Famous Agonize Poems by Famous Poets

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

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An Essay on Man in Four Epistles: Epistle 1

...finer optics giv'n,
T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n?
Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,
To smart and agonize at ev'ry pore?
Or quick effluvia darting through the brain,
Die of a rose in aromatic pain?
If nature thunder'd in his op'ning ears,
And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres,
How would he wish that Heav'n had left him still
The whisp'ring zephyr, and the purling rill?
Who finds not Providence all good and wise,
Alike in what it gives, and what d...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander


Andrea del Sarto

...!
No sketches first, no studies, that's long past:
I do what many dream of, all their lives,
--Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,
And fail in doing. I could count twenty such
On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,
Who strive--you don't know how the others strive
To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,--
Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,
(I know his name, no matter)--so much less!
Well, less is more, Lu...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

By The Fire-Side

...stall!

XLIV.

Worth how well, those dark grey eyes,
That hair so dark and dear, how worth
That a man should strive and agonize,
And taste a veriest hell on earth
For the hope of such a prize!

XIIV.

You might have turned and tried a man,
Set him a space to weary and wear,
And prove which suited more your plan,
His best of hope or his worst despair,
Yet end as he began.

XLVI.

But you spared me this, like the heart you are,
And filled my empty heart at a word.
If two lives ...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

Essay on Man

...ptics giv'n, 
T' inspect a mite,(16) not comprehend the heav'n? 
Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er, 
To smart and agonize at ev'ry pore? 
Or quick effluvia(17) darting thro' the brain, 
Die of a rose in aromatic pain? 
If nature thunder'd in his op'ning ears, 
And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres, 
How would he wish that Heav'n had left him still 
The whisp'ring Zephyr,(18) and the purling rill?(19) 
Who finds not Providence all good and wise, 
Alike in what it...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander

Hyperion

...thunderbolt, till all
That rebel Jove's whole armoury were spent,
Not world on world upon these shoulders piled,
Could agonize me more than baby-words
In midst of this dethronement horrible.
Speak! roar! shout! yell! ye sleepy Titans all.
Do ye forget the blows, the buffets vile?
Are ye not smitten by a youngling arm?
Dost thou forget, sham Monarch of the waves,
Thy scalding in the seas? What! have I rous'd
Your spleens with so few simple words as these?
O joy! for now I see...Read more of this...
by Keats, John


On a Theme in the Greek Anthology

...w is smouldering 
Shall be the conflagration soon 
Whose paths are strewn 
With torment of blanched lips and eyes 
That agonize....Read more of this...
by Seeger, Alan

One Viceroy Resigns

...sight o' God),
Commend you, then, to something more than you --
The Other People's blunders and
 . . . that's all.
I'd agonize to serve you if I could.
It's incommunicable, like the cast
That drops the tackle with the gut adry.
Too much -- too little -- there's your salmon lost!
And so I tell you nothing --with you luck,
And wonder -- how I wonder! -- for your sake
And triumph for my own. You're young, you're young,
You hold to half a hundred Shibboleths.
I'm old. I followed...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

Since we must die, why do we live? Why agonize to

...Since we must die, why do we live? Why agonize to
reach a problematic bliss? Since, for some unknown
cause, we may not here remain, why not concern ourselves
about the future pilgrimage? Why disregard our
fate?...Read more of this...
by Khayyam, Omar

The Bedridden Peasant to an Unknown God

...ccour by a word. 

Might but Thy sense flash down the skies 
 Like man's from clime to clime, 
Thou would'st not let me agonize 
 Through my remaining time; 

But, seeing how much Thy creatures bear - 
 Lame, starved, or maimed, or blind - 
Thou'dst heal the ills with quickest care 
 Of me and all my kind. 

Then, since Thou mak'st not these things be, 
 But these things dost not know, 
I'll praise Thee as were shown to me 
 The mercies Thou would'st show!...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas

Their Frailty

...a Blighty wound. He’s safe; and then 
War’s fine and bold and bright. 
She can forget the doomed and prisoned men 
Who agonize and fight. 

He’s back in France. She loathes the listless strain
And peril of his plight, 
Beseeching Heaven to send him home again, 
She prays for peace each night. 

Husbands and sons and lovers; everywhere 
They die; War bleeds us white
Mothers and wives and sweethearts,—they don’t care 
So long as He’s all right....Read more of this...
by Sassoon, Siegfried

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