Famous Youth Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Youth poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous youth poems. These examples illustrate what a famous youth poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Horace
What slender youth, besprinkled with perfume,
Courts you on roses in some grotto's shade?
Fair Pyrrha, say, for whom
Your yellow hair you braid,
So trim, so simple! Ah!...Read more of this...
by
Edward Lear
Y was a Youth, who kickedAnd screamed and cried like mad; Papa he said, "Your conduct isAbominably bad!" ...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
Drink wine, and live here blitheful while ye may;
The morrow's life too late is; Live to-day....Read more of this...
by
Rupert Brooke
The Day that Youth had died,
There came to his grave-side,
In decent mourning, from the country’s ends,
Those scatter’d friends
Who had lived the boon companions of his prime,
And laughed with him and sung with him and wasted,
In feast and wine and many-crown’d carouse,
The days and nights and dawnings of the time
When Youth kept open house,...Read more of this...
by
William Cowper
Sin has undone our wretched race;
But Jesus has restored,
And brought the sinner face to face
With his forgiving Lord.
This we repeat from year to year
And press upon our youth;
Lord, give them an attentive ear,
Lord, save them by Thy truth!
Blessings upon the rising race!
Make this a happy hour,
According to Thy richest grace,
And thine Almighty power.
We feel for your unhappy state
(May you...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Now is the volume of my youth outworn,
And all my spring-tide blossoms rent and torn.
Ah, bird of youth! I marked not when you came,
Nor when you fled, and left me thus forlorn....Read more of this...
by
Constantine P Cavafy
He finished the painting yesterday noon. Now
he studies it in detail. He has painted him in a
gray unbuttoned coat, a deep gray; without
any vest or any tie. With a rose-colored shirt;
open at the collar, so something might be seen
also of the beauty of his chest, of his neck.
The right temple is almost entirely
covered by his hair, his beautiful hair
(parted...Read more of this...
by
George (Lord) Byron
THERE'S not a joy the world can give like that it takes away
When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay;
'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone which fades so fast
But the tender bloom of heart is gone ere youth itself be past.
Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck...Read more of this...
by
Robert Herrick
What needs complaints,
When she a place
Has with the race
Of saints?
In endless mirth,
She thinks not on
What's said or done
In earth:
She sees no tears,
Or any tone
Of thy deep groan
She hears;
Nor does she mind,
Or think on't now,
That ever thou
Wast kind:--
But changed above,
She likes not there,
As she did here,
Thy love.
--Forbear, therefore,
And lull asleep
Thy woes, and weep
No more....Read more of this...
by
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
I am not sure if I knew the truth
What his case or crime might be,
I only know that he pleaded Youth,
A beautiful, golden plea!
Youth, with its sunlit, passionate eyes,
Its roseate velvet skin—
A plea...Read more of this...
by
Matthew Arnold
'Tis death! and peace, indeed, is here,
And ease from shame, and rest from fear.
There's nothing can dismarble now
The smoothness of that limpid brow.
But is a calm like this, in truth,
The crowning end of life and youth,
And when this boon rewards the dead,
Are all debts paid, has all been said?
And is the heart of youth so light,
Its step so firm,...Read more of this...
by
Francis Thompson
As lovers, banished from their lady's face
And hopeless of her grace,
Fashion a ghostly sweetness in its place,
Fondly adore
Some stealth-won cast attire she wore,
A kerchief or a glove:
And at the lover's beck
Into the glove there fleets the hand,
Or at impetuous command
Up from the kerchief floats the virgin neck:
So I, in very lowlihead of love, -
Too shyly reverencing
To let one thought's...Read more of this...
by
Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
The sun sinks down in the crimson west,
Oh, a beautiful sun is he;
With his purple robes and his crown of gold
And his feet dipped in the sea.
Along the shore where the sea-weeds lie
Like threads of her tangled hair,
Naomi stands in the amber glow
Of the mystical sunset air.
Her hair is brown, with a...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
Laughter not time destroyed my voice
And put that crack in it,
And when the moon's pot-bellied
I get a laughing fit,
For that old Madge comes down the lane,
A stone upon her breast,
And a cloak wrapped about the stone,
And she can get no rest
With singing hush and hush-a-bye;
She that has been wild
And barren as a breaking wave
Thinks that the stone's a child.
And...Read more of this...
by
Amy Levy
What does youth know of love?
Little enough, I trow!
He plucks the myrtle for his brow,
For his forehead the rose.
Nay, but of love
It is not youth who knows....Read more of this...
by
William Lisle Bowles
Milton, our noblest poet, in the grace
Of youth, in those fair eyes and clustering hair,
That brow untouched by one faint line of care,
To mar its openness, we seem to trace
The front of the first lord of the human race,
Mid thine own Paradise portrayed so fair,
Ere Sin or Sorrow scathed it: such the air...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Since to-day is my turn for youth, I intend to pass it
in drinking wine, for that is my pleasure. Begin not to
talk of its bitterness, to speak ill of this delicious juice,
for it is agreeable, and is only bitter because it enforces
the bitterness of my life.
285...Read more of this...
by
Adelaide Crapsey
But me
They cannot touch,
Old Age and death…the strange
And ignominious end of old
Dead folk!...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness;
Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport;
Both grace and faults are loved of more and less;
Thou mak'st faults graces that to thee resort.
As on the finger of a thronèd queen,
The basest jewel will be well esteemed.
So are those errors that in thee are seen
To truths translated, and for true things...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
The moments passed as at a play;
I had the wisdom love brings forth;
I had my share of mother-wit,
And yet for all that I could say,
And though I had her praise for it,
A cloud blown from the cut-throat North
Suddenly hid Love's moon away.
Believing every word I said,
I praised her body and her mind
Till pride had made her eyes grow bright,
And...Read more of this...
by
Laurence Binyon
COME then, as ever, like the wind at morning!
Joyous, O Youth, in the aged world renew
Freshness to feel the eternities around it,
Rain, stars and clouds, light and the sacred dew.
The strong sun shines above thee:
That strength, that radiance bring!
If Winter come to Winter,
When shall men hope...Read more of this...
by
William Carlos (WCW) Williams
I bought a dishmop—
having no daughter—
for they had twisted
fine ribbons of shining copper
about white twine
and made a tousled head
of it, fastened it
upon a turned ash stick
slender at the neck
straight, tall—
when tied upright
on the brass wallbracket
to be a light for me
and naked
as a girl should seem
to her father....Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Youth is the time to pay court to the vine,
To quaff the cup, with revellers to recline;
A flood of water once laid waste the earth,
Hence learn to lay you waste with floods of wine....Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
WE have left our youth behind:
Earth is in its baby years:
Void of wisdom cries the wind,
And the sunlight knows no tears.
When shall twilight feel the awe,
All the rapt thought of the sage,
And the lips of wind give law
Drawn from out their lore of age?
When shall earth begin to burn
With such love as thrills my...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Here is the Dawn; arise, O beardless youth, and quickly
fill this crystal cup with ruby wine, for [later], you could
seek long time ere finding such a moment of existence as
is lent us in this world of nothingness....Read more of this...
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