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Famous Suffers Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Martí, José
...old.

On my brave heart is engraved
The sorrow hidden from all eyes:
The son of a land enslaved,
Lives for it, suffers and dies.

All is beautiful and right,
All is as music and reason;
And all, like diamonds, is light
That was coal before its season.

I know when fools are laid to rest
Honor and tears will abound,
And that of all fruits, the best
Is left to rot in holy ground.

Without a word, the pompous muse
I've set aside, and understood:...Read more of this...



by Pope, Alexander
...what his Works inspire.
Our Criticks take a contrary Extream,
They judge with Fury, but they write with Fle'me:
Nor suffers Horace more in wrong Translations
By Wits, than Criticks in as wrong Quotations.

See Dionysius Homer's Thoughts refine,
And call new Beauties forth from ev'ry Line!

Fancy and Art in gay Petronius please,
The Scholar's Learning, with the Courtier's Ease.

In grave Quintilian's copious Work we find
The justest Rules, and clearest Method join'...Read more of this...

by Bishop, Elizabeth
...o stippled faces,
darkening, condensing all his light;
in spite of all the dreaming
squandered upon him with that look,
suffers our uses and abuses,
sinks through the drift of bodies,
sinks through the drift of vlasses
to evening to the beggar in the park
who, weary, without lamp or book
 prepares stupendous studies:
 the fiery event
 of every day in endless
 endless assent....Read more of this...

by O'Hara, Frank
...of me is skewered
by grey crested birds
in the middle of the vines of my promise
and the very fact that I'm a poet
suffers my eyes
to be filled with vermilion tears 


2

how much greater danger
from occasion and pain is my vitality
yielding like a tree on fire!--
for every day is another view
of the tentative past
grown secure in its foundry of shimmering
that's not even historical;it's just me.

3

And the other half
of me where I master the root
...Read more of this...

by Berryman, John
...lustful mongrel
again today, glaring at her bandages & locks:
his bark has grit.

This screen-porch where my puppy suffers and 
I swarm I hope with heartless love is now
towards the close of day
the scene of a vision of friendlies who withstand
animal nature so far as to allow
grace awhile to stay....Read more of this...



by Russell, George William
...y leaving dim
The emptying chambers of his heart
Thrilled only by the pang and smart,
The dull and throbbing agony
That suffers still, yet knows not why.
Love’s immortality so blind
Dreams that all things with it conjoined
Must share with it immortal day:
But not of this—but not of this—
The touch, the eyes, the laugh, the kiss,
Fall from it and it goes its way.
So blind he wept above her clay,
“I did not think that you could die.
Only some veil would cover you
Ou...Read more of this...

by Spenser, Edmund
...they on it stare. 
But her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground, 
Are govern¨¨d with goodly modesty, 235 
That suffers not one looke to glaunce awry, 
Which may let in a little thought unsownd. 
Why blush ye, love, to give to me your hand, 
The pledge of all our band! 
Sing, ye sweet Angels, Alleluya sing, 240 
That all the woods may answere, and your eccho ring. 

Now al is done: bring home the bride againe; 
Bring home the triumph of our victory: 
...Read more of this...

by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...'s such a fuss
To pronounce, that we usually call him just Gus.
His coat's very shabby, he's thin as a rake,
And he suffers from palsy that makes his paw shake.
Yet he was, in his youth, quite the smartest of Cats--
But no longer a terror to mice and to rats.
For he isn't the Cat that he was in his prime;
Though his name was quite famous, he says, in its time.
And whenever he joins his friends at their club
(Which takes place at the back of the neighbouring pu...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...peephole --
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.

Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bump...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...prised by death.

