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Famous Dolorous Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Baudelaire, Charles
...e sins
To make my womb atone for pleasure.

"Since You have chosen me from all the brides
To bear the disgust of my dolorous groom
And since I can't throw back into the fires
Like an old love letter this gaunt buffoon

"I'll replace Your hate that overwhelms me
On the instrument of Your wicked gloom
And torture so well this miserable tree
Its pestiferous buds will never bloom!"

She chokes down the eucharist of venom,
Not comprehending eternal designs,
She prepares a Gehe...Read more of this...



by Wilde, Oscar
...viol, hastily
She bade her pigeons fold each straining plume,
And dropt to earth, and reached the strand, and saw their dolorous
doom.

For as a gardener turning back his head
To catch the last notes of the linnet, mows
With careless scythe too near some flower bed,
And cuts the thorny pillar of the rose,
And with the flower's loosened loneliness
Strews the brown mould; or as some shepherd lad in wantonness

Driving his little flock along the mead
Treads down two daffodil...Read more of this...

by Corso, Gregory
...temples of ancient times
 their grand ruin ceased
 Electrons Protons Neutrons 
 gathering Hersperean hair
 walking the dolorous gulf of Arcady
 joining marble helmsmen
 entering the final ampitheater
 with a hymnody feeling of all Troys
 heralding cypressean torches
 racing plumes and banners
 and yet knowing Homer with a step of grace
 Lo the visiting team of Present
 the home team of Past
 Lyre and tube together joined
 Hark the hotdog soda olive grape
 gala galaxy robed a...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...in his eyes,
That it enforc'd me to bid sad farewell
To all my empire: farewell sad I took,
And hither came, to see how dolorous fate
Had wrought upon ye; and how I might best
Give consolation in this woe extreme.
Receive the truth, and let it be your balm."

 Whether through pos'd conviction, or disdain,
They guarded silence, when Oceanus
Left murmuring, what deepest thought can tell?
But so it was, none answer'd for a space,
Save one whom none regarded, Clymene;
And...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...r deathlike swoon, thus over all that shore,
Save for some whisper of the seething seas,
A dead hush fell; but when the dolorous day
Grew drearier toward twilight falling, came
A bitter wind, clear from the North, and blew
The mist aside, and with that wind the tide
Rose, and the pale King glanced across the field
Of battle: but no man was moving there;
Nor any cry of Christian heard thereon,
Nor yet of heathen; only the wan wave
Brake in among dead faces, to and fro
Swaying ...Read more of this...



by Alighieri, Dante
...est vision to search what came, and he 
 Who marked, indulgent, told. "Ahead we see 
 The city of Dis, with all its dolorous crew, 
 Numerous, and burdened with reliefless pain, 
 And guilt intolerable to think." 

 I said, 
 "Master, already through the night I view 
 The mosques of that sad city, that fiery red 
 As heated metal extend, and crowd the plain." 
 He answered, "These the eternal fire contain, 
 That pulsing through them sets their domes aglow." ...Read more of this...

by Agustini, Delmira
...aurora risingFrom the shadowy bed of night,Exhausted, without splendor, without anxiousness.And her songs are like dolorous fairiesJeweled in teardrops…                          The strings of lyres                          Are the souls' fibers.–The blood of bitter vineyards, noble vineyards,In goblets of regal beauty, risesTo her marble hands, to lips carvedLike the blazon of a great lineage.Strange Princes of Fantasy! TheyHave seen her languid head, once erect...Read more of this...

by Noonuccal, Oodgeroo
...nd buckled, its hell prolonged, 
Whose hung head and listless mien express 
Its hopelessness. 
Municipal gum, it is dolorous 
To see you thus 
Set in your black grass of bitumen-- 
O fellow citizen, 
What have they done to us?...Read more of this...

