Famous And Sad Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Sad Child

by Margaret Atwood
 You're sad because you're sad.
It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.
Go see a shrink or take a pill,
or hug your sadness like an eyeless doll
you need to sleep.

Well, all children are sad
but some get over it.
Count your blessings. Better than that,
buy a hat. Buy a coat or pet.
Take up dancing to forget.

Forget what?
Your sadness, your shadow,
whatever it was that...Read more of this...

Phantasmagoria CANTO VII ( Sad Souvenaunce )

by Lewis Carroll
 "WHAT'S this?" I pondered. "Have I slept? 
Or can I have been drinking?" 
But soon a gentler feeling crept 
Upon me, and I sat and wept 
An hour or so, like winking. 

"No need for Bones to hurry so!" 
I sobbed. "In fact, I doubt 
If it was worth his while to go - 
And who is Tibbs, I'd...Read more of this...

In Memoriam A. H. H.: 121. Sad Hesper oer the buried sun

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 Sad Hesper o'er the buried sun
And ready, thou, to die with him,
Thou watchest all things ever dim
And dimmer, and a glory done:
The team is loosen'd from the wain,
The boat is drawn upon the shore;
Thou listenest to the closing door,
And life is darken'd in the brain.
Bright Phosphor, fresher for the night,
By thee the world's great work is heard
Beginning, and the...Read more of this...

Mi Musa Triste (My Sad Muse)

by Delmira Agustini
SpanishVagos preludios. En la noche espléndidaSu voz de perlas una fuente calla,Cuelgan las brisas sus celestes pifanosEn el follaje. Las cabezas pardasDe los búhos acechan.Las flores se abren más, como asombradas.Los cisnes de marfil tienden los cuellosEn las lagunas pálidas.Selene mira del azul. Las frondasTiemblan… y todo! hasta el silencio, calla…Es que ella pasa con su boca tristeY el gran...Read more of this...

A Fairly Sad Tale

by Dorothy Parker
 I think that I shall never know
Why I am thus, and I am so.
Around me, other girls inspire
In men the rush and roar of fire,
The sweet transparency of glass,
The tenderness of April grass,
The durability of granite;
But me- I don't know how to plan it.
The lads I've met in Cupid's deadlock
Were- shall we say?- born out of wedlock.
They broke my...Read more of this...

The Bad Season Makes The Poet Sad

by Robert Herrick
 Dull to myself, and almost dead to these,
My many fresh and fragrant mistresses;
Lost to all music now, since every thing
Puts on the semblance here of sorrowing.
Sick is the land to th' heart; and doth endure
More dangerous faintings by her desperate cure.
But if that golden age would come again,
And Charles here rule, as he before did reign;
If smooth and unperplex'd...Read more of this...

Languid And Sad And Slow From Day To Day

by William Lisle Bowles
 Languid, and sad, and slow, from day to day 
I journey on, yet pensive turn to view 
(Where the rich landscape gleams with softer hue) 
The streams and vales, and hills, that steal away. 
So fares it with the children of the earth: 
For when life's goodly prospect opens round, 
Their spirits beat to tread that fairy ground, 
Where...Read more of this...

The Lacking Sense Scene.--A sad-coloured landscape Waddon Vale

by Thomas Hardy
 I 

"O Time, whence comes the Mother's moody look amid her labours, 
 As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves? 
 Why weaves she not her world-webs to according lutes and tabors, 
With nevermore this too remorseful air upon her face, 
 As of angel fallen from grace?" 

II 

- "Her look is but her...Read more of this...

Art thou sad? Take a piece of hasheesh as large as a

by Omar Khayyam
Art thou sad? Take a piece of hasheesh as large as a
grain of barley, or drink a small measure of rose-colored
wine. Then you will become a Sufi. But, if you will
not drink of this or partake of that, nothing remains for
you but to eat pebbles; go, eat some pebbles!...Read more of this...

Home Is So Sad

by Philip Larkin
 Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped in the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft.

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how...Read more of this...

Sonnet: Languid And Sad And Slow From Day To Day

by William Lisle Bowles
 Languid, and sad, and slow, from day to day
I journey on, yet pensive turn to view
(Where the rich landscape gleams with softer hue)
The streams and vales, and hills, that steal away.
So fares it with the children of the earth:
For when life's goodly prospect opens round,
Their spirits beat to tread that fairy ground,
Where every vale sounds to the pipe of...Read more of this...

A Sad State Of Freedom

by Nazim Hikmet
 You waste the attention of your eyes, 
the glittering labour of your hands, 
and knead the dough enough for dozens of loaves 
of which you'll taste not a morsel; 
you are free to slave for others-- 
you are free to make the rich richer. 

