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Famous Gloom Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Service, Robert William
...ty's urgency to burst
Into a world for joy athirst,
And so I dare;
And I shall see what none shall see -
December skies gloom over me,
And mock them with my April glee,
And fearless fare.

"And I shall hear what none shall hear -
The hardy robin piping clear,
The Storm King gallop dark and drear
Across the sky;
And I shall know what none shall know -
The silent kisses of the snow,
The Christmas candles' silver glow,
Before I die.

"Then from your frost-gemmed window p...Read more of this...



by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...Bellefontaine, thou hast ever thy jest and thy ballad!
Ever in cheerfullest mood art thou, when others are filled with
Gloomy forebodings of ill, and see only ruin before them.
Happy art thou, as if every day thou hadst picked up a horseshoe."
Pausing a moment, to take the pipe that Evangeline brought him,
And with a coal from the embers had lighted, he slowly continued:--
"Four days now are passed since the English ships at their anchors
Ride in the Gaspereau's mout...Read more of this...

by Tagore, Rabindranath
...path! 

By what dim shore of the ink-black river, 
by what far edge of the frowning forest, 
through what mazy depth of gloom art thou threading 
thy course to come to me, my friend?...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...less eyes,
Wait for the light and music of those suns which never rise.

The quenched-out torch, the lonely cypress-gloom,
The little dust stored in the narrow urn,
The gentle XAIPE of the Attic tomb, -
Were not these better far than to return
To my old fitful restless malady,
Or spend my days within the voiceless cave of misery?

Nay! for perchance that poppy-crowned god
Is like the watcher by a sick man's bed
Who talks of sleep but gives it not; his rod
Hath lost its vi...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...Goddess weeping at his feet:
Until at length old Saturn lifted up
His faded eyes, and saw his kingdom gone,
And all the gloom and sorrow ofthe place,
And that fair kneeling Goddess; and then spake,
As with a palsied tongue, and while his beard
Shook horrid with such aspen-malady:
"O tender spouse of gold Hyperion,
Thea, I feel thee ere I see thy face;
Look up, and let me see our doom in it;
Look up, and tell me if this feeble shape
Is Saturn's; tell me, if thou hear'st the vo...Read more of this...



by Alighieri, Dante
...
 Justice divine has weighed: the doom is clear. 
 All hope renounce, ye lost, who enter here. 
 This scroll in gloom above the gate I read, 
 And found it fearful. "Master, hard," I said, 
 "This saying to me." And he, as one that long 
 Was customed, answered, "No distrust must wrong 
 Its Maker, nor thy cowarder mood resume 
 If here ye enter. This the place of doom 
 I told thee, where the lost in darkness dwell. 
 Here, by themselves divorced from...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...e live!" exclaims the impatient heir, 
And sighs for sables which he must not wear. 
A hundred scutcheons deck with gloomy grace 
The Laras' last and longest dwelling-place; 
But one is absent from the mouldering file, 
That now were welcome to that Gothic pile. 

IV. 

He comes at last in sudden loneliness, 
And whence they know not, why they need not guess; 
They more might marvel, when the greeting's o'er, 
Not that he came, but came not long before: 
No train ...Read more of this...

by Angelou, Maya
...y tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...farther north unto that broken mound, -
There, prisoned now within a lordly tomb
Raised by a daughter's hand, in lonely gloom,
Huge-limbed Theodoric, the Gothic king,
Sleeps after all his weary conquering.
Time hath not spared his ruin, - wind and rain
Have broken down his stronghold; and again
We see that Death is mighty lord of all,
And king and clown to ashen dust must fall

Mighty indeed THEIR glory! yet to me
Barbaric king, or knight of chivalry,
Or the great queen h...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...was theirs, a Margaret, three years old:
They, thinking that her clear germander eye
Droopt in the giant-factoried city-gloom,
Came, with a month's leave given them, to the sea:
For which his gains were dock'd, however small:
Small were his gains, and hard his work; besides,
Their slender household fortunes (for the man
Had risk'd his little) like the little thrift,
Trembled in perilous places o'er a deep:
And oft, when sitting all alone, his face
Would darken, as he cursed h...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...conceive too much of articulation. 

