Famous Bitterest Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Bitterest poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous bitterest poems. These examples illustrate what a famous bitterest poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Robert William Service
Don't cheer, damn you! Don't cheer!
Silence! Your bitterest tear
Is fulsomely sweet to-day. . . .
Down on your knees and pray.
See, they sing as they go,
Marching row upon row.
Who will be spared to return,
Sombre and starkly stern?
Chaps whom we knew - s0 strange,
Distant and dark with change;
Silent as those they slew,
Something in them dead too.
Who will return this way,
To sing...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
My hand, a little raised, might press a star-
Where I may look, the frosted peaks are spun,
So shaped before Olympus was begun,
Spanned each to each, now, by a silver bar.
Thus to face Beauty have I traveled far,
But now, as if around my heart were run
Hard, lacing fingers, so I stand undone.
Of all my tears, the bitterest these are.
Who humbly...Read more of this...
by
Charlotte Bronte
Lough, vessel, plough the British main,
Seek the free ocean's wider plain;
Leave English scenes and English skies,
Unbind, dissever English ties;
Bear me to climes remote and strange,
Where altered life, fast-following change,
Hot action, never-ceasing toil,
Shall stir, turn, dig, the spirit's soil;
Fresh roots shall plant, fresh seed shall sow,
Till a new garden there shall grow,
Cleared of...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
What was the blackest sight to me
Of all that campaign?
A naked woman tied to a tree
With jagged holes where her breasts should be,
Rotting there in the rain.
On we pressed to the battle fray,
Dogged and dour and spent.
Sudden I heard my Captain say:
"Voilà! Kultur has passed this way,
And left us a monument."
So I looked and I saw our Colonel there,
And...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
'Twas in the year of 1650, and on the twenty-first of May,
The city of Edinburgh was put into a state of dismay
By the noise of drums and trumpets, which on the air arose,
That the great sound attracted the notice of Montrose.
Who enquired at the Captain of the guard the cause of it,
Then the officer told him, as he...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
What man has not betrayed
Some sacred trust?
If haply you are made
Of honest dust,
Vaunt not of glory due,
Of triumph won:
Think, think of duties you
Have left undone.
But if in mercy hope,
Despite your sin,
The gates of Heaven ope'
To let you in:
Pray, pray that when God reads
Your judgement due,
He may forget good deeds
You did not...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
If Mary had known
When she held her Babe's hands in her own
Little hands that were tender and white as a rose,
All dented with dimples from finger to wrist,
Such as mothers have kissed
That one day they must feel the fierce blows
Of a hatred insane,
Must redden with holiest stain,
And grasp as their guerdon the boon of the bitterest pain,
Oh, I think...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
WHEN I peruse the conquer’d fame of heroes, and the victories of mighty generals, I
do not
envy
the generals,
Nor the President in his Presidency, nor the rich in his great house;
But when I hear of the brotherhood of lovers, how it was with them,
How through life, through dangers, odium, unchanging, long and long,
Through youth,...Read more of this...
by
Robert Browning
I
My love, this is the bitterest, that thou
Who art all truth and who dost love me now
As thine eyes say, as thy voice breaks to say—
Shouldst love so truly and couldst love me still
A whole long life through, had but love its will,
Would death that leads me from thee brook delay!
II
I have but to be by thee, and...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
I think that the bitterest sorrow or pain
Of love unrequited, or cold death’s woe,
Is sweet, compared to that hour when we know
That some grand passion is on the wane.
When we see that the glory, and glow, and grace
Which lent a splendour to night and day,
Are surely fading, and showing grey
And dull groundwork of the commonplace.
When fond expressions...Read more of this...
by
George (Lord) Byron
I speak not, I trace not, I breathe not thy name;
There is grief in the sound, there is guilt in the fame;
But the tear that now burns on my cheek may impart
The deep thoughts that dwell in that silence of heart.
Too brief for our passion, too long for our peace,
Were those hours - can their joy or their bitterness...Read more of this...
by
Emily Brontë
The moon is full this winter night;
The stars are clear, though few;
And every window glistens bright,
With leaves of frozen dew.
The sweet moon through your lattice gleams
And lights your room like day;
And there you pass, in happy dreams,
The peaceful hours away!
While I, with effort hardly quelling
The anguish in my breast,
Wander about the silent dwelling,
And cannot think of rest....Read more of this...
by
Alexander Pushkin
Bound for your distant home
you were leaving alien lands.
In an hour as sad as I’ve known
I wept over your hands.
My hands were numb and cold,
still trying to restrain
you, whom my hurt told
never to end this pain.
But you snatched your lips away
from our bitterest kiss.
You invoked another place
than the dismal exile of this.
You said, ‘When we meet again,
in the shadow...Read more of this...
by
John Greenleaf Whittier
O Mother Earth! upon thy lap
Thy weary ones receiving,
And o'er them, silent as a dream,
Thy grassy mantle weaving,
Fold softly in thy long embrace
That heart so worn and broken,
And cool its pulse of fire beneath
Thy shadows old and oaken.
Shut out from him the bitter word
And serpent hiss of scorning;
Nor let the storms of yesterday
Disturb his quiet morning.
Breathe over him forgetfulness
Of...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I am poor and old and blind;
The sun burns me, and the wind
Blows through the city gate
And covers me with dust
From the wheels of the august
Justinian the Great.
It was for him I chased
The Persians o'er wild and waste,
As General of the East;
Night after night I lay
In their camps of yesterday;
Their forage was my feast.
For him, with sails...Read more of this...
by
Du Fu
Wagons rumble rumble Hhorses whinny whinny Foot person bow arrow each at waist Father mother wife children go mutual see off Dust dust not see Xianyang bridge Pull clothes stamp foot bar way weep Weep sound directly up strike clouds clouds Road side passerby ask foot person Foot person only say mark down often Some from ten...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
You have become a forge of snow-white fire,
A crucible of molten steel, O France!
Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn
And fade in light for you, O glorious France!
They pass through meteor changes with a song
Which to all islands and all continents
Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame,
Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child,
Nor love, nor youth's...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
The sky is like an envelope,
One of those blue official things;
And, sealing it, to mock our hope,
The moon, a silver wafer, clings.
What shall we find when death gives leave
To read--our sentence or reprieve?
I'm holding it down on God's scrap-pile, up on the ***-end of earth;
O'er me a menace of mountains, a river that...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
It don't sound so terrible -- quite -- as it did --
I run it over -- "Dead", Brain, "Dead."
Put it in Latin -- left of my school --
Seems it don't shriek so -- under rule.
Turn it, a little -- full in the face
A Trouble looks bitterest --
Shift it -- just --
Say "When Tomorrow comes this way --
I shall have...Read more of this...
by
Adrienne Rich
Something spreading underground won't speak to us
under skin won't declare itself
not all life-forms want dialogue with the
machine-gods in their drama hogging down
the deep bush clear-cutting refugees
from ancient or transient villages into
our opportunistic fervor to search
crazily for a host a lifeboat
Suddenly instead of art we're eyeing
organisms traced and stained on cathedral transparencies
cruel blues embroidered purples succinct yellows
a beautiful tumor
•
I...Read more of this...
by
William Butler Yeats
We have cried in our despair
That men desert,
For some trivial affair
Or noisy, insolent sport,
Beauty that we have won
From bitterest hours;
Yet we, had we walked within
Those topless towers
Where Helen waked with her boy,
Had given but as the rest
Of the men and women of Troy,
A word and a jest....Read more of this...
by
Amy Levy
A True Incident of Pre-Revolutionary French History.
Now the lovely autumn morning breathes its freshness in earth's face,
In the crowned castle courtyard the blithe horn proclaims the chase;
And the ladies on the terrace smile adieux with rosy lips
To the huntsmen disappearing down the cedar-shaded groves,
Wafting delicate aromas from their scented finger tips,
And the gallants wave in answer, with their gold-embroidered...Read more of this...
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