Famous Anguish Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Anguish poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous anguish poems. These examples illustrate what a famous anguish poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Oh the long and dreary Winter!
Oh the cold and cruel Winter!
Ever thicker, thicker, thicker
Froze the ice on lake and river,
Ever deeper, deeper, deeper
Fell the snow o'er all the landscape,
Fell the covering snow, and drifted
Through the forest, round the village.
Hardly from his buried wigwam
Could the hunter force a passage;
With his mittens and his snow-shoes
Vainly walked he through the forest,
Sought for...Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land,
"This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon."
In the afternoon they came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.
All round the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
And like a downward smoke, the slender stream
Along the...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
One said; "Lo, I would walk hand-clasped with thee
Adown the ways of joy and sunlit slopes
Of earthly song in happiest vagrancy
To pluck the blossom of a thousand hopes.
Let us together drain the wide world's cup
With gladness brimméd up!"
And one said, "I would pray to go with thee
When sorrow claims thee; I would fence thy heart
With mine...Read more of this...
by
Countee Cullen
"Lord, being dark," I said, "I cannot bear
The further touch of earth, the scented air;
Lord, being dark, forewilled to that despair
My color shrouds me in, I am as dirt
Beneath my brother's heel; there is a hurt
In all the simple joys which to a child
Are sweet; they are contaminate, defiled
By truths of wrongs the childish vision fails
To see; too great...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
The anguish of the earth absolves our eyes
Till beauty shines in all that we can see.
War is our scourge; yet war has made us wise,
And, fighting for our freedom, we are free.
Horror of wounds and anger at the foe,
And loss of things desired; all these must pass.
We are the happy legion, for we...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Oh ye whose hearts are resonant, and ring to War's romance,
Hear ye the story of a boy, a peasant boy of France;
A lad uncouth and warped with toil, yet who, when trial came,
Could feel within his soul upleap and soar the sacred flame;
Could stand upright, and scorn and smite, as only heroes may:
Oh, harken! Let me try to tell...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
Oh! this happiness, sometimes so rare and frail that it frightens us!
In vain we hush our voices, and make of all your hair a tent to shelter us; often the anguish in our hearts flows over.
But our love, being like a kneeling angel, begs and supplicates that the future give to others than ourselves a like affection and life, so...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
One Anguish -- in a Crowd --
A Minor thing -- it sounds --
And yet, unto the single Doe
Attempted of the Hounds
'Tis Terror as consummate
As Legions of Alarm
Did leap, full flanked, upon the Host --
'Tis Units -- make the Swarm --
A Small Leech -- on the Vitals --
The sliver, in the Lung --
The Bung out -- of an Artery --
Are...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Hark! like the sea in wrath the heavens assailing,
Or like a brook through rocky basin wailing,
Comes from below, in groaning agony,
A heavy, vacant torment-breathing sigh!
Their faces marks of bitter torture wear,
While from their lips burst curses of despair;
Their eyes are hollow, and full of woe,
And their looks with heartfelt anguish
Seek Cocytus' stream that runs wailing below,
For the bridge o'er...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
One Joy of so much anguish
Sweet nature has for me
I shun it as I do Despair
Or dear iniquity --
Why Birds, a Summer morning
Before the Quick of Day
Should stab my ravished spirit
With Dirks of Melody
Is part of an inquiry
That will receive reply
When Flesh and Spirit sunder
In Death's Immediately --...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
WHERE are the joys I have met in the morning,
That danc’d to the lark’s early song?
Where is the peace that awaited my wand’ring,
At evening the wild-woods among?
No more a winding the course of yon river,
And marking sweet flowerets so fair,
No more I trace the light footsteps of Pleasure,
But Sorrow and sad-sighing Care.
Is it that Summer’s...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I LEFT thee last a child at heart
A woman scarce in years:
I come to thee a solemn corpse
Which neither feels nor fears.
I have no breath to use in sighs; 5
They laid the dead-weights on mine eyes
To seal them safe from tears.
Look on me with thine own calm look:
I meet it calm...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
O THOU Great Being! what Thou art,
Surpasses me to know;
Yet sure I am, that known to Thee
Are all Thy works below.
Thy creature here before Thee stands,
All wretched and distrest;
Yet sure those ills that wring my soul
Obey Thy high behest.
