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
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
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
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
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[This sweet Ballad, and the one entitled The
Maid of the Mill's Repentance, were written on the occasion of a
visit paid by Goethe to Switzerland. The Maid of the Mill's Treachery,
to which the latter forms the sequel, was not written till the following
year.]
YOUTH.
SAY, sparkling streamlet, whither thou
Art
going!
With joyous mien thy waters now
Are
flowing.
Why seek the...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Left in immortal Youth
On that low Plain
That hath nor Retrospection
Nor Again --
Ransomed from years --
Sequestered from Decay
Canceled like Dawn
In comprehensive Day --...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
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
OFTEN I think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down
The pleasant streets of that dear old town,
And my youth comes back to me. 5
And a verse of a Lapland song
Is haunting my memory still:
"A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
Now and again
All my body springs alive,
And the life that is polarised in my eyes,
That quivers between my eyes and mouth,
Flies like a wild thing across my body,
Leaving my eyes half-empty, and clamorous,
Filling my still breasts with a flush and a flame,
Gathering the soft ripples below my breast
Into urgent, passionate waves,
And my soft, slumbering belly
Quivering awake with...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
Wilfred Owen
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, --
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to...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
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
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,
Nor left untasted
Aught of his high emprise...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
Robert Browning
1 It once might have been, once only:
2 We lodged in a street together,
3 You, a sparrow on the housetop lonely,
4 I, a lone she-bird of his feather.
5 Your trade was with sticks and clay,
6 You thumbed, thrust, patted and polished,
7 Then laughed 'They will see some day
8 Smith made, and Gibson demolished.'
9 My business was song, song, song;
10...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Allan Poe
How often we forget all time, when lone
Admiring Nature's universal throne;
Her woods - her winds - her mountains - the intense
Reply of Hers to Our intelligence!
I.
In youth I have known one with whom the Earth
In secret communing held - as he with it,
In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth:
Whose fervid,...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
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
Edward Dorn
But now I pass
graveyards in a car.
The dead lie,
unsuperstitiously,
with their feet toward me--
please forgive me for
saying the tombstones would not
fancy their faces turned from the highway.
Oh perish the thought
I was thinking in that moment
Newman Illinois
the Saturday night dance--
what a life? Would I like it again?
No. Once I returned late summer
from California thin from journeying
and the girls were not the...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
D. H. Lawrence
There are four men mowing down by the Isar;
I can hear the swish of the scythe-strokes, four
Sharp breaths taken: yea, and I
Am sorry for what's in store.
The first man out of the four that's mowing
Is mine, I claim him once and for all;
Though it's sorry I am, on his young feet, knowing
None...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
What belongs to youth is wine, the limpid juice of the
vine and the society of beauty; and since water once
brought ruin to this world by annihilating it, it is our
part to drown ourselves in wine, to pass our life in
drunkenness complete....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
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...
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...
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