Famous Regrets Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Regrets poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous regrets poems. These examples illustrate what a famous regrets poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Wilfred Owen
(Another version of "A Terre".)
To Siegfried Sassoon
My arms have mutinied against me -- brutes!
My fingers fidget like ten idle brats,
My back's been stiff for hours, damned hours.
Death never gives his squad a Stand-at-ease.
I can't read. There: it's no use. Take your book.
A short life and a merry one, my buck!
We said we'd hate to grow dead old. But...Read more of this...
by
T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
Thou hast committed—
Fornication: but that was in another country,
And besides, the wench is dead.
The Jew of Malta.
I
AMONG the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
You have the scene arrange itself—as it will seem to do—
With “I have saved this afternoon for you”;
And four wax candles in the darkened room,
Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,
An atmosphere of Juliet’s...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
I.
Years upon years, as a course of clouds that thicken
Thronging the ways of the wind that shifts and veers,
Pass, and the flames of remembered fires requicken
Years upon years.
Surely the thought in a man's heart hopes or fears
Now that forgetfulness needs must here have stricken
Anguish, and sweetened the sealed-up springs of tears.
Ah, but the strength of regrets that strain and...Read more of this...
by
James Whitcomb Riley
Neglected now is the old guitar
And moldering into decay;
Fretted with many a rift and scar
That the dull dust hides away,
While the spider spins a silver star
In its silent lips to-day.
The keys hold only nerveless strings--
The sinews of brave old airs
Are pulseless now; and the scarf that clings
So closely here declares
A sad regret in its ravelings
And the faded hue it...Read more of this...
by
Charlotte Bronte
"What is this world?thy school, O misery!
"Our only lesson is to learn to suffer."
- YOUNG.
LOVE, thou sportive fickle boy,
Source of anguish, child of joy,
Ever woundingever smiling,
Soothing still, and still beguiling;
What are all thy boasted treasures,
Tender sorrows, transient pleasures?
Anxious hopes, and jealous fears,
LAUGHING HOURS, and MOURNING YEARS.
What is FRIENDSHIP'S soothing...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
I am in continual war with my passions, but what can
I do? The memory of my deeds causes me a thousand
regrets, but what can I do? I admit that in Thy clemency
Thou mayest pardon my faults, but the shame of
knowing that Thou knowest what I have done, that shame
will remain, and what can I do?...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LXXXV. Tennemi Amor anni ventuno ardendo. HE CONFESSES AND REGRETS HIS SINS, AND PRAYS GOD TO SAVE HIM FROM ETERNAL DEATH. Love held me one and twenty years enchain'd,His flame was joy—for hope was in my grief!For ten more years I wept without relief,When Laura with my heart, to heaven attain'd.Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
'Twas in the bleary middle of the hard-boiled Arctic night,
I was lonesome as a loon, so if you can,
Imagine my emotions of amazement and delight
When I bumped into that Missionary Man.
He was lying lost and dying in the moon's unholy leer,
And frozen from his toes to finger-tips'
The famished wolf-pack ringed him; but he didn't seem to fear,
As he pressed...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
(To Mrs. Edward MacDowell)
No sound of any storm that shakes
Old island walls with older seas
Comes here where now September makes
An island in a sea of trees.
Between the sunlight and the shade
A man may learn till he forgets
The roaring of a world remade,
And all his ruins and regrets;
And if he still remembers here...Read more of this...
by
John Ashbery
Orpheus liked the glad personal quality
Of the things beneath the sky. Of course, Eurydice was a part
Of this. Then one day, everything changed. He rends
Rocks into fissures with lament. Gullies, hummocks
Can't withstand it. The sky shudders from one horizon
To the other, almost ready to give up wholeness.
Then Apollo quietly told him: "Leave it all on earth.
Your lute, what point?...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
MOTLEY I count the only wear
That suits, in this mixed world, the truly wise,
Who boldly smile upon despair
And shake their bells in Grandam Grundy's eyes.
Singers should sing with such a goodly cheer
That the bare listening should make strong like wine,
At this unruly time of year,
The Feast of Valentine.
We do not now parade our "oughts"
And "shoulds" and motives and beliefs...Read more of this...
by
Louisa May Alcott
We sighing said, "Our Pan is dead;
His pipe hangs mute beside the river
Around it wistful sunbeams quiver,
But Music's airy voice is fled.
Spring mourns as for untimely frost;
The bluebird chants a requiem;
The willow-blossom waits for him;
The Genius of the wood is lost."
Then from the flute, untouched by hands,
There came a low,...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("O! dis-moi, tu veux fuir?")
{Bk. IV, vii., Jan. 31, 1821.}
Forget? Can I forget the scented breath
Of breezes, sighing of thee, in mine ear;
The strange awaking from a dream of death,
The sudden thrill to find thee coming near?
Our huts were desolate, and far away
I heard...Read more of this...
by
Edward Taylor
The directions to the lunatic asylum were confusing,
more likely they were the random associations
and confused ramblings of a lunatic.
We arrived three hours late for lunch
and the lunatics were stacked up on their shelves,
quite neatly, I might add, giving credit where credit is due.
The orderlies were clearly very orderly, and they
should receive all the credit that is their due.
When I...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
They offer you many things,
I a few.
Moonlight on the play of fountains at night
With water sparkling a drowsy monotone,
Bare-shouldered, smiling women and talk
And a cross-play of loves and adulteries
And a fear of death and a remembering of regrets:
All this they offer you.
I come with:
salt and bread
a terrible job of work
and tireless war;
Come and have now:
hunger.
danger
and hate....Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
When the frosty kiss of Autumn in the dark
Makes its mark
On the flowers, and the misty morning grieves
Over fallen leaves;
Then my olden garden, where the golden soil
Through the toil
Of a hundred years is mellow, rich, and deep,
Whispers in its sleep.
'Mid the crumpled beds of marigold and phlox,
Where the box
Borders with its glossy green the ancient walks,
There's a voice that...Read more of this...
by
James Tate
The directions to the lunatic asylum were confusing,
more likely they were the random associations
and confused ramblings of a lunatic.
We arrived three hours late for lunch
and the lunatics were stacked up on their shelves,
quite neatly, I might add, giving credit where credit is due.
The orderlies were clearly very orderly, and they
should receive all the credit that is their due.
When I...Read more of this...
by
Hart Crane
As silent as a mirror is believed
Realities plunge in silence by . . .
I am not ready for repentance;
Nor to match regrets. For the moth
Bends no more than the still
Imploring flame. And tremorous
In the white falling flakes
Kisses are,--
The only worth all granting.
It is to be learned--
This cleaving and this burning,
But only by the one who
Spends out himself again.
Twice...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Threefold is the march of time
While the future slow advances,
Like a dart the present glances,
Silent stands the past sublime.
No impatience e'er can speed him
On his course if he delay;
No alarm, no doubts impede him
If he keep his onward way;
No regrets, no magic numbers
Wake the tranced one from his slumbers.
Wouldst thou wisely and with pleasure,
Pass the days of life's short...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CLXVIII. Mia ventura ed Amor m' avean sì adorno. HE REGRETS HAVING RETURNED HER GLOVE. Me Love and Fortune then supremely bless'd!Her glove which gold and silken broidery bore!I seem'd to reach of utmost bliss the crest,Musing within myself on her who wore.Ne'er on that day I think, of days...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
I. CHICKENS
I am The Great White Way of the city:
When you ask what is my desire, I answer:
"Girls fresh as country wild flowers,
With young faces tired of the cows and barns,
Eager in their eyes as the dawn to find my mysteries,
Slender supple girls with shapely legs,
Lure in the arch of their little shoulders
And wisdom from the prairies to cry...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
Oh! the calm summer garden where nothing moves! Unless it be, near the middle of the bright and radiant pond, the goldfish like tongues of fire.
They are our memories playing in our thoughts that are calm and stilled and limpid, like the trustful and restful water.
And the water brightens and the fishes leap at the abrupt and marvellous sun, not...Read more of this...
by
Hart Crane
Sinuously winding through the room
On smokey tongues of sweetened cigarettes, --
Plaintive yet proud the cello tones resume
The andante of smooth hopes and lost regrets.
Bright peacocks drink from flame-pots by the wall,
Just as absinthe-sipping women shiver through
With shimmering blue from the bowl in Circe's hall.
Their brown eyes blacken, and the blue drop hue....Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
The gift of yourself no longer satisfies you; you are prodigal of yourself: the rapture that bears you on to ever greater love springs up in you ceaselessly and untiringly, and carries you ever higher towards the wide heaven of perfect love.
A clasp of the hands, a gentle look impassions you; and your heart appears to me so suddenly lovely...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("O Charles, je te sens près de moi.")
{July, 1871.}
I feel thy presence, Charles. Sweet martyr! down
In earth, where men decay,
I search, and see from cracks which rend thy tomb,
Burst out pale morning's ray.
Close linked are bier and cradle: here the dead,
To charm us,...Read more of this...
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