Sure, Thou, Almighty, canst not act
From cruelty or wrath!
O, free my weary eyes from tears,
Or close them...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
I saw by looking in his eyes
That they remembered everything;
And this was how I came to know
That he was here, still wandering.
For though the figure and the scene
Were never to be reconciled,
I knew the man as I had known
His image when I was a child.
With evidence at every turn,
I should have...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
In falling Timbers buried --
There breathed a Man --
Outside -- the spades -- were plying --
The Lungs -- within --
Could He -- know -- they sought Him --
Could They -- know -- He breathed --
Horrid Sand Partition --
Neither -- could be heard --
Never slacked the Diggers --
But when Spades had done --
Oh, Reward of Anguish,
It was dying -- Then...Read more of this...
by
Robert Southey
'Tis night; the mercenary tyrants sleep
As undisturb'd as Justice! but no more
The wretched Slave, as on his native shore,
Rests on his reedy couch: he wakes to weep!
Tho' thro' the toil and anguish of the day
No tear escap'd him, not one suffering groan
Beneath the twisted thong, he weeps alone
In bitterness; thinking that far away
Tho' the gay ******* join the midnight...Read more of this...
by
Samuel Johnson
CONDEMN'D to Hope's delusive mine,
As on we toil from day to day,
By sudden blasts or slow decline
Our social comforts drop away.
Well tried through many a varying year,
See Levet to the grave descend,
Officious, innocent, sincere,
Of every friendless name the friend.
Yet still he fills affection's eye,
Obscurely wise and coarsely kind;
Nor, letter'd Arrogance, deny
Thy praise to merit unrefined.
When fainting nature call'd for...Read more of this...
by
Edmund Spenser
SHE fell away in her first ages spring,
Whil'st yet her leafe was greene, and fresh her rinde,
And whil'st her braunch faire blossomes foorth did bring,
She fell away against all course of kinde.
For age to dye is right, but youth is wrong;
She fel away like fruit blowne downe with winde.
Weepe, Shepheard! weepe, to make...Read more of this...
by
Conrad Aiken
I
The girl in the room beneath
Before going to bed
Strums on a mandolin
The three simple tunes she knows.
How inadequate they are to tell how her heart feels!
When she has finished them several times
She thrums the strings aimlessly with her finger-nails
And smiles, and thinks happily of many things.
II
I stood for a long while before...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
By the side of the brook, where the willow is waving
Why sits the wan Youth, in his wedding-suit gay!
Now sighing so deeply, now frantickly raving
Beneath the pale light of the moon's sickly ray.
Now he starts, all aghast, and with horror's wild gesture,
Cries, "AGNES is coming, I know her white vesture!
"See! see! how she beckons me on to the willow,
"Where,...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Give little Anguish --
Lives will fret --
Give Avalanches --
And they'll slant --
Straighten -- look cautious for their Breath --
But make no syllable -- like Death --
Who only shows the Marble Disc --
Sublimer sort -- than Speech --...Read more of this...
by
Adelaide Crapsey
Keep thou
Thy tearless watch
All night but when blue-dawn
Breathes on the silver moon, then weep!
Then weep!...Read more of this...
by
Charlotte Bronte
"What is this world?thy school, O misery!
"Our only lesson is to learn to suffer."
- YOUNG.
LOVE, thou sportive fickle boy,
Source of anguish, child of joy,
Ever woundingever smiling,
Soothing still, and still beguiling;
What are all thy boasted treasures,
Tender sorrows, transient pleasures?
Anxious hopes, and jealous fears,
LAUGHING HOURS, and MOURNING YEARS.
What is FRIENDSHIP'S soothing...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
'Tis Anguish grander than Delight
'Tis Resurrection Pain --
The meeting Bands of smitten Face
We questioned to, again.
'Tis Transport wild as thrills the Graves
When Cerements let go
And Creatures clad in Miracle
Go up by Two and Two....Read more of this...
by
William Morris
Love is enough: while ye deemed him a-sleeping,
There were signs of his coming and sounds of his feet;
His touch it was that would bring you to weeping,
When the summer was deepest and music most sweet:
In his footsteps ye followed the day to its dying,
Ye went forth by his gown-skirts the morning to meet:
In his place on the beaten-down orchard-grass...Read more of this...
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