Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Hurting Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Shakespeare, William
...o turn white and swoon at tragic shows.

'That not a heart which in his level came
Could 'scape the hail of his all-hurting aim,
Showing fair nature is both kind and tame;
And, veil'd in them, did win whom he would maim:
Against the thing he sought he would exclaim;
When he most burn'd in heart-wish'd luxury,
He preach'd pure maid, and praised cold chastity.

'Thus merely with the garment of a Grace
The naked and concealed fiend he cover'd;
That th' unexperient gave t...Read more of this...



by Gibran, Kahlil
...servation the first law of Nature? Why, then, does Greed urge you to self-sacrifice in order only to achieve his aim in hurting your brothers? Beware, my brother, of the leader who says, "Love of existence obliges us to deprive the people of their rights!" I say unto you but this: protecting others' rights is the noblest and most beautiful human act; if my existence requires that I kill others, then death is more honorable to me, and if I cannot find someone to kill me for th...Read more of this...

by Owen, Wilfred
...e jokes hurled at them. I suppose
Little I'd ever teach a son, but hitting,
Shooting, war, hunting, all the arts of hurting.
Well, that's what I learnt, -- that, and making money.
Your fifty years ahead seem none too many?
Tell me how long I've got? God! For one year
To help myself to nothing more than air!
One Spring! Is one too good to spare, too long?
Spring wind would work its own way to my lung,
And grow me legs as quick as lilac-shoots.
My servant's lame...Read more of this...

by Thomas, R S
...but not three.

What does it mean
life? I am here I am
there. Look! Suddenly
the young tool in their hands
for hurting one another.

And the camera says:
Smile; there is no wound
time gives that is not bandaged
by time. And so they do the 
three of them at me who weep....Read more of this...

by Thomas, R S
...but not three.

What does it mean
life? I am here I am
there. Look! Suddenly
the young tool in their hands
for hurting one another.

And the camera says:
Smile; there is no wound
time gives that is not bandaged
by time. And so they do the 
three of them at me who weep....Read more of this...



by Plath, Sylvia
...s, half their old size.
The lines of the eye, scalded by these bald surfaces,

Boomerang like anchored elastics, hurting the owner.
Is it any wonder he puts on dark glasses?

Is it any wonder he affects a black cassock?
Here he comes now, among the mackerel gatherers

Who wall up their backs against him.
They are handling the black and green lozenges like the parts of a body.

The sea, that crystallized these, 
Creeps away, many-snaked, with a lon...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...eyes from the fire. 
They rock upon the daybreak 
and amputate the waters. 
They are beating the sea, 
they are hurting it, 
delving down into the inscrutable salt. 

* 

When mother left the room 
and left me in the big black 
and sent away my kitty 
to be fried in the camps 
and took away my blanket 
to wash the me out of it 
I lay in the soiled cold and prayed. 
It was a little jail in which 
I was never slapped with kisses. 
I was the engine that could...Read more of this...

by Browning, Elizabeth Barrett
...n in her head
For ever instead.

III.
What art can a woman be good at ? Oh, vain !
What art is she good at, but hurting her breast
With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain ?
Ah boys, how you hurt ! you were strong as you pressed,
And I proud, by that test.

IV.
What art's for a woman ? To hold on her knees
Both darlings ! to feel all their arms round her throat,
Cling, strangle a little ! to sew by degrees
And 'broider the long-clothes and neat li...Read more of this...

by Neruda, Pablo
...estined
to shine,
constant constellation,
round rose of water,
upon
the table
of the poor.

You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone

and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature....Read more of this...

by Lawrence, D. H.
...ger as sets your mouth unwontedly?

Ah, here I sit while you break the music beneath
Your bow; for broken it is, and hurting to hear:
Cease then from music--does anguish of absence bequeath
Me only aloofness when I would draw near?...Read more of this...

by Bachmann, Ingeborg
...t has torn up your mind?

