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Best Famous Ineffectual Poems

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Written by Walt Whitman | Create an image from this poem

Carol of Words

 1
EARTH, round, rolling, compact—suns, moons, animals—all these are words to be
 said; 
Watery, vegetable, sauroid advances—beings, premonitions, lispings of the future, 
Behold! these are vast words to be said. 

Were you thinking that those were the words—those upright lines? those curves,
 angles,
 dots? 
No, those are not the words—the substantial words are in the ground and sea,
They are in the air—they are in you. 

Were you thinking that those were the words—those delicious sounds out of your
 friends’
 mouths? 
No, the real words are more delicious than they. 

Human bodies are words, myriads of words; 
In the best poems re-appears the body, man’s or woman’s, well-shaped, natural,
 gay,
Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame. 

2
Air, soil, water, fire—these are words; 
I myself am a word with them—my qualities interpenetrate with theirs—my name is
 nothing to
 them; 
Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would air, soil, water, fire,
 know of
 my
 name? 

A healthy presence, a friendly or commanding gesture, are words, sayings, meanings;
The charms that go with the mere looks of some men and women, are sayings and meanings
 also. 

3
The workmanship of souls is by the inaudible words of the earth; 
The great masters know the earth’s words, and use them more than the audible words. 

Amelioration is one of the earth’s words; 
The earth neither lags nor hastens;
It has all attributes, growths, effects, latent in itself from the jump; 
It is not half beautiful only—defects and excrescences show just as much as
 perfections
 show. 

The earth does not withhold, it is generous enough; 
The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so conceal’d either; 
They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print;
They are imbued through all things, conveying themselves willingly, 
Conveying a sentiment and invitation of the earth—I utter and utter, 
I speak not, yet if you hear me not, of what avail am I to you? 
To bear—to better—lacking these, of what avail am I? 

4
Accouche! Accouchez!
Will you rot your own fruit in yourself there? 
Will you squat and stifle there? 

The earth does not argue, 
Is not pathetic, has no arrangements, 
Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,
Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures, 
Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out, 
Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out. 

5
The earth does not exhibit itself, nor refuse to exhibit itself—possesses still
 underneath; 
Underneath the ostensible sounds, the august chorus of heroes, the wail of slaves,
Persuasions of lovers, curses, gasps of the dying, laughter of young people, accents of
 bargainers, 
Underneath these, possessing the words that never fail. 

To her children, the words of the eloquent dumb great mother never fail; 
The true words do not fail, for motion does not fail, and reflection does not fail; 
Also the day and night do not fail, and the voyage we pursue does not fail.

6
Of the interminable sisters, 
Of the ceaseless cotillions of sisters, 
Of the centripetal and centrifugal sisters, the elder and younger sisters, 
The beautiful sister we know dances on with the rest. 
With her ample back towards every beholder,
With the fascinations of youth, and the equal fascinations of age, 
Sits she whom I too love like the rest—sits undisturb’d, 
Holding up in her hand what has the character of a mirror, while her eyes glance back from
 it, 
Glance as she sits, inviting none, denying none, 
Holding a mirror day and night tirelessly before her own face.

7
Seen at hand, or seen at a distance, 
Duly the twenty-four appear in public every day, 
Duly approach and pass with their companions, or a companion, 
Looking from no countenances of their own, but from the countenances of those who are with
 them, 
From the countenances of children or women, or the manly countenance,
From the open countenances of animals, or from inanimate things, 
From the landscape or waters, or from the exquisite apparition of the sky, 
From our countenances, mine and yours, faithfully returning them, 
Every day in public appearing without fail, but never twice with the same companions. 

8
Embracing man, embracing all, proceed the three hundred and sixty-five resistlessly round
 the
 sun;
Embracing all, soothing, supporting, follow close three hundred and sixty-five offsets of
 the
 first,
 sure and necessary as they. 

9
Tumbling on steadily, nothing dreading, 
Sunshine, storm, cold, heat, forever withstanding, passing, carrying, 
The Soul’s realization and determination still inheriting, 
The fluid vacuum around and ahead still entering and dividing,
No balk retarding, no anchor anchoring, on no rock striking, 
Swift, glad, content, unbereav’d, nothing losing, 
Of all able and ready at any time to give strict account, 
The divine ship sails the divine sea. 

10
Whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you;
The divine ship sails the divine sea for you. 

Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid, 
You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky, 
For none more than you are the present and the past, 
For none more than you is immortality.

11
Each man to himself, and each woman to herself, such is the word of the past and present,
 and
 the
 word of immortality; 
No one can acquire for another—not one! 
Not one can grow for another—not one! 

