And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
John Keats also wrote lyric poetry. Following is an example from his lyric poem Ode
on a Grecian Urn:

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's famous How Do I Love Thee is yet another famous
example of a lyric poem:

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 candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith

I love thee with a love I seem to love

With my lost saints, - I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

Narrative Poetry
A narrative poem tells a story, usually of human interest, and includes the epic,
which is a long story, and the ballad, which was originally meant to be sung while
dancing.

Well-known examples of poems that are ballads include:

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Following is an excerpt from The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer:
Experience, though noon auctoritee

Were in this world, were right ynogh to me

To speke of wo that is in mariage;

For, lordynges, sith I twelf yeer was of age,

Thonked be God, that is eterne on lyve,

Housbondes at chirche dore I have had fyve -

For I so ofte have ywedded bee -

And alle were worthy men in hir degree.

Following is the last stanza of Edgar Allan Poe�s poem, The Raven.

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted - nevermore.

Dramatic Poetry
Dramatic poetry is any drama that is written in verse that is meant to be recited.
It usually tells a story or refers to a situation. This would include closet drama,
dramatic monologues, and rhyme verse.

Examples of dramatic poetry would come from:

Shakespeare
Christopher Marlowe
Ben Jonson
Aeschylus
Here is an excerpt from the opening of Christopher Marlowe�s Tamburlaine the Great:

From jigging veins of riming mother wits

And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay

We'll lead you to the stately tent of war,

Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine

Threatening the world with high astounding terms

And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword.

Following is an excerpt from a dramatic poem called Song of the Furies by

Aeschylus:
P and lead the dance of Fate!

Lift the song that mortals hate!

Tell what rights are ours on earth,

Over all of human birth.

Swift of foot to avenge are we!

He whose hands are clean and pure,

Naught our wrath to dread hath he;

Calm his cloudless days endure.

But the man that seeks to hide

Like him [1], his gore-bedew�d hands,

Witnesses to them that died,

The blood avengers at his side,

The Furies' troop forever stands.

Haiku Poetry
A haiku is a Japanese form of poetry with three lines of 5, 7, and 5 moras. A mora
is a sound unit, like a syllable, but is not identical to it. Most people just say
it is a syllable because it doesn�t translate well to English.

Here is an example of a haiku:

Falling to the ground,

I watch a leaf settle down

In a bed of brown.

The best known Japanese Haiku