From the precious girl I once loved,

The one so pure and kind.
*****
I know that you are hurting,

You can’t look at me any more;

I know I can help you,

Heal your heart that’s sore.
*****
I know I’m not perfect,

But I really try to be;

I really truly love you,

That you’ve got to see.
*****




I know I’m no studly man,

Big and tall I’m not;

I don’t have much to offer you,

But all the love I got.
*****
We’ve had our share of p...Read more of this...

by Benet, Stephen Vincent
...heaven, 
And she -- 
. . . Then I grow proud; and suddenly 
There comes a splatter of oil against my skin, 
Hurting this time. And I forget my pride: 
And my face writhes. 
Some day the little ladder 
Of white words that I build up, up, to her 
May fetch me out. Meanwhile it isn't bad. . . . 

But what a sense of humor God must have!...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...ing brand.
But I wanted to speak o' your mother that's Lady Gloster still;
I'm going to up and see her, without its hurting the will.
Here! Take your hand off the bell-pull. Five thousand's waiting for you,
If you'll only listen a minute, and do as I bid you do.
They'll try to prove me crazy, and, if you bungle, they can;
And I've only you to trust to! (O God, why ain't it a man? )
There's some waste money on marbles, the same as M'Cullough tried --
Marbles an...Read more of this...

by Belloc, Hilaire
...***
Time will pass,

And the dark sets in;

Laying there wishing,

I could still touch your skin.
*****
Lying there hurting,

I wish I could die;

Missing you so much,

Again I start to cry.
*****





Sometimes I wonder,

If you even know;

The way that I need you,

Would you still go.
*****
I can’t sleep now,

Again a long night;

Are you this lonely,

Do you share in my fright.
*****

Written 09-27-90...Read more of this...

by Mandelstam, Osip
...le.
Where you are, it is still bright.
At the gates of Jerusalem,
a black sun is alight.

The yellow sun is hurting,
sleep, baby, sleep.
The Jews in the Temple’s burning
buried my mother deep.

Without rabbi, without blessing,
over her ashes, there,
the Jews in the Temple’s burning
chanted the prayer.

Over this mother,
Israel’s voice was sung.
I woke in a glittering cradle,
lit by a black sun....Read more of this...

by Strode, William
...nds so amazed at the sight
As when the lightning makes a breach
Through pitchie clouds: can lightning reach
The marrowe hurting not the skynne?
Your eyes to me the same have byn;
Can jett invite the loving strawe
With secrett fire? so those can draw,
And can, where ere they glance a dart,
Make stubble of the strongest hart.
Oft when I looke I may descry
A little face peep through your eye;
Sure 'tis the boy, who wisely chose
His throne among such rayes as those,
Which, if...Read more of this...

by Wheelwright, John
...leep to several
tasks, we gather to despair; we, who assembled
once for hopes from common toil to dreams
or sickish and hurting or triumphal rapture;
always our enemy is our foe at home.
We, deafened with far scattered city rattles
to the hubbub of forest birds (never having
"had time" to grieve or to hear through vivid sleep
the sea knock on its cracked and hollow stones)
so that the stars, almost, and birds comply,
and the garden-wet; the trees retire; We are
a scared p...Read more of this...

by García Lorca, Federico
...leep to several
tasks, we gather to despair; we, who assembled
once for hopes from common toil to dreams
or sickish and hurting or triumphal rapture;
always our enemy is our foe at home.
We, deafened with far scattered city rattles
to the hubbub of forest birds (never having
"had time" to grieve or to hear through vivid sleep
the sea knock on its cracked and hollow stones)
so that the stars, almost, and birds comply,
and the garden-wet; the trees retire; We are
a scared p...Read more of this...

by Owen, Wilfred
...old seems awful: not to renew
My boyhood with my boys, and teach 'em hitting,
Shooting and hunting, -- all the arts of hurting!
-- Well, that's what I learnt. That, and making money.
Your fifty years in store seem none too many;
But I've five minutes. God! For just two years
To help myself to this good air of yours!
One Spring! Is one too hard to spare? Too long?
Spring air would find its own way to my lung,
And grow me legs as quick as lilac-shoots.

Yes, th...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Hurting poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things