Famous Sufferers Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse

by Matthew Arnold
 Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused
With rain, where thick the crocus blows,
Past the dark forges long disused,
The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes.
The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride,
Through forest, up the mountain-side. 

The autumnal evening darkens round,
The wind is up, and drives the rain;
While, hark! far down, with strangled sound
Doth the Dead Guier's stream complain,
Where that wet smoke, among the...Read more of this...

confessions of a fool

by Rg Gregory
 (i)
i believed in flower-power (the triumph of the meek)
the thought that what a wind could bend was not to be
derided for its weakness but known to draw its calm
from a corporate sense of self (its many-ed history)
that tyranny (in the long blow) lacked the will to break

that heaped-up suffering gave to sufferers a balm
and through such evolution (such dog-eared...Read more of this...

Grace Darling

by William Topaz McGonagall
 As the night was beginning to close in one rough September day
In the year of 1838, a steamer passed through the Fairway
Between the Farne Islands and the coast, on her passage northwards;
But the wind was against her, and the steamer laboured hard. 

There she laboured in the heavy sea against both wind and tide,
Whilst a dense fog enveloped her...Read more of this...

The Feast Of Freedom

by Victor Hugo
 ("Lorsqu'à l'antique Olympe immolant l'evangile.") 
 
 {Bk. II. v., 1823.} 
 
 {There was in Rome one antique usage as follows: On the eve of the 
 execution day, the sufferers were given a public banquet—at the prison 
 gate—known as the "Free Festival."—CHATEAUBRIAND'S "Martyrs."} 


 




...Read more of this...

The Living Lost

by William Cullen Bryant
 Matron! the children of whose love,
Each to his grave, in youth have passed,
And now the mould is heaped above
The dearest and the last!
Bride! who dost wear the widow's veil
Before the wedding flowers are pale!
Ye deem the human heart endures
No deeper, bitterer grief than yours.

Yet there are pangs of keener wo,
Of which the sufferers never speak,
Nor to the world's cold...Read more of this...

The Widow and Her Son XXI

by Kahlil Gibran
 Night fell over North Lebanon and snow was covering the villages surrounded by the Kadeesha Valley, giving the fields and prairies the appearance of a great sheet of parchment upon which the furious Nature was recording her many deeds. Men came home from the streets while silence engulfed the night. 

In a lone house near those villages lived a...Read more of this...

Written among the Euganean Hills North Italy

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
MANY a green isle needs must be 
In the deep wide sea of Misery, 
Or the mariner, worn and wan, 
Never thus could voyage on 
Day and night, and night and day, 5 
Drifting on his dreary way, 
With the solid darkness black 
Closing round his vessel's track; 
Whilst above, the sunless sky 
Big with clouds, hangs heavily, 10 
And...Read more of this...

A Day Dream

by Emily Brontë
 On a sunny brae, alone I lay
One summer afternoon;
It was the marriage-time of May
With her young lover, June. 

From her mother's heart, seemed loath to part
That queen of bridal charms,
But her father smiled on the fairest child
He ever held in his arms. 

The trees did wave their plumy crests,
The glad birds caroled clear;
And I, of all the wedding guests,
Was...Read more of this...

Psalm 145 part 3

by Isaac Watts
 v.14,17ff 
C. M.
Mercy to sufferers; or, God hearing prayer.

Let every tongue thy goodness speak,
Thou sovereign Lord of all;
Thy strength'ning hands uphold the weak,
And raise the poor that fall.

When sorrow bows the spirit down,
Or virtue lies distressed
Beneath some proud oppressor's frown,
Thou giv'st the mourners rest.

The Lord supports our tott'ring days,
And guides our giddy youth;
Holy and just are all his ways,
And...Read more of this...

natural therapy

by Rg Gregory
 the great thing about the tall white daisy
is that it knows how to laugh at itself

some flowers for all their rich displays
won't preen themselves without a primness

in their sap - nor let their stalks abide
bending this way that way in the thick wind

the large daisy is happy to be slapdash
is not snooty about the company it keeps

it does have...Read more of this...

The Old And The New Masters

by Randall Jarrell
 About suffering, about adoration, the old masters 
Disagree. When someone suffers, no one else eats 
Or walks or opens the window--no one breathes 
As the sufferers watch the sufferer. 
In St. Sebastian Mourned by St. Irene
The flame of one torch is the only light. 
All the eyes except the maidservant's (she weeps 
And covers them with a cloth) are...Read more of this...

The Torture of Cuauhtemoc

by Alan Seeger
 Their strength had fed on this when Death's white arms 
Came sleeved in vapors and miasmal dew, 
Curling across the jungle's ferny floor, 
Becking each fevered brain. On bleak divides, 
Where Sleep grew niggardly for nipping cold 
That twinged blue lips into a mouthed curse, 
Not back to Seville and its sunny plains 
Winged their brief-biding dreams, but once...Read more of this...

Canzone IV

by Francesco Petrarch
CANZONE IV. Si è debile il filo a cui s' attene. HE GRIEVES IN ABSENCE FROM LAURA.  The thread on which my weary life dependsSo fragile is and weak,If none kind succour lends,Soon 'neath the painful burden will it break;Since doom'd to take my sad farewell of her,In whom begins...Read more of this...

Yesterday and Today XII

by Kahlil Gibran
 The gold-hoarder walked in his palace park and with him walked his troubles. And over his head hovered worries as a vulture hovers over a carcass, until he reached a beautiful lake surrounded by magnificent marble statuary. 

He sat there pondering the water which poured from the mouths of the statues like thoughts flowing freely from a lover's imagination,...Read more of this...

My Aviary

by Oliver Wendell Holmes
 THROUGH my north window, in the wintry weather,--
My airy oriel on the river shore,--
I watch the sea-fowl as they flock together
Where late the boatman flashed his dripping oar.

The gull, high floating, like a sloop unladen,
Lets the loose water waft him as it will;
The duck, round-breasted as a rustic maiden,
Paddles and plunges, busy, busy still.

I see the solemn gulls in...Read more of this...

Regret

by Victor Hugo
 ("Oui, le bonheur bien vite a passé.") 
 
 {Bk. V. ii., February, 1821.} 


 Yes, Happiness hath left me soon behind! 
 Alas! we all pursue its steps! and when 
 We've sunk to rest within its arms entwined, 
 Like the Phoenician virgin, wake, and find 
 Ourselves alone again. 
 
 Then, through the distant future's...Read more of this...

Burning of the Exeter Theatre

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1887, which many people will long remember,
The burning of the Theatre at Exeter on the 5th of September,
Alas! that ever-to-be-remembered and unlucky night,
When one hundred and fifty lost their lives, a most agonising sight. 

The play on this night was called "Romany Rye,"
And at act four, scene third, Fire! Fire! was the cry;
And all...Read more of this...

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