Famous Anodyne Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Buried Life The

by Matthew Arnold
 Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness o'er me roll.
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
We know, we know that we can smile!
But there's a something in this breast,
To which thy light words bring no rest,
And thy gay smiles no anodyne.
Give me thy hand, and hush...Read more of this...

Rearrange a Wifes affection!

by Emily Dickinson
 Rearrange a "Wife's" affection!
When they dislocate my Brain!
Amputate my freckled Bosom!
Make me bearded like a man!

Blush, my spirit, in thy Fastness --
Blush, my unacknowledged clay --
Seven years of troth have taught thee
More than Wifehood every may!

Love that never leaped its socket --
Trust entrenched in narrow pain --
Constancy thro' fire -- awarded --
Anguish -- bare of anodyne!

Burden -- borne so...Read more of this...

Accordion

by Robert William Service
 Some carol of the banjo, to its measure keeping time;
Of viol or of lute some make a song.
My battered old accordion, you're worthy of a rhyme,
You've been my friend and comforter so long.
Round half the world I've trotted you, a dozen years or more;
You've given heaps of people lots of fun;
You've set a host of happy feet a-tapping on...Read more of this...

All Souls Night

by William Butler Yeats
 Epilogue to "A Vision'

MIDNIGHT has come, and the great Christ Church Bell
And may a lesser bell sound through the room;
And it is All Souls' Night,
And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel
Bubble upon the table. A ghost may come;
For it is a ghost's right,
His element is so fine
Being sharpened by his death,
To drink from the wine-breath
While our gross palates drink...Read more of this...

No Bobolink -- reverse His Singing

by Emily Dickinson
 No Bobolink -- reverse His Singing
When the only Tree
Ever He minded occupying
By the Farmer be --

Clove to the Root --
His Spacious Future --
Best Horizon -- gone --
Whose Music be His
Only Anodyne --
Brave Bobolink --...Read more of this...

Stupidity

by Robert William Service
 Stupidity, woe's anodyne,
Be kind and comfort me in mine;
Smooth out the furrows of my brow,
Make me as carefree as a cow,
Content to sleep and eat and drink
 And never think

Stupidity, let me be blind
To all the ills of humankind;
Fill me with simple sentiment
To walk the way my father went;
School me to sweat with robot folk
 Beneath the yoke.

Stupidity, keep...Read more of this...

The Village Garden

by Amy Levy
 To E.M.S.


Here, where your garden fenced about and still is,
Here, where the unmoved summer air is sweet
With mixed delight of lavender and lilies,
Dreaming I linger in the noontide heat.

Of many summers are the trees recorders,
The turf a carpet many summers wove;
Old-fashioned blossoms cluster in the borders,
Love-in-a-mist and crimson-hearted clove.

All breathes of peace and sunshine in the present,
All tells of...Read more of this...

Heart not so heavy as mine

by Emily Dickinson
 Heart, not so heavy as mine
Wending late home --
As it passed my window
Whistled itself a tune --
A careless snatch -- a ballad -- A ditty of the street --
Yet to my irritated Ear
An Anodyne so sweet --
It was as if a Bobolink
Sauntering this way
Carolled, and paused, and carolled --
Then bubbled slow away!
It was as if a chirping brook
Upon a...Read more of this...

The New Helen

by Oscar Wilde
 Where hast thou been since round the walls of Troy
The sons of God fought in that great emprise?
Why dost thou walk our common earth again?
Hast thou forgotten that impassioned boy,
His purple galley and his Tyrian men
And treacherous Aphrodite's mocking eyes?
For surely it was thou, who, like a star
Hung in the silver silence of the night,
Didst lure the Old World's...Read more of this...

The Buried Life

by Matthew Arnold
 Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness o'er me roll.
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
We know, we know that we can smile!
But there's a something in this breast,
To which thy light words bring no rest,
And thy gay smiles no anodyne.
Give me thy hand, and hush...Read more of this...

The Comforters

by Rudyard Kipling
 Until thy feet have trod the Road
 Advise not wayside folk,
 Nor till thy back has borne the Load
 Break in upon the broke.

 Chase not with undesired largesse
 Of sympathy the heart
 Which, knowing her own bitterness,
 Presumes to dwell apart.

 Employ not that glad hand to raise
 The God-forgotten head
 To Heaven and all the neighbours' gaze--
...Read more of this...

Loneliness

by John Matthew
 I pause midway in the in the whirl,
Of deadlines, things undone,
And average the sadness and joys -
There remains only loneliness,
Of which I see no cure,
No bitter palliatives, no anodyne.

We remain in life’s journey,
Like loners sitting depressed,
On solitary park benches, or,
Standing in balconies, staring,
Loneliness gnawing at our minds,
As hungry ants at a grain of food.
Often in life’s vicious lanes,
In lonesome...Read more of this...

Panthea

by Oscar Wilde
 Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire,
From passionate pain to deadlier delight, -
I am too young to live without desire,
Too young art thou to waste this summer night
Asking those idle questions which of old
Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told.

For, sweet, to feel is better than to know,
And wisdom is a childless heritage,
One pulse...Read more of this...

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