Famous Overwhelmed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Second Elegy

by Rainer Maria Rilke
Every angel is terrifying. And yet alas
I invoked you almost deadly birds of the soul
knowing about you. Where are the days of Tobias
when one of you veiling his radiance stood at the front door  
slightly disguised for the journey no longer appalling;
(a young man like the one who curiously peeked through the window).
But if the archangel now perilous from...Read more of this...

Negation

by Wallace Stevens
Hi! The creator too is blind,
Struggling toward his harmonious whole,
Rejecting intermediate parts,
Horrors and falsities and wrongs;
Incapable master of all force,
Too vague idealist, overwhelmed
By an afflatus that persists.
For this, then, we endure brief lives,
The evanescent symmetries
From that meticulous potter's thumb....Read more of this...

To Those Born After

by Bertolt Brecht
 To the cities I came in a time of disorder
That was ruled by hunger.
I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar
And then I joined in their rebellion.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

I ate my dinners between the battles,
I lay down to sleep among the murderers,
I didn't care for much...Read more of this...

Why the Young Men Are So Ugly

by Tony Hoagland
 They have little tractors in their blood
and all day the tractors climb up and down
inside their arms and legs, their
collarbones and heads.

That is why they yell and scream and slam the barbells
down into their clanking slots,
making the metal ring like sledgehammers on iron,
like dungeon prisoners rattling their chains.

That is why they shriek their tires at the stopsign,
why they turn...Read more of this...

The Revenge of Rain-in-the-Face

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 In that desolate land and lone,
Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone
Roar down their mountain path,
By their fires the Sioux Chiefs
Muttered their woes and griefs
And the menace of their wrath. 

"Revenge!" cried Rain-in-the-Face,
"Revenue upon all the race
Of the White Chief with yellow hair!"
And the mountains dark and high
From their crags re-echoed the cry
Of his anger and despair. 

In the meadow,...Read more of this...

During those hours

by Emile Verhaeren
During those hours wherein we are lost so far from all that is not ourselves, what lustral blood or what baptism bathes our hearts that strain towards all love?
Clasping our hands without praying, stretching out our arms without crying aloud, but with earnest and ingenuous mind worshipping something farther off and purer than ourselves, we know not what, how we...Read more of this...

Psalm 142

by Isaac Watts
 God is the hope of the helpless.

To God I made my sorrows known,
From God I sought relief;
In long complaints before his throne
I poured out all my grief.

My soul was overwhelmed with woes,
My heart began to break;
My God, who all my burden knows,
He knows the way I take.

On every side I cast mine eye,
And found my helpers gone;
While friends and...Read more of this...

Finite -- to fail but infinite to Venture --

by Emily Dickinson
 Finite -- to fail, but infinite to Venture --
For the one ship that struts the shore
Many's the gallant -- overwhelmed Creature
Nodding in Navies nevermore --...Read more of this...

On Hearing Of A Death

by Rainer Maria Rilke
 We lack all knowledge of this parting. Death
does not deal with us. We have no reason
to show death admiration, love or hate;
his mask of feigned tragic lament gives us

a false impression. The world's stage is still
filled with roles which we play. While we worry
that our performances may not please, 
death also performs, although to no applause.

But as you left...Read more of this...

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