Famous Short Dark Poems

Famous Short Dark Poems. Short Dark Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Dark short poems

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by Emily Brontë

Love is like the wild rose-briar,
Friendship like the holly-tree—
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms
But which will bloom most constantly?

The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring,
Its summer blossoms scent the air;
Yet wait till winter comes again
And who will call the wild-briar fair?

Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now
And deck thee with the holly’s sheen,
That when December blights thy brow
He still may leave thy garland green.

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by Robert Frost

 In going from room to room in the dark,
I reached out blindly to save my face,
But neglected, however lightly, to lace
My fingers and close my arms in an arc.
A slim door got in past my guard,
And hit me a blow in the head so hard
I had my native simile jarred.
So people and things don't pair any more
With what they used to pair with before.

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by Langston Hughes

 To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
 Dark like me-
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening...
A tall, slim tree...
Night coming tenderly
 Black like me.

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by Gwendolyn Brooks

 I shall not sing a May song.
A May song should be gay.
I'll wait until November
And sing a song of gray.

I'll wait until November
That is the time for me.
I'll go out in the frosty dark
And sing most terribly.

And all the little people
Will stare at me and say,
"That is the Crazy Woman
Who would not sing in May."

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by Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings

there is a 
moon sole 
in the blue 
night 

             amorous of waters 
tremulous, 
blinded with silence the 
undulous heaven yearns where 

in tense starlessness 
anoint with ardor 
the yellow lover 

stands in the dumb dark 
svelte 
and 
urgent 

           (again 
love i slowly 
gather 
of thy languorous mouth the 

thrilling 
flower)

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by William Butler Yeats

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

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by Octavio Paz

It’s a long and silent street.
I walk in the dark and trip and fall
and get up and step blindly
on the mute stones and dry leaves
and someone behind me is also walking:
if I stop, he stops;
if I run,, he runs. I turn around: no one.
Everything is black, there is no exit,
and I turn and turn corners
that always lead to the street
where no one waits for me, no one follows,
where I follow a man who trips
and gets up and says when he sees me: no one.

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by Jack Kerouac

 Birds singing
 in the dark
—Rainy dawn.

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by Carol Ann Duffy

 Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say 
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.

La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you

and this is what it is like or what it is like in words.

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by Shel Silverstein

 I am writing these poems
From inside a lion,
And it's rather dark in here.
So please excuse the handwriting
Which may not be too clear.
But this afternoon by the lion's cage
I'm afraid I got too near.
And I'm writing these lines
From inside a lion,
And it's rather dark in here.

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by Charles Baudelaire

 UNDER the overhanging yews, 
The dark owls sit in solemn state, 
Like stranger gods; by twos and twos 
Their red eyes gleam. They meditate. 

Motionless thus they sit and dream 
Until that melancholy hour 
When, with the sun's last fading gleam, 
The nightly shades assume their power. 

From their still attitude the wise 
Will learn with terror to despise 
All tumult, movement, and unrest; 

For he who follows every shade, 
Carries the memory in his breast, 
Of each unhappy journey made.

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by Yosa Buson

 Old well,
a fish leaps--
 dark sound.

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by Wendell Berry

 Like the water
of a deep stream,
love is always too much.
We did not make it.
Though we drink till we burst,
we cannot have it all,
or want it all.
In its abundance
it survives our thirst.

In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill,
and sleep,
while it flows
through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us,
except we keep returning to its rich waters
thirsty.

We enter,
willing to die,
into the commonwealth of its joy.

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by Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings

(once like a spark)

if strangers meet
life begins-
not poor not rich
(only aware)
kind neither
nor cruel
(only complete)
i not not you
not possible;
only truthful
-truthfully once
if strangers(who
deep our most are
selves)touch:
forever

(and so to dark)

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by Allen Ginsberg

 I speak of love that comes to mind:
The moon is faithful, although blind;
She moves in thought she cannot speak.
Perfect care has made her bleak.

I never dreamed the sea so deep,
The earth so dark; so long my sleep,
I have become another child.
I wake to see the world go wild.

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by Robert Frost

 The great Overdog
That heavenly beast
With a star in one eye
Gives a leap in the east.
He dances upright
All the way to the west
And never once drops
On his forefeet to rest.
I'm a poor underdog,
But to-night I will bark
With the great Overdog
That romps through the dark.

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by Raymond Carver

 These fish have no eyes 
these silver fish that come to me in dreams, 
scattering their roe and milt 
in the pockets of my brain.

But there's one that comes-- 
heavy, scarred, silent like the rest, 
that simply holds against the current,

closing its dark mouth against 
the current, closing and opening 
as it holds to the current.

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by Sylvia Plath

 Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new

Whose name you meditate --
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.

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by Emily Dickinson

Good night! which put the candle out?
A jealous zephyr, not a doubt.
   Ah! friend, you little knew
How long at that celestial wick
The angels labored diligent;
   Extinguished, now, for you!

It might have been the lighthouse spark
Some sailor, rowing in the dark,
   Had importuned to see!
It might have been the waning lamp
That lit the drummer from the camp
   To purer reveille!

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by Alexander Pushkin

 My voice that is for you the languid one, and gentle,
Disturbs the velvet of the dark night's mantle,
By my bedside, a candle, my sad guard,
Burns, and my poems ripple and merge in flood --
And run the streams of love, run, full of you alone,
And in the dark, your eyes shine like the precious stones,
And smile to me, and hear I the voice:
My friend, my sweetest friend... I love... I'm yours... I'm yours!

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by Lisa Zaran

 love is believable 
in every moment of exhaustion 
in every heartbroken home 
in every dark spirit, 
the meaning unfolds... 

...in every night that sings 
of tomorrow. in every suicide 
i carry deep inside my head. 
in every lonely smile 
that plays across my lips. 
love is believable i tell you, 
in every scrap of history, 
in every sheen of want. 

what can be wrong 
that some days i have a tough time 
believing. 
and in each chamber of my heart 
i pray. 

Copyright © Lisa Zaran, 2006

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by Robert Bly

Conversation brings us so close! Opening
The surfs of the body 
Bringing fish up near the sun 
And stiffening the backbones of the sea!

I have wandered in a face for hours 
Passing through dark fires.
I have risen to a body
Not yet born 
Existing like a light around the body
Through which the body moves like a sliding moon.

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by W. E. B. Du Bois

O Silent God, Thou whose voice afar in mist and mystery hath left our ears
an-hungered in these fearful days--
  _Hear us, good Lord!_

Listen to us, Thy children: our faces dark with doubt are made a mockery
in Thy sanctuary. With uplifted hands we front Thy heaven, O God, crying:
  _We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!_

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by Adrienne Rich

 In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to

But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through the rags of fog
where we stood, saying I

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by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 From the outskirts of the town,
Where of old the mile-stone stood,
Now a stranger, looking down
I behold the shadowy crown
Of the dark and haunted wood.

Is it changed, or am I changed?
Ah! the oaks are fresh and green,
But the friends with whom I ranged
Through their thickets are estranged
By the years that intervene.

Bright as ever flows the sea,
Bright as ever shines the sun,
But alas! they seem to me
Not the sun that used to be,
Not the tides that used to run.

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