Famous Futility Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Futility poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous futility poems. These examples illustrate what a famous futility poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...lips. Then the hovel became empty and nothing was lest save parchments and papers which the poet had strewn with bitter futility.
Hundreds of years later, when the people of the city arose from the diseases slumber of ignorance and saw the dawn of knowledge, they erected a monument in the most beautiful garden of the city and celebrated a feast every year in honor of that poet, whose writings had freed them. Oh, how cruel is man's ignorance!...Read more of this...
by
Gibran, Kahlil
...you of worth
For all your pains?
E'er death shall slam the door,
Will you, like me,
Face fate and count the score--
FUTILITY....Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...In a waste-basket, and with much dry noise
Comes up again, having found Time at the bottom
And filled himself with its futility.
‘Time is at once,’ he says, to startle us,
‘A poison for us, if we make it so,
And, if we make it so, an antidote
For the same poison that afflicted us.’
I’m witness to the poison, but the cure
Of my complaint is not, for me, in Time.
There may be doctors in eternity
To deal with it, but they are not here now.
There’s no specific for my thre...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ent;
you've been dead
28 years
yet I remember you
better than any of
the rest;
you were the only one
who understood
the futility of the
arrangement of
life;
all the others were only
displeased with
trivial segments,
carped
nonsensically about
nonsense;
Jane, you were
killed by
knowing too much.
here's a drink
to your bones
that
this dog
still
dreams about....Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...Oh, I have tried to laugh the pain away,
Let new flames brush my love-springs like a feather.
But the old fever seizes me to-day,
As sickness grips a soul in wretched weather.
I have given up myself to every urge,
With not a care of precious powers spent,
Have bared my body to the strangest scourge,
To soothe and deaden my heart's unhealing rent.
B...Read more of this...
by
McKay, Claude
...Move him into the sun --
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds --
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved, -- still w...Read more of this...
by
Owen, Wilfred
...scarce a soul remembers them save I,
Re-reading them would only give me pain.
So I will sigh, and say with curling lip:
Futility! Thy name is authorship....Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...more painful
as they bowed by turns over
the eye of the toilet bowl
to discharge their shame. Ahead
lay cigarettes, the futility
of guaranteed programs of
exercise, the elaborate lies
of conquest no one believed,
forms of sexual torture and
rejection undreamed of. Ahead
lay our fifteenth birthdays,
acne, deodorants, crabs, salves,
butch haircuts, draft registration,
the military and political victories
of Dwight Eisenhower, who brought us
Richard Nixon with wife and dog.
Any ...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...hough I may say that he is not afraid,
And that it is not for the joy there is
In serving an eternal Ignorance
Of our futility that he is here.
Is that what you and Martha mean by Nothing?
Is that what you are fearing? If that be so,
There are more weeds than lentils in your garden.
And one whose weeds are laughing at his harvest
May as well have no garden; for not there
Shall he be gleaning the few bits and orts
Of life that are to save him. For my part,
I am again ...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...-I'll let
things be what they are, sort of.In the autumn I'll put up jellies
and preserves, against the winter cold and futility,
and that will be a human thing, and intelligent as well.
I won't be embarrassed by my friends' dumb remarks,
or even my own, though admittedly that's the hardest part,
as when you are in a crowded theater and something you say
riles the spectator in front of you, who doesn't even like the idea
of two people near him talking together. Well he's
got...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...ness, and ugliness, and iteration,—
Too meaningless; or, if it has a meaning,
Too tiresomely insistent on one meaning:
Futility . . . This world, I hear you saying,—
With lifted chin, and arm in outflung gesture,
Coldly imperious,—this transient world,
What has it then to give, if not containing
Deep hints of nobler worlds? We know its beauties,—
Momentary and trivial for the most part,
Perceived through flesh, passing like flesh away,—
And know how much outweighed they are ...Read more of this...
by
Aiken, Conrad
...How is your story summed
Now you are old?'
Though golden voice was his,
And fame had he,
He sighed: 'The finish is
--Futility.'
I'm old; I have no wealth
Toil to reward;
Yet for the boon of health
I thank the Lord.
While Beauty I can see,
To live is good;
And so life's crown to me
Is--Gratitude...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
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