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Famous Defeats Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...eign skies, to shroud
Our sun of love whose radiance is so bright.

“Thou art not first? ” Nay, and he who would be
Defeats his own heart’s dearest purpose then.
No truer truth was ever told to thee –
Who has loved most, he best can love again.

If Lippo (and not he alone) has taught
The arts that please thee, wherefore art thou sad?
Since all my vast love-lore to thee is brought,
Look up and smile, my Beppo, and be glad....Read more of this...



by Milton, John
...nnic power, but raging to pursue 
The righteous and all such as honour Truth; 
He all thir Ammunition 
And feats of War defeats 
With plain Heroic magnitude of mind 
And celestial vigour arm'd, 
Thir Armories and Magazins contemns, 
Renders them useless, while 
With winged expedition 
Swift as the lightning glance he executes 
His errand on the wicked, who surpris'd 
Lose thir defence distracted and amaz'd. 

ALL is best, though we oft doubt, 
What th' unsearchable dispos...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...e wolf-worn legions of the caribou.
We smoked our pipes, o'er scenes of triumph dwelling;
 Of deeds of daring, dire defeats, we talked;
And other tales that lost not in the telling,
 Ere to our beds uncertainly we walked.

And so, dear friends, in gentler valleys roaming,
 Perhaps, when on my printed page you look,
Your fancies by the firelight may go homing
 To that lone land that haply you forsook.
And if perchance you hear the silence calling,
 The frozen music...Read more of this...

by Trumbull, John
...still shall teem your empty skull
With vict'ries, when the moon's at full,
Which by transition passing strange
Wane to defeats before the change.
Still shall you steer, on land or ocean,
By like eccentric lunar motion;
Eclips'd in many a fatal crisis,
And dimm'd when Washington arises.


"And see how Fate, herself turn'd traitor,
Inverts the ancient course of nature;
And changes manners, tempers, climes,
To suit the genius of the times!
See, Bourbon forms a gen'rous ...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ws,
Right-echoed of a chime primordial,
On anvils, in the gleaming of God's forge. 

XX 

The prophet of dead words defeats himself:
Whoever would acknowledge and include
The foregleam and the glory of the real,
Must work with something else than pen and ink
And painful preparation: he must work
With unseen implements that have no names,
And he must win withal, to do that work,
Good fortitude, clean wisdom, and strong skill. 

XXI 

To curse the chilled insistence of ...Read more of this...



by Milton, John
...yrannic power, but raging to pursue
The righteous and all such as honour Truth;
He all thir Ammunition
And feats of War defeats
With plain Heroic magnitude of mind
And celestial vigour arm'd, 
Thir Armories and Magazins contemns,
Renders them useless, while
With winged expedition
Swift as the lightning glance he executes
His errand on the wicked, who surpris'd
Lose thir defence distracted and amaz'd.
But patience is more oft the exercise
Of Saints, the trial of thir forti...Read more of this...

by Petrarch, Francesco
...0>Thus through man's breast love's current sweetly pours:Yet still thine absence half the joy defeats,—Alas! my friend, why dim such radiant light? Wollaston....Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...ctually occurred?


And what is Art whereto we press
 Through paint and prose and rhyme--
When Nature in her nakedness
 Defeats us every time?


It is not learning, grace nor gear,
 Nor easy meat and drink,
But bitter pinch of pain and fear
 That makes creation think.


When in this world's unpleasing youth
 Our god-like race began,
The longest arm, the sharpest tooth,
 Gave man control of man;


Till, bruised and bitten to the bone
 And taught by pain and fear,
He learne...Read more of this...

by Padel, Ruth
...Nang fogged up. The men you need
are moral and kill like angels. Passionless. 
No judgement. Judgement defeats us. 
You're choosing between nightmares all the time.
My first tour, we hissed into an encampment 
early afternoon, round two. The new directive,
polio. Inoculating kids. It took a while.
As we left, this old man came up, pulled on our
back-lag jeep-hoods, yacking. We went back.
They'd come behind us, hacked off
all th...Read more of this...

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