Famous Sufferings Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Sufferings poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous sufferings poems. These examples illustrate what a famous sufferings poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Dryden, John
...br>
Yet, grant our lords the people kings can make,
What prudent men a settled throne would shake?
For whatsoe'er their sufferings were before,
That change they covet makes them suffer more.
All other errors but disturb a state;
But innovation is the blow of fate.
If ancient fabrics nod, and threat to fall,
To patch the flaws, and buttress up the wall,
Thus far 'tis duty; but here fix the mark:
For all beyond it is to touch our Ark.
To change foundations, cast the...Read more of this...
by
McGonagall, William Topaz
...into the street below.
The crushed and charred bodies were carried into London Hotel yard,
And to alleviate their sufferings the doctors tried hard;
But, alas! their attendance on many was thrown away,
But those that survived were conveyed to Exeter Hospital without delay.
And all those that had their wounds dressed proceeded home,
Accompanied by their friends, and making a loud moan;
While the faces and necks of others were sickening to behold,
Enough to chill on...Read more of this...
by
Rilke, Rainer Maria
...by her lover may feel
from that far intenser example of loving:
"Ah, might I become like her!" Should not their oldest
sufferings finally become more fruitful for us?
Is it not time that lovingly we freed ourselves
from the beloved and, quivering, endured:
as the arrow endures the bow-string's tension,
and in this tense release becomes more than itself.
For staying is nowhere.
Voices, voices. Listen my heart, as only saints
have listened: until the gigantic call...Read more of this...
by
Bronte, Charlotte
..., tearless, perfect, pure,
To all with equal bounty given,
In all, unfeigned, unfailing, sure ?
Will he, from penal sufferings free,
Released from shroud and wormy clod,
All calm and glorious, rise and see
Creation's SireExistence' God ?
Then, glancing back on Time's brief woes,
Will he behold them, fading, fly;
Swept from Eternity's repose,
Like sullying cloud, from pure blue sky ?
If soendure, my weary frame;
And when thy anguish strikes too deep,
And when a...Read more of this...
by
Bryant, William Cullen
...
The living!--they who never felt thy power,
And know thee not. The curses of the wretch
Whose crimes are ripe, his sufferings when thy hand
Is on him, and the hour he dreads is come,
Are writ among thy praises. But the good--
Does he whom thy kind hand dismissed to peace,
Upbraid the gentle violence that took off
His fetters, and unbarred his prison cell?
Raise then the Hymn to Death. Deliverer!
God hath anointed thee to free the oppressed
And crush the oppressor...Read more of this...
by
Brontë, Emily
...would not bring them down
With us to weep, with us to groan,
No - Earth would wish no other sphere
To taste her cup of sufferings drear;
She turns from Heaven with a careless eye
And only mourns that we must die!
Ah mother, what shall comfort thee
In all this boundless misery?
To cheer our eager eyes a while
We see thee smile; how fondly smile!
But who reads not through that tender glow
Thy deep, unutterable woe:
Indeed no dazzling land above
Can cheat thee of thy children's...Read more of this...
by
Auden, Wystan Hugh (W H)
...and noise of to-morrowWhen the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,A few thousand will think of this dayAs one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual. What instruments we have agreeThe day of his death was a dark cold day.
You were silly like us; your gift su...Read more of this...
by
Naidu, Sarojini
...to wake and hunger after love,
And thirst with passionate longing for the things
That burn your brows with blood-red sufferings.
Till ye have battled with great grief and fears,
And borne the conflict of dream-shattering years,
Wounded with fierce desire and worn with strife,
Children, ye have not lived: for this is life....Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...spair,
That slumbered; wakes the bitter memory
Of what he was, what is, and what must be
Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue.
Sometimes towards Eden, which now in his view
Lay pleasant, his grieved look he fixes sad;
Sometimes towards Heaven, and the full-blazing sun,
Which now sat high in his meridian tower:
Then, much revolving, thus in sighs began.
O thou, that, with surpassing glory crowned,
Lookest from thy sole dominion like the God
Of t...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...eace. Can thus
The image of God in Man, created once
So goodly and erect, though faulty since,
To such unsightly sufferings be debased
Under inhuman pains? Why should not Man,
Retaining still divine similitude
In part, from such deformities be free,
And, for his Maker's image sake, exempt?
