Famous Smarts Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Smarts poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous smarts poems. These examples illustrate what a famous smarts poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Whitman, Walt
...but a conflict with foes—the old, the
incessant
war?)
You degradations—you tussle with passions and appetites;
You smarts from dissatisfied friendships, (ah wounds, the sharpest of all;)
You toil of painful and choked articulations—you meannesses;
You shallow tongue-talks at tables, (my tongue the shallowest of any;)
You broken resolutions, you racking angers, you smother’d ennuis;
Ah, think not you finally triumph—My real self has yet to come forth;
It shall yet mar...Read more of this...
by
Fletcher, John Gould
...I must die.
Farewell, false love! thy tongue is ever telling
Lie after lie.
For ever let me rest now from thy smarts;
Alas, for pity go
And fire their hearts
That have been hard to thee! Mine was not so.
Never again deluding love shall know me,
For I will die;
And all those griefs that think to overgrow me
Shall be as I:
For ever will I sleep, while poor maids cry--
'Alas, for pity stay,
And let us die
With thee! Men cannot mock us in the clay.'...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...fore should we lie?)
The queen of Midas slept, and so may I.
You think this cruel? take it for a rule,
No creature smarts so little as a fool.
Let peals of laughter, Codrus! round thee break,
Thou unconcern'd canst hear the mighty crack:
Pit, box, and gall'ry in convulsions hurl'd,
Thou stand'st unshook amidst a bursting world.
Who shames a scribbler? break one cobweb through,
He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew;
Destroy his fib or sophistry, in vain,
...Read more of this...
by
Campbell, Thomas
...Old Outalissi woke his battle song,
And, beating with his war-club cadence strong,
Tells how his deep-stung indignation smarts,
Of them that wrapt his house in flames, ere long,
To whet a dagger on their stony hearts,
And smile avenged ere yet his eagle spirit parts.
Calm, opposite the Christian father rose,
Pale on his venerable brow its rays
Of martyr light the conflagration throws;
One hand upon his lovely child he lays,
And one th' uncover'd crowd to silence sways;
W...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...that from the womb abortive fled;
Not unprovoked, she tries forbidden arts,
But in her soft breast love's hid cancer smarts,
While she resoloves, at once, Sidney's disgrace
And her self scorned for emulous Denham's face,
And nightly hears the hated guards, away
Galloping with the Duke to other prey.
Paint Castlemaine in colours that will hold
(Her, not her picture, for she now grows old):
She through her lackey's drawers, as he ran,
Discerned love's cause and ...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...Beaten like an old hound
Whimpering by the stove,
I complicate the pain
That smarts with promised love.
The oilstove falls, the rain,
Forecast, licks at my wound;
Ice forms, clips the green shoot,
And strikes the wren house mute.
May commoner and king,
The barren bride and nun
Begrudge the season's dues.
May children curse the sun,
Sweet briar and grass refuse
To compromise the spring,
And both sower and seed ...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...her fichus,
her veils; her pictures, her busts, her birds. It is
absurd that she
cannot be happy. The Emperor smarts under the thought
of her ingratitude.
What could he do more? And yet she spends, spends as
never before.
It is ridiculous. Can she not enjoy life at a smaller
figure?
Was ever monarch plagued with so extravagant an ex-wife. She
owes
her chocolate-merchant, her candle-merchant, her sweetmeat purveyor;
her grocer, her butcher, her po...Read more of this...
by
Ashbery, John
...and regret, so powerful
In its restraint that one cannot look for long.
The secret is too plain. The pity of it smarts,
Makes hot tears spurt: that the soul is not a soul,
Has no secret, is small, and it fits
Its hollow perfectly: its room, our moment of attention.
That is the tune but there are no words.
The words are only speculation
(From the Latin speculum, mirror):
They seek and cannot find the meaning of the music.
We see only postures of the dream,
...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...shouting.
Skin most of us of our mediocrity,
We should have nothing then that we could scratch.
The picture smarts. Cover it, if you please,
And do so rather gently. Now for Norcross.”
Ferguson closed his eyes in resignation,
While a dead sigh came out of him. “Good God!”
He said, and said it only half aloud,
As if he knew no longer now, nor cared,
If one were there to listen: “Have I said nothing—
Nothing at all—of Norcross? Do you mean
To ...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...hing against the walls and furniture, and nicking
The darkness into sparks, chipping away the gloom.
The Boy's nose smarts with the pungence in the room.
The wind pushes an elm branch from before the door
And the sun widens out all along the floor,
Filling the barn-chamber with white, straightforward light,
So not one blurred outline can tease the mind to fright.
"O All ye Works of the Lord, Bless
ye the Lord; Praise Him, and Magnify Him
for ever.
O let the E...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...oy can't interpret the thing
Till he is become a man.
And then he's so pierc'd with cares,
And wounded with arrowy smarts,
That the whole business of his life
Is to pick out the heads of the darts.
'Twas the Greeks' love of war
Turn'd Love into a boy,
And woman into a statue of stone--
And away fled every joy....Read more of this...
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