The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him; 
The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him;
The murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him; 
The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him; 
The love is to the lover, and comes back most to him; 
The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him—it cannot fail; 
The oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and actress, not to the audience;
And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, or the indication of his
 own. 

12
I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall be complete! 
I swear the earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who remains jagged and
 broken! 
I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate those of the earth! 
I swear there can be no theory of any account, unless it corroborate the theory of the
 earth!
No politics, art, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account, unless it compare with
 the
 amplitude of the earth, 
Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude of the earth. 

13
I swear I begin to see love with sweeter spasms than that which responds love! 
It is that which contains itself—which never invites, and never refuses. 

I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words!
I swear I think all merges toward the presentation of the unspoken meanings of the earth! 
Toward him who sings the songs of the Body, and of the truths of the earth; 
Toward him who makes the dictionaries of words that print cannot touch. 

14
I swear I see what is better than to tell the best; 
It is always to leave the best untold.

When I undertake to tell the best, I find I cannot, 
My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots, 
My breath will not be obedient to its organs, 
I become a dumb man. 

The best of the earth cannot be told anyhow—all or any is best;
It is not what you anticipated—it is cheaper, easier, nearer; 
Things are not dismiss’d from the places they held before; 
The earth is just as positive and direct as it was before; 
Facts, religions, improvements, politics, trades, are as real as before; 
But the Soul is also real,—it too is positive and direct;
No reasoning, no proof has establish’d it, 
Undeniable growth has establish’d it. 

15
This is a poem—a carol of words—these are hints of meanings, 
These are to echo the tones of Souls, and the phrases of Souls; 
If they did not echo the phrases of Souls, what were they then?
If they had not reference to you in especial, what were they then? 

I swear I will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells the best! 
I will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold. 

16
Say on, sayers! 
Delve! mould! pile the words of the earth!
Work on—(it is materials you must bring, not breaths;) 
Work on, age after age! nothing is to be lost; 
It may have to wait long, but it will certainly come in use; 
When the materials are all prepared, the architects shall appear. 

I swear to you the architects shall appear without fail! I announce them and lead them;
I swear to you they will understand you, and justify you; 
I swear to you the greatest among them shall be he who best knows you, and encloses all,
 and is
 faithful to all; 
I swear to you, he and the rest shall not forget you—they shall perceive that you are
 not
 an
 iota less than they; 
I swear to you, you shall be glorified in them.


Written by Hilaire Belloc | Create an image from this poem

Lines to a Don

 Remote and ineffectual Don
That dared attack my Chesterton,
With that poor weapon, half-impelled,
Unlearnt, unsteady, hardly held,
Unworthy for a tilt with men--
Your quavering and corroded pen;
Don poor at Bed and worse at Table,
Don pinched, Don starved, Don miserable;
Don stuttering, Don with roving eyes,
Don nervous, Don of crudities;
Don clerical, Don ordinary,
Don self-absorbed and solitary;
Don here-and-there, Don epileptic;
Don puffed and empty, Don dyspeptic;
Don middle-class, Don sycophantic,
Don dull, Don brutish, Don pedantic;
Don hypocritical, Don bad,
Don furtive, Don three-quarters mad;
Don (since a man must make and end),
Don that shall never be my friend.

Don different from those regal Dons!
With hearts of gold and lungs of bronze,
Who shout and bang and roar and bawl
The Absolute across the hall,
Or sail in amply bellying gown
Enormous through the Sacred Town,
Bearing from College to their homes
Deep cargoes of gigantic tomes;
Dons admirable! Dons of Might!
Uprising on my inward sight
Compact of ancient tales, and port
And sleep--and learning of a sort.
Dons English, worthy of the land;
Dons rooted; Dons that understand.
Good Dons perpetual that remain
A landmark, walling in the plain--
The horizon of my memories--
Like large and comfortable trees.


Don very much apart from these,
Thou scapegoat Don, thou Don devoted,
Don to thine own damnation quoted,
Perplexed to find thy trivial name
Reared in my verse to lasting shame.
Don dreadful, rasping Don and wearing,
Repulsive Don--Don past all bearing.
Don of the cold and doubtful breath,
Don despicable, Don of death;
Don nasty, skimpy, silent, level;
Don evil, Don that serves the devil.
Don ugly--that makes fifty lines.
There is a Canon which confines
A Rhymed Octosyllabic Curse
If written in Iambic Verse
To fifty lines. I never cut;
I far prefer to end it--but
Believe me I shall soon return.
My fires are banked, but still they burn
To write some more about the Don
That dared attack my Chesterton.
Written by William Cowper | Create an image from this poem

The Task: Book V The Winter Morning Walk (excerpts)

 'Tis morning; and the sun, with ruddy orb
Ascending, fires th' horizon: while the clouds,
That crowd away before the driving wind,
More ardent as the disk emerges more,
Resemble most some city in a blaze,
Seen through the leafless wood. His slanting ray
Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale,
And, tinging all with his own rosy hue,
From ev'ry herb and ev'ry spiry blade
Stretches a length of shadow o'er the field.
Mine, spindling into longitude immense,
In spite of gravity, and sage remark
That I myself am but a fleeting shade,
Provokes me to a smile. With eye askance
I view the muscular proportion'd limb
Transform'd to a lean shank. The shapeless pair,
As they design'd to mock me, at my side
Take step for step; and, as I near approach
The cottage, walk along the plaster'd wall,
Prepost'rous sight! the legs without the man.
The verdure of the plain lies buried deep
Beneath the dazzling deluge; and the bents,
And coarser grass, upspearing o'er the rest,
Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine
Conspicuous, and, in bright apparel clad
And fledg'd with icy feathers, nod superb.
The cattle mourn in corners where the fence
Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep
In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait
Their wonted fodder; not like hung'ring man,
Fretful if unsupply'd; but silent, meek,
And patient of the slow-pac'd swain's delay.
He from the stack carves out th' accustom'd load,
Deep-plunging, and again deep-plunging oft,
His broad keen knife into the solid mass:
Smooth as a wall the upright remnant stands,
With such undeviating and even force
He severs it away: no needless care,
Lest storms should overset the leaning pile
Deciduous, or its own unbalanc'd weight....


'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower
Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume,
And we are weeds without it. All constraint,
Except what wisdom lays on evil men,
Is evil; hurts the faculties, impedes
Their progress in the road of science; blinds
The eyesight of discovery, and begets,
In those that suffer it, a sordid mind
Bestial, a meagre intellect, unfit
To be the tenant of man's noble form.
Thee therefore, still, blameworthy as thou art,
With all thy loss of empire, and though squeez'd
By public exigence till annual food
Fails for the craving hunger of the state,
Thee I account still happy, and the chief
Among the nations, seeing thou art free,
My native nook of earth! . . ....


But there is yet a liberty unsung
By poets, and by senators unprais'd,
Which monarchs cannot grant, nor all the pow'rs
Of earth and hell confederate take away;
A liberty which persecution, fraud,
Oppression, prisons, have no pow'r to bind;
Which whoso tastes can be enslav'd no more.
'Tis liberty of heart, deriv'd from Heav'n,
Bought with his blood who gave it to mankind,
And seal'd with the same token. It is held
By charter, and that charter sanction'd sure
By th' unimpeachable and awful oath
And promise of a God. His other gifts
All bear the royal stamp that speaks them his,
And are august, but this transcends them all.
Written by D. H. Lawrence | Create an image from this poem

Dreams Nascent

 My world is a painted fresco, where coloured shapes 
Of old, ineffectual lives linger blurred and warm; 
An endless tapestry the past has women drapes 
The halls of my life, compelling my soul to conform. 

The surface of dreams is broken,
The picture of the past is shaken and scattered. 
Fluent, active figures of men pass along the railway, and I am woken
From the dreams that the distance flattered. 

Along the railway, active figures of men. 
They have a secret that stirs in their limbs as they move
Out of the distance, nearer, commanding my dreamy world.

Here in the subtle, rounded flesh 
Beats the active ecstasy. 
In the sudden lifting my eyes, it is clearer,
The fascination of the quick, restless Creator moving through the mesh
Of men, vibrating in ecstasy through the rounded flesh.

Oh my boys, bending over your books, 
In you is trembling and fusing 
The creation of a new-patterned dream, dream of a generation:
And I watch to see the Creator, the power that patterns the dream.

The old dreams are beautiful, beloved, soft-toned, and sure,
But the dream-stuff is molten and moving mysteriously,
Alluring my eyes; for I, am I not also dream-stuff,
Am I not quickening, diffusing myself in the pattern, shaping and shapen?

Here in my class is the answer for the great yearning:
Eyes where I can watch the swim of old dreams reflected on the molten metal of dreams,
Watch the stir which is rhythmic and moves them all as a heart-beat moves the blood,
Here in the swelling flesh the great activity working,
Visible there in the change of eyes and the mobile features.

Oh the great mystery and fascination of the unseen Shaper,
The power of the melting, fusing Force—heat, light, all in one,
Everything great and mysterious in one, swelling and shaping the dream in the flesh,
As it swells and shapes a bud into blossom.

