Famous Despairs Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Despairs poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous despairs poems. These examples illustrate what a famous despairs poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Emily Brontë
When weary with the long day's care,
And earthly change from pain to pain,
And lost and ready to despair,
Thy kind voice calls me back again:
Oh, my true friend! I am not lone,
While thou canst speak with such a tone!
So hopeless is the world without;
The world within I doubly prize;
Thy world, where guile, and hate, and doubt,
And cold suspicion never...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
The short hour's halt is ended,
The red gone from the west,
The broken wheel is mended,
And the dead men laid to rest.
Three days have we retreated
The brave old Curse-and-Grin –
Outnumbered and defeated –
Fall in, my men, fall in.
Poor weary, hungry sinners,
Past caring and past fear,
The camp-fires of the winners
Are...Read more of this...
by
Michael Drayton
An evil spirit, your beauty haunts me still,
Wherewith, alas, I have been long possest,
Which ceaseth not to tempt me to each ill,
Nor gives me once but one poor minute's rest;
In me it speaks, whether I sleep or wake,
And when by means to drive it out I try,
With greater torments then it me doth...Read more of this...
by
Anne Kingsmill Finch
[Silvia] Pretty Nymph! within this Shade,
Whilst the Flocks to rest are laid,
Whilst the World dissolves in Heat,
Take this cool, and flow'ry Seat:
And with pleasing Talk awhile
Let us two the Time beguile;
Tho' thou here no Shepherd see,
To encline his humble Knee,
Or with melancholy Lays
Sing thy dangerous Beauty's Praise.
[Dorinda] Nymph! with thee I here...Read more of this...
by
Charles Baudelaire
AN we suppress the old Remorse
Who bends our heart beneath his stroke,
Who feeds, as worms feed on the corse,
Or as the acorn on the oak?
Can we suppress the old Remorse?
Ah, in what philtre, wine, or spell,
May we drown this our ancient foe,
Destructive glutton, gorging well,
Patient as the ants, and slow?
What...Read more of this...
by
Delmore Schwartz
"Poet and veteran of childhood, look!
See in me the obscene, for you have love,
For you have hatred, you, you must be judge,
Deliver judgement, Delmore Schwartz.
Well-known wishes have been to war,
The vicious mouth has chewed the vine.
The patient crab beneath the shirt
Has charmed such interests as Indies meant.
For I have walked within and seen each sea,
The fish that flies, the...Read more of this...
by
Mary Shelley
Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried,
What hell it is——
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares,
To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs;
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone....Read more of this...
by
Edgar Allan Poe
Of all who hail thy presence as the morning-
Of all to whom thine absence is the night-
The blotting utterly from out high heaven
The sacred sun- of all who, weeping, bless thee
Hourly for hope- for life- ah! above all,
For the resurrection of deep-buried faith
In Truth- in Virtue- in Humanity-
Of all who, on Despair's unhallowed bed
Lying down to die, have suddenly...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
A heavy heart, Beloved, have I borne
From year to year until I saw thy face,
And sorrow after sorrow took the place
Of all those natural joys as lightly worn
As the stringed pearls, each lifted in its turn
By a beating heart at dance-time. Hopes apace
Were changed to long despairs, till God's own grace
Could scarcely lift above the world forlorn
My heavy heart....Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Despair's advantage is achieved
By suffering -- Despair --
To be assisted of Reverse
One must Reverse have bore --
The Worthiness of Suffering like
The Worthiness of Death
Is ascertained by tasting --
As can no other Mouth
Of Savors -- make us conscious --
As did ourselves partake --
Affliction feels impalpable
Until Ourselves are struck --...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SESTINA VII. Non ha tanti animali il mar fra l' onde. HE DESPAIRS OF ESCAPE FROM THE TORMENTS BY WHICH HE IS SURROUNDED. Nor Ocean holds such swarms amid his waves,Not overhead, where circles the pale moon,Were stars so numerous ever seen by night,Nor dwell so many birds among the woods,Read more of this...
by
Michael Drayton
Taking my pen, with words to cast my woe,
Duly to count the sum of all my cares,
I find my griefs innumerable grow,
The reckonings rise to millions of despairs;
And thus dividing of my fatal hours,
The payments of my love I read and cross,
Subtracting, set my sweets unto my sours,
My joy's arrearage leads me...Read more of this...
by
Michael Drayton
An evil spirit, your beauty, haunts me still,
Wherewith, alas, I have been long possess'd,
Which ceaseth not to tempt me to each ill,
Nor gives me once but one poor minute's rest.
In me it speaks, whether I sleep or wake;
And when by means to drive it out I try,
With greater torments then it me doth take,
And tortures me in most extremity.
Before...Read more of this...
by
Ben Jonson
To draw no envy, Shakespeare, on thy name
Am I thus ample to thy book and fame;
While I confess thy writings to be such
As neither Man nor Muse can praise too much.
'Tis true, and all men's suffrage. But these ways
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise;
For silliest ignorance on these may light,
Which when it sounds at best but...Read more of this...
by
John Keats
MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, 5
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-wing¨¨d Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Christ's humiliation, exaltation, and triumph.
Phil. 2:8,9; Mark 15:20,24,29; Col. 2:15.
The mighty frame of glorious grace,
That brightest monument of praise
That e'er the God of love designed,
Employs and fills my lab'ring mind.
Begin, my soul, the heav'nly song,
A burden for an angel's tongue:
When Gabriel sounds these awful things,
He tunes and summons all his stungs.
Proclaim inimitable love:
Jesus, the Lord of worlds above,
Puts...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
Wordsworth, thy music like a river rolls
Among the mountains, and thy song is fed
By living springs far up the watershed;
No whirling flood nor parching drought controls
The crystal current: even on the shoals
It murmurs clear and sweet; and when its bed
Darkens below mysterious cliffs of dread,
Thy voice of peace grows deeper in our souls.
But...Read more of this...
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