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Best Famous Sum Poems

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

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Love Is A Parallax

 'Perspective betrays with its dichotomy:
train tracks always meet, not here, but only
 in the impossible mind's eye;
horizons beat a retreat as we embark
on sophist seas to overtake that mark
 where wave pretends to drench real sky.
' 

'Well then, if we agree, it is not odd
that one man's devil is another's god
 or that the solar spectrum is
a multitude of shaded grays; suspense
on the quicksands of ambivalence
 is our life's whole nemesis.
 

So we could rave on, darling, you and I,
until the stars tick out a lullaby
 about each cosmic pro and con;
nothing changes, for all the blazing of
our drastic jargon, but clock hands that move
 implacably from twelve to one.
 

We raise our arguments like sitting ducks
to knock them down with logic or with luck
 and contradict ourselves for fun;
the waitress holds our coats and we put on
the raw wind like a scarf; love is a faun
 who insists his playmates run.
 

Now you, my intellectual leprechaun,
would have me swallow the entire sun
 like an enormous oyster, down
the ocean in one gulp: you say a mark
of comet hara-kiri through the dark
 should inflame the sleeping town.
 

So kiss: the drunks upon the curb and dames
in dubious doorways forget their monday names,
 caper with candles in their heads;
the leaves applaud, and santa claus flies in
scattering candy from a zeppelin,
 playing his prodigal charades.
 

The moon leans down to took; the tilting fish
in the rare river wink and laugh; we lavish
 blessings right and left and cry
hello, and then hello again in deaf
churchyard ears until the starlit stiff
 graves all carol in reply.
 

Now kiss again: till our strict father leans
to call for curtain on our thousand scenes;
 brazen actors mock at him,
multiply pink harlequins and sing
in gay ventriloquy from wing to wing
 while footlights flare and houselights dim.
 

Tell now, we taunq where black or white begins
and separate the flutes from violins:
 the algebra of absolutes
explodes in a kaleidoscope of shapes
that jar, while each polemic jackanapes
 joins his enemies' recruits.
 

The paradox is that 'the play's the thing':
though prima donna pouts and critic stings,
 there burns throughout the line of words,
the cultivated act, a fierce brief fusion
which dreamers call real, and realists, illusion:
 an insight like the flight of birds: 

Arrows that lacerate the sky, while knowing
the secret of their ecstasy's in going;
 some day, moving, one will drop,
and, dropping, die, to trace a wound that heals
only to reopen as flesh congeals:
 cycling phoenix never stops.
 

So we shall walk barefoot on walnut shells
of withered worlds, and stamp out puny hells
 and heavens till the spirits squeak
surrender: to build our bed as high as jack's
bold beanstalk; lie and love till sharp scythe hacks
 away our rationed days and weeks.
 

Then jet the blue tent topple, stars rain down,
and god or void appall us till we drown
 in our own tears: today we start
to pay the piper with each breath, yet love
knows not of death nor calculus above
 the simple sum of heart plus heart.

Written by Christina Rossetti |

Uphill

 DOES the road wind uphill all the way? 
 Yes, to the very end.
 
Will the day's journey take the whole long day? 
 From morn to night, my friend.
 

But is there for the night a resting-place? 
 A roof for when the slow, dark hours begin.
 
May not the darkness hide it from my face? 
 You cannot miss that inn.
 

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night? 
 Those who have gone before.
 
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight? 
 They will not keep you waiting at that door.
 

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? 
 Of labour you shall find the sum.
 
Will there be beds for me and all who seek? 
 Yea, beds for all who come.

Written by Thomas Hardy |

A Broken Appointment

 You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.

Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure loving kindness' sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.
 

You love me not,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
--I know and knew it.
 But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came
To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
You love me not.

Written by Leonard Cohen |

Anthem

 The birds they sang 
at the break of day 
Start again 
I heard them say 
Don't dwell on what 
has passed away 
or what is yet to be.
 
Ah the wars they will 
be fought again 
The holy dove 
She will be caught again 
bought and sold 
and bought again 
the dove is never free.
 
Ring the bells that still can ring 
Forget your perfect offering 
There is a crack in everything 
That's how the light gets in.
 
We asked for signs 
the signs were sent: 
the birth betrayed 
the marriage spent 
Yeah the widowhood 
of every government -- 
signs for all to see.
 
I can't run no more 
with that lawless crowd 
while the killers in high places 
say their prayers out loud.
 
But they've summoned, they've summoned up 
a thundercloud 
and they're going to hear from me.
 
Ring the bells that still can ring .
.
.
 
You can add up the parts 
but you won't have the sum 
You can strike up the march, 
there is no drum 
Every heart, every heart 
to love will come 
but like a refugee.
 
Ring the bells that still can ring 
Forget your perfect offering 
There is a crack, a crack in everything 
That's how the light gets in.
 
Ring the bells that still can ring 
Forget your perfect offering 
There is a crack, a crack in everything 
That's how the light gets in.
 
That's how the light gets in.
 
That's how the light gets in.

Written by Charlotte Bronte |

Frances

 SHE will not sleep, for fear of dreams, 
But, rising, quits her restless bed, 
And walks where some beclouded beams 
Of moonlight through the hall are shed.


Obedient to the goad of grief, 
Her steps, now fast, now lingering slow, 
In varying motion seek relief 
From the Eumenides of woe.


Wringing her hands, at intervals 
But long as mute as phantom dim 
She glides along the dusky walls, 
Under the black oak rafters, grim.


The close air of the grated tower 
Stifles a heart that scarce can beat, 
And, though so late and lone the hour, 
Forth pass her wandering, faltering feet;

And on the pavement, spread before 
The long front of the mansion grey, 
Her steps imprint the night-frost hoar, 
Which pale on grass and granite lay.


Not long she stayed where misty moon 
And shimmering stars could on her look, 
But through the garden arch-way, soon 
Her strange and gloomy path she took.


Some firs, coeval with the tower, 
Their straight black boughs stretched o'er her head, 
Unseen, beneath this sable bower, 
Rustled her dress and rapid tread.
 

There was an alcove in that shade, 
Screening a rustic-seat and stand; 
Weary she sat her down and laid 
Her hot brow on her burning hand.


To solitude and to the night, 
Some words she now, in murmurs, said; 
And, trickling through her fingers white, 
Some tears of misery she shed.


' God help me, in my grievous need, 
God help me, in my inward pain; 
Which cannot ask for pity's meed, 
Which has no license to complain;

Which must be borne, yet who can bear, 
Hours long, days long, a constant weight 
The yoke of absolute despair, 
A suffering wholly desolate ?

Who can for ever crush the heart, 
Restrain its throbbing, curb its life ? 
Dissemble truth with ceaseless art, 
With outward calm, mask inward strife ?'

She waitedas for some reply;
The still and cloudy night gave none; 
Erelong, with deep-drawn, trembling sigh, 
Her heavy plaint again begun.
 

' UnlovedI love; unweptI weep; 
Grief I restrainhope I repress: 
Vain is this anguishfixed and deep; 
Vainer, desires and dreams of bliss.


My love awakes no love again, 
My tears collect, and fall unfelt; 
My sorrow touches none with pain, 
My humble hopes to nothing melt.


For me the universe is dumb, 
Stone-deaf, and blank, and wholly blind; 
Life I must bound, existence sum 
In the strait limits of one mind;

That mind my own.
 Oh ! narrow cell; 
Darkimagelessa living tomb ! 
There must I sleep, there wake and dwell 
Content, with palsy, pain, and gloom.
'

Again she paused; a moan of pain, 
A stifled sob, alone was heard; 
Long silence followedthen again, 
Her voice the stagnant midnight stirred.


' Must it be so ? Is this my fate ?
Can I nor struggle, nor contend ?
And am I doomed for years to wait,
Watching death's lingering axe descend ? 

And when it falls, and when I die, 
What follows ? Vacant nothingness ? 
The blank of lost identity ? 
Erasure both of pain and bliss ?

I've heard of heavenI would believe; 
For if this earth indeed be all, 
Who longest lives may deepest grieve, 
Most blest, whom sorrows soonest call.


Oh ! leaving disappointment here, 
Will man find hope on yonder coast ? 
Hope, which, on earth, shines never clear, 
And oft in clouds is wholly lost.


Will he hope's source of light behold, 
Fruition's spring, where doubts expire, 
And drink, in waves of living gold, 
Contentment, full, for long desire ?

Will he find bliss, which here he dreamed ? 
Rest, which was weariness on earth ? 
Knowledge, which, if o'er life it beamed, 
Served but to prove it void of worth ?

Will he find love without lust's leaven, 
Love fearless, tearless, perfect, pure, 
To all with equal bounty given, 
In all, unfeigned, unfailing, sure ? 

Will he, from penal sufferings free, 
Released from shroud and wormy clod, 
All calm and glorious, rise and see 
Creation's SireExistence' God ?

Then, glancing back on Time's brief woes, 
Will he behold them, fading, fly; 
Swept from Eternity's repose, 
Like sullying cloud, from pure blue sky ?

If soendure, my weary frame; 
And when thy anguish strikes too deep, 
And when all troubled burns life's flame,
Think of the quiet, final sleep;

Think of the glorious waking-hour, 
Which will not dawn on grief and tears, 
But on a ransomed spirit's power, 
Certain, and free from mortal fears.


Seek now thy couch, and lie till morn, 
Then from thy chamber, calm, descend, 
With mind nor tossed, nor anguish-torn, 
But tranquil, fixed, to wait the end.


And when thy opening eyes shall see
Mementos, on the chamber wall,
Of one who has forgotten thee,
Shed not the tear of acrid gall.
 

The tear which, welling from the heart, 
Burns where its drop corrosive falls, 
And makes each nerve, in torture, start, 
At feelings it too well recalls:

When the sweet hope of being loved, 
Threw Eden sunshine on life's way; 
When every sense and feeling proved 
Expectancy of brightest day.


When the hand trembled to receive 
A thrilling clasp, which seemed so near, 
And the heart ventured to believe,
Another heart esteemed it dear.


When words, half love, all tenderness, 
Were hourly heard, as hourly spoken, 
When the long, sunny days of bliss, 
Only by moonlight nights were broken.


Till drop by drop, the cup of joy 
Filled full, with purple light, was glowing, 
And Faith, which watched it, sparkling high, 
Still never dreamt the overflowing.


It fell not with a sudden crashing, 
It poured not out like open sluice; 
No, sparkling still, and redly flashing, 
Drained, drop by drop, the generous juice.
 

I saw it sink, and strove to taste it, 
My eager lips approached the brim; 
The movement only seemed to waste it, 
It sank to dregs, all harsh and dim.


These I have drank, and they for ever 
Have poisoned life and love for me; 
A draught from Sodom's lake could never 
More fiery, salt, and bitter, be.


Oh ! Love was all a thin illusion; 
Joy, but the desert's flying stream; 
And, glancing back on long delusion,
My memory grasps a hollow dream.


Yet, whence that wondrous change of feeling, 
I never knew, and cannot learn, 
Nor why my lover's eye, congealing, 
Grew cold, and clouded, proud, and stern.


Nor wherefore, friendship's forms forgetting, 
He careless left, and cool withdrew; 
Nor spoke of grief, nor fond regretting, 
Nor even one glance of comfort threw.


And neither word nor token sending,
Of kindness, since the parting day,
His course, for distant regions bending,
Went, self-contained and calm, away.
 

Oh, bitter, blighting, keen sensation, 
Which will not weaken, cannot die, 
Hasten thy work of desolation, 
And let my tortured spirit fly !

Vain as the passing gale, my crying; 
Though lightning-struck, I must live on; 
I know, at heart, there is no dying 
Of love, and ruined hope, alone.


Still strong, and young, and warm with vigour, 
Though scathed, I long shall greenly grow, 
And many a storm of wildest rigour 
Shall yet break o'er my shivered bough.


Rebellious now to blank inertion, 
My unused strength demands a task; 
Travel, and toil, and full exertion, 
Are the last, only boon I ask.


Whence, then, this vain and barren dreaming 
Of death, and dubious life to come ? 
I see a nearer beacon gleaming 
Over dejection's sea of gloom.


The very wildness of my sorrow 
Tells me I yet have innate force; 
My track of life has been too narrow, 
Effort shall trace a broader course.
 

The world is not in yonder tower, 
Earth is not prisoned in that room, 
'Mid whose dark pannels, hour by hour, 
I've sat, the slave and prey of gloom.


One feelingturned to utter anguish, 
Is not my being's only aim; 
When, lorn and loveless, life will languish, 
But courage can revive the flame.


He, when he left me, went a roving
To sunny climes, beyond the sea; 
And I, the weight of woe removing, 
Am free and fetterless as he.


New scenes, new language, skies less clouded,
May once more wake the wish to live; 
Strange, foreign towns, astir, and crowded, 
New pictures to the mind may give.


New forms and faces, passing ever, 
May hide the one I still retain, 
Defined, and fixed, and fading never, 
Stamped deep on vision, heart, and brain.


And we might meettime may have changed him;
Chance may reveal the mystery,
The secret influence which estranged him;
Love may restore him yet to me.
 

False thoughtfalse hopein scorn be banished ! 
I am not lovednor loved have been; 
Recall not, then, the dreams scarce vanished, 
Traitors ! mislead me not again !

To words like yours I bid defiance, 
'Tis such my mental wreck have made; 
Of God alone, and self-reliance, 
I ask for solacehope for aid.


Morn comesand ere meridian glory
O'er these, my natal woods, shall smile, 
Both lonely wood and mansion hoary 
I'll leave behind, full many a mile.

