Famous Short Worst Poems
Famous Short Worst Poems. Short Worst Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Worst short poems
by
Shel Silverstein
Said the little boy, "Sometimes I drop my spoon."
Said the old man, "I do that too."
The little boy whispered, "I wet my pants."
"I do that too," laughed the little old man.
Said the little boy, "I often cry."
The old man nodded, "So do I."
"But worst of all," said the boy, "it seems
Grown-ups don't pay attention to me."
And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.
"I know what you mean," said the little old man.
by
John Dryden
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Be fair or foul or rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
by
John Masefield
I had seen flowers come in stony places
And kind things done by men with ugly faces,
And the gold cup won by the worst horse at the races,
Ao I trust, too.
by
Denise Levertov
It's when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart:
not to a flower, not to a dolphin,
to no innocent form
but to this creature vainly sure
it and no other is god-like, God
(out of compassion for our ugly
failure to evolve) entrusts,
as guest, as brother,
the Word.
by
Emily Dickinson
Fate slew Him, but He did not drop --
She felled -- He did not fall --
Impaled Him on Her fiercest stakes --
He neutralized them all --
She stung Him -- sapped His firm Advance --
But when Her Worst was done
And He -- unmoved regarded Her --
Acknowledged Him a Man.
by
Charles Bukowski
as the poems go into the thousands you
realize that you've created very
little.
it comes down to the rain, the sunlight,
the traffic, the nights and the days of the
years, the faces.
leaving this will be easier than living
it, typing one more line now as
a man plays a piano through the radio,
the best writers have said very
little
and the worst,
far too much.
from ONTHEBUS - 1992
by
George Herbert
Alas, poor Death! Where is thy glory?
Where is thy famous force, thy ancient sting?
Alas, poor mortal, void of story!
Go spell and read how I have killed thy King.
Poor Death! And who was hurt thereby?
Thy curse being laid on Him makes thee accurst.
Let losers talk, yet thou shalt die;
These arms shall crush thee.
Spare not, do thy worst.
I shall be one day better than before;
Thou so much worse, that thou shalt be no more.
by
Emily Dickinson
The Loneliness One dare not sound --
And would as soon surmise
As in its Grave go plumbing
To ascertain the size --
The Loneliness whose worst alarm
Is lest itself should see --
And perish from before itself
For just a scrutiny --
The Horror not to be surveyed --
But skirted in the Dark --
With Consciousness suspended --
And Being under Lock --
I fear me this -- is Loneliness --
The Maker of the soul
Its Caverns and its Corridors
Illuminate -- or seal --
by
Boris Pasternak
Beneath the willow wound round with ivy
we take cover from the worst
of the storm, with a greatcoat round
our shoulders and my hands around your waist.
I've got it wrong. That isn't ivy
entwined in the bushes round
the wood, but hops. You intoxicate me!
Let's spread the greatcoat on the ground.
by
William Butler Yeats
She hears me strike the board and say
That she is under ban
Of all good men and women,
Being mentioned with a man
That has the worst of all bad names;
And thereupon replies
That his hair is beautiful,
Cold as the March wind his eyes.
by
Dorothy Parker
Love has gone a-rocketing.
That is not the worst;
I could do without the thing,
And not be the first.
Joy has gone the way it came.
That is nothing new;
I could get along the same, --
Many people do.
Dig for me the narrow bed,
Now I am bereft.
All my pretty hates are dead,
And what have I left?
by
Elinor Wylie
When my eyes are weeds,
And my lips are petals, spinning
Down the wind that has beginning
Where the crumpled beeches start
In a fringe of salty reeds;
When my arms are elder-bushes,
And the rangy lilac pushes
Upward, upward through my heart;
Summer, do your worst!
Light your tinsel moon, and call on
Your performing stars to fall on
Headlong through your paper sky;
Nevermore shall I be cursed
By a flushed and amorous slattern,
With her dusty laces' pattern
Trailing, as she straggles by.
by
Robert William Service
I am a mild man, you'll agree,
But red my rage is,
When folks who borrow books from me
Turn down their pages.
Or when a chap a book I lend,
And find he's loaned it
Without permission to a friend -
As if he owned it.
But worst of all I hate those crooks
(May hell-fires burn them!)
Who beg the loan of cherished books
And don't return them.
My books are tendrils of myself
No shears can sever . . .
May he who rapes one from its shelf
Be damned forever.
by
Robert Herrick
We two are last in hell; what may we fear
To be tormented or kept pris'ners here I
Alas! if kissing be of plagues the worst,
We'll wish in hell we had been last and first.
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Blest in death and life beyond man's guessing
Little children live and die, possest
Still of grace that keeps them past expressing
Blest.
Each least chirp that rings from every nest,
Each least touch of flower-soft fingers pressing
Aught that yearns and trembles to be prest,
Each least glance, gives gifts of grace, redressing
Grief's worst wrongs: each mother's nurturing breast
Feeds a flower of bliss, beyond all blessing
Blest.
by
William Strode
Denys hath merited no slender praise,
In that She well supplied the Formers daies.
Conceive how Good she was, whose very worst
Unto her Knight was This, that She dyed First.
by
Ben Jonson
LXX. — TO WILLIAM ROE. When nature bids us leave to live, 'tis late Then to begin, my ROE! He makes a state In life, that can employ it; and takes hold On the true causes, ere they grow to old. Delay is bad, doubt worse, depending worst; Each best day of our life escapes us, first: Then, since we, more than many, these truths know; Though life be short, let us not make it so.
by
Carl Sandburg
OF my city the worst that men will ever say is this:
You took little children away from the sun and the dew,
And the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky,
And the reckless rain; you put them between walls
To work, broken and smothered, for bread and wages,
To eat dust in their throats and die empty-hearted
For a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights.
by
Emily Dickinson
This Merit hath the worst --
It cannot be again --
When Fate hath taunted last
And thrown Her furthest Stone --
The Maimed may pause, and breathe,
And glance securely round --
The Deer attracts no further
Than it resists -- the Hound --
by
Emily Dickinson
If any sink, assure that this, now standing --
Failed like Themselves -- and conscious that it rose --
Grew by the Fact, and not the Understanding
How Weakness passed -- or Force -- arose --
Tell that the Worst, is easy in a Moment --
Dread, but the Whizzing, before the Ball --
When the Ball enters, enters Silence --
Dying -- annuls the power to kill.
by
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Mortal my mate, bearing my rock-a-heart
Warm beat with cold beat company, shall I
Earlier or you fail at our force, and lie
The ruins of, rifled, once a world of art?
The telling time our task is; time’s some part,
Not all, but we were framed to fail and die—
One spell and well that one. There, ah thereby
Is comfort’s carol of all or woe’s worst smart.
Field-flown, the departed day no morning brings
Saying ‘This was yours’ with her, but new one, worse,
And then that last and shortest…
by
Henry Lawson
I saw it in the days gone by,
When the dead girl lay at rest,
And the wattle and the native rose
We placed upon her breast.
I saw it in the long ago
(And I've seen strong men die),
And who, to wear the wattle,
Hath better right than I?
I've fought it through the world since then,
And seen the best and worst,
But always in the lands of men
I held Australia first.
I wrote for her, I fought for her,
And when at last I lie,
Then who, to wear the wattle, has
A better right than I?