Famous Condition Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Condition poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous condition poems. These examples illustrate what a famous condition poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Whitman, Walt
...ls another, or one life countervails another.
All is eligible to all,
All is for individuals—All is for you,
No condition is prohibited—not God’s, or any.
All comes by the body—only health puts you rapport with the universe.
Produce great persons, the rest follows.
4
America isolated I sing;
I say that works made here in the spirit of other lands, are so much poison in The States.
(How dare such insects as we see assume to write poems for Ameri...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...f her trust,
And harshly deal, like an ill borrower,
With that which you received on other terms,
Scorning the unexempt condition
By which all mortal frailty must subsist,
Refreshment after toil, ease after pain,
That have been tired all day without repast,
And timely rest have wanted. But, fair virgin,
This will restore all soon.
LADY. 'T will not, false
traitor!
'T will not restore the truth and honesty
That thou hast banished from thy tongue with lies.
Was...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...>'
'What love,' asked Father Shawn, 'but too great love
Of flawed earth-flesh could cause this sorry pass?
Some damned condition you are in:
Thinking never to have left the world, you grieve
As though alive, shriveling in torment thus
To atone as shade for sin that lured blind man.'
'The day of doom
Is not yest come.
Until that time
A crock of dust is my dear hom.'
'Fond phantom,' cried shocked Father Shawn,
'Can there be such stubbornness--
A soul grown feveri...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...e."
"Sing, if you will—but do not speak so loud;
Besides, such things as these," said fair Mahaud,
"In your condition are not understood."
"Well said," made answer Zeno, "'tis a place
Of wonders—I see serpents, and can trace
Vampires, and monsters swarming, that arise
In mist, through chinks, to meet the gazer's eyes."
Then Mahaud shuddered, and she said: "The wine
The Abbé made me drink as task of mine,
Will soon enwrap me in the soundest ...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...gured street
He left me, with a kind of valediction,
And faded on the blowing of the horn.
III
There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,
Being between two lives—unflowering, between
The live and the dead nettle.Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...h you in Rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful
typewriter
I'm with you in Rockland
where your condition has become serious and
is reported on the radio
I'm with you in Rockland
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit
the worms of the senses
I'm with you in Rockland
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the
spinsters of Utica
I'm with you in Rockland
where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the
harpies of the Bronx
I'm...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...Eve, who thought
Less attributed to her faith sincere,
Thus her reply with accent sweet renewed.
If this be our condition, thus to dwell
In narrow circuit straitened by a foe,
Subtle or violent, we not endued
Single with like defence, wherever met;
How are we happy, still in fear of harm?
But harm precedes not sin: only our foe,
Tempting, affronts us with his foul esteem
Of our integrity: his foul esteem
Sticks no dishonour on our front, but turns
Foul on him...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...f the flames maddens me with pleasure.
O the joy of the strong-brawn’d fighter, towering in the arena, in perfect condition,
conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent.
O the joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human Soul is capable of
generating
and emitting in steady and limitless floods.
4
O the mother’s joys!
The watching—the endurance—the precious love—the anguish—the patiently
yielded life.
O the joy of increase, growth...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...someone someday in this country
Decides to raise a memorial to me,
I give my consent to this festivity
But only on this condition - do not build it
By the sea where I was born,
I have severed my last ties with the sea;
Nor in the Tsar's Park by the hallowed stump
Where an inconsolable shadow looks for me;
Build it here where I stood for three hundred hours
And no-one slid open the bolt.
Listen, even in blissful death I fear
That I will forget the Black Marias,
Forget how ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...ation from labour, comes forth into the open Air, to a
place nigh, somewhat retir'd there to sit a while and bemoan his
condition. Where he happens at length to be visited by certain
friends and equals of his tribe, which make the Chorus, who seek
to comfort him what they can ; then by his old Father Manoa, who
endeavours the like, and withal tells him his purpose to procure his
liberty by ransom; lastly, that this Feast was proclaim'd by the
Philistins as a day of Thanks...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...ng back to the body of which it seems
So unlikely a part, to fence in and shore up the face
On which the effort of this condition reads
Like a pinpoint of a smile, a spark
Or star one is not sure of having seen
As darkness resumes. A perverse light whose
Imperative of subtlety dooms in advance its
Conceit to light up: unimportant but meant.
Francesco, your hand is big enough
To wreck the sphere, and too big,
One would think, to weave delicate meshes
That only argue it...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...tiflings and passages open—the paralyzed become supple,
The swell’d and convuls’d and congested awake to themselves in condition,
They pass the invigoration of the night, and the chemistry of the night, and awake.
21
I too pass from the night,
I stay a while away, O night, but I return to you again, and love you.
Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you?
I am not afraid—I have been well brought forward by you;
I love the rich running day, but I do not dese...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...placid and
self-contain’d;
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied—not one is demented with the mania of owning
things;
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.
S...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...is the principle landholder in Turkey; he governs Magnesia. Those who, by a kind of feudal tenure, possess land on condition of service, are called Timariots; they serve as Spahis, according to the extent of territory, and bring a certain number into the field, generally cavalry.
(8) When a Pacha is sufficiently strong to resist, the single messenger, who is always the first bearer of the order for his death, is strangled instead, and sometimes five or six, one aft...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
....15 But yet laid hold on virtue seemingly:
4.16 Who climbs without hold, climbs dangerously.
4.17 Be my condition mean, I then take pains
4.18 My family to keep, but not for gains.
4.19 If rich, I'm urged then to gather more
4.20 To bear me out i' th' world and feed the poor;
4.21 If a father, then for children must provide,
4.22 But if none, then for kindred near ally'd;
4.23 If Noble, then mine honour to maintain;
4.24 If not,...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...e I have time and space,
Ere that I farther in this tale pace,
Me thinketh it accordant to reason,
To tell you alle the condition
Of each of them, so as it seemed me,
And which they weren, and of what degree;
And eke in what array that they were in:
And at a Knight then will I first begin.
A KNIGHT there was, and that a worthy man,
That from the time that he first began
To riden out, he loved chivalry,
Truth and honour, freedom and courtesy.
Full worthy was he in his...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...e the paines strong
Both of the lover and the prisonere.
I n'ot* which hath the wofuller mistere**. *know not **condition
For, shortly for to say, this Palamon
Perpetually is damned to prison,
In chaines and in fetters to be dead;
And Arcite is exiled *on his head* *on peril of his head*
For evermore as out of that country,
Nor never more he shall his lady see.
You lovers ask I now this question,
Who lieth the worse, Arcite or Palamon?
The one may see his lady...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...h unshaken,
An easy trust assumed of easy trials,
A sick negation born of weak denials,
A crazed abhorrence of an old condition,
A blind attendance on a brief ambition,—
Whatever stayed him or derided him,
His way was even as ours;
And we, with all our wounds and all our powers,
Must each await alone at his own height
Another darkness or another light;
And there, of our poor self dominion reft,
If inference and reason shun
Hell, Heaven, and Oblivion,
May thwarted wi...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...bove a gentleman," may throw light on
the reading here, which is difficult.
THE TALE.
O scatheful harm, condition of poverty,
With thirst, with cold, with hunger so confounded;
To aske help thee shameth in thine hearte;
If thou none ask, so sore art thou y-wounded,
That very need unwrappeth all thy wound hid.
Maugre thine head thou must for indigence
Or steal, or beg, or borrow thy dispence*. *expense
Thou blamest Christ, and sayst full bitterly,
He m...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ad prefer to bigamy;
It liketh them t' be clean in body and ghost;* *soul
Of mine estate* I will not make a boast. *condition
For, well ye know, a lord in his household
Hath not every vessel all of gold; 7
Some are of tree, and do their lord service.
God calleth folk to him in sundry wise,
And each one hath of God a proper gift,
Some this, some that, as liketh him to shift.* *appoint, distribute
Virginity is great perfection,
And continence eke with devotion:
But...Read more of this...
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