Famous My Own Life Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous My Own Life poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous my own life poems. These examples illustrate what a famous my own life poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...ght could scarce sustain:
The black lean land, of featureless contour,
Was like a tract in pain.
"This scene, like my own life," I said, "is one
Where many glooms abide;
Toned by its fortune to a deadly dun--
Lightless on every side.
I glanced aloft and halted, pleasure-caught
To see the contrast there:
The ray-lit clouds gleamed glory; and I thought,
"There's solace everywhere!"
Then bitter self-reproaches as I stood
I dealt me silently
As one perverse--misreprese...Read more of this...
by
Hardy, Thomas
...e blood d'ye see;
Then I begged of him, for God's sake not to cut the throat of poor Jim,
But he cried, Ha! ha! to save my own life I consider it no sin.
I tried to prevent him but he struck me without dismay
And cut poor Jim's throat in defiance of me, or all I could say,
Also a piece of flesh from each thigh, and began to eat away,
But poor fellow he sickened about noon, and died on the Sunday.
Now it is all over and I will thank all my life,
Who has preserved m...Read more of this...
by
McGonagall, William Topaz
...
Infirm and aged I might stay
In some good company,
I who have always hated work,
Smiling at the sea,
Or demonstrate in my own life
What Robert Browning meant
By an old hunter talking with Gods;
But I am not content....Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...e of me
Seems a kind of innocence.
Fast enough I shall wound it:
Let me breathe till then
Its milk-aired Eden,
Till my own life impound it-
Slow-falling; grey-veil-hung; a theft,
A style of dying only....Read more of this...
by
Larkin, Philip
...in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair:
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,--
'Guess now who holds thee ? '--' Death,' I said. But, there,
The silver answer rang,--' Not Death, but Love.'...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...I have started to say
"A quarter of a century"
Or "thirty years back"
About my own life.
It makes me breathless
It's like falling and recovering
In huge gesturing loops
Through an empty sky.
All that's left to happen
Is some deaths (my own included).
Their order, and their manner,
Remain to be learnt....Read more of this...
by
Larkin, Philip
...closer to me,
The familiar pictures are clear.
I sit in my favourite chair and turn in my mind
The tiny pages of my own life, whereon so little is written,
And hear at the eastern window the pressure of a long wind, coming
From I know not where.
How many times have I sat here,
How many times will I sit here again,
Thinking these same things over and over in solitude
As a child says over and over
The first word he has learned to say.
IX
This girl gave h...Read more of this...
by
Aiken, Conrad
...,
Or waiting to arrive, or pass’d on farther than those of the earth,
I henceforth no more ignore them, than I ignore my own life,
Or the lives of the earth arrived as far as mine, or waiting to arrive.
O I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me—as the day cannot,
I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...is now.
It is here where the apples are:
Here in the stars,
In the quick hour.
The greatest and richest good,
My own life to live in,
This she has given me --
If giver could....Read more of this...
by
MacLeish, Archibald
...in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair:
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,—
'Guess now who holds thee? '—' Death,' I said. But, there,
The silver answer rang,—' Not Death, but Love.'...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
..., impassioned tenderness
Of one approaching what he most adores,
I only wished to lose a little space
All thought of my own life, and in its place
To live and dream and have my joy in yours....Read more of this...
by
Seeger, Alan
...his antique tongue 5
I saw in gradual vision through my tears
The sweet sad years the melancholy years¡ª
Those of my own life who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware
So weeping how a mystic Shape did move 10
Behind me and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery while I strove
'Guess now who holds thee?'¡ª'Death ' I said. But there
The silver answer rang¡ª'Not Death but Love.' ...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...again that year
and the next summer and the year
afterward those six descending
notes the same for all the changing
in my own life since the last time
I had heard them fall past me from
the bright air in the morning of a bird
and I believed that what I had heard
would always be there if I came again
to be overtaken by that season
in that place after the winter
and I would wonder again whether
Mendelssohn really had heard them somewhere
far to the north that many years ago
lo...Read more of this...
by
Merwin, W S
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