Written by Dorothy Parker |

Ballade at Thirty-five

 This, no song of an ingénue, 
This, no ballad of innocence; 
This, the rhyme of a lady who 
Followed ever her natural bents.
 
This, a solo of sapience, 
This, a chantey of sophistry, 
This, the sum of experiments, -- 
I loved them until they loved me.
 

Decked in garments of sable hue, 
Daubed with ashes of myriad Lents, 
Wearing shower bouquets of rue, 
Walk I ever in penitence.
 
Oft I roam, as my heart repents, 
Through God's acre of memory, 
Marking stones, in my reverence, 
"I loved them until they loved me.
" 

Pictures pass me in long review,-- 
Marching columns of dead events.
 
I was tender, and, often, true; 
Ever a prey to coincidence.
 
Always knew I the consequence; 
Always saw what the end would be.
 
We're as Nature has made us -- hence 
I loved them until they loved me.

Written by Robinson Jeffers |

The Great Explosion

 The universe expands and contracts like a great heart.

It is expanding, the farthest nebulae
Rush with the speed of light into empty space.

It will contract, the immense navies of stars and galaxies,
 dust clouds and nebulae
Are recalled home, they crush against each other in one
 harbor, they stick in one lump
And then explode it, nothing can hold them down; there is no
 way to express that explosion; all that exists
Roars into flame, the tortured fragments rush away from each 
 other into all the sky, new universes
Jewel the black breast of night; and far off the outer nebulae 
 like charging spearmen again
Invade emptiness.

 No wonder we are so fascinated with 
 fireworks
And our huge bombs: it is a kind of homesickness perhaps for
 the howling fireblast that we were born from.


But the whole sum of the energies
That made and contain the giant atom survives.
 It will 
 gather again and pile up, the power and the glory--
And no doubt it will burst again; diastole and systole: the 
 whole universe beats like a heart.

Peace in our time was never one of God's promises; but back 
 and forth, live and die, burn and be damned,
The great heart beating, pumping into our arteries His 
 terrible life.

 He is beautiful beyond belief.

And we, God's apes--or tragic children--share in the beauty.

 We see it above our torment, that's what life's for.

He is no God of love, no justice of a little city like Dante's
 Florence, no anthropoid God
Making commandments,: this is the God who does not care
 and will never cease.
 Look at the seas there
Flashing against this rock in the darkness--look at the
 tide-stream stars--and the fall of nations--and dawn
Wandering with wet white feet down the Caramel Valley to
 meet the sea.
 These are real and we see their beauty.

The great explosion is probably only a metaphor--I know not
 --of faceless violence, the root of all things.

Written by Robert William Service |

At Eighty Years

 As nothingness draws near
 How I can see
Inexorably clear
 My vanity.

My sum of worthiness
 Always so small,
Dwindles from less to less
 To none at all.


As grisly destiny
 Claims me at last,
How grievous seem to me
 Sins of my past!
How keen a conscience edge
 Can come to be!
How pitiless the dredge
 Of memory!

Ye proud ones of the earth
 Who count your gains,
What cherish you of worth
 For all your pains?
E'er death shall slam the door,
 Will you, like me,
Face fate and count the score--
 FUTILITY.

Written by William Wordsworth |

EXPOSTULATION AND REPLY

  "Why, William, on that old grey stone,
  Thus for the length of half a day,
  Why, William, sit you thus alone,
  And dream your time away?"

  "Where are your books? that light bequeath'd
  To beings else forlorn and blind!
  Up! Up! and drink the spirit breath'd
  From dead men to their kind.
"

  "You look round on your mother earth,
  As if she for no purpose bore you;
  As if you were her first-born birth,
  And none had lived before you!"

  One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake,
  When life was sweet, I knew not why,
  To me my good friend Matthew spake,
  And thus I made reply.

  "The eye it cannot chuse but see,
  We cannot bid the ear be still;
  Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
  Against, or with our will.
"

  "Nor less I deem that there are powers
  Which of themselves our minds impress,
  That we can feed this mind of ours
  In a wise passiveness.
"

  "Think you, mid all this mighty sum
  Of things for ever speaking,
  That nothing of itself will come,
  But we must still be seeking?"

  "—Then ask not wherefore, here, alone,
  Conversing as I may,
  I sit upon this old grey stone,
  And dream my time away.
"

Written by George (Lord) Byron |

Prometheus

 Titan! to whose immortal eyes 
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.


Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refus'd thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift Eternity
Was thine--and thou hast borne it well.

All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.


Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself--and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concenter'd recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.