Famous Trouble Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Trouble poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous trouble poems. These examples illustrate what a famous trouble poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
John Greenleaf Whittier
FOR the fairest maid in Hampton
They needed not to search,
Who saw young Anna favor
Come walking into church,--
Or bringing from the meadows,
At set of harvest-day,
The frolic of the blackbirds,
The sweetness of the hay.
Now the weariest of all mothers,
The saddest two years' bride,
She scowls in the face of her husband,
And spurns her child aside.
"Rake out the red coals, goodman,--
For there the...Read more of this...
by
Robert Frost
Lancaster bore him--such a little town,
Such a great man. It doesn't see him often
Of late years, though he keeps the old homestead
And sends the children down there with their mother
To run wild in the summer--a little wild.
Sometimes he joins them for a day or two
And sees old friends he somehow can't get near....Read more of this...
by
A E Housman
On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.
'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood;
'Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.
Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare;
The blood...Read more of this...
by
John Clare
Summer pleasures they are gone like to visions every one
And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on
I tried to call them back but unbidden they are gone
Far away from heart and eye and for ever far away
Dear heart and can it be that such raptures meet decay
I thought them all eternal when by Langley Bush I...Read more of this...
by
Hafez
O gentle weariness,
Thine is the power that can all spirits free
From bonding-trouble, thou art a goddess
To all the suffering slaves of misery.
Thy sanctuary
No suppliant vainly seeketh; wheresoe’er
Desperate grief is, then unfailingly
Is thine all-hallowing rest & refuge there.
Our sorrow hath outgrown
Solace, yet still in thine all-mothering hand
Is balm of soft oblivion, who alone
Our never-ending needs dost understand.
...Read more of this...
by
Roger McGough
'The trouble with snowmen,'
Said my father one year
'They are no sooner made
than they just disappear.
I'll build you a snowman
And I'll build it to last
Add sand and cement
And then have it cast.
And so every winter,'
He went on to explain
'You shall have a snowman
Be it sunshine or rain.'
And that snowman still stands
Though my father is gone
Out there in the garden
Like an...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Whoever you are as you read this,
Whatever your trouble or grief,
I want you to know and to heed this:
The day draweth near with relief.
No sorrow, no woe is unending,
Though heaven seems voiceless and dumb;
So sure as your cry is ascending,
So surely an answer will come.
Whatever temptation is near you,
Whose eyes on this...Read more of this...
by
Sarojini Naidu
He
Lift up the veils that darken the delicate moon
of thy glory and grace,
Withhold not, O love, from the night
of my longing the joy of thy luminous face,
Give me a spear of the scented keora
guarding thy pinioned curls,
Or a silken thread from the fringes
that trouble the dream of thy glimmering pearls;
Faint grows my soul with...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
A Flower will not trouble her, it has so small a Foot,
And yet if you compare the Lasts,
Hers is the smallest Boot --...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
How long shall I trouble myself with the care of knowing
whether I possess or do not possess—if I ought or
ought not to pass life gaily? Fill ever the cup of wine,
O cupbearer! for I do not know whether I shall breathe
out this breath that I am actually breathing or not....Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Friend! trouble not yourself about your lot,
Let futile care and sorrow be forgot;
Since this life's vesture crumbles into dust,
What matters stain of word or deed, or blot?...Read more of this...
by
John Berryman
Henry in trouble whirped out lonely whines.
When ich when was ever not in trouble?
But did he whip out whines
afore? And when check in wif ales & lifelines
anyone earlier O?-”Some, now, Mr Bones,
many.-”I am fleeing double:
Mr Past being no friends of mine,
all them around: Sir Future Dubious,
calamitous & grand:
I can no foothold here; wherefore I pines
for Dr Present, who won't...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Unto like Story -- Trouble has enticed me --
How Kinsmen fell --
Brothers and Sister -- who preferred the Glory --
And their young will
Bent to the Scaffold, or in Dungeons -- chanted --
Till God's full time --
When they let go the ignominy -- smiling --
And Shame went still --
Unto guessed Crests, my moaning fancy, leads me,
Worn fair
By Heads rejected --...Read more of this...
by
William Morris
Love is enough: through the trouble and tangle
From yesterday's dawning to yesterday's night
I sought through the vales where the prisoned winds wrangle,
Till, wearied and bleeding, at end of the light
I met him, and we wrestled, and great was my might.
O great was my joy, though no rest was around me,
Though mid wastes of the world were we twain...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Bound -- a trouble --
And lives can bear it!
Limit -- how deep a bleeding go!
So -- many -- drops -- of vital scarlet --
Deal with the soul
As with Algebra!
Tell it the Ages -- to a cypher --
And it will ache -- contented -- on --
Sing -- at its pain -- as any Workman --
Notching the fall of the Even...Read more of this...
by
Cornelius Eady
Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman,
Some type of supernatural creature.
My mother would tell you, if she could,
About her life with my father,
A strange and sometimes cruel gentleman.
She would tell you about the choices
A young black woman faces.
Is falling in love with some man
A deal with the devil
In blue terms, the tongue we use
When we don't...Read more of this...
by
Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
A piece of bone, found at Trondhjem in 1901, with the following runic inscription (about A.D. 1050) cut on it: I loved her as a maiden; I will not trouble Erlend's detestable wife; better she should be a widow.
Words scored upon a bone,
Scratched in despair or rage --
Nine hundred years have gone;
Now, in another age,...Read more of this...
by
Eugene Field
There's a dear little home in Good-Children street -
My heart turneth fondly to-day
Where tinkle of tongues and patter of feet
Make sweetest of music at play;
Where the sunshine of love illumines each face
And warms every heart in that old-fashioned place.
For dear little children go romping about
With dollies and tin tops and drums,
And, my! how they frolic and scamper and shout
Till...Read more of this...
by
Lascelles Abercrombie
The Dream
All round the knoll, on days of quietest air,
Secrets are being told; and if the trees
Speak out — let them make uproar loud as drums —
'Tis secrets still, shouted instead of whisper'd.
There must have been a warning given once:
No tree, on pain of withering and sawfly,
To reach the slimmest of his snaky toes
Into this mounded sward and rumple...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
Should they whisper false of you.
Never trouble to deny;
Should the words they say be true,
Weep and storm and swear they lie....Read more of this...
by
Edith Nesbit
1 It's all for nothing: I've lost im now.
2 I suppose it ad to be:
3 But oh I never thought it of im,
4 Nor e never thought it of me.
5 And all for a kiss on your evening out
6 An a field where the grass was down ...
7 And e as gone to God-knows-where,
8 And I may go on...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
LEADER.
LET no cares now hover o'er us
Let the wine unsparing run!
Wilt thou swell our merry chorus?
Hast thou all thy duty done?
SOLO.
Two young folks--the thing is curious--
Loved each other; yesterday
Both quite mild, to-day quite furious,
Next day, quite the deuce to pay!
If her neck she there was stooping,
He must here needs pull his hair.
I revived their spirits drooping,
And they're now a...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
Your troubles shrink not, though I feel them less
Here, far away, than when I tarried near;
I even smile old smiles--with listlessness--
Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere.
A thought too strange to house within my brain
Haunting its outer precincts I discern:
--That I will not show zeal again to learn
Your griefs, and, sharing them, renew my...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Keep from the trouble and vexation of aiming to acquire
white silver or yellow gold. Eat with thy friend,
ere thy warm breath be cooled, for after thee come enemies
who will eat thee....Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Dey was oncet a awful quoil 'twixt de skillet an' de pot;
De pot was des a-bilin' an' de skillet sho' was hot.
Dey slurred each othah's colah an' dey called each othah names,[Pg 269]
Wile de coal-oil can des gu-gled, po'in oil erpon de flames.
De pot, hit called de skillet des a flat, disfiggered t'ing,
An' de skillet 'plied dat all...Read more of this...
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