Famous Gloomy Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Beowulf (Modern English)

...ected,
he then fled, deprived of joys, seeking his death-bed,
the enemy of mankind. And still his mother,
greedy and gloomy, wished to go forth
on a sorrowful journey, to avenge her son’s death. (ll. 1258b-78)

Then she came to Heorot, where the Ring-Danes
slept throughout the hall. At once there came a change
for the noblemen, after Grendel’s mother penetrated inside.
Her terror was lesser by a little bit, just as the strength of women,
war-terrible women is compar...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,


Beowulf (Old English)

...rs the hater of men,
lonely roamer, wrought unceasing,
harassings heavy. O’er Heorot he lorded,
gold-bright hall, in gloomy nights;
and ne’er could the prince {2d} approach his throne,
-- ’twas judgment of God, -- or have joy in his hall.
Sore was the sorrow to Scyldings’-friend,
heart-rending misery. Many nobles
sat assembled, and searched out counsel
how it were best for bold-hearted men
against harassing terror to try their hand.
Whiles they vowed in their heath...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Charmides

...ssed homeward like a shadow, and the dull big drops of rain

Fell on the pattering fig-leaves, up he rose,
And from the gloomy forest went his way
Past sombre homestead and wet orchard-close,
And came at last unto a little quay,
And called his mates aboard, and took his seat
On the high poop, and pushed from land, and loosed the dripping
sheet,

And steered across the bay, and when nine suns
Passed down the long and laddered way of gold,
And nine pale moons had breathed their...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Endymion: Book IV

...ands to him, and behold,
Before three swiftest kisses he had told,
They vanish'd far away!--Peona went
Home through the gloomy wood in wonderment....Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

...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 mouth, with ...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth


Hyperion

...ight cove.
In pale and silver silence they remain'd,
Till suddenly a splendor, like the morn,
Pervaded all the beetling gloomy steeps,
All the sad spaces of oblivion,
And every gulf, and every chasm old,
And every height, and every sullen depth,
Voiceless, or hoarse with loud tormented streams:
And all the everlasting cataracts,
And all the headlong torrents far and near,
Mantled before in darkness and huge shade,
Now saw the light and made it terrible.
It was Hyperion:---a g...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Lara

...th he 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 is his b...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey

...aint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colors and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, not any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

New Hampshire

...e say, received.
I found him standing at the close of day
Inside the threshold of his open barn,
Like a lone actor on a gloomy stage—
And recognized him, through the iron gray
In which his face was muffled to the eyes,
As an old boyhood friend, and once indeed
A drover with me on the road to Brighton.
His farm was "grounds," and not a farm at all;
His house among the local sheds and shanties
Rose like a factor's at a trading station.
And be was rich, and I was still a rascal....Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

Paradise Lost: Book 02

...ugh your spacious empire up to light, 
Alone and without guide, half lost, I seek, 
What readiest path leads where your gloomy bounds 
Confine with Heaven; or, if some other place, 
From your dominion won, th' Ethereal King 
Possesses lately, thither to arrive 
I travel this profound. Direct my course: 
Directed, no mean recompense it brings 
To your behoof, if I that region lost, 
All usurpation thence expelled, reduce 
To her original darkness and your sway 
(Which is my pr...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Poem of Joys

...
15
Yet, O my soul supreme! 
Know’st thou the joys of pensive thought? 
Joys of the free and lonesome heart—the tender, gloomy heart?
Joy of the solitary walk—the spirit bowed yet proud—the suffering and the
 struggle? 
The agonistic throes, the extasies—joys of the solemn musings, day or night? 
Joys of the thought of Death—the great spheres Time and Space? 
Prophetic joys of better, loftier love’s ideals—the Divine Wife—the sweet,
 eternal, perfect Comrade? 
Joys all thine ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Ravenna

...k comes a perfect star!

