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Best Famous Grievance Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Grievance poems. This is a select list of the best famous Grievance poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Grievance poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of grievance poems.

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Written by Phillis Wheatley | Create an image from this poem

To The Right Honourable William Earl Of Dartmouth His Majestys Principal Secretary Of The State For North-America

 HAIL, happy day, when, smiling like the morn,
Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn:
The northern clime beneath her genial ray,
Dartmouth, congratulates thy blissful sway:
Elate with hope her race no longer mourns,
Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns,
While in thine hand with pleasure we behold
The silken reins, and Freedom's charms unfold.
Long lost to realms beneath the northern skies She shines supreme, while hated faction dies: Soon as appear'd the Goddess long desir'd, Sick at the view, she languish'd and expir'd; Thus from the splendors of the morning light The owl in sadness seeks the caves of night.
No more, America, in mournful strain Of wrongs, and grievance unredress'd complain, No longer shalt thou dread the iron chain, Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand Had made, and with it meant t' enslave the land.
Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song, Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung, Whence flow these wishes for the common good, By feeling hearts alone best understood, I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate Was snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat: What pangs excruciating must molest, What sorrows labour in my parent's breast? Steel'd was that soul and by no misery mov'd That from a father seiz'd his babe belov'd: Such, such my case.
And can I then but pray Others may never feel tyrannic sway? For favours past, great Sir, our thanks are due, And thee we ask thy favours to renew, Since in thy pow'r, as in thy will before, To sooth the griefs, which thou did'st once deplore.
May heav'nly grace the sacred sanction give To all thy works, and thou for ever live Not only on the wings of fleeting Fame, Though praise immortal crowns the patriot's name, But to conduct to heav'ns refulgent fane, May fiery coursers sweep th' ethereal plain, And bear thee upwards to that blest abode, Where, like the prophet, thou shalt find thy God.


Written by Li Po | Create an image from this poem

Marble Stairs Grievance

 On Marble Stairs
still grows the white dew
That has all night
soaked her silk slippers,

But she lets down
her crystal blind now
And sees through glaze
the moon of autumn.
Written by Paul Laurence Dunbar | Create an image from this poem

A Grievance

Wen de snow 's a-fallin'
An' de win' is col'.
Mammy 'mence a-callin',
Den she 'mence to scol',
"Lucius Lishy Brackett,
Don't you go out do's,
Button up yo' jacket,
Les'n you 'll git froze."
I sit at de windah
Lookin' at de groun',
Nuffin nigh to hindah,
Mammy ain' erroun';
Wish 't she would n' mek me
Set down in dis chaih;
Pshaw, it would n't tek me
Long to git some aih.
So I jump down nimble
Ez a boy kin be,
Dough I 's all a-trimble
Feahed some one 'll see;
Bet in a half a minute
I fly out de do'
An' I 's knee-deep in it,
Dat dah blessed snow.
Den I hyeah a pattah
Come acrost de flo'.
Den dey comes a clattah
At de cabin do';
An' my mammy holler
Spoilin' all my joy,
"Come in f'om dat waller,
Don't I see you, boy?"
Wen de snow 's a-sievin'
Down ez sof ez meal,
Whut 's de use o' livin'
'Cept you got de feel
Of de stuff dat's fallin'
'Roun' an' white an' damp,
'Dout some one a-callin',
"Come in hyeah, you scamp!"
Written by James Wright | Create an image from this poem

At The Executed Murderers Grave

 for J.
L.
D.
Why should we do this? What good is it to us? Above all, how can we do such a thing? How can it possibly be done? --Freud 1.
My name is James A.
Wright, and I was born Twenty-five miles from this infected grave, In Martins Ferry, Ohio, where one slave To Hazel-Atlas Glass became my father.
He tried to teach me kindness.
I return Only in memory now, aloof, unhurried, To dead Ohio, where I might lie buried, Had I not run away before my time.
Ohio caught George Doty.
Clean as lime, His skull rots empty here.
Dying's the best Of all the arts men learn in a dead place.
I walked here once.
I made my loud display, Leaning for language on a dead man's voice.
Now sick of lies, I turn to face the past.
I add my easy grievance to the rest: 2.
Doty, if I confess I do not love you, Will you let me alone? I burn for my own lies.
The nights electrocute my fugitive, My mind.
I run like the bewildered mad At St.
Clair Sanitarium, who lurk, Arch and cunning, under the maple trees, Pleased to be playing guilty after dark.
Staring to bed, they croon self-lullabies.
Doty, you make me sick.
I am not dead.
I croon my tears at fifty cents per line.
3.
Idiot, he demanded love from girls, And murdered one.
Also, he was a thief.
He left two women, and a ghost with child.
The hair, foul as a dog's upon his head, Made such revolting Ohio animals Fitter for vomit than a kind man's grief.
I waste no pity on the dead that stink, And no love's lost between me and the crying Drunks of Belaire, Ohio, where police Kick at their kidneys till they die of drink.
Christ may restore them whole, for all of me.
Alive and dead, those giggling muckers who Saddled my nighmares thirty years ago Can do without my widely printed sighing.
Over their pains with paid sincerity.
I do not pity the dead, I pity the dying.
4.
I pity myself, because a man is dead.
If Belmont County killed him, what of me? His victims never loved him.
Why should we? And yet, nobody had to kill him either.
It does no good to woo the grass, to veil The quicklime hole of a man's defeat and shame.
Nature-lovers are gone.
To hell with them.
I kick the clods away, and speak my name.
5.
This grave's gash festers.
Maybe it will heal, When all are caught with what they had to do In fear of love, when every man stands still By the last sea, And the princes of the sea come down To lay away their robes, to judge the earth And its dead, and we dead stand undefended everywhere, And my bodies--father and child and unskilled criminal-- Ridiculously kneel to bare my scars, My sneaking crimes, to God's unpitying stars.
6.
Staring politely, they will not mark my face From any murderer's, buried in this place.
Why should they? We are nothing but a man.
7.
Doty, the rapist and the murderer, Sleeps in a ditch of fire, and cannot hear; And where, in earth or hell's unholy peace, Men's suicides will stop, God knows, not I.
Angels and pebbles mock me under trees.
Earth is a door I cannot even face.
Order be damned, I do not want to die, Even to keep Belaire, Ohio, safe.
The hackles on my neck are fear, not grief.
(Open, dungeon! Open, roof of the ground!) I hear the last sea in the Ohio grass, Heaving a tide of gray disastrousness.
Wrinkles of winter ditch the rotted face Of Doty, killer, imbecile, and thief: Dirt of my flesh, defeated, underground.
Written by Paul Laurence Dunbar | Create an image from this poem

Deacon Jones' Grievance

I 've been watchin' of 'em, parson,
An' I 'm sorry fur to say
'At my mind is not contented
With the loose an' keerless way
'At the young folks treat the music;
'T ain't the proper sort o' choir.
Then I don't believe in Christuns
A-singin' hymns for hire.
But I never would 'a' murmured
An' the matter might 'a' gone
Ef it was n't fur the antics
'At I've seen 'em kerry on;
So I thought it was my dooty
Fur to come to you an' ask
Ef you would n't sort o' gently
Take them singin' folks to task.
Fust, the music they 've be'n singin'
Will disgrace us mighty soon;
It 's a cross between a opry
An' a ol' cotillion tune.
With its dashes an' its quavers
An' its hifalutin style—
Why, it sets my head to swimmin'
When I 'm comin' down the aisle.
Now it might be almost decent
Ef it was n't fur the way
'At they git up there an' sing it,
Hey dum diddle, loud and gay.
Why, it shames the name o' sacred
In its brazen wordliness,
An' they 've even got "Ol' Hundred"
In a bold, new-fangled dress.
You 'll excuse me, Mr. Parson,
Ef I seem a little sore;
But I 've sung the songs of Isr'el
For threescore years an' more,
An' it sort o' hurts my feelin's
Fur to see 'em put away
Fur these harum-scarum ditties
'At is capturin' the day.
There 's anuther little happ'nin'
'At I 'll mention while I 'm here,
Jes' to show 'at my objections
All is offered sound and clear.
It was one day they was singin'
An' was doin' well enough—
Singin' good as people could sing
Sich an awful mess o' stuff—
When the choir give a holler,
An' the organ give a groan,
An' they left one weak-voiced feller
A-singin' there alone!
But he stuck right to the music,
[Pg 40]Tho' 't was tryin' as could be;
An' when I tried to help him,
Why, the hull church scowled at me.
You say that's so-low singin',
Well, I pray the Lord that I
Growed up when folks was willin'
To sing their hymns so high.
Why, we never had sich doin's
In the good ol' Bethel days,
When the folks was all contented
With the simple songs of praise.
Now I may have spoke too open,
But 'twas too hard to keep still,
An' I hope you 'll tell the singers
'At I bear 'em no ill-will.
'At they all may git to glory
Is my wish an' my desire,
But they 'll need some extry trainin'
'Fore they jine the heavenly choir.


Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

Prophets at Home

 Prophets have honour all over the Earth,
 Except in the village where they were born,
Where such as knew them boys from birth
 Nature-ally hold 'em in scorn.
When Prophets are naughty and young and vain, They make a won'erful grievance of it; (You can see by their writings how they complain), But 0, 'tis won'erful good for the Prophet! There's nothing Nineveh Town can give (Nor being swallowed by whales between), Makes up for the place where a man's folk live, Which don't care nothing what he has been.
He might ha' been that, or he might ha' been this, But they love and they hate him for what he is.
Written by Ezra Pound | Create an image from this poem

The Jewel Stairs Grievance

 The jewelled steps are already quite white with dew,
It is so late that the dew soaks my gauze stockings,
And I let down the crystal curtain
And watch the moon through the clear autumn.

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