Famous Rueful Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Rueful poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous rueful poems. These examples illustrate what a famous rueful poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...SAD thy tale, thou idle page,
And rueful thy alarms:
Death tears the brother of her love
From Isabella’s arms.
Sweetly deckt with pearly dew
The morning rose may blow;
But cold successive noontide blasts
May lay its beauties low.
Fair on Isabella’s morn
The sun propitious smil’d;
But, long ere noon, succeeding clouds
Succeeding hopes beguil’d.
Fate oft tears the bosom chords
That...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...
With all the dignity of Freemen.
Sir Reynard daily heard debates
Of Princes’, Kings’, and Nations’ fates,
With many rueful, bloody stories
Of Tyrants, Jacobites, and Tories:
From liberty how angels fell,
That now are galley-slaves in hell;
How Nimrod first the trade began
Of binding Slavery’s chains on Man;
How fell Semiramis—G—d d-mn her!
Did first, with sacrilegious hammer,
(All ills till then were trivial matters)
For Man dethron’d forge hen-peck fetters;
How Xerxes,...Read more of this...
by
Burns, Robert
...ay
Until the sun turned pale from warm,
Until sweet wind changed tune, blew harm :
Cruel nettles stung her angles raw.
Rueful, most vexed, that tender skin
Should accept so fell a wound,
He stamped and cracked stalks to the ground
Which had caused his dear girl pain.
Now he goes from his rightful road
And, under honor, will depart;
While she stands burning, venom-girt,
In wait for sharper smart to fade....Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...And Wisdom gnawed his fingers, gloomy-eyed.
Young Fancy—how I loved him all the while—
Stared at his note-book with a rueful smile.
Their training done, I shipped them all to France,
Where most of those I’d loved too well got killed.
Rapture and pale Enchantment and Romance,
And many a sickly, slender lord who’d filled
My soul long since with lutanies of sin,
Went home, because they couldn’t stand the din.
But the kind, common ones that I despised
(Hardly a man of t...Read more of this...
by
Sassoon, Siegfried
...hen I die
Down drops the curtain;
Another show is all my eye
And Betty Martin.
I know the score, and with a smile
Of rueful rating,
I reckon I am not worth while
Perpetuating.
I hope that God,--if God there be
Of love and glory,
Will let me off Eternity,
And end my story.
Will count me just a worn-out bit
Of human matter,
Who's done his job or bungled it,
--More like the latter.
I did not beg for mortal breath,
Plus hell or Heaven;
So let the last pay-off be death,...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...ine looked hard at him:
“If I be too familiar with a fool,
I’m on the way to be another fool,”
He mused, and owned a rueful qualm within him:
“Yes, Dagonet,” he ventured, with a laugh,
“Men tell me that his beard has vanished wholly,
And that he shines now as the Lord’s anointed,
And wears the valiance of an ageless youth
Crowned with a glory of eternal peace.”
Dagonet, smiling strangely, shook his head:
“I grant your valiance of a kind of youth
To Merlin, but your ...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ls through the land,
To yield their necks at your command;
While paleness marks their late disgraces,
Through all their rueful length of faces?
"Have you not caused as woeful work
In our good city of New-York,
When all the rabble, well cockaded,
In triumph through the streets paraded,
And mobb'd the Tories, scared their spouses,
And ransack'd all the custom-houses;
Made such a tumult, bluster, jarring,
That mid the clash of tempests warring,
Smith's weather-cock, in veers f...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...success, or singularity.
I saw our vet'ran thousands yield,
And pile their muskets on the field,
And peasant guards, in rueful plight,
March off our captured bands from fight;
While every rebel fife in play
To Yankee-doodle tuned its lay,
And like the music of the spheres,
Mellifluous sooth'd their vanquish'd ears."
"Alas, I cried, what baleful star
Sheds fatal influence on the war?
And who that chosen Chief of fame,
That heads this grand parade of shame?"
"There see how ...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...--
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh.
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all--
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart--
He saw all spoiled. 'Don't let him cut my hand off
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!'
So. But the hand was gone a...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...yx, the flood of deadly hate;
Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;
Cocytus, named of lamentation loud
Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegeton,
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.
Far off from these, a slow and silent stream,
Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls
Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks
Forthwith his former state and being forgets--
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
Beyond this flood a frozen continent
Lies dark and wild...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...you, it appears,
Must be Sir Everard's lady. And my fears
At being caught a-trespassing were quick."
XIV
He looked so rueful that she laughed out loud. "You
are forgiven, Mr. Deane. Even more,
I offer you the fishing, and am proud That you should find
it pleasant from this shore.
Nobody fishes now, my husband used To angle daily, and I too
with him.
He loved the spotted trout, and pike, and dace. He
even had a whim
That flies my fingers tied swiftly confused
The greater...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...s first sightSo high a rival in my heart gave birth;As suddenly his sad and rueful plight[Pg 107]From further scrutiny a small cloud veil'd,So much it ruffled him that then he fail'd. Macgregor....Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...te, my lady, that your way
Lies backward to the Chatelet!"
She shook her head and gazed awhile
At her cold hands with a rueful smile,
As though this thing had made her mad.
This was the parting that they had
Beside the haystack in the floods....Read more of this...
by
Morris, William
...ay,* *maid
Thou haven of refuge, bright star of day,
Rue* on my child, that of thy gentleness *take pity
Ruest on every rueful* in distress. *sorrowful person
"O little child, alas! what is thy guilt,
That never wroughtest sin as yet, pardie?* *par Dieu; by God
Why will thine harde* father have thee spilt?** *cruel **destroyed
O mercy, deare Constable," quoth she,
"And let my little child here dwell with thee:
And if thou dar'st not save him from blame,
So kiss him ones in h...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ngBuoys up my powers on resolution's wing,While on the flight of time, with rueful gazeIntent, I try to thread the backward maze,And husband what remains, a scanty space.Few fleeting hours, alas! have pass'd away,Since a weak infant in the lap I lay;For what is human life but one uncertain day!Now hid b...Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...ts power to wound or kill;
Or from thy looks, with desperate rage,
Chafing the sallow hue of age,
And cursing dire with rueful faces,
The repartees of looking-glasses.
Now at tea-table take thy station,
Those shambles vile of reputation,
Where butcher'd characters and stale
Are day by day exposed for sale:
Then raise the floodgates of thy tongue,
And be the peal of scandal rung;
While malice tunes thy voice to rail,
And whispering demons prompt the tale--
Yet hold thy hand,...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
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