by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...,
Being by no means from that frigid bosom weaned away,
If only she therewith be given me back?"
I sought her down that dolorous labyrinth,
Wherein no shaft of sunlight ever fell,
And in among the bloodless everywhere
I sought her, but the air,
Breathed many times and spent,
Was fretful with a whispering discontent,
And questioning me, importuning me to tell
Some slightest tidings of the light of day they know no more,
Plucking my sleeve, the eager shades were with me where I...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...first their lamentable lot, and found 
No rest. Through many a dark and dreary vale 
They passed, and many a region dolorous, 
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery alp, 
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death-- 
A universe of death, which God by curse 
Created evil, for evil only good; 
Where all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds, 
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, 
Obominable, inutterable, and worse 
Than fables yet have feigned or f...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...r helped their harm, crushed in and bruised 
Into their substance pent, which wrought them pain 
Implacable, and many a dolorous groan; 
Long struggling underneath, ere they could wind 
Out of such prison, though Spirits of purest light, 
Purest at first, now gross by sinning grown. 
The rest, in imitation, to like arms 
Betook them, and the neighbouring hills uptore: 
So hills amid the air encountered hills, 
Hurled to and fro with jaculation dire; 
That under ground the...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...bliss to the bottomless Deep—
Yet to that hideous place not so confined
By rigour unconniving but that oft,
Leaving my dolorous prison, I enjoy
Large liberty to round this globe of Earth,
Or range in the Air; nor from the Heaven of Heavens
Hath he excluded my resort sometimes.
I came, among the Sons of God, when he
Gave up into my hands Uzzean Job,
To prove him, and illustrate his high worth; 
And, when to all his Angels he proposed
To draw the proud king Ahab into fraud...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...word,' 
Sprang from the door into the dark. The Queen 
Looked hard upon her lover, he on her; 
And each foresaw the dolorous day to be: 
And all talk died, as in a grove all song 
Beneath the shadow of some bird of prey; 
Then a long silence came upon the hall, 
And Modred thought, `The time is hard at hand.'...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...e marble limbs of Artemis and all her company.

And I will tell thee why the jacinth wears
Such dread embroidery of dolorous moan,
And why the hapless nightingale forbears
To sing her song at noon, but weeps alone
When the fleet swallow sleeps, and rich men feast,
And why the laurel trembles when she sees the lightening east.

And I will sing how sad Proserpina
Unto a grave and gloomy Lord was wed,
And lure the silver-breasted Helena
Back from the lotus meadows of the...Read more of this...

by Hood, Thomas
...The bloodhound at his haunches.

The window jingled in its crumbled frame,
And through its many gaps of destitution
Dolorous moans and hollow sighings came,
Like those of dissolution.

The wood-louse dropped, and rolled into a ball,
Touched by some impulse occult or mechanic;
And nameless beetles ran along the wall
In universal panic.

The subtle spider, that, from overhead,
Hung like a spy on human guilt and error,
Suddenly turned, and up its slender thread
Ran w...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...y
Will sicken soon and die,
And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould,
And Hell it self will pass away
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day. 

XV

Yea Truth, and Justice then
Will down return to men,
Th'enameld Arras of the Rain-bow wearing,
And Mercy set between
Thron'd in Celestiall sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down stearing,
And Heav'n as at som festivall,
Will open wide the gates of her high Palace Hall.

XVI

But wisest Fate sayes ...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...deathlike swoon, thus over all that shore, 
Save for some whisper of the seething seas, 
A dead hush fell; but when the dolorous day 
Grew drearier toward twilight falling, came 
A bitter wind, clear from the North, and blew 
The mist aside, and with that wind the tide 
Rose, and the pale King glanced across the field 
Of battle: but no man was moving there; 
Nor any cry of Christian heard thereon, 
Nor yet of heathen; only the wan wave 
Brake in among dead faces, to and fro ...Read more of this...

by Field, Eugene
...edbud and gum and from the redolent lilac,
When from the dirt roads and pikes cometh that calling for Peter;
Cometh the dolorous cry, cometh that weird iteration
Of "Peter" and "Peter" for aye, of "Peter" and "Peter" forever!
This is the legend of old, told in the tum-titty meter
Which the great poets prefer, being less labor than rhyming
(My first attempt at the same, my last attempt, too, I reckon!);
Nor have I further to say, for the sad story is ended....Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...we find the noisy mart and the sound of burial bells. 

Never the golden city, where radiant people meet, 
But the dolorous town where mourners are going about the street. 

We travel the dusty road till the light of the day is dim, 
And sunset shows us spires away on the world's rim. 

We travel from dawn to dusk, till the day is past and by, 
Seeking the Holy City beyond the rim of the sky. 

Friends and loves we have none, nor wealth nor blest abode, 
But ...Read more of this...

by Hood, Thomas
...ags, 
Plying her needle and thread-- 
Stitch! stitch! stitch! 
In poverty, hunger, and dirt, 
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch 
She sang the "Song of the Shirt."

"Work! work! work! 
While the cock is crowing aloof! 
And work — work — work, 
Till the stars shine through the roof! 
It's Oh! to be a slave 
Along with the barbarous Turk, 
Where woman has never a soul to save, 
If this is Christian work!

"Work — work — work 
Till the brain begins to swim; 
Work — wor...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs