Famous Self Pity Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Death-Bed

...1918
This is the State above the Law.
 The State exists for the State alone."
[This is a gland at the back of the jaw,
 And an answering lump by the collar-bone.],


Some die shouting in gas or fire;
 Some die silent, by shell and shot.
Some die desperate, caught on the wire -
 Some die suddenly. This will not.


"Regis suprema voluntas Lex"
[It will follo...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard


Advice to a Prophet

...When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,
Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,
Not proclaiming our fall but begging us
In God's name to have self-pity,

Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range,
The long numbers that rocket the mind;
Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,
Unable to fear what is too strange.

Nor s...Read more of this...
by Wilbur, Richard

Dire Cure

..."First, do no harm," the Hippocratic
Oath begins, but before she might enjoy
such balm, the docs had to harm her tumor.
It was large, rare, and so anomalous
in its behavior that at first they mis-
diagnosed it. "Your wife will die of it
within a year." But in ten days or so
I sat beside her bed with hot-and-sour
soup and heard an intern congratulate
her on...Read more of this...
by Matthews, William

Friends Within The Darkness

...I can remember starving in a 
small room in a strange city 
shades pulled down, listening to 
classical music 
I was young I was so young it hurt like a knife 
inside 
because there was no alternative except to hide as long 
as possible-- 
not in self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance: 
trying to connect. 

the old composers -- Mozart, Bach, Beetho...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles

Geraint And Enid

...O purblind race of miserable men, 
How many among us at this very hour 
Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves, 
By taking true for false, or false for true; 
Here, through the feeble twilight of this world 
Groping, how many, until we pass and reach 
That other, where we see as we are seen! 

So fared it with Geraint, who issuing forth 
That morning, ...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord


Love We Must Part Now

...Love, we must part now: do not let it be 
Calamitious and bitter. In the past 
There has been too much moonlight and self-pity:
Let us have done with it: for now at last 
Never has sun more boldly paced the sky, 
Never were hearts more eager to be free, 
To kick down worlds, lash forests; you and I 
No longer hold them; we are husks, that see 
The grain go...Read more of this...
by Larkin, Philip

Self-pity

...I never saw a wild thing 
sorry for itself. 
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself....Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.

The Princess (part 7)

...So was their sanctuary violated, 
So their fair college turned to hospital; 
At first with all confusion: by and by 
Sweet order lived again with other laws: 
A kindlier influence reigned; and everywhere 
Low voices with the ministering hand 
Hung round the sick: the maidens came, they talked, 
They sang, they read: till she not fair began 
To gather light...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

To The Dead

...What I hope (when I hope) is that we'll
see each other again,--

. . . and again reach the VEIN

in which we loved each other . .
It existed. It existed.

There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,--

. . . for, like the detectives (the Ritz Brothers)
in The Gorilla,

once we'd been battered by the gorilla

we searched the walls, the intricately carved
impenetrabl...Read more of this...
by Bidart, Frank

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