Famous Defeat Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Defeat poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous defeat poems. These examples illustrate what a famous defeat poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Crowley, Aleister
...!
A year of infinite love unwearying ---
No circling seasons, but perennial spring!
A year of triumph trampling through defeat,
The first made holy and the last made sweet
By this same love; a year of wealth and woe,
Joy, poverty, health, sickness --- all one glow
In the pure light that filled our firmament
Of supreme silence and unbarred extent,
Wherein one sacrament was ours, one Lord,
One resurrection, one recurrent chord,
One incarnation, one descending dove,
All these be...Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...d nothing thrives to reach its natural term;
And life, shorn of its venerable length,
Even at its greatest space is a defeat,
And dies in anger that it was a dupe;
And, in its highest noon and wantonness,
Is early frugal, like a beggar's child;
Even in the hot pursuit of the best aims
And prizes of ambition, checks its hand,
Like Alpine cataracts frozen as they leaped,
Chilled with a miserly comparison
Of the toy's purchase with the length of life. ...Read more of this...
by
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...e of woe.
XXIX.
Unhappy Muse! for thee no song remains,
Save the sad miséréré of the plains.
Yet though defeat, not triumph, ends the tale,
Great victors sometimes are the souls that fail.
All glory lies not in the goals we reach,
But in the lessons which our actions teach.
And he who, conquered, to the end believes
In God and in himself, though vanquished, still achieves.
***.
Ah, grand as rash was that last fatal raid
The little group of...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...nds grow wearied, warring with the tower,
The noisy North is out of breath, nor power
Has any blast old Corbus to defeat,
It still has strength their onslaughts worst to meet.
Thus, spite of briers and thistles, the old tower
Remains triumphant through the darkest hour;
Superb as pontiff, in the forest shown,
Its rows of battlements make triple crown;
At eve, its silhouette is finely traced
Immense and black—showing the Keep is placed
On rocky th...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...e years,
The years will roll into the centuries,
And mine will ever be a name of scorn.
I must not dwell on that defeat of fame.
Let the world be; that is but of the world.
What else? what hope? I think there was a hope,
Except he mocked me when he spake of hope;
His hope he called it; but he never mocks,
For mockery is the fume of little hearts.
And blessd be the King, who hath forgiven
My wickedness to him, and left me hope
That in mine own heart ...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...ring tongue
Caught infant-like from the far-foamed sands.
"O ye, whom wrath consumes! who, passion-stung,
Writhe at defeat, and nurse your agonies!
Shut up your senses, stifle up your ears,
My voice is not a bellows unto ire.
Yet listen, ye who will, whilst I bring proof
How ye, perforce, must be content to stoop:
And in the proof much comfort will I give,
If ye will take that comfort in its truth.
We fall by course of Nature's law, not force
Of thunder, or of Jov...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...f those men
I'd come to love, forgot
the battles lost and won,
forgot the final trek
over hopeless mountain roads,
defeat, surrender, the vows
to live on. I slept until
the lights came on and off.
A girl was prodding my arm,
for the place was closing.
A slender Indonesian girl
in sweater and American jeans,
her black hair falling
almost to my eyes, she told
me in perfect English
that I could come back,
and she swept up into a folder
the yellowing ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ether upheld by strength, or chance, or fate,
Too well I see and rue the dire event
That, with sad overthrow and foul defeat,
Hath lost us Heaven, and all this mighty host
In horrible destruction laid thus low,
As far as Gods and heavenly Essences
Can perish: for the mind and spirit remains
Invincible, and vigour soon returns,
Though all our glory extinct, and happy state
Here swallowed up in endless misery.
But what if he our Conqueror (whom I now
Of force bel...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...s alive;
In the morning I help pick up the dead and lay them in rows in a barn.
12
Now of the older war-days, the defeat at Brooklyn,
Washington stands inside the lines—he stands on the intrench’d hills, amid a
crowd of
officers,
His face is cold and damp—he cannot repress the weeping drops,
He lifts the glass perpetually to his eyes—the color is blanch’d from his
cheeks,
He sees the slaughter of the southern braves confided to him by their parents.
The same...Read more of this...
by
Rich, Adrienne
...t turn our pockets out
To the last crumb or lingering bit of fluff,
But all we can confess of what we are
Has in it the defeat of isolation--
If not our own, then someone's, anyway.
So I come back to saying this good-by,
A sort of ceremony of my own,
This stepping backward for another glance.
Perhaps you'll say we need no ceremony,
Because we know each other, crack and flaw,
Like two irregular stones that fit together.
Yet still good-by, because we live by inches...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...head;
And fronted with the Italian's eye,
Asking him of his whence and why,
King Alfred stood and said:
"I am that oft-defeated King
Whose failure fills the land,
Who fled before the Danes of old,
Who chaffered with the Danes with gold,
Who now upon the Wessex wold
Hardly has feet to stand.
"But out of the mouth of the Mother of God
I have seen the truth like fire,
This--that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher."
Long looked the Roman on the land;
The...Read more of this...
by
Murray, Les
...sed stack, bulk khaki and blue,
reading Yakka or King Gee, crisp with steely warehouse odour.
Satisfied ambition, defeat, true unconcern,
the wish and the knack of self-forgetfulness
all fall within the scunge ambit
wearing board shorts of similar;
it is a kind of weightlessness.
Unlike public nakedness, which in Westerners
is deeply circumstantial, relaxed as exam time,
artless and equal as the corsetry of a hussar regiment,
shorts and their plain like
are an a...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...spring of years long pass'd away;
No fading of thy beauty's rich array,
No detriment of age on thee I trace,
But time's defeat written in spoils of grace,
From rivals robb'd, whom thou didst pity and slay.
So hath thy growth been, thus thy faith is true,
Unchanged in change, still to my growing sense,
To life's desire the same, and nothing new:
But as thou wert in dream and prescience
At love's arising, now thou stand'st to view
In the broad noon of his magnificence....Read more of this...
by
Angelou, Maya
...
Memory of old tombs,
Rotting flesh and worms do
Not convince me against
The challenge. The years
And cold defeat live deep in
Lines along my face.
They dull my eyes, yet
I keep on dying,
Because I love to live....Read more of this...
by
Killigrew, Anne
...ey,
And Fate to his impetuous Sute gives way,
Be he or Rich, or Amorous, or Great,
He'll find this Riddle still of a Defeat,
That only Care, for Bliss, he home has brought,
Or else Contempt of what he so much fought.
So that on each Event if we reflect,
The Joys and Sufferings of both sides collect,
We cannot say where lies the greatest Pain,
In the fond Pursuit, Loss, or Empty Gain.
And can it be, Lord of the Sea and Earth,
Off-spring of Heaven, that to ...Read more of this...
by
Strand, Mark
...ey waited
they would turn the pages, hoping
something would happen.
They would patch up their lives in secret:
each defeat forgiven because it could not be tested,
each pain rewarded because it was unreal.
They did nothing."
7
The book will not survive.
We are the living proof of that.
It is dark outside, in the room it is darker.
I hear your breathing.
You are asking me if I am tired,
if I want to keep reading.
Yes, I am tired.
Yes, I wan...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...he gave a wolfish bark:
He, aiming blindly in the dark,
With random shaft had pierced the mark.
She felt that her defeat was plain,
Yet madly strove with might and main
To get the upper hand again.
Fixing her eyes upon the beach,
As though unconscious of his speech,
She said "Each gives to more than each."
He could not answer yea or nay:
He faltered "Gifts may pass away."
Yet knew not what he meant to say.
"If that be so," she straight replied,
"Ea...Read more of this...
by
Ayres, Pam
...
Congestion on the motorways, free holidays for thugs
The damage to the ozone layer, refugees and drugs.
These may defeat the brain of any politician bloke
But present it to my husband and he’ll solve it at a stroke.
He’ll clarify the situation; he will make it crystal clear
You’ll feel the glazing of your eyeballs, and the bending of your ear.
Corruption at the top, he’s an authority on that
And the Mafia, Gadafia and Yasser Arafat.
Upon these areas he brings ...Read more of this...
by
Swift, Jonathan
...upon their private ends,
Like renegadoes now he feels,
Against him lifting up their heels.
The Dean did by his pen defeat
An infamous destructive cheat;
Taught fools their int'rest how to know,
And gave them arms to ward the blow.
Envy has owned it was his doing,
To save that hapless land from ruin;
While they who at the steerage stood,
And reaped the profit, sought his blood.
To save them from their evil fate,
In him was held a crime of state.
A wicked monst...Read more of this...
by
Shakur, Tupac
...discovered
u taught me 2 be strong
but im confused 2 c u so weak
u said never 2 give up
and it hurts 2 c u welcome defeat
when ure hero falls so do the stars
and so does the perception of tomorrow
without my hero there is only
me alone 2 deal with my sorrow
your heart ceases 2 work
and your soul is not happy at all
what r u expected 2 do
when ure only hero falls...Read more of this...
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