Famous Anger Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Black Birds

by Henry Van Dyke
 I 

Once, only once, I saw it clear, --
That Eden every human heart has dreamed
A hundred times, but always far away!
Ah, well do I remember how it seemed,
Through the still atmosphere
Of that enchanted day,
To lie wide open to my weary feet:
A little land of love and joy and rest,
With meadows of soft green,
Rosy with cyclamen, and sweet
With delicate breath...Read more of this...

the shakes

by Rg Gregory
 now pay attention
(said the teacher)
and look up here

the children looked up

this is william shakespeare

four centuries up
on a pedestal
was shakespeare's head

he was what we call
a great man

the children got sore necks
looking up
and some began to look down

no no
you mustn't look down
(said the teacher)
apart from winston churchill
shakespeare was the greatest
englishman who ever lived

the children's eyes
drained to their feet
and their minds
played around...Read more of this...

Dire Cure

by William Matthews
 "First, do no harm," the Hippocratic
Oath begins, but before she might enjoy
such balm, the docs had to harm her tumor.
It was large, rare, and so anomalous
in its behavior that at first they mis-
diagnosed it. "Your wife will die of it
within a year." But in ten days or so
I sat beside her bed with hot-and-sour
soup and heard an intern congratulate
her...Read more of this...

The Visitor

by Jack Prelutsky
 it came today to visit
and moved into the house
it was smaller than an elephant
but larger than a mouse

first it slapped my sister
then it kicked my dad
then it pushed my mother
oh! that really made me mad

it went and tickled rover
and terrified the cat
it sliced apart my necktie
and rudely crushed my hat

it smeared my head with honey
and filled the tub with...Read more of this...

Blizzard

by William Carlos (WCW) Williams
 Snow falls:
years of anger following
hours that float idly down—
the blizzard
drifts its weight
deeper and deeper for three days
or sixty years, eh? Then
the sun! a clutter of
yellow and blue flakes—
Hairy looking trees stand out
in long alleys
over a wild solitude.
The man turns and there—
his solitary track stretched out
upon the world....Read more of this...

Meditations Divine and Moral

by Anne Bradstreet
 A ship that bears much sail, and little ballast, is easily 
overset; and that man, whose head hath great abilities, and his 
heart little or no grace, is in danger of foundering. 
The finest bread has the least bran; the purest honey, the 
least wax; and the sincerest Christian, the least self-love. 
Sweet words are like honey; a little...Read more of this...

Canzone XIX

by Francesco Petrarch
CANZONE XIX. S' il dissi mai, ch' i' venga in odio a quella. HE VEHEMENTLY REBUTS THE CHARGE OF LOVING ANOTHER.  Perdie! I said it not,Nor never thought to do:As well as I, ye wotI have no power thereto.And if I did, the lotThat first did me enchainMay never...Read more of this...

Return

by D. H. Lawrence
Now I am come again, you who have so desired
My coming, why do you look away from me?
Why does your cheek burn against me--have I inspired
Such anger as sets your mouth unwontedly?

Ah, here I sit while you break the music beneath
Your bow; for broken it is, and hurting to hear:
Cease then from music--does anguish of absence bequeath
Me only aloofness when...Read more of this...

Sonnet CLXXII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CLXXII. Dolci ire, dolci sdegni e dolci paci. HE CONSOLES HIMSELF WITH THE THOUGHT THAT HE WILL BE ENVIED BY POSTERITY.  Sweet scorn, sweet anger, and sweet misery,Forgiveness sweet, sweet burden, and sweet ill;Sweet accents that mine ear so sweetly thrill,That sweetly bland, now sweetly fierce can be.[Pg...Read more of this...

Mycerinus

by Matthew Arnold
 'Not by the justice that my father spurn'd,
Not for the thousands whom my father slew,
Altars unfed and temples overturn'd,
Cold hearts and thankless tongues, where thanks are due;
Fell this dread voice from lips that cannot lie,
Stern sentence of the Powers of Destiny.

'I will unfold my sentence and my crime.
My crime--that, rapt in reverential awe,
I sate obedient, in the fiery prime
Of...Read more of this...

The German Parnassus

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 in the wares before you spread,
Types of all things may be read.

'NEATH the shadow

Of these bushes,
On the meadow

Where the cooling water gushes.
Phoebus gave me, when a boy,
All life's fullness to enjoy.
So, in silence, as the God
Bade them with his sov'reign nod,
Sacred Muses train'd my days
To his praise.--
With the bright and silv'ry flood
Of Parnassus stirr'd my blood,
And the seal so...Read more of this...

Heritage

by Countee Cullen
 What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?

So I lie, who all day long
Want no sound except the song
Sung by wild barbaric birds
Goading massive...Read more of this...

273. Song—Tam Glen

by Robert Burns
 MY heart is a-breaking, dear Tittie,
 Some counsel unto me come len’,
To anger them a’ is a pity,
 But what will I do wi’ Tam Glen?