Oh the terrible ecstasy of the consciousness that I am life!
Oh the miracle of the whole, the widespread, labouring concentration
Swelling mankind like one bud to bring forth the fruit of a dream,
Oh the terror of lifting the innermost I out of the sweep of the impulse of life,
And watching the great Thing labouring through the whole round flesh of the world; 
And striving to catch a glimpse of the shape of the coming dream,
As it quickens within the labouring, white-hot metal,
Catch the scent and the colour of the coming dream, 
Then to fall back exhausted into the unconscious, molten life!
Written by Robert Frost | Create an image from this poem

The Hill Wife

 I. LONELINESS

 Her Word

One ought not to have to care
 So much as you and I
Care when the birds come round the house
 To seem to say good-bye;

Or care so much when they come back
 With whatever it is they sing;
The truth being we are as much
 Too glad for the one thing

As we are too sad for the other here --
 With birds that fill their breasts
But with each other and themselves
 And their built or driven nests.

II. HOUSE FEAR

Always -- I tell you this they learned --
Always at night when they returned
To the lonely house from far away
To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray,
They learned to rattle the lock and key
To give whatever might chance to be
Warning and time to be off in flight:
And preferring the out- to the in-door night,
They. learned to leave the house-door wide
Until they had lit the lamp inside.

III. THE SMILE

 Her Word

I didn't like the way he went away.
That smile! It never came of being gay.
Still he smiled- did you see him?- I was sure!
Perhaps because we gave him only bread
And the wretch knew from that that we were poor.
Perhaps because he let us give instead
Of seizing from us as he might have seized.
Perhaps he mocked at us for being wed,
Or being very young (and he was pleased
To have a vision of us old and dead).
I wonder how far down the road he's got.
He's watching from the woods as like as not.

IV. THE OFT-REPEATED DREAM

She had no saying dark enough
 For the dark pine that kept
Forever trying the window-latch
 Of the room where they slept.

The tireless but ineffectual hands
 That with every futile pass
Made the great tree seem as a little bird
 Before the mystery of glass!

It never had been inside the room,
 And only one of the two
Was afraid in an oft-repeated dream
 Of what the tree might do.

V. THE IMPULSE

It was too lonely for her there,
 And too wild,
And since there were but two of them,
 And no child,

And work was little in the house,
 She was free,
And followed where he furrowed field,
 Or felled tree.

She rested on a log and tossed
 The fresh chips,
With a song only to herself
 On her lips.

And once she went to break a bough
 Of black alder.
She strayed so far she scarcely heard.
 When he called her --

And didn't answer -- didn't speak --
 Or return.
She stood, and then she ran and hid
 In the fern.

He never found her, though he looked
 Everywhere,
And he asked at her mother's house
 Was she there.

Sudden and swift and light as that
 The ties gave,
And he learned of finalities
 Besides the grave.


Written by Edgar Lee Masters | Create an image from this poem

Godwin James

 Harry Wilmans! You who fell in a swamp
Near Manila, following the flag,
You were not wounded by the greatness of a dream,
Or destroyed by ineffectual work,
Or driven to madness by Satanic snags;
You were not torn by aching nerves,
Nor did you carry great wounds to your old age.
You did not starve, for the government fed you.
You did not suffer yet cry "forward"
To an army which you led
Against a foe with mocking smiles,
Sharper than bayonets. You were not smitten down
By invisible bombs. You were not rejected
By those for whom you were defeated.
You did not eat the savorless bread
Which a poor alchemy had made from ideals.
You went to Manila, Harry Wilmans,
While I enlisted in the bedraggled army
Of bright-eyed, divine youths,
Who surged forward, who were driven back and fell,
Sick, broken, crying, shorn of faith,
Following the flag of the Kingdom of Heaven.
You and I, Harry Wilmans, have fallen
In our several ways, not knowing
Good from bad, defeat from victory,
Nor what face it is that smiles
Behind the demoniac mask.
Written by Robert Louis Stevenson | Create an image from this poem

Sonet VI

 As in the hostel by the bridge I sate,
Nailed with indifference fondly deemed complete,
And (O strange chance, more sorrowful than sweet)
The counterfeit of her that was my fate,
Dressed in like vesture, graceful and sedate,
Went quietly up the vacant village street,
The still small sound of her most dainty feet
Shook, like a trumpet blast, my soul's estate.
Instant revolt ran riot through my brain,
And all night long, thereafter, hour by hour,
The pageant of dead love before my eyes
Went proudly; and old hopes, broke loose again
From the restraint of wisely temperate power,
With ineffectual ardour sought to rise.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry