Famous Golden Age Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Golden Age poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous golden age poems. These examples illustrate what a famous golden age poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...golden Eies
First shines upon the Priest and Sacrifice.
Ile on howere; May this yeare happier prove
Than all the Golden Age when Vertue strove
With nothing but with Vertue; may it bee
Such as the Dayes of Saturnes Infancy.
May every Tide and Season joyntly fitt
All your Intents and your Occasions hitt:
May every Grayne of Sand within your Glass
Number a fresh content before it pass.
And when success comes on, stand then each howre
Like Josuah's Day, & grow to t...Read more of this...
by
Strode, William
...l commend;
Short is the Date, alas, of Modern Rhymes;
And 'tis but just to let 'em live betimes.
No longer now that Golden Age appears,
When Patriarch-Wits surviv'd thousand Years;
Now Length of Fame (our second Life) is lost,
And bare Threescore is all ev'n That can boast:
Our Sons their Fathers' failing language see,
And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be.
So when the faithful Pencil has design'd
Some bright Idea of the Master's Mind,
Where a new World leaps out at...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...A little Indian temple in the Golden Age. Around it a garden;
around that the forest. Anashuya, the young priestess, kneeling
within the temple.
Anashuya. Send peace on all the lands and flickering
corn. -
O, may tranquillity walk by his elbow
When wandering in the forest, if he love
No other. - Hear, and may the indolent flocks
Be plentiful. - And if he love...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...d I can see her face,
Softening beneath the marvel of thy grace,
Where not a foot our vanished steps can track--
The golden age, the golden age come back!
"O fairest, hear me now who do thy will,
Plead for thy rebel that she be not slain,
But live and love and be thy servant still;
Ah, give her joy and take away my pain,
And thus two long-enduring servants gain.
An easy thing this is to do for me,
What need of my vain words to weary thee.
"But none the less...Read more of this...
by
Morris, William
...r>
If 'twere a shame to love, here 'twere no shame,
Affection here takes Reverence's name.
Were her first years the Golden Age; that's true,
But now she's gold oft tried, and ever new.
That was her torrid and inflaming time,
This is her tolerable Tropique clime.
Fair eyes, who asks more heat than comes from hence,
He in a fever wishes pestilence.
Call not these wrinkles, graves; if graves they were,
They were Love's graves; for else he is no where.
Yet lie...Read more of this...
by
Donne, John
...woodlander--
Pass'd like a dream before him. Then the spur
Of the old bards to mighty deeds: his plans
To nurse the golden age 'mong shepherd clans:
That wondrous night: the great Pan-festival:
His sister's sorrow; and his wanderings all,
Until into the earth's deep maw he rush'd:
Then all its buried magic, till it flush'd
High with excessive love. "And now," thought he,
"How long must I remain in jeopardy
Of blank amazements that amaze no more?
Now I have tasted her ...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...less : whilst gold bears all this sway, I, that have none to send you, send you verse.Than this our gilt, nor golden age can deem, When gold was made no weapon to cut throats, Or put to flight Astrea, when her ingóts Were yet unfound, and better placed in earth, Than here, to give pride fame, and peasants birth, But let this dross carry what price it will With noble ignorants, and let them still Turn upon scorned verse, their quarter-face...Read more of this...
by
Jonson, Ben
...Will;
Fight on, believing all is well with life;
Seeing within the worst of War's red rage
The gleam, the glory of the Golden Age....Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...den, that so blest a sky controls,
Weaving the climate dear to both our souls.
VIII
As in the guileless, golden age, my heart
I gave thee, even like an ample flower
That opens in the dew's bright morning hour;
My lips have rested where the frail leaves part.
I plucked the flower—it came
From meadows whereon grow the flowers of flame:
Speak to it not—'tis best that we control
Words, since they needs are trivial 'twixt us two;
All words are hazardous,...Read more of this...
by
Verhaeren, Emile
...the Pow'r of Art
To bind, or to restore the Heart!
From the AMINTA of TASSO.
Part of the Description of the Golden Age.
THEN, by some Fountains flow'ry side
The Loves unarm'd, did still abide.
Then, the loos'd Quiver careless hung,
The Torch extinct, the Bow unstrung.
Then, by the Nymphs no Charms were worn,
But such as with the Nymphs were born.
The Shepherd cou'd not, then, complain,
Nor told his am'rous Tale in vain.
No Veil the Beau...Read more of this...
by
Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...ught makes me tremble;
Yet I will travel that road, if 'tis to truth and to right."
Friend, hast thou heard of the golden age? Full many a story
Poets have sung in its praise, simply and touchingly sung--
Of the time when the holy still wandered over life's pathways,--
When with a maidenly shame every sensation was veiled,--
When the mighty law that governs the sun in his orbit,
And that, concealed in the bud, teaches the point how to move,
When necessity's silent law, t...Read more of this...
by
Schiller, Friedrich von
...ce..
Nor fears he the Most Christian should trepan
Two saints at once, St Germain, St Alban,
But thought the Golden Age was now restored,
When men and women took each other's word.
Paint then again Her Highness to the life,
Philosopher beyond Newcastle's wife.
She, nak'd, can Archimedes self put down,
For an experiment upon the crown,
She p?rfected that engine, oft assayed,
How after childbirth to renew a maid,
And found how royal heirs might be ma...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...If Might made Right, life were a wild-beasts' cage;
If Right made Might, this were the golden age;
But now, until we win the long campaign,
Right must gain Might to conquer and to reign....Read more of this...
by
Dyke, Henry Van
...ing.
Sick is the land to th' heart; and doth endure
More dangerous faintings by her desperate cure.
But if that golden age would come again,
And Charles here rule, as he before did reign;
If smooth and unperplex'd the seasons were,
As when the sweet Maria lived here;
I should delight to have my curls half drown'd
In Tyrian dews, and head with roses crown'd:
And once more yet, ere I am laid out dead,
Knock at a star with my exalted head....Read more of this...
by
Herrick, Robert
...WHEN the morning breaks above us
And the wild sweet stars have fled,
By the faery hands that love us
Wakened you and I will tread
Where the lilacs on the lawn
Shine with all their silver dews,
In the stillness of a dawn
Wrapped in tender primrose hues.
We will hear the strange old song
That the earth croons in her breast,
Echoed by the feathered th...Read more of this...
by
Russell, George William
...Pg 386]Adrian, and Antonine the just and good,He, with his son, the golden age renew'd;And ere they ruled the world, themselves subdued.Then, as I turn'd my roving eyes around,Quirinus I beheld with laurel crown'd,And five succeeding kings. The sixth was lost,By vice degraded from his regal po...Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...o see or count)
Descend'st from thence like Moses from the Mount,
And with a candid, yet unquestioned aw,
Restorlst the Golden Age when Verse was Law.
Instructing us, thou so secur'st thy fame,
That nothing can distrub it but my name;
Nay I have hoped that standing so near thine
'Twill lose its drosse, and by degrees refine ...
"Live, till the disabused world consent
All truths of use, or strength, or ornament,
Are with such harmony by thee displaid,
As the wh...Read more of this...
by
Philips, Katherine
...like those that have new hopes, or suits, With thy new place, bring I these early fruits Of love, and, what the golden age did hold A treasure, art ; contemn'd in the age of gold. Nor glad as those, that old dependents be, To see thy father's rites new laid on thee. Nor glad for fashion ; nor to shew a fit Of flattery to thy titles ; nor of wit. But I am glad to see that time survive, Where merit is not sepulcher'd alive ; Where good me...Read more of this...
by
Jonson, Ben
...with his purple mass
The cedar reaching high
To kiss the sky,
The cypress, pine,
And useful sassafras.
To whom the golden age
Still Nature's laws doth give,
No other cares attend
But them to defend
From winter's rage,
That long there doth not live.
When as the luscious smell
Of that delicious land,
Above the sea that flows,
The clear wind throws,
Your hearts to swell,
Approaching the dear strand.
In kenning of the shore,
(Thanks to God first given)
O you, the h...Read more of this...
by
Drayton, Michael
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