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Famous Yearned Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...carnation, one descending dove,
All these being one, and that one being Love!

You sent your spirit into tunes; my soul
Yearned in a thousand melodies to enscroll
Its happiness: I left no flower unplucked
That might have graced your garland. I induct
Tragedy, comedy, farce, fable, song,
Each longing a little, each a little long,
But each aspiring only to express
Your excellence and my unworthiness --- 
Nay! but my worthiness, since I was sense
And spirit too of that same exce...Read more of this...
by Crowley, Aleister



...seemed, it was certain, to match man's birth,
Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I;
And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth,
As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky:
Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine,
Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star;
Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine,
For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor ...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...When cook sent up the salad,
To find within its depths concealed
A touching little ballad.

Or if for tea and toast you yearned,
What joy to find upon it
The chambermaid had coyly laid
A palpitating sonnet.

Your baker could the fashion set;
Your butcher might respond well;
With every tart a triolet,
With every chop a rondel.

Your tailor's bill . . . well, I'll be blowed!
Dear chap! I never knowed him . . .
He's gone and written me an ode,
Instead of what I owed him.

So eas...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...ld not or I could not climb-- 
I thought I could not breathe in that fine air 
That pure severity of perfect light-- 
I yearned for warmth and colour which I found 
In Lancelot--now I see thee what thou art, 
Thou art the highest and most human too, 
Not Lancelot, nor another. Is there none 
Will tell the King I love him though so late? 
Now--ere he goes to the great Battle? none: 
Myself must tell him in that purer life, 
But now it were too daring. Ah my God, 
What might I ...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...h. And he found the lord Hades in his house seated upon a couch, and his shy mate with him, much reluctant, because she yearned for her mother. But she was afar off, brooding on her fell design because of the deeds of the blessed gods. And the strong Slayer of Argus drew near and said:

"Dark-haired Hades, ruler over the departed, father Zeus bids me bring noble Persephone forth from Erebus unto the gods, that her mother may see her with her eyes and cease from her dread an...Read more of this...
by Homer,



...e clock hummed. 

The fat woman in the orange smock 
places tiny greens at mouth 
and tail as though she remembered 
or yearned instead for forests, deep floors 
of needles, and the hushed breath. 

* 

Blue nosed cannisters 
as fat as barrels silently 
slipping by. "Nitro," he says. 
On the roof he shows me 
where Reuban lay down 
to ****-off and never woke. 
"We're takin little whiffs 
all the time." 
 Slivers 
of glass work their way 
through the canvas gloves 
and burn. L...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip
...triumph, but leave through a postern of tears. 


It was thither, ambitious, 
We came for Youth's right, 
When our lips yearned for kisses 
As moths for the light, 
When our souls cried for Love 
As for life-giving rain 
Wan leaves of the grove, 
Withered grass of the plain, 
And our flesh ached for Love-flesh beside it with bitter, intolerable pain. 


Under arbor and trellis, 
Full of flutes, full of flowers, 
What mad fortunes befell us, 
What glad orgies were ours! 
In th...Read more of this...
by Seeger, Alan
...ng flowers,
Youth sighed 'Which rose make ours,
Which lily leave and then as best recall?'
Not that, admiring stars,
It yearned 'Nor Jove, nor Mars;
Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!'

Not for such hopes and fears
Annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.

Poor vaunt of life indeed,
Were man but formed to feed
On joy, to s...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...me there with his great eyes that scrutinized mine---
And oh, all my heart how it loved him! but where was the sign?
I yearned---``Could I help thee, my father, inventing a bliss,
``I would add, to that life of the past, both the future and this;
``I would give thee new life altogether, as good, ages hence,
``As this moment,---had love but the warrant, love's heart to dispense!''

XVI.

Then the truth came upon me. No harp more---no song more! outbroke---

XVII.

``I have go...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert
...Sense,
`Their eyes upturned and begged and burned
In brimstone lakes, and a Hand above
Beat back the hands that upward yearned --'
`Nay!' quoth Love --

"`Yea, yea, sweet Prince; thyself shalt see,
Wilt thou but down this slope with me;
'Tis palpable,' whispered Sense.
-- At the foot of the hill a living rill
Shone, and the lilies shone white above;
`But now 'twas black, 'twas a river, this rill,'
(`Black?' quoth Love)

"`Ay, black, but lo! the lilies grow,
And yon-side wher...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney
...aught
From the bard's mouth with melody.
The cheeks with dewy softness burned;
The longing that, though quenched, still yearned,
Proclaimed the spirit-harmony.

The wisest's wisdom, and the strongest's vigor,--
The meekest's meekness, and the noblest's grace,
By you were knit together in one figure,
Wreathing a radiant glory round the place.
Man at the Unknown's sight must tremble,
Yet its refulgence needs must love;
That mighty Being to resemble,
Each glorious hero madly str...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von
...going home, into space,
into time, to farm the mind's Sabine acres
for product and subsistence. 

Now that everyone who yearned to wear long pants
has essentially achieved them,
long pants, which have themselves been underwear
repeatedly, and underground more than once,
it is time perhaps to cherish the culture of shorts, 

to moderate grim vigour
with the knobble of bare knees,
to cool bareknuckle feet in inland water,
slapping flies with a book on solar wind
or a patient ba...Read more of this...
by Murray, Les
...fairest summer bowers,
We bade her drink their fragrance, we heaped her lap with flowers;
She only said, with eyes that yearned, "Oh, if ye might have brought
The pale, unscented blossoms by my father's lowly cot!" 

We bade her listen to the birds that sang so madly sweet,
The lyric of the laughing stream that dimpled at our feet;
"But, O," she cried, "I weary for the music wild that stirs
When keens the mournful western wind among my native firs!" 

We told her she had fait...Read more of this...
by Montgomery, Lucy Maud
...rain,
The long-lost ventures of the heart,
  That send no answers back again.

O flames that glowed!  O hearts that yearned!
  They were indeed too much akin,
The drift-wood fire without that burned,
  The thoughts that burned and glowed within....Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...had fled along them bridge by bridge, 
And every bridge as quickly as he crost 
Sprang into fire and vanished, though I yearned 
To follow; and thrice above him all the heavens 
Opened and blazed with thunder such as seemed 
Shoutings of all the sons of God: and first 
At once I saw him far on the great Sea, 
In silver-shining armour starry-clear; 
And o'er his head the Holy Vessel hung 
Clothed in white samite or a luminous cloud. 
And with exceeding swiftness ran the boat, ...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...t the White--Sir Tristram of the Woods-- 
Whom Lancelot knew, had held sometime with pain 
His own against him, and now yearned to shake 
The burthen off his heart in one full shock 
With Tristram even to death: his strong hands gript 
And dinted the gilt dragons right and left, 
Until he groaned for wrath--so many of those, 
That ware their ladies' colours on the casque, 
Drew from before Sir Tristram to the bounds, 
And there with gibes and flickering mockeries 
Stood, whil...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Lo, I have loved thee long, long have I yearned and entreated!
Tell me how I may win thee, tell me how I must woo.
Shall I creep to thy white feet, in guise of a humble lover ?
Shall I croon in mild petition, murmuring vows anew ? 

Shall I stretch my arms unto thee, biding thy maiden coyness,
Under the silver of morning, under the purple of night ?
Taming my ancient rudeness, checking my heady cl...Read more of this...
by Montgomery, Lucy Maud
...und they made them;
 Hear now the Song of the Dead!

 I
We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town;
We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down.
Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power with the Need,
Till the Soul that is not man's soul was lent us to lead.
As the deer breaks -- as the steer breaks -- from the herd where they graze,
In the faith of little children we went on our ways.
Then the wood failed -- then the food failed -...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard
...To see the clouds his spirit yearned toward so 
Over new mountains piled and unploughed waves, 
Back of old-storied spires and architraves 
To watch Arcturus rise or Fomalhaut,

And roused by street-cries in strange tongues when day 
Flooded with gold some domed metropolis, 
Between new towers to waken and new bliss 
Spread on his pillow in a wondrous way:

These were his joys. Oft unde...Read more of this...
by Seeger, Alan
...we danced together— and fell in love.

IV
Young and in love-how magical the phrase! 
How magical the fact! Who has not yearned 
Over young lovers when to their amaze 
They fall in love and find their love returned, 
And the lights brighten, and their eyes are clear 
To see God's image in their common clay. 
Is it the music of the spheres they hear? 
Is it the prelude to that noble play, 
The drama of Joined Lives? Ah, they forget 
They cannot write their parts; the bell has ...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry