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Famous Defeat Poems by Famous Poets

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

The City That Will Not Repent

by Vachel Lindsay

 Climbing the heights of Berkeley 
Nightly I watch the West. 
There lies new San Francisco, 
Sea-maid in purple dressed, 
Wearing a dancer's girdle 
All to inflame desire: 
Scorning her days of sackcloth, 
Scorning her cleansing fire. 

See, like a burning city 
Sets now the red sun's dome. 
See, mystic firebrands sparkle 
There on each store and home. 
See how...Read more of this...

Form: Ode

The Lost Battle

by Victor Hugo

 ("Allah! qui me rendra-") 
 
 {XVI., May, 1828.} 


 Oh, Allah! who will give me back my terrible array? 
 My emirs and my cavalry that shook the earth to-day; 
 My tent, my wide-extending camp, all dazzling to the sight, 
 Whose watchfires, kindled numberless beneath the brow of night, 
 Seemed oft unto the sentinel that...Read more of this...

Crows Fall

by Ted Hughes

When Crow was white he decided the sun was too white. 
He decided it glared much too whitely. 
He decided to attack it and defeat it. 

He got his strength flush and in full glitter. 
He clawed and fluffed his rage up. 
He aimed his beak direct at the sun's centre. 

He laughed himself to the centre of himself

And attacked....Read more of this...

Pantheist

by Robert William Service

 Lolling on a bank of thyme
Drunk with Spring I made this rhyme. . . .

Though peoples perish in defeat,
And races suffer to survive,
The sunshine never was so sweet,
So vast he joy to be alive;
The laughing leaves, the glowing grass
Proclaim how good it is to be;
The pines are lyric as I pass,
The hills hosannas sing to me.

Pink roses ring yon...Read more of this...

Late Light

by Philip Levine

 Rain filled the streets 
once a year, rising almost 
to door and window sills, 
battering walls and roofs 
until it cleaned away the mess 
we'd made. My father told 
me this, he told me it ran 
downtown and spilled into 
the river, which in turn 
emptied finally into the sea. 
He said this only once 
while I sat on...Read more of this...

Form: Free verse

The Lifeguard

by James Dickey

 In a stable of boats I lie still,
From all sleeping children hidden.
The leap of a fish from its shadow
Makes the whole lake instantly tremble.
With my foot on the water, I feel
The moon outside

Take on the utmost of its power.
I rise and go our through the boats.
I set my broad sole upon silver,
On the skin of the sky, on the...Read more of this...

At The Executed Murderers Grave

by James Wright

 for J.L.D.

Why should we do this? What good is it to us? Above all,
how can we do such a thing? How can it possibly be done?

 --Freud

1.
My name is James A. Wright, and I was born
Twenty-five miles from this infected grave,
In Martins Ferry, Ohio, where one slave
To Hazel-Atlas Glass became my father.
He tried to teach me kindness. I return
Only...Read more of this...

Carry On

by Robert William Service

 It's easy to fight when everything's right,
 And you're mad with the thrill and the glory;
It's easy to cheer when victory's near,
 And wallow in fields that are gory.
It's a different song when everything's wrong,
 When you're feeling infernally mortal;
When it's ten against one, and hope there is none,
 Buck up, little soldier, and chortle:

Carry on! Carry on!
There isn't...Read more of this...

Adieu to a Soldier

by Walt Whitman

 ADIEU, O soldier! 
You of the rude campaigning, (which we shared,) 
The rapid march, the life of the camp, 
The hot contention of opposing fronts—the long manoeuver, 
Red battles with their slaughter,—the stimulus—the strong, terrific game,
Spell of all brave and manly hearts—the trains of Time through you, and like of you,
 all
 fill’d, 
With war, and war’s expression. 

Adieu,...Read more of this...

My Portion is Defeat -- today --

by Emily Dickinson

 My Portion is Defeat -- today --
A paler luck than Victory --
Less Paeans -- fewer Bells --
The Drums don't follow Me -- with tunes --
Defeat -- a somewhat slower -- means --
More Arduous than Balls --

'Tis populous with Bone and stain --
And Men too straight to stoop again --,
And Piles of solid Moan --
And Chips of Blank -- in...Read more of this...

Loss And Gain

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 When I compare
What I have lost with what I have gained,
What I have missed with what attained,
Little room do I find for pride.

I am aware
How many days have been idly spent;
How like an arrow the good intent
Has fallen short or been turned aside.

But who shall dare
To measure loss and gain in this wise?
Defeat may be victory in disguise;
The lowest...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXXVII

by Francesco Petrarch

SONNET LXXVII. Da' più begli occhi e dal più chiaro viso. HIS ONLY COMFORT IS THE EXPECTATION OF MEETING HER AGAIN IN HEAVEN.  The brightest eyes, the most resplendent faceThat ever shone; and the most radiant hair,[Pg 303]With which nor gold nor sunbeam could compare;The sweetest accent, and a...Read more of this...

When Ure Hero Falls

by Tupac Shakur

when your hero falls from grace
all fairy tales r uncovered
myths exposed and pain magnified
the greatest pain discovered
u taught me 2 be strong
but im confused 2 c u so weak
u said never 2 give up
and it hurts 2 c u welcome defeat

when ure hero falls so do the stars
and so does the perception of tomorrow
without my hero there is only
me alone...Read more of this...

Godwin James

by Edgar Lee Masters

 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...Read more of this...

The Charge of the Second Iowa Cavalry

by Ellis Parker Butler

 Comrades, many a year and day
 Have fled since that glorious 9th of May
 When we made the charge at Farmington.
 But until our days on earth are done
 Our blood will burn and our hearts beat fast
 As we tell of the glorious moments we passed,
 When we rode on the guns with a mighty shout
 And saved...Read more of this...

A Song of Defeat

by G K Chesterton

 The line breaks and the guns go under, 
The lords and the lackeys ride the plain; 
I draw deep breaths of the dawn and thunder, 
And the whole of my heart grows young again. 
For our chiefs said 'Done,' and I did not deem it; 
Our seers said 'Peace,' and it was not peace; 
Earth will grow worse till...Read more of this...

Imagining Defeat

by David Berman

 She woke me up at dawn,
her suitcase like a little brown dog at her heels.

I sat up and looked out the window
at the snow falling in the stand of blackjack trees.

A bus ticket in her hand.

Then she brought something black up to her mouth,
a plum I thought, but it was an asthma inhaler.

I reached under the bed for my...Read more of this...

Lincoln

by John Gould Fletcher

 I 

Like a gaunt, scraggly pine 
Which lifts its head above the mournful sandhills; 
And patiently, through dull years of bitter silence, 
Untended and uncared for, starts to grow. 

Ungainly, labouring, huge, 
The wind of the north has twisted and gnarled its branches; 
Yet in the heat of midsummer days, when thunderclouds ring the horizon, 
A nation of men...Read more of this...

The biggest defeat

by Ehsan Sehgal

"Do not create things that make some-one doubtful and show wrong direction.
No matter you are doing that in good sense, but you are making yourself, untrusted, miner and bad person. Placing or setting the seeds of doubts in the mind of your friends, your lover or any person means you are pushing them away from your own relationships. In this...Read more of this...

Grieve not at coming ill, you can't defeat it,

by Omar Khayyam

Grieve not at coming ill, you can't defeat it,
And what far-sighted person goes to meet it?
Cheer up! bear not about a world of grief,
Your fate is fixed, and grieving will not cheat it....Read more of this...

Sonnet II

by Alan Seeger

 Her courts are by the flux of flaming ways, 
Between the rivers and the illumined sky 
Whose fervid depths reverberate from on high 
Fierce lustres mingled in a fiery haze. 
They mark it inland; blithe and fair of face 
Her suitors follow, guessing by the glare 
Beyond the hilltops in the evening air 
How bright the cressets at her...Read more of this...

Hurt Hawks

by Robinson Jeffers

 I

The broken pillar of the wing jags from the clotted shoulder,
The wing trails like a banner in defeat, 

No more to use the sky forever but live with famine
And pain a few days: cat nor coyote
Will shorten the week of waiting for death, there is game without talons.

He stands under the oak-bush and waits 
The lame feet of salvation;...Read more of this...

The Old Chimaeras. Old Recipts

by Robert Louis Stevenson

 THE old Chimaeras, old receipts
For making "happy land,"
The old political beliefs
Swam close before my hand.

The grand old communistic myths
In a middle state of grace,
Quite dead, but not yet gone to Hell,
And walking for a space,

Quite dead, and looking it, and yet
All eagerness to show
The Social-Contract forgeries
By Chatterton - Rousseau -

A hundred such as these I tried,
And hundreds after that,
I...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXXXI