Famous Cure Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Cure poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous cure poems. These examples illustrate what a famous cure poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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VERSES Occasioned by a Young Ladys asking the Author What was a Cure for Love?

by Thomas Godfrey
 From me, my Dear, O seek not to receive
What e'en deep-read Experience cannot give.
We may, indeed, from the Physician's skill
Some Med'cine find to cure the body's ill.
But who e'er found the physic for the soul,
Or made th' affections bend to his controul?
When thro' the blaze of passion objects show
How dark 's the shade! how bright the colours glow!
All the...Read more of this...

A Dialogue Between The Soul And Body

by Andrew Marvell
 Soul
O Who shall, from this Dungeon, raise
A Soul inslav'd so many wayes?
With bolts of Bones, that fetter'd stands
In Feet ; and manacled in Hands.
Here blinded with an Eye ; and there
Deaf with the drumming of an Ear.
A Soul hung up, as 'twere, in Chains
Of Nerves, and Arteries, and Veins.
Tortur'd, besides each other part,1
In a vain Head, and double Heart.

Body
O...Read more of this...

Lilys Menagerie

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [Goethe describes this much-admired Poem, which 
he wrote in honour of his love Lily, as being "designed to change 
his surrender of her into despair, by drolly-fretful images."]

THERE'S no menagerie, I vow,

Excels my Lily's at this minute;

She keeps the strangest creatures in it,
And catches them, she knows not how.

Oh, how they hop, and run, and rave,
And their clipp'd pinions...Read more of this...

Not To Keep

by Robert Frost
 They sent him back to her. The letter came
Saying... And she could have him. And before
She could be sure there was no hidden ill
Under the formal writing, he was in her sight,
Living. They gave him back to her alive
How else? They are not known to send the dead
And not disfigured visibly. His face?
His hands? She had to look, and...Read more of this...

The Cow-Juice Cure

by Robert William Service
 The clover was in blossom, an' the year was at the June,
When Flap-jack Billy hit the town, likewise O'Flynn's saloon.
The frost was on the fodder an' the wind was growin' keen,
When Billy got to seein' snakes in Sullivan's shebeen.

Then in meandered Deep-hole Dan, once comrade of the cup:
"Oh Billy, for the love of Mike, why don't ye sober up?
I've...Read more of this...

Freedom

by Helen Hunt Jackson
 What freeman knoweth freedom? Never he 
Whose father's father through long lives have reigned 
O'er kingdoms which mere heritage attained. 
Though from his youth to age he roam as free 
As winds, he dreams not freedom's ecstacy. 
But he whose birth was in a nation chained 
For centuries; where every breath was drained 
From breasts of slaves which knew...Read more of this...

Song. Mediocrity in love rejected

by Thomas Carew
 GIVE me more love or more disdain ; 
The torrid or the frozen zone 
Bring equal ease unto my pain, 
The temperate affords me none : 
Either extreme of love or hate, 
Is sweeter than a calm estate. 

Give me a storm ; if it be love, 
Like Dana? in that golden shower, 
I swim in pleasure ; if...Read more of this...

Keepe On Your Maske (Version for his Mistress)

by William Strode
 Keepe on your maske and hide your eye
For in beholding you I dye.
Your fatall beauty Gorgon-like
Dead with astonishment doth strike.
Your piercing eyes that now I see
Are worse than Basilisks to me.
Shut from mine eyes those hills of snow,
Their melting vally do not shew:
Those azure paths lead to despaire,
O vex me not, forbear, forbear;
For while I thus in torments dwell
The...Read more of this...

Tennessee Claflin Shope

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I was the laughing-stock of the village,
Chiefly of the people of good sense, as they call themselves --
Also of the learned, like Rev. Peet, who read Greek
The same as English.
For instead of talking free trade,
Or preaching some form of baptism;
Instead of believing in the efficacy
Of walking cracks -- picking up pins the right way,
Seeing the new moon over the...Read more of this...

What Almost Every Woman Knows Sooner Or Later

by Ogden Nash
 Husbands are things that wives have to get used to putting up with.
And with whom they breakfast with and sup with.
They interfere with the discipline of nurseries,
And forget anniversaries,
And when they have been particularly remiss
They think they can cure everything with a great big kiss,
And when you tell them about something awful they have done they just
look unbearably patient...Read more of this...

When All Is Done

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
When all is done, and my last word is said,
And ye who loved me murmur, "He is dead,"
Let no one weep, for fear that I should know,
And sorrow too that ye should sorrow so.
When all is done and in the oozing clay,
Ye lay this cast-off hull of mine away,
Pray not for me, for, after long despair,
The quiet of the grave...Read more of this...

Botany Bay Eclogues 03 - Humphrey And William

by Robert Southey
 (Time, Noon.)


HUMPHREY:

See'st thou not William that the scorching Sun
By this time half his daily race has run?
The savage thrusts his light canoe to shore
And hurries homeward with his fishy store.
Suppose we leave awhile this stubborn soil
To eat our dinner and to rest from toil!


WILLIAM:

Agreed. Yon tree whose purple gum bestows
A ready medicine for the sick-man's woes,
Forms with its shadowy...Read more of this...

The Paradox

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
 I am the mother of sorrows, 
I am the ender of grief; 
I am the bud and the blossom, 
I am the late-falling leaf.

I am thy priest and thy poet, 
I am thy serf and thy king; 
I cure the tears of the heartsick, 
When I come near they shall sing.

White are my hands as the snowdrop; 
Swart are...Read more of this...

XIII. O Time! Who Knowst a Lenient Hand to Lay..

by William Lisle Bowles
 O TIME! who know'st a lenient hand to lay 
Softest on sorrow's wound, and slowly thence, 
(Lulling to sad repose the weary sense) 
Stealest the long-forgotten pang away; 
On Thee I rest my only hope at last, 
And think, when thou hast dried the bitter tear 
That flows in vain o'er all my soul held dear, 
I may look...Read more of this...

The Prologue

by Anne Bradstreet
1

To sing of wars, of captains, and of kings,
Of cities founded, commonwealths begun,
For my mean pen, are too superior things,
And how they all, or each, their dates have run
Let poets, and historians set these forth,
My obscure verse shall not so dim their worth.


2

But when my wond'ring eyes, and envious heart,
Great Bartas' sugared lines do but read o'er,
Fool, I do grudge...Read more of this...

Dire Cure

by William Matthews
 "First, do no harm," the Hippocratic
Oath begins, but before she might enjoy
such balm, the docs had to harm her tumor.
It was large, rare, and so anomalous
in its behavior that at first they mis-
diagnosed it. "Your wife will die of it
within a year." But in ten days or so
I sat beside her bed with hot-and-sour
soup and heard an intern congratulate
her...Read more of this...

With Scindia to Delphi

by Rudyard Kipling
 More than a hundred years ago, in a great battle fought near Delhi,
an Indian Prince rode fifty miles after the day was lost
with a beggar-girl, who had loved him and followed him in all his camps,
on his saddle-bow. He lost the girl when almost within sight of safety.
A Maratta trooper tells the story: --


The wreath of banquet overnight lay...Read more of this...

Power

by Adrienne Rich
 Living in the earth-deposits of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she...Read more of this...

Henry King

by Hilaire Belloc
 The Chief Defect of Henry King
Was chewing little bits of String.
At last he swallowed some which tied
Itself in ugly Knots inside.

Physicians of the Utmost Fame
Were called at once; but when they came
They answered, as they took their Fees,
"There is no Cure for this Disease.

"Henry will very soon be dead.''
His Parents stood about his Bed
Lamenting his Untimely Death,
When Henry, with...Read more of this...

My Cancer Cure

by Robert William Service
 "A year to live," the Doctor said;
"There is no cure," and shook his head.
Ah me! I felt as good as dead.
Yet quite resigned to fate was I,
Thinking: "Well, since I have to die
'Twill be beneath the open sky." 

And so I sought a wildsome wood
Wherein a lonely cabin stood,
And doomed myself to solitude,
And there was no one I would...Read more of this...

The Disturber

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Oh, what shall I do? I am wholly upset;
I am sure I 'll be jailed for a lunatic yet.
I 'll be out of a job—it's the thing to expect
When I 'm letting my duty go by with neglect.
You may judge the extent and degree of my plight
When I 'm thinking all day and a-dreaming all night,
And a-trying my hand at...Read more of this...

A Song On The Baths

by William Strode
 What Angel stirrs this happy Well,
Some Muse from thence come shew't me,
One of those naked Graces tell
That Angels are for beauty:
The Lame themselves that enter here
Come Angels out againe,
And Bodies turne to Soules all cleere,
All made for joy, noe payne.


Heate never was so sweetely mett
With moist as in this shower:
Old men are borne anew by swett
Of its restoring pow'r:
When...Read more of this...

202. On the Death of Robert Dundas Esq. of Arniston

by Robert Burns
 LONE on the bleaky hills the straying flocks
Shun the fierce storms among the sheltering rocks;
Down from the rivulets, red with dashing rains,
The gathering floods burst o’er the distant plains;
Beneath the blast the leafless forests groan;
The hollow caves return a hollow moan.
Ye hills, ye plains, ye forests, and ye caves,
Ye howling winds, and wintry swelling waves!
Unheard, unseen, by human ear...Read more of this...

Benediction

by Charles Baudelaire
 When, by decree of the supreme power,
The Poet appears in this annoyed world,
His mother, blasphemous out of horror
At God's pity, cries out with fists curled:

"Ah! I'd rather You'd will me a snake's skin
Than to keep feeding this monstrous slur!
I curse that night's ephemera are sins
To make my womb atone for pleasure.

"Since You have chosen me from all the brides
To...Read more of this...

Damon The Mower

by Andrew Marvell
 Heark how the Mower Damon Sung,
With love of Juliana stung!
While ev'ry thing did seem to paint
The Scene more fit for his complaint.
Like her fair Eyes the day was fair;
But scorching like his am'rous Care.
Sharp like his Sythe his Sorrow was,
And wither'd like his Hopes the Grass.

Oh what unusual Heats are here,
Which thus our Sun-burn'd Meadows sear!
The Grass-hopper its pipe...Read more of this...

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