History of Poetry
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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
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
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
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
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