Famous Yearnings Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Symbolism

by George William Russell
 NOW when the spirit in us wakes and broods,
Filled with home yearnings, drowsily it flings
From its deep heart high dreams and mystic moods,
Mixed with the memory of the loved earth things:
Clothing the vast with a familiar face;
Reaching its right hand forth to greet the starry race.


Wondrously near and clear the great warm fires
Stare from the blue; so shows the...Read more of this...

Trilogy of Passion: II. ELEGY

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 When man had ceased to utter his lament,

 A god then let me tell my tale of sorrow.

WHAT hope of once more meeting is there now
In the still-closed blossoms of this day?
Both heaven and hell thrown open seest thou;
What wav'ring thoughts within the bosom play
No longer doubt! Descending from the sky,
She lifts thee in her arms to realms on...Read more of this...

Introduction To The Song Of Hiawatha

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 Should you ask me, 
whence these stories? 
Whence these legends and traditions, 
With the odors of the forest 
With the dew and damp of meadows,
With the curling smoke of wigwams,
With the rushing of great rivers,
With their frequent repetitions,
And their wild reverberations
As of thunder in the mountains?
I should answer, I should tell you,
"From the forests and the prairies,
From the great...Read more of this...

An Autograph

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 I write my name as one, 
On sands by waves o'errun 
Or winter's frosted pane, 
Traces a record vain. 

Oblivion's blankness claims 
Wiser and better names, 
And well my own may pass 
As from the strand or glass. 

Wash on, O waves of time! 
Melt, noons, the frosty rime! 
Welcome the shadow vast, 
The silence that shall last! 

When...Read more of this...

From Vashti

by Lascelles Abercrombie
 WHAT thing shall be held up to woman's beauty? 
Where are the bounds of it? Yea, what is all 
The world, but an awning scaffolded amid 
The waste perilous Eternity, to lodge 
This Heaven-wander'd princess, woman's beauty? 
The East and West kneel down to thee, the North 
And South; and all for thee their shoulders bear 
The load of...Read more of this...

The Musagetes

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 IN the deepest nights of Winter
To the Muses kind oft cried I:
"Not a ray of morn is gleaming,
Not a sign of daylight breaking;
Bring, then, at the fitting moment,
Bring the lamp's soft glimm'ring lustre,
'Stead of Phoebus and Aurora,
To enliven my still labours!"
Yet they left me in my slumbers,
Dull and unrefreshing, lying,
And to each late-waken'd morning
Follow'd days devoid of profit.

When at...Read more of this...

Intima (Intimate)

by Delmira Agustini
Spanish    Yo te diré los sueños de mi vidaEn lo más hondo de la noche azul…Mi alma desnuda temblará en tus manos,Sobre tus hombros pesará mi cruz.Las cumbres de la vida son tan solas,Tan solas y tan frías! Y encerréMis ansias en mí misma, y toda enteraComo una torre de marfil me alcé.Hoy abriré a tu alma el gran misterio;Tu alma...Read more of this...

The Teachers Monologue

by Charlotte Bronte
 The room is quiet, thoughts alone 
People its mute tranquillity; 
The yoke put on, the long task done,­ 
I am, as it is bliss to be, 
Still and untroubled. Now, I see, 
For the first time, how soft the day 
O'er waveless water, stirless tree, 
Silent and sunny, wings its way. 
Now, as I watch that distant hill, 
So...Read more of this...

Translated from Geibel

by Amy Levy
 O say, thou wild, thou oft deceived heart,
What mean these noisy throbbings in my breast?
After thy long, unutterable woe
Wouldst thou not rest?

Fall'n from Life's tree the sweet rose-blossom lies,
And fragrant youth has fled. What made to seem
This earth as fair to thee as Paradise,
Was all a dream.

The blossom fell, the thorn was left to me;
Deep from the wound the...Read more of this...

I am older than Nature and her Time

by Fernando Pessoa
I am older than Nature and her Time

By all the timeless age of Consciousness,

And my adult oblivion of the clime

Where I was born makes me not countryless.

Ay, and dim through my daylight thoughts escape

Yearnings for that land where my childhood dreamed,

Which I cannot recall in colour or shape

But haunts my hours like something that hath gleamed

And yet is not as...Read more of this...

peach-power

by Rg Gregory
 peaches exude this thrall - 
reminders of those luscious
whereabouts that lips 
best find their precious sips
to cry let this be all

they lull so well endowed
with dreams of wanting flesh
who can resist their touch
not they who wishing much
sigh o you do me proud

and yield in fruitful dreams
to the nectars of delight
that peaches bosom forth
(no better biter’s worth)
or so the vision...Read more of this...

Trilogy of Passion: III. ATONEMENT

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [Composed, when 74 years old, for a Polish lady, who excelled in
playing on the pianoforte.]

PASSION brings reason--who can pacify

An anguish'd heart whose loss hath been so great?
Where are the hours that fled so swiftly by?

In vain the fairest thou didst gain from fate;
Sad is the soul, confused the enterprise;

The glorious world, how on the sense it dies!

In million tones...Read more of this...

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