Famous Despondent Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Let It Enfold You

by Charles Bukowski
 either peace or happiness,
let it enfold you

when i was a young man
I felt these things were
dumb,unsophisticated.
I had bad blood,a twisted
mind, a pecarious
upbringing.

I was hard as granite,I
leered at the 
sun.
I trusted no man and
especially no
woman.

I was living a hell in
small rooms, I broke
things, smashed things,
walked through glass,
cursed.
I challenged everything,
was continually being
evicted,jailed,in and
out of fights,in and aout
of my mind.
women were something
to...Read more of this...

The Withdrawal

by Robert Lowell
 1
Only today and just for this minute,
when the sunslant finds its true angle,
you can see yellow and pinkish leaves spangle
our gentle, fluffy tree—
suddenly the green summer is momentary...
Autumn is my favorite season—
why does it change clothes and withdraw?

This week the house went on the market—
suddenly I woke up among strangers;
when I go into a room, it moves
with embarrassment, and...Read more of this...

Sonnet IX

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET IX. S' Amor novo consiglio non n' apporta. HE DESCRIBES HIS SAD STATE.  If Love to give new counsel still delay,My life must change to other scenes than these;My troubled spirit grief and terror freeze,Desire augments while all my hopes decay.Thus ever grows my life, by night and day,Despondent,...Read more of this...

Does It Pay?

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 If one poor burdened toiler o’er life’s road, 
Who meets us by the way, 
Goes on less conscious of his galling load, 
Then life, indeed, does pay.

If we can show the troubled heart the gain
That lies always in loss, 
Why, then, we too are paid for all the pain
Of bearing life’s hard cross.

If some despondent soul to hope is...Read more of this...

At His Grave

by Alfred Austin
 LEAVE me a little while alone, 
Here at his grave that still is strown 
With crumbling flower and wreath; 
The laughing rivulet leaps and falls, 
The thrush exults, the cuckoo calls, 
And he lies hush’d beneath. 

With myrtle cross and crown of rose, 
And every lowlier flower that blows, 
His new-made couch is dress’d; 
Primrose and cowslip, hyacinth wild,...Read more of this...

Ad Se Ipsum

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 DEAR sir, good-morrow! Five years back,
When you first girded for this arduous track,
And under various whimsical pretexts
Endowed another with your damned defects,
Could you have dreamed in your despondent vein
That the kind God would make your path so plain?
Non nobis, domine! O, may He still
Support my stumbling footsteps on the hill!...Read more of this...

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