Famous Stoic Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Stoic poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous stoic poems. These examples illustrate what a famous stoic poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...rse;
And you are slowly moving, pioneer, you alone.
How vivid your travelling seems now, in the troubled sunshine,
Stoic, Ulyssean atom;
Suddenly hasty, reckless, on high toes.
Voiceless little bird,
Resting your head half out of your wimple
In the slow dignity of your eternal pause.
Alone, with no sense of being alone,
And hence six times more solitary;
Fulfilled of the slow passion of pitching through immemorial ages
Your little round house in the midst of cha...Read more of this...
by
Lawrence, D. H.
...ll-governed and wise appetite.
COMUS. 0 foolishness of men! that lend their ears
To those budge doctors of the Stoic fur,
And fetch their precepts from the Cynic tub,
Praising the lean and sallow Abstinence!
Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth
With such a full and unwithdrawing hand,
Covering the earth with odours, fruits, and flocks,
Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable,
But all to please and sate the curious taste?
And set to work millions of spinning...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ce
Would last the earth out, not dying till the planet died. I wrote a schoolboy poem
About the last man walking in stoic dignity along the dead shore
Of the last sea, alone, alone, alone, remembering all
His racial past. But now I don't think so. They'll die faceless in flocks,
And the earth flourish long after mankind is out....Read more of this...
by
Jeffers, Robinson
...nius lies;
Earth! Ocean! Heav'n! The wond'rous loss deplore,
The dregs of nature with her glory dies.
What iron Stoic can suppress the tear;
What sour reviewer read with vacant eye!
What bard but decks his literary bier!
Alas! I cannot sing-- I howl-- I cry--...Read more of this...
by
Chatterton, Thomas
...tree-rock'd cradle to his bier
The fierce extreme of good and ill to brook
Impassive--fearing but the shame of fear--
A stoic of the woods--a man without a tear.
Yet deem not goodness on the savage stock
Of Outalissi's heart disdain'd to grow;
As lives the oak unwither'd on the rock
By storms above, and barrenness below;
He scorn'd his own, who felt another's wo:
And ere the wolf-skin on his back he flung,
Or laced his mocassins, in act to go,
A song of parting to the bo...Read more of this...
by
Campbell, Thomas
...eath,
Plus hell or Heaven;
So let the last pay-off be death,
And call it even.
To Nature I will pay my debt
With stoic laughter:
But spare me, God, your awful threat
Of Life Here-after!...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...kle,
And hanging grimly on,
Letting go at last as she drags away,
And closing his steel-trap face.
His steel-trap, stoic, ageless, handsome face.
Alas, what a fool he looks in this scuffle.
And how he feels it!
The lonely rambler, the stoic, dignified stalker through chaos,
The immune, the animate,
Enveloped in isolation,
Fore-runner.
Now look at him!
Alas, the spear is through the side of his isolation.
His adolescence saw him crucified into sex,
Doome...Read more of this...
by
Lawrence, D. H.
...hat watered all the schools
Of Academics old and new, with those
Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe.
These here revolve, or, as thou likest, at home,
Till time mature thee to a kingdom's weight;
These rules will render thee a king complete
Within thyself, much more with empire joined."
To whom our Saviour sagely thus replied:—
"Think not but that I know these things; or, think
I know them not, not therefore am I short
Of knowing what...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...g lips into the pillow prest,
Her eyes sealed fast within its smothering fold.
XXIV
The morning brought her a more stoic mind, And
sunshine struck across the polished floor.
She wondered whether this day she should find Gervase a-fishing,
and so listen more,
Much more again, to all he had to tell. And he was there, but
waiting to begin
Until she came. They fished awhile,
then went To the old seat within
The cherry's shade. He pleased her very well
By ...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...rful eyes
Mark'd the vex'd deep, as the slow rising moon
Gleam'd on the world of waters. 'Twas a scene
Would make a Stoic shudder! For, amid
The wavy mountains, they beheld, alone ,
A LITTLE BOAT, now scarcely visible;
And now not seen at all; or, like a buoy,
Bounding, and buffetting, to reach the shore!
