Famous Malady Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Severer Service of myself

by Emily Dickinson
 Severer Service of myself
I -- hastened to demand
To fill the awful Vacuum
Your life had left behind --

I worried Nature with my Wheels
When Hers had ceased to run --
When she had put away Her Work
My own had just begun.

I strove to weary Brain and Bone --
To harass to fatigue
The glittering Retinue of nerves --
Vitality to clog

To some dull comfort Those...Read more of this...

Pilates Wifes Dream

by Charlotte Bronte
 I've quenched my lamp, I struck it in that start
Which every limb convulsed, I heard it fall­
The crash blent with my sleep, I saw depart
Its light, even as I woke, on yonder wall;
Over against my bed, there shone a gleam
Strange, faint, and mingling also with my dream. 

It sunk, and I am wrapt in utter gloom; 
How far is...Read more of this...

The three tailors

by Eugene Field
 I shall tell you in rhyme how, once on a time,
Three tailors tramped up to the inn Ingleheim,
On the Rhine, lovely Rhine;
They were broke, but the worst of it all, they were curst
With that malady common to tailors--a thirst
For wine, lots of wine.

"Sweet host," quoth the three, "we're hard up as can be,
Yet skilled in the practice of cunning...Read more of this...

Alas! when the lead of illness flowed

by Emile Verhaeren
Alas! when the lead of illness flowed in my benumbed veins with my heavy, sluggish blood, with my blood day by day heavier and more sluggish;
When my eyes, my poor eyes, followed peevishly on my long, pale hands the fatal marks of insidious malady;
When my skin dried up like bark, and I had no longer even strength enough to press...Read more of this...

Elegy VII

by John Donne
 Nature's lay idiot, I taught thee to love,
And in that sophistry, Oh, thou dost prove
Too subtle: Foole, thou didst not understand
The mystic language of the eye nor hand:
Nor couldst thou judge the difference of the air
Of sighs, and say, This lies, this sounds despair:
Nor by th' eyes water call a malady
Desperately hot, or changing feverously.
I had not taught thee,...Read more of this...

Common Cold

by Ogden Nash
 Go hang yourself, you old M.D.! 
You shall not sneer at me. 
Pick up your hat and stethoscope, 
Go wash your mouth with laundry soap; 
I contemplate a joy exquisite 
I'm not paying you for your visit. 
I did not call you to be told 
My malady is a common cold. 

By pounding brow and swollen lip; 
By fever's...Read more of this...

Sorrow

by D. H. Lawrence
 Why does the thin grey strand 
Floating up from the forgotten 
Cigarette between my fingers, 
Why does it trouble me? 

Ah, you will understand;
When I carried my mother downstairs,
A few times only, at the beginning 
Of her soft-foot malady, 

I should find, for a reprimand
To my gaiety, a few long grey hairs
On the breast of my coat; and one...Read more of this...

Poem 97

by Edmund Spenser
 THe wanton boy was shortly wel recured,
of that his malady:
But he soone after fresh againe enured,
his former cruelty.
And since that time he wounded hath my selfe
with his sharpe dart of loue:
And now forgets the cruell carelesse elfe,
his mothers heast to proue.
So now I languish till he please,
my pining anguish to appease....Read more of this...

Sonnet L

by Edmund Spenser
 LOng languishing in double malady,
of my harts wound and of my bodies greife:
there came to me a leach that would apply
fit medicines for my bodies best reliefe.
Vayne man (quod I) that hast but little priefe:
in deep discouery of the mynds disease,
is not the hart of all the body chiefe?
and rules the members as it selfe doth please.
Then with some...Read more of this...

The Fortune-Teller a Gypsy Tale

by Mary Darby Robinson
 LUBIN and KATE, as gossips tell,
Were Lovers many a day;
LUBIN the damsel lov'd so well,
That folks pretend to say
The silly, simple, doting Lad,
Was little less than loving mad:
A malady not known of late--
Among the little-loving Great!

KATE liked the youth; but woman-kind
Are sometimes giv'n to range.
And oft, the giddy Sex, we find,
(They know not why)
When most they promise, soonest change,
And...Read more of this...

They say that Time assuages --

by Emily Dickinson
 They say that "Time assuages" --
Time never did assuage --
An actual suffering strengthens
As Sinews do, with age --

Time is a Test of Trouble --
But not a Remedy --
If such it prove, it prove too
There was no Malady --...Read more of this...

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