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Famous Melancholic Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Tebb, Barry
...ife -

May he rest in peace.





I can’t remember what angered me

About Geoffrey Hill, quite funny

In a nervous, melancholic way,

A mask you wouldn’t get behind.



Harrison and I were close for years

But it sort of faded when he wrote

He wanted to hear no more

Of my personal life.

I went to his reading in Galway

Where he walked in his cosy regalia

Crossed the length of the bar

To embrace me, manic about the necessity

Of doing big shows in the Balkans....Read more of this...



by Milton, John
...ions well imitated. Nor is
Nature wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion: for
so in Physic things of melancholic hue and quality are us'd against
melancholy, sowr against sowr, salt to remove salt humours.
Hence Philosophers and other gravest Writers, as Cicero, Plutarch
and others, frequently cite out of Tragic Poets, both to adorn and
illustrate thir discourse. The Apostle Paul himself thought it not
unworthy to insert a verse of Euripides into th...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...far'd *behaviour 
Not only like the lovers' malady
Of Eros, but rather y-like manie* *madness
Engender'd of humours melancholic,
Before his head in his cell fantastic.
And shortly turned was all upside down,
Both habit and eke dispositioun,
Of him, this woful lover Dan* Arcite. *Lord 
Why should I all day of his woe indite?
When he endured had a year or two
This cruel torment, and this pain and woe,
At Thebes, in his country, as I said,
Upon a night in sle...Read more of this...

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