common rules.
One pondered on the life of man,
His hopes, his endings, and began
To rate the Market's sordid war
As something scarce worth living for.
"I'll brace to higher aims," said he,
"I'll further Truth and Purity;
Thereby to mend and mortal lot
And sweeten...Read more of this...
by
Michael Drayton
To the Shadow
Letters and lines we see are soon defac'd,
Metals do waste and fret with canker's rust,
The diamond shall once consume to dust,
And freshest colors with foul stains disgrac'd;
Paper and ink can paint but naked words,
To write with blood of force offends the sight;
And if with tears I find them all too light,...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
ELEMENTAL drifts!
How I wish I could impress others as you have just been impressing me!
As I ebb’d with an ebb of the ocean of life,
As I wended the shores I know,
As I walk’d where the ripples continually wash you, Paumanok,
Where they rustle up, hoarse and sibilant,
Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[I feel considerable hesitation in venturing
to offer this version of a poem which Carlyle describes to be 'a
beautiful piece (a very Hans Sacks beatified, both in character
and style), which we wish there was any possibility of translating.'
The reader will be aware that Hans Sachs was the celebrated Minstrel-
Cobbler of Nuremberg, who Wrote 208 plays,...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XVI. Quand' io son tutto volto in quella parte. HE FLIES, BUT PASSION PURSUES HIM. When I reflect and turn me to that partWhence my sweet lady beam'd in purest light,And in my inmost thought remains that lightWhich burns me and consumes in every part,I, who yet dread lest from...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LIV. Io son già stanco di pensar siccome. HE WONDERS AT HIS LONG ENDURANCE OF SUCH TOIL AND SUFFERING. I weary me alway with questions keenHow, why my thoughts ne'er turn from you away,Wherefore in life they still prefer to stay,When they might flee this sad and painful scene,And how...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Abreast and ahead of the sea is a crag's front cloven asunder
With strong sea-breach and with wasting of winds whence terror is
shed
As a shadow of death from the wings of the darkness on waters that
thunder
Abreast and ahead.
At its edge is a sepulchre hollowed and hewn for a lone man's bed,
Propped open with rock and agape on the sky and...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
I was Lord of Cities very sumptuously builded.
Seven roaring Cities paid me tribute from far.
Ivory their outposts were--the guardrooms of them gilded,
And garrisoned with Amazons invincible in war.
All the world went softly when it walked before my Cities--
Neither King nor Army vexed my peoples at their toil.
Never horse nor chariot irked or overbore my Cities.
Never Mob nor Ruler questioned...Read more of this...
by
John Keats
O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings: climb with me the steep,—
Nature's observatory—whence the dell,
In flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
'Mongst boughs pavilioned, where the deer's swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell.
But though I'll gladly trace these...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
WITH antecedents;
With my fathers and mothers, and the accumulations of past ages;
With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am:
With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece and Rome;
With the Kelt, the Scandinavian, the Alb, and the Saxon;
With antique maritime ventures,—with laws, artizanship, wars and journeys;
With the poet, the skald,...Read more of this...
by
Charles Baudelaire
MADONNA, mistress, I would build for thee
An altar deep in the sad soul of me;
And in the darkest corner of my heart,
From mortal hopes and mocking eyes apart,
Carve of enamelled blue and gold a shrine
For thee to stand erect in, Image divine!
And with a mighty Crown thou shalt be crowned
Wrought of the...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
A gentle was Fridolin,
And he his mistress dear,
Savern's fair Countess, honored in
All truth and godly fear.
She was so meek, and, ah! so good!
Yet each wish of her wayward mood,
He would have studied to fulfil,
To please his God, with earnest will.
From the first hour when daylight shone
Till rang the vesper-chime,
He lived but for her will alone,
And deemed e'en that scarce...Read more of this...
by
Marina Tsvetaeva
Whence cometh such tender rapture?
Those curls--they are not the first ones
I've smoothened, and I've already
Known lips--that were darker than yours.
The stars have risen and faded,
--Whence cometh such tender rapture?--
And eyes have risen and faded
In face of these eyes of mine
I'd never yet hearkened unto
Such songs in the depths of darkness,
--Whence cometh such tender rapture?--
My head on the bard's...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
Here, whence
all have departed orwill do, here airless, where
that witchy ball
wanted, fought toward, dreamed of, all a green living
drops limply into one's hands
without pleasure or interest
Figurez-vous, a time swarms when the word
'happy' sheds its whole meaning, like to come and
like for memory too
That morning arrived to Henry as well a great cheque
eaten out already by the Government & State...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
IN May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals, fallen in the pool, 5
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower...Read more of this...
by
Dame Edith Sitwell
LOVELY Semiramis
Closes her slanting eyes:
Dead is she long ago.
From her fan, sliding slow,
Parrot-bright fire's feathers,
Gilded as June weathers,
Plumes bright and shrill as grass
Twinkle down; as they pass
Through the green glooms in Hell
Fruits with a tuneful smell,
Grapes like an emerald rain,
Where the full moon has lain,
Greengages bright as...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
O, from what power hast thou this powerful might
With insufficiency my heart to sway?
To make me give the lie to my true sight,
And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?
Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,
That in the very refuse of thy deeds
There is such strength and warrantise of skill
That, in my mind, thy worst all best...Read more of this...
by
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair --
The bees are stirring -- birds are on the wing --
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.
Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,
Have traced the fount...Read more of this...
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