Do you not know, O speech, how the buds beneath you are folded? 
Waiting in gloom, protected by frost; 
The dirt receding before my prophetical screams; 
I underlying causes, to balance them at last;
My knowledge my live parts—it keeping tally with the meaning of things, 
HAPPINESS—which, whoever hears me, let him or her set out in search of this
 day. 

My final merit I refuse you—I refuse putting from me what I really a...Read more of this...

by Angelou, Maya
...trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtine...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...his note is somewhat sad, 
He'll try for once a strain more glad, 
With some faint hope his alter'd lay 
May sing these gloomy thoughts away. 

XI. 

"What! not receive my foolish flower? 
Nay then I am indeed unblest: 
On me can thus thy forehead lower? 
And know'st thou not who loves thee best? 
Oh, Selim dear! oh, more than dearest! 
Say is it me thou hat'st or fearest? 
Come, lay thy head upon my breast, 
And I will kiss thee into rest, 
Since words of mine, and s...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...er beguiling.   Such views the youthful bard allure,  But, heedless of the following gloom,  He deems their colours shall endure  'Till peace go with him to the tomb.  —And let him nurse his fond deceit,  And what if he must die in sorrow!  Who would not cherish dreams so sweet,  Though grief and pain may come to-morrow? LINES  Wri...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...l. 

`Thereafter, the dark warning of our King, 
That most of us would follow wandering fires, 
Came like a driving gloom across my mind. 
Then every evil word I had spoken once, 
And every evil thought I had thought of old, 
And every evil deed I ever did, 
Awoke and cried, "This Quest is not for thee." 
And lifting up mine eyes, I found myself 
Alone, and in a land of sand and thorns, 
And I was thirsty even unto death; 
And I, too, cried, "This Quest is not for...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...While yet a child,—and children know,
     Instinctive taught, the friend and foe,—
     I shuddered at his brow of gloom,
     His shadowy plaid and sable plume;
     A maiden grown, I ill could bear
     His haughty mien and lordly air:
     But, if thou join'st a suitor's claim,
     In serious mood, to Roderick's name.
     I thrill with anguish! or, if e'er
     A Douglas knew the word, with fear.
     To change such odious theme were best,—
     What think'...Read more of this...

by Thomson, James
..., and Storms: Be these my Theme,
These, that exalt the Soul to solemn Thought,
And heavenly musing. Welcome kindred Glooms! 
Wish'd, wint'ry, Horrors, hail! -- With frequent Foot,
Pleas'd, have I, in my cheerful Morn of Life,
When, nurs'd by careless Solitude, I liv'd,
And sung of Nature with unceasing Joy,
Pleas'd, have I wander'd thro' your rough Domains; 
Trod the pure, virgin, Snows, my self as pure:
Heard the Winds roar, and the big Torrent burst:
Or seen the deep, f...Read more of this...

by Carroll, Lewis
...d a carol fresh and free,
He laughed aloud for very glee:
There came a breeze from off the sea: 

It passed athwart the glooming flat -
It fanned his forehead as he sat -
It lightly bore away his hat, 

All to the feet of one who stood
Like maid enchanted in a wood,
Frowning as darkly as she could. 

With huge umbrella, lank and brown,
Unerringly she pinned it down,
Right through the centre of the crown. 

Then, with an aspect cold and grim,
Regardless of its battered...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...others as with steps towards the tomb
Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,
And others mournfully within the gloom
Of their own shadow walked, and called it death ...
And some fled from it as it were a ghost,
Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath.
But more with motions which each other crost
Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw
Or birds within the noonday ether lost,
Upon that path where flowers never grew;
And weary with vain to...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...n tempest-toss'd; 
Fierce and unfathomable thoughts engraved 
Eternal wrath on his immortal face, 
And where he gazed a gloom pervaded space. 

XXV 

As he drew near, he gazed upon the gate 
Ne'er to be enter'd more by him or Sin, 
With such a glance of supernatural hate, 
As made Saint Peter wish himself within; 
He potter'd with his keys at a great rate, 
And sweated through his apostolic skin: 
Of course his perspiration was but ichor, 
Or some such other spiritual liq...Read more of this...

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