It is snowing. Paper spots
are falling from the punch.
Hello? Mrs. Death is here!
She suffers according to the digits
of my hate. I hear the filaments
of alabaster. I would lie down
with them and lift my madness
off like a wig. I would lie
outside in a room of wool
and let the snow cover me.
Paris white or flake white
or argentine, all in the washbasin
of my mouth, calling, "Oh."
I am empty. I am witless.
Death is ...Read more of this...

by Levertov, Denise
...'s hands
unseen, the whirling rides
dazzle, the lights blind him. Fragmented,
he is not present to himself. God
suffers the void that is his absence....Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...come (since no man comes),
And talk at least, though I despair to attain.
Thy Father, who is holy, wise, and pure,
Suffers the hypocrite or atheous priest
To tread his sacred courts, and minister
About his altar, handling holy things,
Praying or vowing, and voutsafed his voice 
To Balaam reprobate, a prophet yet
Inspired: disdain not such access to me."
 To whom our Saviour, with unaltered brow:—
"Thy coming hither, though I know thy scope,
I bid not, or forbid. ...Read more of this...

by Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor
...
who, lured by the flashing steel,
rashly runs a finger
along the knife-blade's edge;

    who, despite the cut he suffers,
is ignorant of the source
and protests giving it up
more than he minds the pain;

    I, like adoring Clytie,
gaze fixed on golden Apollo,
who would teach him how to shine--
teach the father of brightness!

    I, like air filling a vacuum,
like fire feeding on matter,
like rocks plummeting earthward,
like the will set on a goal-

   ...Read more of this...

by Dryden, John
...
Yet, since th'effects of providence, we find
Are variously dispens'd to human kind;
That vice triumphs, and virtue suffers here,
(A brand that sovereign justice cannot bear;)
Our reason prompts us to a future state:
The last appeal from fortune, and from fate:
Where God's all-righteous ways will be declar'd;
The bad meet punishment, the good, reward.

 Thus man by his own strength to Heaven would soar:
And would not be oblig'd to God for more.
Vain, wretched crea...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...To waver, or fall off and joyn with Idols:
Which is my chief affliction, shame and sorrow,
The anguish of my Soul, that suffers not
Mine eie to harbour sleep, or thoughts to rest.
This only hope relieves me, that the strife 
With me hath end; all the contest is now
'Twixt God and Dagon; Dagon hath presum'd,
Me overthrown, to enter lists with God,
His Deity comparing and preferring
Before the God of Abraham. He, he sure,
Will not connive, or linger, thus provok'd,
But ...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...innards 'eavin', 'is bowels givin' way;
'E sees the blue-white faces all tryin 'ard to grin,
An 'e stands an' waits an' suffers till it's time to cap'em in.

An' now the hugly bullets come peckin' through the dust,
An' no one wants to face 'em, but every beggar must;
So, like a man in irons, which isn't glad to go,
They moves 'em off by companies uncommon stiff an' slow.

Of all 'is five years' schoolin' they don't remember much
Excep' the not retreatin', the step an'...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...n just `to die.'
``The blow a glove gives is but weak:
``Does the mark yet discolour my cheek?
``But when the heart suffers a blow,
``Will the pain pass so soon, do you know?''

I looked, as away she was sweeping,
And saw a youth eagerly keeping
As close as he dared to the doorway.
No doubt that a noble should more weigh
His life than befits a plebeian;
And yet, had our brute been Nemean---
(I judge by a certain calm fervour
The youth stepped with, forward to serve he...Read more of this...

by Jarrell, Randall
...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 fixed on the shaft 
Set in his chest like a column; St. Irene's...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...y; there's the fairer chance: 
~I~ like her none the less for rating at her! 
Besides, the woman wed is not as we, 
But suffers change of frame. A lusty brace 
Of twins may weed her of her folly. Boy, 
The bearing and the training of a child 
Is woman's wisdom.' 
Thus the hard old king: 
I took my leave, for it was nearly noon: 
I pored upon her letter which I held, 
And on the little clause 'take not his life:' 
I mused on that wild morning in the woods, 
And on ...Read more of this...

by Field, Edward
...:
Their hatred was now his hatred,

so he set out on his new career
his previous one being the victim,
the good man who suffers.

Now no longer the hunted but the hunter
he was in charge of his destiny
and knew how to be cold and clever,

preserving barely a spark of memory
for the old blind musician
who once took him in and offered brotherhood.

His idea -- if his career now had an idea --
was to kill them all,
keep them in terror anyway,
let them feel hunted.
Th...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs