Famous Failure Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Failure poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous failure poems. These examples illustrate what a famous failure poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Emily Dickinson
Whoever disenchants
A single Human soul
By failure of irreverence
Is guilty of the whole.
As guileless as a Bird
As graphic as a star
Till the suggestion sinister
Things are not what they are --...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I wonder if successful men
Are always happy?
And do they sing with gusto when
Springtime is sappy?
Although I am of snow-white hair
And nighly mortal,
Each time I sniff the April air
I chortle.
I wonder if a millionaire
Jigs with enjoyment,
Having such heaps of time to spare
For daft employment.
For as I dance the Highland Fling
My glee is muckle,
And...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
For failure I was well equipped
And should have come to grief,
By atavism grimly gripped,
A fool beyond belief.
But lo! the Lord was good to me,
And with a heart to sing,
He gave me to a rare degree
The Gift of Wondering.
I could not play a stalwart part
My shoddy soul to save,
And should have gone with broken heart
...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
THOUGH now thou hast failed and art fallen, despair not because of defeat,
Though lost for a while be thy heaven and weary of earth be thy feet,
For all will be beauty about thee hereafter through sorrowful years,
And lovely the dews for thy chilling and ruby thy heart-drip of tears.
The eyes that had gazed from afar on a beauty that...Read more of this...
by
Denise Levertov
It's when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart:
not to a flower, not to a dolphin,
to no innocent form
but to this creature vainly sure
it and no other is god-like, God
(out of compassion for our ugly
failure to evolve) entrusts,
as...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
THE wind is without there and howls in the trees,
And the rain-flurries drum on the glass:
Alone by the fireside with elbows on knees
I can number the hours as they pass.
Yet now, when to cheer me the crickets begin,
And my pipe is just happily lit,
Believe me, my friend, tho' the evening draws in,
That not all uncontested I sit.
Alone, did I...Read more of this...
by
Oscar Wilde
Is it thy will that I should wax and wane,
Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey,
And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain
Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day?
Is it thy will - Love that I love so well -
That my Soul's House should be a tortured spot
Wherein, like evil paramours, must dwell
The quenchless flame, the...Read more of this...
by
Howard Nemerov
On the long shore, lit by the moon
To show them properly alone,
Two lovers suddenly embraced
So that their shadows were as one.
The ordinary night was graced
For them by the swift tide of blood
That silently they took at flood,
And for a little time they prized
Themselves emparadised.
Then, as if shaken by stage-fright
Beneath the hard moon's bony light,
They stood together on the sand
Embarrassed...Read more of this...
by
Du Fu
Cold wind rise sky end Gentleman thought resemble what? Goose what time come? River lake autumn water much Literature hate fate eminent Demons happy people failure Respond together wronged person language Throw poems give Miluo Cold wind rises at the end of the sky, What thoughts occupy the gentleman's mind? What time will the wild...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:
"Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane --
Strong for the red rage of battle; sane for I harry them sore;
Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core;
Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the...Read more of this...
by
Philip Levine
On March 1, 1958, four deserters from the French Army of North Africa,
August Rein, Henri Bruette, Jack Dauville, & Thomas Delain, robbed a
government pay station at Orleansville. Because of the subsequent
confession of Dauville the other three were captured or shot. Dauville
was given his freedom and returned to the land of his birth, the U.S.A.
AUGUST REIN:...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
He wrote a play; by day and night
He strove with passion and delight;
Yet knew, long ere the curtain drop,
His drama was a sorry flop.
In Parliament he sought a seat;
Election Day brought dire defeat;
Yet he had wooed with word and pen
Prodigiously his fellow men.
And then he wrote a lighter play
That made him famous in a day.
He won a seat in...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
Boanerges Blitzen, servant of the Queen,
Is a dismal failure -- is a Might-have-been.
In a luckless moment he discovered men
Rise to high position through a ready pen.
Boanerges Blitzen argued therefore -- "I,
With the selfsame weapon, can attain as high."
Only he did not possess when he made the trial,
Wicked wit of C-lv-n, irony of L--l.
[Men who spar with Government need, to...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel--
Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens--
But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
Ballades by the score with the same old thought:
The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;
And what is love but a rose that fades?
Life all around me here...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
Alone in Sutton with Fynbos my orange cat
A long weekend of wind and rain drowning
The tumultuous flurry of mid-February blossom
A surfeit of letters to work through, a mountain
Of files to sort, some irritation at the thought
Of travelling to Kentish Town alone when
My mind was flooded with the mellifluous voice
Of Heath-Stubbs on tape reading ‘The Divided Ways’
In memory of Sidney...Read more of this...
by
Rupert Brooke
Because God put His adamantine fate
Between my sullen heart and its desire,
I swore that I would burst the Iron Gate,
Rise up, and curse Him on His throne of fire.
Earth shuddered at my crown of blasphemy,
But Love was as a flame about my feet;
Proud up the Golden Stair I strode; and beat
Thrice on the Gate, and entered with a cry...Read more of this...
by
Philip Larkin
You do not come dramatically, with dragons
That rear up with my life between their paws
And dash me butchered down beside the wagons,
The horses panicking; nor as a clause
Clearly set out to warn what can be lost,
What out-of-pocket charges must be borne
Expenses met; nor as a draughty ghost
That's seen, some mornings, running down a lawn.
It is these sunless afternoons, I...Read more of this...
by
Donald Justice
Turn your head. Look. The light is turning yellow.
The river seems enriched thereby, not to say deepened.
Why this is, I'll never be able to tell you.
Or are Americans half in love with failure?
One used to say so, reading Fitzgerald, as it happened.
(That Viking Portable, all water spotted and yellow--
remember?) Or does mere distance lend a value
to things? --false, it...Read more of this...
by
Jack Gilbert
The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German
Tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers,
A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace.
And yet this poem would lessen that day. Question
The bravery. Say it's not courage. Call it a passion.
Would say courage isn't that. Not at its best.
It was impossib1e, and...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
Jonas Keene thought his lot a hard one
Because his children were all failures.
But I know of a fate more trying than that:
It is to be a failure while your children are successes.
For I raised a brood of eagles
Who flew away at last, leaving me
A crow on the abandoned bough.
Then, with the ambition to prefix Honorable to my name,
And thus...Read more of this...
by
Erica Jong
The poet fears failure
& so she says
"Hold on pen--
what if the critics
hate me?"
& with that question
she blots out more lines
than any critic could.
The critic is only doing his job:
keeping the poet lonely.
He barks
like a dog at the door
when the master comes home.
It's in his doggy nature.
If he didn't know the poet
for the boss,
he wouldn't bark so loud.
& the poet?
It's...Read more of this...
by
Sandra Cisneros
December 24th and we’re through again.
This time for good I know because I didn’t
throw you out — and anyway we waved.
No shoes. No angry doors.
We folded clothes and went
our separate ways.
You left behind that flannel shirt
of yours I liked but remembered to take
your toothbrush. Where are you tonight?
Richard, it’s Christmas Eve again
and old ghosts come back home.
I’m sitting by the...Read more of this...
by
Charles Bukowski
there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day
and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace
those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
You ask me what I call Success -
It is, I wonder, Happiness?
It is not wealth, it is not fame,
Nor rank, nor power nor honoured name.
It is not triumph in the Arts -
Best-selling books or leading parts.
It is not plaudits of the crowd,
The flame of flags, processions proud.
The panegyrics of the Press
are but the mirage of Success.
You may have all...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Much as he left it when he went from us
Here was the room again where he had been
So long that something oh him should be seen,
Or felt—and so it was. Incredulous,
I turned about, loath to be greeted thus,
And there he was in his old chair, serene
As ever, and as laconic as lean
As when he lived, and as cadaverous.
Calm as...Read more of this...
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