Famous Yearning Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Yearning poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous yearning poems. These examples illustrate what a famous yearning poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Emile Verhaeren
In such a spot, with radiant flowers for halo,
I saw the Guardian Angel sit her down;
Vine-branches fashioned a green shrine above her
And sun-flowers rose behind her like a crown.
Her fingers, their white slenderness encircled
With humble, fragile rings of coral round.
Held, ranged in couples, sprays of faithful roses.
Sealed with a clasp, with threads of woollen bound.
A shimmering air the golden calm...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
(1) the ordinary
you are not interested in me
a receiver of food and a giver of ****
my brain knuckled under
i have rendered the skills of my
limbs to generations of caesars
and caesar's gods have siphoned off my spirit
by day i have been trained to dismember my own brothers
my own pieces travel through the night yearning for union
in every land i...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
my jerusalem
my newfoundland
juicy as redcurrants
with their sweet tang taste
my desire
my holy requirement
caught in a cleft of mountain
ever clambered towards
my yearning
my place of the blood-red fruit
my want at the first sherd
for the full-bosomed bowl
my jerusalem
my sinewy prayer
where dust and the dry rock
are chastened by the cool red juice
my jerusalem
my revolving love
as the year bends and the fruit's
pangs purchase my...Read more of this...
by
Sidney Lanier
For ever wave, for ever float and shine
Before my yearning eyes, oh! dream of mine
Wherein I dreamed that time was like a vine,
A creeping rose, that clomb a height of dread
Out of the sea of Birth, all filled with dead,
Up to the brilliant cloud of Death o'erhead.
This vine bore many blossoms, which were years.
Their petals, red with joy, or...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
In the tents of Akbar
Are dole and grief to-day,
For the flower of all the Indies
Has gone the silent way.
In the tents of Akbar
Are emptiness and gloom,
And where the dancers gather,
The silence of the tomb.
Across the yellow desert,
Across the burning sands,
Old Akbar wanders madly,
And wrings his fevered hands.
And ever makes his moaning
To the unanswering sky,
For Sutna, lovely Sutna,
Who was so fair...Read more of this...
by
Emily Brontë
Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?
Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover
That noble heart for ever, ever more?
Cold in...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
It is a year dear one, since you afar
Went out beyond my yearning mortal sight
A wondrous year! perchance in many a star
You have sojourned, or basked within the light
Of mightier suns; it may be you have trod
The glittering pathways of the Pleiades,
And through the Milky Way's white mysteries
Have walked at will, fire-shod.
You may have gazed in the immortal...Read more of this...
by
Robert Pinsky
Dire one and desired one,
Savior, sentencer--
In an old allegory you would carry
A chained alphabet of tokens:
Ankh Badge Cross.
Dragon,
Engraved figure guarding a hallowed intaglio,
Jasper kinema of legendary Mind,
Naked omphalos pierced
By quills of rhyme or sense, torah-like: unborn
Vein of will, xenophile
Yearning out of Zero.
Untrusting I court you. Wavering
I seek your face, I read
That Crusoe's knife
Reeked of you, that to defile you
The...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
I think of thee, when golden sunbeams shimmer
Across the sea;
And when the waves reflect the moon's pale glimmer,
I think of thee.
I see thy form, when down the distant highway
The dust-clouds rise;
In deepest night, above the mountain by-way,
I see thine eyes.
I hear thee when the ocean-tides returning
Loudly rejoice;
And on the lonely moor, in stillness yearning,
I hear thy voice.
I dwell with...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Down home to-night the moonshine falls
Across a hill with daisies pied,
The pear tree by the garden gate
Beckons with white arms like a bride.
A savor as of trampled fern
Along the whispering meadow stirs,
And, beacon of immortal love,
A light is shining through the firs.
To my old gable window creeps
The night wind with a sigh and song,
And, weaving ancient sorceries,
Thereto...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
THIS moment yearning and thoughtful, sitting alone,
It seems to me there are other men in other lands, yearning and thoughtful;
It seems to me I can look over and behold them, in Germany, Italy, France, Spain—or far,
far
away,
in China, or in Russia or India—talking other dialects;
And it seems to me if I could know those...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
IN a faraway northern county, in the placid, pastoral region,
Lives my farmer friend, the theme of my recitative, a famous Tamer of Oxen:
There they bring him the three-year-olds and the four-year-olds, to break them;
He will take the wildest steer in the world, and break him and tame him;
He will go, fearless, without any whip, where...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
HE bent above: so still her breath
What air she breathed he could not say,
Whether in worlds of life or death:
So softly ebbed away, away,
The life that had been light to him,
So fled her beauty leaving dim
The emptying chambers of his heart
Thrilled only by the pang and smart,
The dull and throbbing agony
That suffers still, yet knows not why.
Love’s immortality so...Read more of this...
by
Oliver Wendell Holmes
How the mountains talked together,
Looking down upon the weather,
When they heard our friend had planned his
Little trip among the Andes
How they'll bare their snowy scalps
To the climber of the Alps
When the cry goes through their passes,
"Here comes the great Agassiz!"
"Yes, I'm tall," says Chimborazo,
"But I wait for him to say so,--
That's the only thing that lacks,-- he
Must see me,...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
I
When shall I see the half moon sink again
Behind the black sycamore at the end of the garden?
When will the scent of the dim, white phlox
Creep up the wall to me, and in at my open window?
Why is it, the long slow stroke of the midnight bell,
(Will it never finish the twelve?)
Falls again and again on...Read more of this...
by
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
There is a candle in your heart,
ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul,
ready to be filled.
You feel it, don’t you?
You feel the separation
from the Beloved.
Invite Him to fill you up,
embrace the fire.
Remind those who tell you otherwise that
Love
comes...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
In the dark and damp of the alley cold,
Lay the Christmas tree that hadn't been sold;
By a shopman dourly thrown outside;
With the ruck and rubble of Christmas-tide;
Trodden deep in the muck and mire,
Unworthy even to feed a fire...
So I stopped and salvaged that tarnished tree,
And thus is the story it told to me:
"My Mother was Queen of the forest...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
There's a place I know where the birds swing low,
And wayward vines go roaming,
Where the lilacs nod, and a marble god
Is pale, in scented gloaming.
And at sunset there comes a lady fair
Whose eyes are deep with yearning.
By an old, old gate does the lady wait
Her own true love's returning.
But the days...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
NOT the soul that’s whitest
Wakens love the sweetest:
When the heart is lightest
Oft the charm is fleetest.
While the snow-frail maiden,
Waits the time of learning,
To the passion laden
Turn with eager yearning.
While the heart is burning
Heaven with earth is banded:
To the stars returning
Go not empty-handed.
Ah, the snow-frail maiden!
Somehow truth has missed her,
Left the heart unladen
...Read more of this...
by
Rg Gregory
dodona oak (the tree of life) sheds leaves
nutritious-which feeds blood and mind today
there’s not a jot (from which the present cleaves)
can be dispensed with – all life’s array
from first to last has leaf-mould in its clay
eve is that apple she took her bite from
the best and worst can’t thwart its dna
head-shaking won’t dislodge that first aplomb
which even now keeps...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Lovingly I'll sing of love;
Ever comes she from above.
THE FRIENDLY MEETING.
IN spreading mantle to my chin conceald,
I trod the rocky path, so steep and grey,
Then to the wintry plain I bent my way
Uneasily, to flight my bosom steel'd.
But sudden was the newborn day reveal'd:
A maiden came, in heavenly bright array,
Like the fair creatures of the poet's lay
In realms of...Read more of this...
by
Lascelles Abercrombie
She
ONLY to be twin elements of joy
In this extravagance of Being, Love,
Were our divided natures shaped in twain;
And to this hour the whole world must consent.
Is it not very marvellous, our lives
Can only come to this out of a long
Strange sundering, with the years of the world between us?
He
Shall life do more than God? for hath not God
Striven with himself,...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
At Aix-la-Chapelle, in imperial array,
In its halls renowned in old story,
At the coronation banquet so gay
King Rudolf was sitting in glory.
The meats were served up by the Palsgrave of Rhine,
The Bohemian poured out the bright sparkling wine,
And all the Electors, the seven,
Stood waiting around the world-governing one,
As the chorus of stars encircle the sun,
That honor might duly be given.
And...Read more of this...
by
Maya Angelou
A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven...Read more of this...
by
Matthew Arnold
Strew on her roses, roses,
And never a spray of yew!
In quiet she reposes;
Ah, would that I did too!
Her mirth the world required;
She bathed it in smiles of glee.
But her heart was tired, tired,
And now they let her be.
Her life was turning, turning,
In mazes of heat and sound.
But for peace her soul was yearning,
And now peace laps her round.
Her cabined...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Yearning poems.