The moment you're born 
they plant around you 
mills that grind lies 
lies to last...Read more of this...

Be Not Sad

by James Joyce
 Be not sad because all men 
Prefer a lying clamour before you: 
Sweetheart, be at peace again -- - 
Can they dishonour you? 

They are sadder than all tears; 
Their lives ascend as a continual sigh. 
Proudly answer to their tears: 
As they deny, deny....Read more of this...

The Sad Message

by Russell Edson
 The Captain becomes moody at sea. He's
afraid of water; such bully amounts that prove the
seas. . . 

 A glass of water is one thing. A man easily downs
it, capturing its menace in his bladder; pissing it
away. A few drops of rain do little harm, save to
remind of how grief looks upon the cheek. 

 One day the water...Read more of this...

To The Sad Moon

by Sir Philip Sidney
 With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies!
How silently, and with how wan a face!
What! May it be that even in heavenly place
That busy archer his sharp arrows tries?
Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case:
I read it in thy looks; thy languished grace
To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.
Then,...Read more of this...

For A Sad Lady

by Dorothy Parker
 And let her loves, when she is dead,
Write this above her bones:
"No more she lives to give us bread
Who asked her only stones."...Read more of this...

In My Own Shire If I Was Sad

by A E Housman
 In my own shire, if I was sad, 
Homely comforters I had: 
The earth, because my heart was sore, 
Sorrowed for the son she bore; 
And standing hills, long to remain, 
Shared their short-lived comrade's pain. 
And bound for the same bourn as I, 
On every road I wandered by, 
Trod beside me, close and dear, 
The beautiful and...Read more of this...

O heart! since this world makes you sad, since souls

by Omar Khayyam
O heart! since this world makes you sad, since souls
so pure must leave the tenement of clay, go, sit upon
the verdure of the field sometimes, ere verdure springs
in turn from your own dust.
297...Read more of this...

Sad Steps

by Philip Larkin
 Groping back to bed after a piss
I part the thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.

Four o'clock: wedge-shaped gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-pierced sky.
There's something laughable about this,

The way the moon dashes through the clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

High and preposterous and separate--
Lozenge of love! Medallion...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXXI: With How Sad Steps O Moon

by Sir Philip Sidney
 With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies!
How silently, and with how wan a face!
What, may it be that even in heav'nly place
That busy archer his sharp arrows tries!
Sure, if that long-with love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case,
I read it in thy looks; thy languish'd grace
To me, that feel the like, thy state...Read more of this...

The Journey Of A Poem Compared To All The Sad Variety Of Travel

by Delmore Schwartz
 A poem moves forward,
Like the passages and percussions of trains in progress
A pattern of recurrence, a hammer of repetetiveoccurrence

a slow less and less heard
low thunder under all passengers

Steel sounds tripping and tripled and
Grinding, revolving, gripping, turning, and returning 
as the flung carpet of the wide countryside spreads out on 
each side in billows

And in isolation, rolled out, white house,...Read more of this...

To A Sad Daughter

by Michael Ondaatje
 All night long the hockey pictures
gaze down at you
sleeping in your tracksuit.
Belligerent goalies are your ideal.
Threats of being traded
cuts and wounds
--all this pleases you.
O my god! you say at breakfast
reading the sports page over the Alpen
as another player breaks his ankle
or assaults the coach.

When I thought of daughters
I wasn't expecting this
but I like this more.
I like all your faults
even...Read more of this...

And ask ye why these sad tears stream?

by Alfred Lord Tennyson
 ‘Te somnia nostra reducunt.’
OVID.

And ask ye why these sad tears stream?
Why these wan eyes are dim with weeping?
I had a dream–a lovely dream,
Of her that in the grave is sleeping.

I saw her as ’twas yesterday,
The bloom upon her cheek still glowing;
And round her play’d a golden ray,
And on her brows were gay flowers blowing.

With angel-hand she swept a lyre,
A...Read more of this...

From The Long Sad Party

by Mark Strand
 Someone was saying
something about shadows covering the field, about
how things pass, how one sleeps towards morning
and the morning goes.

Someone was saying
how the wind dies down but comes back,
how shells are the coffins of wind
but the weather continues.

It was a long night
and someone said something about the moon shedding its
 white
on the cold field, that there was nothing ahead
but more...Read more of this...

Sonnet III: With how sad steps

by Sir Philip Sidney
 With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb'st the skies!
How silently, and with how wan a face!
What! may it be that even in heavenly place
That busy archer his sharp arrows tries?
Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case:
I read it in thy looks; thy languished grace
To me, that feel the like, thy state descries.
Then,...Read more of this...

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