Famous Aches Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Aches poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous aches poems. These examples illustrate what a famous aches poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Ere Sleep Comes Down To Soothe The Weary Eyes

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes,Which all the day with ceaseless care have sought
The magic gold which from the seeker flies;
Ere dreams put on the gown and cap of thought,
And make the waking world a world of lies,—
Of lies most palpable, uncouth, forlorn,
That say life's full of aches and tears and sighs,—
Oh, how with more than dreams...Read more of this...

Are You Drinking?

by Charles Bukowski
 washed-up, on shore, the old yellow notebook
 out again
 I write from the bed
 as I did last
 year.
 will see the doctor,
 Monday.
 "yes, doctor, weak legs, vertigo, head-
 aches and my back 
 hurts."
 "are you drinking?" he will ask.
 "are you getting your
exercise, your
 vitamins?"
 I think that I am just ill 
 with life, the...Read more of this...

A March Day in London

by Amy Levy
 The east wind blows in the street to-day;
The sky is blue, yet the town looks grey.
'Tis the wind of ice, the wind of fire,
Of cold despair and of hot desire,
Which chills the flesh to aches and pains,
And sends a fever through all the veins.

From end to end, with aimless feet,
All day long have I paced the street.
My limbs are...Read more of this...

Interim

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 The room is full of you!—As I came in
And closed the door behind me, all at once
A something in the air, intangible,
Yet stiff with meaning, struck my senses sick!—

Sharp, unfamiliar odors have destroyed
Each other room's dear personality.
The heavy scent of damp, funereal flowers,—
The very essence, hush-distilled, of Death—
Has strangled that habitual breath of home
Whose expiration leaves all houses dead;
And...Read more of this...

Times Revenges

by Robert Browning
 I've a Friend, over the sea;
I like him, but he loves me.
It all grew out of the books I write;
They find such favour in his sight
That he slaughters you with savage looks
Because you don't admire my books.
He does himself though,---and if some vein
Were to snap to-night in this heavy brain,
To-morrow month, if I lived to try,
Round should I just...Read more of this...

A Description of a City Shower

by Jonathan Swift
 Careful Observers may fortel the Hour 
(By sure Prognosticks) when to dread a Show'r: 
While Rain depends, the pensive Cat gives o'er 
Her Frolicks, and pursues her Tail no more. 
Returning Home at Night, you'll find the Sink 
Strike your offended Sense with double Stink. 
If you be wise, then go not far to Dine, 
You spend in Coach-hire...Read more of this...

Good. I have done. My heart weighs. I am sad

by Fernando Pessoa
Good. I have done. My heart weighs. I am sad.

The outer day, void statue of lit blue,

Is altogether outward, other, glad

At mere being not-I (so my aches construe).

I, that have failed in everything, bewail

Nothing this hour but that I have bewailed,

For in the general fate what is't to fail?

Why, fate being past for Fate, 'tis but to have failed.

Whatever hap-or...Read more of this...

The Wizard Way

by Aleister Crowley
 [Dedicated to General J.C.F. Fuller]


Velvet soft the night-star glowed 
Over the untrodden road, 
Through the giant glades of yew 
Where its ray fell light as dew 
Lighting up the shimmering veil 
Maiden pure and aery frail 
That the spiders wove to hide 
Blushes of the sylvan bride 
Earth, that trembled with delight 
At the male caress of Night. 

Velvet...Read more of this...

How can I think, or edge my thoughts to action,

by Fernando Pessoa
How can I think, or edge my thoughts to action,

When the miserly press of each day's need

Aches to a narrowness of spilled distraction

My soul appalled at the world's work's time-greed?

How can I pause my thoughts upon the task

My soul was born to think that it must do

When every moment has a thought to ask

To fit the immediate craving of its...Read more of this...

Dreams

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
What dreams we have and how they fly
Like rosy clouds across the sky;
Of wealth, of fame, of sure success,
Of love that comes to cheer and bless;
And how they wither, how they fade,
The waning wealth, the jilting jade—
The fame that for a moment gleams,
Then flies forever,—dreams, ah—dreams!
O burning doubt and long regret,
O tears with which our eyes are wet,
Heart-throbs, heart-aches, the...Read more of this...

Faces In The Street

by Henry Lawson
 They lie, the men who tell us for reasons of their own
That want is here a stranger, and that misery's unknown;
For where the nearest suburb and the city proper meet
My window-sill is level with the faces in the street 
 Drifting past, drifting past,
 To the beat of weary feet 
While I sorrow for the owners of those faces...Read more of this...

Hope Holds to Christ

by Gerard Manley Hopkins
 . . . . . . . .
Hope holds to Christ the mind’s own mirror out 
To take His lovely likeness more and more. 
It will not well, so she would bring about 
An ever brighter burnish than before 
And turns to wash it from her welling eyes
And breathes the blots off all with sighs on sighs. 
Her glass...Read more of this...

A Fixed Idea

by Amy Lowell
 What torture lurks within a single thought
When grown too constant, and however kind,
However welcome still, the weary mind
Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught
Remembers on unceasingly; unsought
The old delight is with us but to find
That all recurring joy is pain refined,
Become a habit, and we struggle, caught.
You lie upon my heart as on a nest,
Folded in peace, for you...Read more of this...

Weary Waitress

by Robert William Service
 Her smile ineffably is sweet,
 Devinely she is slim;
Yet oh how weary are her feet,
 How aches her every limb!
Thank God it's near to closing time,
 --Merciful midnight chime.

Then in her mackintosh she'll go
 Up seven flights of stairs,
And on her bed her body throw,
 Too tired to say her prayers;
Yet not too sleepy to forget
 Her cheap alarm...Read more of this...

Mentana : First Anniversary

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 At the time when the stars are grey,
And the gold of the molten moon
Fades, and the twilight is thinned,
And the sun leaps up, and the wind,
A light rose, not of the day,
A stronger light than of noon.

As the light of a face much loved
Was the face of the light that clomb;
As a mother's whitened with woes
Her adorable head that...Read more of this...

Unexpressed

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Deep in my heart that aches with the repression,
And strives with plenitude of bitter pain,
There lives a thought that clamors for expression,
And spends its undelivered force in vain.
What boots it that some other may have thought it?
The right of thoughts' expression is divine;
The price of pain I pay for it has bought it,
I care not who lays claim to it—'t...Read more of this...

Carnal Knowledge

by Rebecca Elson
 Having picked the final datum
From the universe
And fixed it in its column,
Named the causes of infinity,
Performed the calculus
Of the imaginary i, it seems

The body aches
To come too,
To the light,
Transmit the grace of gravity,
Express in its own algebra
The symmetries of awe and fear,
The shudder up the spine,
The knowing passing like a cool wind
That leaves the nape hairs leaping....Read more of this...

To All and Everything

by Vladimir Mayakovsky
 No.
It can’t be.
No!
You too, beloved?
Why? What for?
Darling, look -
I came,
I brought flowers,
but, but... I never took
silver spoons from your drawer!

Ashen-faced,
I staggered down five flights of stairs.
The street eddied round me. Blasts. Blares.
Tires screeched.
It was gusty.
The wind stung my cheeks.
Horn mounted horn lustfully.

Above the capital’s madness
I raised my face,
stern as the faces of ancient icons.
Sorrow-rent,
on your body as on a...Read more of this...

Lifes Scars

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 They say the world is round, and yet
I often think it square,
So many little hurts we get
From corners here and there.
But one great truth in life I've found,
While journeying to the West-
The only folks who really wound
Are those we love the best. 

The man you thoroughly despise
Can rouse your wrath, 'tis true;
Annoyance in your heart will rise
At things mere...Read more of this...

legs rivers and age

by Rg Gregory
 with landbound legs a wish
for the easy flow of a river - not 
the clambering up crags to seek 
more favour from the sun
(or long-haired moon) harped for
since those sparks of who am i 
first clicked through consciousness

how the river sidles round 
rocks blocking the painful straight
seems to brush aside
all snags disrupting its ambition
to be sea - certain from...Read more of this...

I am He that Aches with Love

by Walt Whitman
 I AM he that aches with amorous love; 
Does the earth gravitate? Does not all matter, aching, attract all matter? 
So the Body of me, to all I meet, or know....Read more of this...

Pioneers! O Pioneers!

by Walt Whitman
 1
 COME, my tan-faced children, 
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready; 
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp edged axes? Pioneers! O pioneers! 

2
 For we cannot tarry here, 
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers! 

3
 O...Read more of this...

The Distant Winter

by Philip Levine
 from an officer's diary during the last war

I 

The sour daylight cracks through my sleep-caked lids. 
"Stephan! Stephan!" The rattling orderly 
Comes on a trot, the cold tray in his hands: 
Toast whitening with oleo, brown tea, 

Yesterday's napkins, and an opened letter. 
"Your asthma's bad, old man." He doesn't answer, 
And turns to the grey windows and the...Read more of this...

A Banjo Song

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Oh, dere 's lots o' keer an' trouble
In dis world to swaller down;
An' ol' Sorrer 's purty lively
In her way o' gittin' roun'.
Yet dere's times when I furgit em,—
Aches an' pains an' troubles all,—
An' it's when I tek at ebenin'
My ol' banjo f'om de wall.
'Bout de time dat night is fallin'
An' my daily wu'k is done,
An' above de shady hilltops
I...Read more of this...

Ode to a Nightingale

by John Keats
MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, 
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, 5 
But being too happy in thine happiness, 
That thou, light-wing¨¨d Dryad of the trees, 
In some melodious plot 
Of...Read more of this...

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