Their Maker's image, answered Michael, then
Forsook them, when themselves they vilified
To serve ungoverned Appetite; and took
His image whom they served, a brutish vice,
In...Read more of this...
by
Bronte, Charlotte
...
Their labours in forgetfulness, I trust;
Let me my feverish watch with patience bear,
Thankful that none with me its sufferings share.
Yet, Oh, for light ! one ray would tranquilise
My nerves, my pulses, more than effort can;
I'll draw my curtain and consult the skies:
These trembling stars at dead of night look wan,
Wild, restless, strange, yet cannot be more drear
Than this my couch, shared by a nameless fear.
All blackone great cloud, drawn from east t...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...Titan! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Sho...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...e wintry memory bloom
Of one friend left adorned that frozen tomb.
Helen, whose spirit was of softer mould,
Whose sufferings too were less, death slowlier led
Into the peace of his dominion cold.
She died among her kindred, being old.
And know, that if love die not in the dead
As in the living, none of mortal kind
Are blessed as now Helen and Rosalind....Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...d had in scorn
By th' Idolatrous rout amidst thir wine;
Which to have come to pass by means of thee,
Samson, of all thy sufferings think the heaviest,
Of all reproach the most with shame that ever
Could have befall'n thee and thy Fathers house.
Sam: Father, I do acknowledge and confess
That I this honour, I this pomp have brought
To Dagon, and advanc'd his praises high
Among the Heathen round; to God have brought
Dishonour, obloquie, and op't the mouths
Of Idolists, and...Read more of this...
by
Bronte, Anne
...Life was for labour, not for joy?
Cease, selfish spirit, to repine;
O'er thine own ills no longer grieve;
Lo, there are sufferings worse than thine,
Which thou mayst labour to relieve.
If Time indeed too swiftly flies,
Gird on thine armour, haste, arise,
For thou hast much to do; -
To lighten woe, to trample sin,
And foes without and foes within
To combat and subdue.
Earth hath too much of sin and pain:
The bitter cup - the binding chain
Dost thou indeed lament?
Let...Read more of this...
by
Turner Smith, Charlotte
...they then arraign
The dust that cannot hear them; be it yours
To vindicate my humble fame; to say,
That, not in selfish sufferings absorb'd,
"I gave to misery all I had, my tears 8 ."
And if, where regulated sanctity
Pours her long orisons to Heaven, my voice
Was seldom heard, that yet my prayer was made
To him who hears even silence; not in domes
Of human architecture, fill'd with crowds,
But on these hills, where boundless, yet distinct,
Even as a map, beneath are sprea...Read more of this...
by
Gorry, Godfrey Mutiso
...n art of degeneration
A human form sculptured
By an ailment of our time
A thousand diseases in one.
And then these sufferings
There will be no heaven here…
Can’t eat – wounds in mouth
Cant pee – balls on fire
Weak and dizzy
As thin as bones – is bones
Skin and foul air
Do not pity-
There will be no heaven here
A body ravaged beyond ...
When looking for hell
You will find it here....Read more of this...
by
Killigrew, Anne
...ail:
Some freeze with Agues, some with Feavers burn,
Whose Lives thou half out of their Holds dost turn;
And of whose Sufferings it may be said,
They living feel the very State o'th' Dead.
Thou in a thousand sev'ral Forms are drest,
And in them all dost Wretched man infest.
And yet as if these Evils were too few,
Men their own Kind with hostile Arms pursue;
Not Heavens fierce Wrath, nor yet the Hate of Hell,
Not any Plague that e're the World befel,
Not Inun...Read more of this...
by
Bronte, Charlotte
...or wandering sheep,
For all weak, sorrowing, trembling things,
His mercy vast, his passion deep
Of anguish for man's sufferings;
Ischooled from childhood in such lore
Dared I draw back or hesitate,
When called to heal the sickness sore
Of those far off and desolate ?
Dark, in the realm and shades of Death,
Nations and tribes and empires lie,
But even to them the light of Faith
Is breaking on their sombre sky:
And be it mine to bid them raise
Their drooped heads...Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...by Cupid's might,I took example from their cruel fate,And by their sufferings eased my own hard state;Since Phœbus and Leander felt like pain,The one a god, the other but a man;One snare caught Juno and the Carthage dame(Her husband's death prepared her funeral flame—'Twas not a cause that Virgil...Read more of this...
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