Famous Youths Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Song by Gulbaz

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Love, let me thank you for this!
     Now we have drifted apart,
   Wandered away from the sea,—
     For the fresh touch of your kiss,
   For the young warmth of your heart,
     For your youth given to me.

   Thanks: for...Read more of this...

On A Political Prisoner

by William Butler Yeats
 She that but little patience knew,
From childhood on, had now so much
A grey gull lost its fear and flew
Down to her cell and there alit,
And there endured her fingers' touch
And from her fingers ate its bit.

Did she in touching that lone wing
Recall the years before her mind
Became a bitter, an abstract thing,
Her thought some popular enmity:
Blind and leader of...Read more of this...

The Man From Ironbark

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 It was a man from Ironbark who struck the Sydney town,
He wandered over street and park, he wandered up and down,
He loitered here, he loitered there, till he was like to drop,
Until at last in sheer despair he sought a barber's shop.
" 'Ere! shave me beard and whiskers off, I'll be a man of mark,
I'll go and do the...Read more of this...

The Harlem Dancer

by Claude McKay
 Applauding youths laughed with young prostitutes 
And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway; 
Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes 
Blown by black players upon a picnic day. 
She sang and danced on gracefully and calm, 
The light gauze hanging loose about her form; 
To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm 
Grown lovelier for passing through a...Read more of this...

Whilom, ere youth's conceit had waned, methought

by Omar Khayyam
Whilom, ere youth's conceit had waned, methought
Answers to all life's problems I had wrought;
But now, grown old and wise, too late I see
My life is spent, and all my lore is naught....Read more of this...

Godwin James

by Edgar Lee Masters
 Harry Wilmans! You who fell in a swamp
Near Manila, following the flag,
You were not wounded by the greatness of a dream,
Or destroyed by ineffectual work,
Or driven to madness by Satanic snags;
You were not torn by aching nerves,
Nor did you carry great wounds to your old age.
You did not starve, for the government fed you.
You did not suffer yet cry...Read more of this...

Kyrenaikos

by Alan Seeger
 Lay me where soft Cyrene rambles down 
In grove and garden to the sapphire sea; 
Twine yellow roses for the drinker's crown; 
Let music reach and fair heads circle me, 
Watching blue ocean where the white sails steer 
Fruit-laden forth or with the wares and news 
Of merchant cities seek our harbors here, 
Careless how Corinth fares, how Syracuse;...Read more of this...

For once, while roses are in bloom, I said,

by Omar Khayyam
«For once, while roses are in bloom,» I said,
«I'll break the law, and please myself instead,
With blooming youths, and maidens' tulip cheeks
The plain shall blossom like a tulip-bed.»...Read more of this...

Times Revenges

by Robert Browning
 I've a Friend, over the sea;
I like him, but he loves me.
It all grew out of the books I write;
They find such favour in his sight
That he slaughters you with savage looks
Because you don't admire my books.
He does himself though,---and if some vein
Were to snap to-night in this heavy brain,
To-morrow month, if I lived to try,
Round should I just...Read more of this...

O youth's young cloudlet, O freshness free

by Hafez
O youth’s young cloudlet, O freshness free,
With heart so light on the winds to fly
Or glisten in spray up-scatter’d,—I
Am sad as the full surgings of the sea;
I gave thee birth, thou shalt return to me.
Thy heart is light as the empty wind
Of barren purposeless change,—but I
Am the thought-burden’d slow-searching mind:
I am the agony to form & find;—
The fluxing travail of...Read more of this...

A Code of Morals

by Rudyard Kipling
 Now Jones had left his new-wed bride to keep his house in order,
And hied away to the Hurrum Hills above the Afghan border,
To sit on a rock with a heliograph; but ere he left he taught
His wife the working of the Code that sets the miles at naught.

And Love had made him very sage, as Nature made her fair;
So...Read more of this...

O Glorious France

by Edgar Lee Masters
 You have become a forge of snow-white fire,
A crucible of molten steel, O France!
Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn
And fade in light for you, O glorious France!
They pass through meteor changes with a song
Which to all islands and all continents
Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame,
Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child,
Nor love, nor youth's...Read more of this...

Unforgotten

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   Do you ever think of me? you who died
       Ere our Youth's first fervour chilled,
   With your soft eyes and your pulses stilled
       Lying alone, aside,
   Do you ever think of me, left in the light,
   From the endless...Read more of this...

Vision

by Siegfried Sassoon
 I love all things that pass: their briefness is 
Music that fades on transient silences. 
Winds, birds, and glittering leaves that flare and fall— 
They fling delight across the world; they call 
To rhythmic-flashing limbs that rove and race...
A moment in the dawn for Youth’s lit face; 
A moment’s passion, closing on the cry— 
‘O Beauty, born of lovely...Read more of this...

O youth's young cloudlet, O freshness free

by Hafez
O youth’s young cloudlet, O freshness free,
With heart so light on the winds to fly
Or glisten in spray up-scatter’d,—I
Am sad as the full surgings of the sea;
I gave thee birth, thou shalt return to me.

Thy heart is light as the empty wind
Of barren purposeless change,—but I
Am the thought-burden’d slow-searching mind:
I am the agony to form & find;—
The fluxing travail of...Read more of this...

The Veiled Statue At Sais

by Friedrich von Schiller
 A youth, impelled by a burning thirst for knowledge
To roam to Sais, in fair Egypt's land,
The priesthood's secret learning to explore,
Had passed through many a grade with eager haste,
And still was hurrying on with fond impatience.
Scarce could the Hierophant impose a rein
Upon his headlong efforts. "What avails
A part without the whole?" the youth exclaimed;
"Can there be here a lesser...Read more of this...

Refuted

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 ‘Anticipation is sweeter than realisation.’

It may be, yet I have not found it so.
In those first golden dreams of future fame
I did not find such happiness as came
When toil was crowned with triumph. Now I know
My words have recognition, and will go
Straight to some listening heart, my early aim, 
To win the idle glory of a name, 
Pales like...Read more of this...

Lays of Sorrow

by Lewis Carroll
 The day was wet, the rain fell souse
Like jars of strawberry jam, [1] a
sound was heard in the old henhouse,
A beating of a hammer. 
Of stalwart form, and visage warm,
Two youths were seen within it,
Splitting up an old tree into perches for their poultry
At a hundred strokes [2] a minute. 
The work is done, the hen has taken
Possession of...Read more of this...

First Party At Ken Keseys With Hells Angels

by Allen Ginsberg
 Cool black night thru redwoods
cars parked outside in shade
behind the gate, stars dim above
the ravine, a fire burning by the side
porch and a few tired souls hunched over
in black leather jackets. In the huge
wooden house, a yellow chandelier 
at 3 A.M. the blast of loudspeakers
hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles
Jumping Joe Jackson and twenty youths
dancing to the vibration thru...Read more of this...

The Enthusiast

by Herman Melville
 "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him"

Shall hearts that beat no base retreat
In youth's magnanimous years - 
Ignoble hold it, if discreet
When interest tames to fears;
Shall spirits that worship light
Perfidious deem its sacred glow,
Recant, and trudge where worldlings go,
Conform and own them right?

Shall Time with creeping influence cold
Unnerve and cow? The heart
Pine for the heartless ones...Read more of this...

A Ballad upon a Wedding

by Sir John Suckling
 I tell thee, Dick, where I have been, 
Where I the rarest things have seen, 
O, things without compare! 
Such sights again cannot be found 
In any place on English ground, 
Be it at wake or fair.

At Charing Cross, hard by the way 
Where we, thou know'st, do sell our hay, 
There is a house with stairs; 
And there...Read more of this...

Ode to Health

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Come, bright-eyed maid, 
Pure offspring of the tranquil mind,
Haste, my fev'rish temples bind
With olive wreaths of em'rald hue
Steep'd in morn's ethereal dew, 
Where in mild HELVETIA's shade, 
Blushing summer round her flings
Warm gales and sunny show'rs that hang upon her wings. 

I'll seek thee in ITALIA's bow'rs, 
Where supine on beds of flow'rs
Melody's soul-touching throng
Strike the soft lute or...Read more of this...

The Flaâneur

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 I love all sights of earth and skies, 
From flowers that glow to stars that shine; 
The comet and the penny show, 
All curious things, above, below, 
Hold each in turn my wandering eyes: 
I claim the Christian Pagan's line, 
Humani nihil, -- even so, -- 
And is not human life divine? 
When soft the western breezes blow, 
And...Read more of this...

Duino Elegies: The Tenth Elegy

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 That some day, emerging at last from the terrifying vision
I may burst into jubilant praise to assenting angels!
That of the clear-struck keys of the heart not one may fail
to sound because of a loose, doubtful or broken string!
That my streaming countenance may make me more resplendent
That my humble weeping change into blossoms.
Oh, how will you then, nights of suffering,...Read more of this...

Sonnet II: When Forty Winters Shall Besiege Thy Brow

by William Shakespeare
 When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, 
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field, 
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now, 
Will be a tatter'd weed, of small worth held: 
Then being ask'd where all thy beauty lies, 
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days, 
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes, 
Were an all-eating shame...Read more of this...

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