Famous Sick Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Sick poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous sick poems. These examples illustrate what a famous sick poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Wilde, Oscar
...,
The seven-cubit spear, the brazen targe!
And clad in bright and burnished panoply
Athena strode across the stretch of sick and shivering sea!
To the dull sailors' sight her loosened looks
Seemed like the jagged storm-rack, and her feet
Only the spume that floats on hidden rocks,
And, marking how the rising waters beat
Against the rolling ship, the pilot cried
To the young helmsman at the stern to luff to windward side
But he, the overbold adulterer,
A dear profaner of gre...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...spend my days within the voiceless cave of misery?
Nay! for perchance that poppy-crowned god
Is like the watcher by a sick man's bed
Who talks of sleep but gives it not; his rod
Hath lost its virtue, and, when all is said,
Death is too rude, too obvious a key
To solve one single secret in a life's philosophy.
And Love! that noble madness, whose august
And inextinguishable might can slay
The soul with honeyed drugs, - alas! I must
From such sweet ruin play the runaway,
...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...incense, breath'd aloft from sacred hills,
Instead of sweets, his ample palate took
Savor of poisonous brass and metal sick:
And so, when harbor'd in the sleepy west,
After the full completion of fair day,---
For rest divine upon exalted couch,
And slumber in the arms of melody,
He pac'd away the pleasant hours of ease
With stride colossal, on from hall to hall;
While far within each aisle and deep recess,
His winged minions in close clusters stood,
Amaz'd and full offear; l...Read more of this...
by
Ali, Muhammad
...know I’m bad.
just last week, I murdered a rock,
Injured a stone, Hospitalized a brick.
I’m so mean, I make medicine sick.
I’m so fast, man,
I can run through a hurricane and don't get wet.
When George Foreman meets me,
He’ll pay his debt.
I can drown the drink of water, and kill a dead tree.
Wait till you see Muhammad Ali....Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...come.
We get what little misery we can
Out of not having cause for misery.
It makes the guild of novel writers sick
To be expected to be Dostoievskis
On nothing worse than too much luck and comfort.
This is not sorrow, though; it's just the vapors,
And recognized as such in Russia itself
Under the new regime, and so forbidden.
If well it is with Russia, then feel free
To say so or be stood against the wall
And shot. It's Pollyanna now or death.
This...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...ent days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 65
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that ofttimes hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 70
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Ad...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ere
presence
of women;)
O for the girl, my mate! O for the happiness with my mate!
O the young man as I pass! O I am sick after the friendship of him who, I fear, is
indifferent
to me.
O the streets of cities!
The flitting faces—the expressions, eyes, feet, costumes! O I cannot tell how welcome
they
are to me.
6
O to have been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the coast!
O to continue and be employ’d there all my life!
O the briny and damp sme...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...,
Have faith, have faith! We live by faith," said he;
"And all things work together for the good
Of those"--it makes me sick to quote him--last
Gript my hand hard, and with God-bless-you went.
I stood like one that had received a blow:
I found a hard friend in his loose accounts,
A loose one in the hard grip of his hand,
A curse in his God-bless-you: then my eyes
Pursued him down the street, and far away,
Among the honest shoulders of the crowd,
Read rascal in the motions...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks, or of myself, or ill-doing, or loss or lack of
money, or depressions or exaltations;
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news, the fitful
events;
These come to me days and nights, and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.
Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am; ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...rever forward,
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied,
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,
They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go;
But I know that they go toward the best—toward something great.
15
Allons! whoever you are! come forth!
You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though you built it, or though
it
has
been built for you.
Allons! out ...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...n know all evil things
Under the twisted trees,
Where the perverse in pleasure pine
And men are weary of green wine
And sick of crimson seas.
"But you and all the kind of Christ
Are ignorant and brave,
And you have wars you hardly win
And souls you hardly save.
"I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.
"Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you h...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...s with him, near the waterfall, Upon the village common. And he is lean and he is sick, His dwindled body's half awry, His ancles they are swoln and thick; His legs are thin and dry. When he was young he little knew 'Of husbandry or tillage; And now he's forced to work, though weak, —The weakest in the village. H...Read more of this...
by
Bridges, Robert Seymour
...of earthly love devour,
Who have taken no kiss of Nature, nor renew'd
In the world's wilderness with heavenly food
The sickly body of their perishing power.
So none of all our company, I boast,
But now would mock my penning, could they see
How down the right it maps a jagged coast;
Seeing they hold the manlier praise to be
Strong hand and will, and the heart best when most
'Tis sober, simple, true, and fancy-free.
12
How could I quarrel or blame you, most dear,
W...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...t, For her good neighbour, Susan Gale, Old Susan, she who dwells alone, Is sick, and makes a piteous moan, As if her very life would fail. There's not a house within a mile, No hand to help them in distress; Old Susan lies a bed in pain, And sorely puzzled are the twain, For what she ails they cannot guess. And B...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...ell better than they can themselves devise?
Some man desireth for to have richess,
That cause is of his murder or great sickness.
And some man would out of his prison fain,
That in his house is of his meinie* slain. *servants
Infinite harmes be in this mattere.
We wot never what thing we pray for here.
We fare as he that drunk is as a mouse.
A drunken man wot well he hath an house,
But he wot not which is the right way thither,
And to a drunken man th...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...h of the flock,
Before the kindling pile was laid,
And pierced by Roderick's ready blade.
Patient the sickening victim eyed
The life-blood ebb in crimson tide
Down his clogged beard and shaggy limb,
Till darkness glazed his eyeballs dim.
The grisly priest, with murmuring prayer,
A slender crosslet framed with care,
A cubit's length in measure due;
The shaft and limbs were rods of yew,
Whose parents in Inch-Cail...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...s Oppression
PLATE 25
A Song of Liberty
The Eternal Female groand! it was heard over all the Earth:
Albions coast is sick silent; the American meadows faint!
Shadows of Prophecy shiver along by the lakes and the rivers
and mutter across the ocean! France rend down thy dungeon;
Golden Spain burst the barriers of old Rome;
Cast thy keys O Rome into the deep down falling, even to
eternity down falling,
And weep!
In her trembling hands she took the new, born terror howling;...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ld of agony."--
"Whence camest thou & whither goest thou?
How did thy course begin," I said, "& why?
"Mine eyes are sick of this perpetual flow
Of people, & my heart of one sad thought.--
Speak."--"Whence I came, partly I seem to know,
"And how & by what paths I have been brought
To this dread pass, methinks even thou mayst guess;
Why this should be my mind can compass not;
"Whither the conqueror hurries me still less.
But follow thou, & from spectator turn
Ac...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...eets are. The faces have no features.
They are bald and impossible, like the faces of my children,
Those little sick ones that elude my arms.
Other children do not touch me: they are terrible.
They have too many colors, too much life. They are not quiet,
Quiet, like the little emptinesses I carry.
I have had my chances. I have tried and tried.
I have stitched life into me like a rare organ,
And walked carefully, precariously, like something ra...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...r>
x x x
We noiselessly walked through the house,
Not waiting for anything.
They showed me way to the sick man,
And I did not recognize him.
He said, "Now let God have the glory"
And became more thoughtful and blue.
"It's long time that I hit the road,
I've only been waiting for you.
So you bother me in my fever,
I keep those words from you.
Tell me: can you not forgive me?"
And I said, "I can do."
It seemed, that the wall...Read more of this...
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