O much-loved city! I have wandered far
From the wave-circled islands of my home;
Have seen the gloomy mystery of the Dome
Rise slowly from the drear Campagna's way,
Clothed in the royal purple of the day:
I from the city of the violet crown
Have watched the sun by Corinth's hill go down,
And marked the 'myriad laughter' of the sea
From starlit hills of flower-starred Arcady;
Yet back to thee returns my perfect love,
As to its forest-nest the evening d...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Sea Dreams

...and at top
She pointed seaward: there a fleet of glass,
That seem'd a fleet of jewels under me,
Sailing along before a gloomy cloud
That not one moment ceased to thunder, past
In sunshine: right across its track there lay,
Down in the water, a long reef of gold,
Or what seem'd gold: and I was glad at first
To think that in our often-ransack'd world
Still so much gold was left; and then I fear'd
Lest the gay navy there should splinter on it,
And fearing waved my arm to warn t...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Bride of Abydos

...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 songs mus...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Dance Of Death

...about her collar-bones 
As the lascivious streams caress the stones, 
Conceal from every scornful jest that flies, 
Her gloomy beauty; and her fathomless eyes 

Are made of shade and void; with flowery sprays 
Her skull is wreathed artistically, and sways, 
Feeble and weak, on her frail vertebrae. 
O charm of nothing decked in folly! they 

Who laugh and name you a Caricature, 
They see not, they whom flesh and blood allure, 
The nameless grace of every bleached, bare bone, 
...Read more of this...
by Baudelaire, Charles

The Lady of the Lake

...broad,
     And darkened brow, where wounded pride
     With ire and disappointment vied
     Seemed, by the torch's gloomy light,
     Like the ill Demon of the night,
     Stooping his pinions' shadowy sway
     Upon the righted pilgrim's way:
     But, unrequited Love! thy dart
     Plunged deepest its envenomed smart,
     And Roderick, with thine anguish stung,
     At length the hand of Douglas wrung,
     While eyes that mocked at tears before
     With bit...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

...g! buried in the ruins, on Urthona's
dens.
All night beneath the ruins, then their sullen flames faded
emerge round the gloomy king,
With thunder and fire: leading his starry hosts thro' the
waste wilderness [PL 27]he promulgates his ten commands, 
glancing his beamy eyelids over the deep in dark dismay,
Where the son of fire in his eastern cloud, while the
morning plumes her golden breast,
Spurning the clouds written with curses, stamps the stony
law to dust, loosing the ete...Read more of this...
by Blake, William

The Seasons: Winter

...sdains to sing, 
Returning to her nobler Theme in view --

FOR, see! where Winter comes, himself, confest,
Striding the gloomy Blast. First Rains obscure
Drive thro' the mingling Skies, with Tempest foul;
Beat on the Mountain's Brow, and shake the Woods, 
That, sounding, wave below. The dreary Plain
Lies overwhelm'd, and lost. The bellying Clouds
Combine, and deepening into Night, shut up
The Day's fair Face. The Wanderers of Heaven,
Each to his Home, retire; save those that ...Read more of this...
by Thomson, James

The Walk

...eam
That assailed me with horrors so fearful; with life's dreaded phantom,
And with the down-rushing vale, vanished the gloomy one too.
Purer my life I receive again from thine altar unsullied,--
Purer receive the bright glow felt by my youth's hopeful days.
Ever the will is changing its aim and its rule, while forever,
In a still varying form, actions revolve round themselves.
But in enduring youth, in beauty ever renewing.
Kindly Nature, with grace thou dost revere the old ...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von

White Flock

...Crossing her legs that don't feel cold
Upon the northern stone sits she
And calmly looks upon the road.

I felt the gloomy, dusky fear
Before this woman of delight
As on her shoulders played alone
The rays of miserable light.

And how could I forgive her yet
Your shining praise by love deluded
Look, she is happily in sorrow,
And in such elegance denuded.



x x x

In the sleep to me is given
Our last eden of stars up high
City of clean water towers,
Gol...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

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