I’m thinking, wi’ sic a braw fellow,
 In poortith I might mak a fen;
What care I in riches to wallow,
 If I maunna marry Tam Glen!


There’s Lowrie the Laird o’ Dumeller—
 “Gude day to...Read more of this...

Sonnet 50: How heavy do I journey on the way

by William Shakespeare
 How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek, my weary travel's end,
Doth teach that case and that repose to say,
"Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!"
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider loved not speed...Read more of this...

The Ballad of the Anti-Puritan

by G K Chesterton
 They spoke of Progress spiring round, 
Of light and Mrs Humphrey Ward-- 
It is not true to say I frowned, 
Or ran about the room and roared; 
I might have simply sat and snored-- 
I rose politely in the club 
And said, `I feel a little bored; 
Will someone take me to a pub?' 

The new world's wisest did...Read more of this...

Oh You Are Coming

by Sara Teasdale
 Oh you are coming, coming, coming,
How will hungry Time put by the hours till then? --
But why does it anger my heart to long so
For one man out of the world of men?

Oh I would live in myself only
And build my life lightly and still as a dream --
Are not my thoughts clearer than your thoughts
And colored like stones...Read more of this...

Georgine Sand Miner

by Edgar Lee Masters
 A step-mother drove me from home, embittering me.
A squaw-man, a flaneur and dilettante took my virtue.
For years I was his mistress -- no one knew.
I learned from him the parasite cunning
With which I moved with the bluffs, like a flea on a dog.
All the time I was nothing but "very private" with different men.
Then Daniel, the radical, had me...Read more of this...

Tomlinson

by Rudyard Kipling
 Now Tomlinson gave up the ghost in his house in Berkeley Square,
And a Spirit came to his bedside and gripped him by the hair --
A Spirit gripped him by the hair and carried him far away,
Till he heard as the roar of a rain-fed ford the roar of the Milky Way:
Till he heard the roar of the Milky Way...Read more of this...

Feast Of Victory

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Priam's castle-walls had sunk,
Troy in dust and ashes lay,
And each Greek, with triumph drunk,
Richly laden with his prey,
Sat upon his ship's high prow,
On the Hellespontic strand,
Starting on his journey now,
Bound for Greece, his own fair land.
Raise the glad exulting shout!
Toward the land that gave them birth
Turn they now the ships about,
As they seek their native earth.

And in rows, all...Read more of this...

She hath not beauty, that ill-fortun'd gem

by Hafez
She hath not beauty, that ill-fortun’d gem
Wherewith may women dazzle men’s meek eyes
Ere they enslave, un-man & slaughter them.

Nor doth she vaunt afar her heart’s hid prize,
Nor with wide-lavish’d scent of hope allure
Ere men behold her, nor with rich disguise.

Nor hath she wit, that sword wherewith to smart
Delicate souls, with flashing stroke unsure
Of sharp misprise, wounding some gentle heart.

Yet not...Read more of this...

Not From This Anger

by Dylan Thomas
 Not from this anger, anticlimax after
Refusal struck her loin and the lame flower
Bent like a beast to lap the singular floods
In a land strapped by hunger
Shall she receive a bellyful of weeds
And bear those tendril hands I touch across
The agonized, two seas.
Behind my head a square of sky sags over
The circular smile tossed from lover to lover
And the golden...Read more of this...

The Equilibrists

by John Crowe Ransom
 Full of her long white arms and milky skin 
He had a thousand times remembered sin. 
Alone in the press of people traveled he, 
Minding her jacinth, and myrrh, and ivory. 

Mouth he remembered: the quaint orifice 
From which came heat that flamed upon the kiss, 
Till cold words came down spiral from the head. 
Grey doves from the...Read more of this...

Lines On Hearing That Lady Byron Was Ill

by George (Lord) Byron
 And thou wert sad—yet I was not with thee!
And thou wert sick, and yet I was not near;
Methought that joy and health alone could be
Where I was not—and pain and sorrow here.
And is it thus?—it is as I foretold,
And shall be more so; for the mind recoils
Upon itself, and the wrecked heart lies cold,
While heaviness collects the shattered spoils.
It...Read more of this...

On My Birthday July 21

by Matthew Prior
 I, MY dear, was born to-day-- 
So all my jolly comrades say: 
They bring me music, wreaths, and mirth, 
And ask to celebrate my birth: 
Little, alas! my comrades know 
That I was born to pain and woe; 
To thy denial, to thy scorn, 
Better I had ne'er been born: 
I wish to die, even whilst I say-- 
'I,...Read more of this...

You Men

by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
(Español)
Hombres necios que acusáis
a la mujer sin razón,
sin ver que sois la ocasión
de lo mismo que culpáis:

si con ansia sin igual
solicitáis su desdén,
¿por qué quereis que obren bien
si las incitáis al mal?

Combatís su resistencia
y luego, con gravedad,
decís que fue liviandad
lo que hizo la diligencia.

Parecer quiere el denuedo
de vuestro parecer loco,
al niño que pone el coco
y luego le tiene miedo.

Queréis, con...Read more of this...

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