Lyric Poem Examples - Beautiful Samples of Lyric Poetry!

If you want to know more about lyric poems or to get lyric poem examples, then you will get a great mini-tutorial here!

So what is a lyric poem? A lyric poem is a relatively short, non-narrative poem that expresses emotions or personal feelings. A lyric can be an ode or even a sonnet, but does not have to be set to music.

Lyric poems are often very moving and they can be quite beautiful. I hope that you enjoy this lens on lyric poem examples!

by A. E. Housman (1859-1936)

The time you won your town the race

We chaired you through the market-place;

Man and boy stood cheering by,

And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,

Shoulder-high we bring you home,

And set you at your threshold down,

Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away

From fields were glory does not stay

And early though the laurel grows

It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut

Cannot see the record cut,

And silence sounds no worse than cheers

After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout

Of lads that wore their honours out,

Runners whom renown outran

And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,

The fleet foot on the sill of shade,

And hold to the low lintel up

The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head

Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,

And find unwithered on its curls

The garland briefer than a girl's.

The figure standing boldly forward in the center represents “Lyric Poetry,” crowned with a wreath of laurel and touching the strings of a lyre. The feelings that most commonly inspire her songs are personified on either side. On the right are “Pathos,” looking upward, as if calling on heaven to allay her grief; “Truth,” a beautiful nude woman (the naked truth) stands securely upright; and in the corner “Devotion” sits absorbed in contemplation. On the left are “Passion,” enraptured, with her arms thrown out in a graceful movement; “Beauty,” who sits calmly self-contained; and “Mirth,” the nude figure of a little boy, who invites her to play.

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

"What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?"

Excerpt from Ode On A Grecian Urn by John Keats

"If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son! "

Excerpt from 'If' by Rudyard Kipling

"Drive my dead thoughts over the universe

Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!

And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? "

by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

Like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over--

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

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