History of Poetry


I held a Jewel in My Fingers

 

I held a Jewel in my fingers

And went to sleep

The day was warm, and winds were prosy

I said “Twill keep"

 

I woke and chid my honest fingers,

The Gem was gone

And now, an Amethyst remembrance

Is all I own

 

Emily Dickinson

 

 

Famous Love Poems

 

The Definintion Of Love

 

My love is of a birth as rare

As ‘tis for object strange and high:

It was begotten by Despair

Upon Impossibility.

 

Magnanimous Despair alone

Could show me so divine a thing,

Where feeble Hope could ne’er have flown

But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

 

And yet I quickly might arrive

Where my extended soul is fixed

But Fate does iron wedges drive,

And always crowds itself betwixt.

 

For Fate with Jealous eye does see

Two perfect loves, nor lets them close:

Their union would her ruin be,

And her tyrranic power depose.

 

And therefore her decrees of steel

Us as the distant Poles have placed

(Though Love’s whole world on us doth wheel)

Not by themselves to be embraced,

 

Unless the giddy heaven fall,

And earth some new convulsion tear;

And, us to join, the world should all

Be cramped into a planishere.

 

As lines (so loves) oblique may well

Themselves in every angle greet:

But ours so truly parallel,

Though infinite, can never meet.

 

Therefore the love which us doth bind,

But Fate so enviously debars,

Is the conjunction of the mind,

And opposition of the stars.

 

Andrew Marvell

 

 

Famous I love you Poems

 

Sonnet #43, From the Portuguese

 

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints, - I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose,

I shall but thee better after death.

 

Elisabeth Barrett Browning

 

 

Famous funny Poems

 

“Faith" is a fine invention

 

“Faith" is a fine invention

When Gentlemen can see

But Microscopes are prudent

In a Emergency.

 

Emily Dickinson

 

 

Famous Birthday Poems

 

Stella’s Birthday

 

Stella this day is thirty-four,

(We shan’t dispute a year or more: )

However, Stella, be not troubled,

Although thy size and years are doubled,

Since first I saw thee at sixteen,

The brightest virgin on the green;

So little is thy form declin’d;

Made up so largely in thy mind.

 

Oh, would it please the gods to split

Thy beauty, siz, and years, and wit:

No age could furnish out a pair

Of nymphs so graceful, wise, and fair;

With half the luster of your eyes,

With half you wit, your years, and size.

And the, before it grew too late,

How should I beg of gentle Fate,

(That either nymph might have her swain,)

To split my worship too in twain

 

Jonathan Swift

 

 

Limericks

 

There was an Old Man with a flute,

A sarpint ran into his boot;

Till the sarpint took flight,

And avoided that man with a flute.

 

Edward Lear

 

 

Famous Best Friend Poems

 

When to the session of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,

For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,

And weep afresh love’s long since cancelled woe,

And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restored and sorrows end.

 

William Shakespeare

 

 

 

Famous Friendship Poems

 

Friendship

 

A ruddy drop of manly blood

The surging sea outweighs:

The world uncertain comes and goes,

The lover stays.

I fancied he was fled,

And, after many a year,

Glowed unexhausted kindliness

Like daily sunrise there.

My careful heart was free again-

O friend, my bosom said,

Through thee alone the sky is arched,

Through thee the rose is red,

All things through thee takes nobler form

And look beyond the earth,

The mill-round of our fate appears

A sun-path in thy worth.

Me too thy nobleness has taught

To master my despair;

The fountains of my hidden life

Are through thy friendship fair.

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

Famous Sad Poems

 

Broken Dreams

 

There is grey in your hair.

Young men no longer suddenly catch their breath

When you are passing;

But maybe some old gaffer mutters a blessing

Because it was your prayer

Recovered him upon the bed of death.

For your sole sake – that all heart’s ache have known,

And given to others all heart’s ache,

From meager girlhood’s putting on

Burdensome beauty – for your sole sake

Heaven has put away the stroke of her doom,

So great her portion in that peace you make

By merely walking in a room.

Your beauty can but leave among us

Vague memories, nothing but memories.

A young man when the old men are done talking

Will say to an old man, “Tell me of that lady

The poet stubborn with his passion sang us

When age might well have chilled his blood.’

Vague memories, nothing but memories,

But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed.

The certainty that I shall be renewed.

The certainty that I shall see that lady

Leaning or standing or walking

In the first loveliness of womanhood,

And with fervour of my youthful eyes,

Has set me muttering like a fool.

You are more beautiful than any one,

And yet your body had a flaw:

Your small hands were not beautiful,

And I am afraid that you will run

And paddle to the wrist

In that mysterious, always brimming lake

Where those What have obeyed the holy law

Paddle and are perfect. Leave unchanged

The hands that I have kissed,

For old sake’s sake.

The last stroke of midnight dies.

All day in the one chair

From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have

Ranged

In rambling talk with an image of air:

Vague memories, nothing but memories.

 

William Butler Yeats

 

 

Famous Sad Love Poems

 

Wonder

 

Wonder,

A garden among the flames!

 

My heart can take on any form:

A meadow for gazelles,

A cloister for monks,

For the idols, sacred ground,

Ka’ba for the circling pilgrim,

The tables of the Torah,

The scrolls of the Quran.

 

My creed is Love;

Whereever its caravan turns along the way

That is my belief,

My faith.

 

Ibn Arabi

 

 

Famous Death Poems

 

Deaths And Entrances

 

On almost the incendiary eve

Of several near deaths,

When at the great least of your best loved

And always known must leave

Lions and fires of his flying breath,

Of your immortal friends

Who’d raise the organs of the counted dust

To shoot and sing your praise,

One who called deepest down shall hold his peace

That cannot sink or cease

Endlessly to his wound

In many married London’s estranging grief.

 

On almost the incendiary eve

When at your lips and keys,

Locking, unlocking, the murdered strangers weave,

One who is most unknown,

Your polestar neighbour, sun of another street,

Will dive up to his tears.

He’ll bathe his raining blood in the male sea

Who strode for your own dead

And wind his globe out of your water thread

And load the throats of shells

With ever cry since light

Flashed first across his thnderclapping eyes.

 

On almost the incendiary eve

Of deaths and entrances,

When near and strange wounded on London’s waves

Have sought your single grave,

One enemy, of many, who knows well

Your heart is luminous

In the watched dark, quivering through locks and caves,

Will pull the thunderbolts

To shut the sun, plunge, mount your darkened keys

And sear just riders back,

Until that one loved least

Looms the last Samson of your zodiac.

 

Dylan Thomas

 

 

Famous Depression Poem

 

The Fury Of Rainstorms

 

The rain drums down like red ants,

The ants are in great pain

And they cry out as they hit

As if their little legs were only

Stitche don and their heads pasted.

And oh they bring to mind the grave,

So humble, so willing to be beat upon

With its awful lettering and

The body lying underneath

Without an umbrella.

Depression is boring, I think

And I would do better to make

Some soup and light up the cave.

 

Anne Sexton

 

 

 

Famous Family Poems

 

 

Jubilant Father

 

His face is like a sun, warms the moon beside him.

She’s grown full; tonight begins the waning.

The tide pulls through her very bones,

Her form aches as each wave crests.

 

The earth pulse, heavy, blood warm with her

Beats new chords, old sun god chants.

“You are the first mother and the last,

All spring flesh has traveled through you."

 

Aztec plumed and gold beaded,

Your priest kneels at the holy alter,

Gathers each salt pearl shed, nectar for his sacrament.

 

You are the temple,

We pilgrims swept through the gates,

Bent figures know the scent and petals of your presence,

Spread our arms to harvest blossoms,

And your priest, sun struck, kneels beside you.

 

Christine McAuliffe

 

 

Famous Life Poems

 

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

 

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

 

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

 

The waves beside them danced, but they

Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;

A poet could not be but gay,

In such a jocund company!

I gazed-and-gazed-but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

 

For oft, when on my couch I lie

Invacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

 

William Wordsworth

 

 

 

Famous Religious Poems

 

Amazing Grace

 

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)

That sav’d a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,

Was blind, but now I see.

Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

And grace my fears reliev’d;

How precious did that grace appear,

The hour I first believ’d!

 

Thro’ many dangers, toils and snares,

I have already come;

Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,

And grace will lead me home.

 

The Lord has promis’d good to me,

His word my hope secures;

He will my shield and portion be,

As long as life endures.

 

Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,

And mortal life shall cease;

I shall possess, within the veil,

A life of joy and peace.

 

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,

The sun forbear to shine;

But God, who call’d me here below,

Will be forever mine.

 

John Newton

 

 

Famous Nature Poems

 

Autumn

 

Autumn: the year breathes dully towards its death,

Beside its dying sacrificial fire;

The dim world’s middle-age of vain desire

Is strangely troubled, waiting for the breath

That speaks the winter’s welcome malison

To fix it in the unremembering sleep:

The silent woods brood o’er an anxious deep,

And in the faded sorrow of the sun,

I see my dreams’ dead colours, one by one,

Forth-conjur’d from their smouldering palaces,

Fade slowly with the sigh of the passing year.

They wander not nor wring their hands nor weep,

Discrown’d belated dreams! But in the drear

And lingering world we sit among the trees

And bow our heads as they, with frozen mouth,

Looking, in ashen reverie, towards the clear

Sad splendour of the winter of the far south.

 

Christopher Brennan

 

 

Famous Inspirational Poems

 

Peace Beings with Me

 

Peace begins with me

Starting over and breaking fre.

 

Peace begins with me

Opeing my eyes and beginning to see.

 

Peace begins with me

Curious about what I am going to be.

 

Peace begins with me

Knowing I no longer have to flee.

 

Peace begins with me.

Having self dignity.

 

Peace begins with me

Taking on more responsibility.

 

Peace begins with me

Because peace is being happy.

 

And this is why peace begins with me!

 

Richard D. Marco III

 

 

Famous Holiday Poems

 

A Christmas Carol

 

In The beak mid-winter

Frosty winds made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron,

Water like a stone

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,

Snow on snow,

In the bleak mid-winter,

Long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him

Nor earth sustain;

Heaven and earth shall flee away

When he comes to reign:

In the bleak mid-winter

A stable place sufficed

The Lord God Almighty

Jesus Christ.

 

Christina Rossetti

 

 

 

Famous Patriotic Poetry

 

The New Colosus

 

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles.

From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your stories pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

 

Emma Lazarus

 

 

Famous War Poems

 

Nor dread nor hope attend

A dying animal;

A man awaits his end

Dreading and hoping all;

Many times he died,

Many times rose again.

A great man in his pride

Confronting murderous men

Casts derision upon

Supersession of breath;

He knows death to the bone