Famous Xiv Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Modern Love: XIV

by George Meredith
 What soul would bargain for a cure that brings
Contempt the nobler agony to kill?
Rather let me bear on the bitter ill,
And strike this rusty bosom with new stings!
It seems there is another veering fit
Since on a gold-haired lady's eyeballs pure,
I looked with little prospect of a cure,
The while her mouth's red bow loosed shafts of wit.
Just heaven! can it...Read more of this...

The Souls of the Slain

by Thomas Hardy
 I 

 The thick lids of Night closed upon me 
 Alone at the Bill 
 Of the Isle by the Race {1} - 
 Many-caverned, bald, wrinkled of face - 
And with darkness and silence the spirit was on me 
 To brood and be still. 

II 

 No wind fanned the flats of the ocean, 
 Or...Read more of this...

A Pretty Woman

by Robert Browning
 I

That fawn-skin-dappled hair of hers,
And the blue eye
Dear and dewy,
And that infantine fresh air of hers!

II

To think men cannot take you, Sweet,
And enfold you,
Ay, and hold you,
And so keep you what they make you, Sweet!

III

You like us for a glance, you know— 
For a word's sake,
Or a sword's sake,
All's the same, whate'er the chance, you know.

IV

And in turn we...Read more of this...

The Gardener XIV: I Was Walking by the Road

by Rabindranath Tagore
 I was walking by the road, I do not
know why, when the noonday was past
and bamboo branches rustled in the
wind.
The prone shadows with their out-
stretched arms clung to the feet of
the hurrying light.
The koels were weary of their
songs.
I was walking by the road, I do not 
know why.
The hut by the side of the water is
shaded by an overhanging...Read more of this...

Sonnets xiv

by William Shakespeare
 MY love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming; 
I love not less, though less the show appear: 
That love is merchandised whose rich esteeming 
The owner's tongue doth publish everywhere. 
Our love was new, and then but in the spring, 
When I was wont to greet it with my lays; 
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing 
And...Read more of this...

Sonnet XIV

by Alan Seeger
 IT may be for the world of weeds and tares 
And dearth in Nature of sweet Beauty's rose 
That oft as Fortune from ten thousand shows 
One from the train of Love's true courtiers 
Straightway on him who gazes, unawares, 
Deep wonder seizes and swift trembling grows, 
Reft by that sight of purpose and repose, 
Hardly its weight his...Read more of this...

The Garden of Janus

by Aleister Crowley
 I

The cloud my bed is tinged with blood and foam.
The vault yet blazes with the sun
Writhing above the West, brave hippodrome
Whose gladiators shock and shun
As the blue night devours them, crested comb
Of sleep's dead sea
That eats the shores of life, rings round eternity!

II

So, he is gone whose giant sword shed flame
Into my bowels; my blood's bewitched;
My brain's afloat with...Read more of this...

Sonnet XIV

by William Shakespeare
 Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck;
And yet methinks I have astronomy,
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well,
By oft predict that I in heaven find:
But from thine...Read more of this...

XIV. On a Distant View of England

by William Lisle Bowles
 AH! from my eyes the tears unbidden start, 
Albion! as now thy cliffs (that bright appear 
Far o'er the wave, and their proud summits rear 
To meet the beams of morn) my beating heart, 
With eager hope, and filial transport hails! 
Scenes of my youth, reviving gales ye bring. 
As when, ere while, the tuneful morn of spring 
Joyous...Read more of this...

The Hymn

by John Milton
 I

It was the Winter wilde,
While the Heav'n-born-childe, 
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature in aw to him
Had doff't her gawdy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize:
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the Sun her lusty Paramour.

II

Only with speeches fair
She woo'd the gentle Air
To hide her guilty front with innocent Snow,
And on her naked...Read more of this...

Sonnet XIV

by Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 246] SONNET XIV. Alma felice, che sovente torni. HE THANKS HER THAT FROM TIME TO TIME SHE RETURNS TO CONSOLE HIM WITH HER PRESENCE.  O blessed spirit! who dost oft return,Ministering comfort to my nights of woe,From eyes which Death, relenting in his blow,Has lit with all the...Read more of this...

The Dying Child To Its Mother

by Victor Hugo
 ("Oh! vous aurez trop dit.") 
 
 {Bk. III. xiv., April, 1843.} 


 Ah, you said too often to your angel 
 There are other angels in the sky— 
 There, where nothing changes, nothing suffers, 
 Sweet it were to enter in on high. 
 
 To that dome on marvellous pilasters, 
 To that tent roofed o'er...Read more of this...

Modern Love XIV: What Soul Would Bargain

by George Meredith
 What soul would bargain for a cure that brings
Contempt the nobler agony to kill?
Rather let me bear on the bitter ill,
And strike this rusty bosom with new stings!
It seems there is another veering fit
Since on a gold-haired lady's eyeballs pure,
I looked with little prospect of a cure,
The while her mouth's red bow loosed shafts of wit.
Just heaven! can it...Read more of this...

The Beauty of Death XIV

by Kahlil Gibran
 Part One - The Calling


Let me sleep, for my soul is intoxicated with love and 
Let me rest, for my spirit has had its bounty of days and nights; 
Light the candles and burn the incense around my bed, and 
Scatter leaves of jasmine and roses over my body; 
Embalm my hair with frankincense and sprinkle my feet with...Read more of this...

Sonnet XIV: If He From Heavn

by Michael Drayton
 If he from Heav'n that filch'd that living fire 
Condemn'd by Jove to endless torment be, 
I greatly marvel how you still go free 
That far beyond Prometheus did aspire. 
The fire he stole, although of heav'nly kind, 
Which from above he craftily did take, 
Of lifeless clods us living men to make, 
He did bestow in temper of...Read more of this...

Mother and Poet

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 I.

Dead ! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Dead ! both my boys ! When you sit at the feast
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at me !

II.
Yet I was a poetess only last year,
And good at my art, for a...Read more of this...

Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte

by George (Lord) Byron
 I 
'Tis done -- but yesterday a King! 
And arm'd with Kings to strive -- 
And now thou art a nameless thing: 
So abject -- yet alive! 
Is this the man of thousand thrones, 
Who strew'd our earth with hostile bones, 
And can he thus survive? 
Since he, miscall'd the Morning Star, 
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so...Read more of this...

Freedom XIV

by Kahlil Gibran
 And an orator said, "Speak to us of Freedom." 

And he answered: 

At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom, 

Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them. 

Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the...Read more of this...

Holy Sonnet XIV: Batter My Heart Three Person'd God

by John Donne
Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves...Read more of this...

Sonnet XIV: Alas Have I Not

by Sir Philip Sidney
 Alas, have I not pain enough, my friend, 
Upon whose breast a fiercer gripe doth tire, 
Than did on him who first stole down the fire, 
While Love on me doth all his quiver spend, 

But with your rhubarb words you must contend, 
To grieve me worse, in saying that desire 
Doth plunge my well-form'd soul even in the...Read more of this...

Resolution And Independence

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...

Sonnet XIV

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XIV. Movesi 'l vecchierel canuto e bianco. HE COMPARES HIMSELF TO A PILGRIM.  The palmer bent, with locks of silver gray,Quits the sweet spot where he has pass'd his years,Quits his poor family, whose anxious fearsPaint the loved father fainting on his way;And trembling, on his aged limbs slow borne,Read more of this...

A Light Woman

by Robert Browning
 I.

So far as our story approaches the end,
 Which do you pity the most of us three?—
My friend, or the mistress of my friend
 With her wanton eyes, or me?

 II.

My friend was already too good to lose,
 And seemed in the way of improvement yet,
When she crossed his path with her hunting-noose
 And over him drew her net.

...Read more of this...

Sonnet XIV: Come Soft Aeolian Harp

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Come, soft Aeolian harp, while zephyr plays
Along the meek vibration of thy strings,
As twilight's hand her modest mantle brings,
Blending with sober grey, the western blaze!
O! prompt my Phaon's dreams with tend'rest lays,
Ere night o'er shade thee with its humid wings,
While the lorn Philomel his sorrow sings
In leafy cradle, red with parting rays!
Slow let thy dulcet tones on ether glide,
So...Read more of this...

Fifteen False Propositions Against God - Section XIV

by Jack Spicer
 If the diamond ring turns brass
Mama's going to buy you a looking glass
Marianne Moore and Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams
going on a picnic together when they were all students at the
University of Pennsylvania
Now they are all over seventy and the absent baby
Is a mirror sheltering their image....Read more of this...

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