Now the full Moon, in crimson lustre shone
Upon the outstretch'd Ocean. The black clouds
Flew stiffly on, the wild blast following,
And, as they flew, dimming the a...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Mary Darby
...Avoid the reeking herd,
Shun the polluted flock,
Live like that stoic bird,
The eagle of the rock.
The huddled warmth of crowds
Begets and fosters hate;
He keeps above the clouds
His cliff inviolate.
When flocks are folded warm,
And herds to shelter run,
He sails above the storm,
He stares into the sun.
If in the eagle's track
Your sinews cannot leap,
Avoid the lathered pack,
Turn from the steam...Read more of this...
by
Wylie, Elinor
...er these
He may cry out and stay on horribly;
Or, seeing in death too small a thing to fear,
He may go forward like a stoic Roman
Where pangs and terrors in his pathway lie,—
Or, seizing the swift logic of a woman,
Curse God and die.
Or maybe there, like many another one
Who might have stood aloft and looked ahead,
Black-drawn against wild red,
He may have built, unawed by fiery gules
That in him no commotion stirred,
A living reason out of molecules
Why molecu...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...Riches I hold in light esteem,
And love I laugh to scorn;
And lust of fame was but a dream
That vanish'd with the morn:
And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is, "Leave the heart that now I bear,
And give me liberty!"
Yes, as my swift days near their goal,
'Tis all that I implore:
In life and death a chainless soul,
With courage to end...Read more of this...
by
Brontë, Emily
...solid learning bent his mind,
In trope and syllogism he shined,
'Gainst reigning follies spent his railing;
Too much a Stoic--'twas his failing.
Hither for aid our Sparrow came,
And told his errand and his name,
With panting breath explain'd his case,
Much trembling at the sage's face;
And begg'd his Owlship would declare
If love were worth a wise one's care.
The grave Owl heard the weighty cause,
And humm'd and hah'd at every pause;
Then fix'd his looks in sapie...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...let them take lugger and all!"
Kanzo Makame, the diver -- knowing full well what it meant --
Fatalist, gambler, and stoic, smiled a broad smile of content,
Flattened in mainsail and foresail, and off to the Islands they went.
Close to the headlands they drifted, picking up shell by the ton,
Piled up on deck were the oysters, opening wide in the sun,
When, from the lee of the headland, boomed the report of a gun.
Then if the diver was sighted, pearl-shell an...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...ed and boisterous revelry
Surge round him on the tides of wine, but he,
Staunch in the ethic of an antique school --
Stoic or Cynic or of Pyrrho's mind --
With steady eyes surveyed the unbridled scene,
Himself impassive, silent, self-contained:
So sat the Indian prince, with brow unblanched,
Amid the tortured and the torturers.
He who had seen his hopes made desolate,
His realm despoiled, his early crown deprived him,
And watched while Pestilence and Famine pile...Read more of this...
by
Seeger, Alan
...bayThe raging foe, and conquer'd by delay.Another Fabius join'd the stoic pair,The Pauli and Marcelli famed in war;With them the victor in the friendly strife,Whose public virtue quench'd his love of life.With either Brutus ancient Curius came;Fabricius, too, I spied, a nobler nameRead more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...ure it.
To angel from the ape
No human pang was vain
In that divine escape
To joy through Pain.
See Pain with stoic eyes
And patient fortitude,
A blessing in disguise,
An instrument of good.
Aye, though with hearts forlorn
We to despair be fain,
Believe that Joy is born
From Womb of Pain....Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...blood, in the dark-creation morning.
Moving, and being himself,
Slow, and unquestioned,
And inordinately there, O stoic!
Wandering in the slow triumph of his own existence,
Ringing the soundless bell of his presence in chaos,
And biting the frail grass arrogantly,
Decidedly arrogantly....Read more of this...
by
Lawrence, D. H.
...To have a business of my own
With toil and tears,
I wore my fingers to the bone
For weary years.
With stoic heart, for sordid gold
In patient pain
My life and liberty I sold
For others gain.
I scrimped and scraped, as cent by cent
My savings grew;
I found a faded shop for rent,
Made it like new.
Above the door the paint was dry
Where glowed my name:
I waited there for folks to buy--
But no one came.
Now I am back where I began:
Myself I ...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
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