Famous Wormwood Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Wormwood poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous wormwood poems. These examples illustrate what a famous wormwood poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...e to thy thrall,
Had often wrought some fury on myself,
Saving for Balan: those three kingless years
Have past--were wormwood-bitter to me. King,
Methought that if we sat beside the well,
And hurled to ground what knight soever spurred
Against us, thou would'st take me gladlier back,
And make, as ten-times worthier to be thine
Than twenty Balins, Balan knight. I have said.
Not so--not all. A man of thine today
Abashed us both, and brake my boast....Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...p and meat,
And all the other things there were to eat,
Cliff took two glasses and filled one with wine
And one with wormwood. Then, without a sign
For me to choose at all, he took the draught
Of bitterness himself, and lightly quaffed
It off, and said the other one was mine.
And when I asked him what the deuce he meant
By doing that, he only looked at me
And smiled, and said it was a way of his.
And though I know the fellow, I have spent
Long time a-won...Read more of this...
by
Rossetti, Christina
...ith aguish fear, and pain,
She kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth.
Her lips began to scorch,
That juice was wormwood to her tongue,
She loathed the feast:
Writhing as one possessed she leaped and sung,
Rent all her robe, and wrung
Her hands in lamentable haste,
And beat her breast.
Her locks streamed like the torch
Borne by a racer at full speed,
Or like the mane of horses in their flight,
Or like an eagle when she stems the light
Straight toward the sun,
Or l...Read more of this...
by
Masters, Edgar Lee
...t is why I fled from you.
For though when our bodies rise from pain
We kiss forever the watchful hands
That gave us wormwood, while we shudder
For thinking of the wormwood,
A soul that's cured is a different matter,
For there we'd blot from memory
The soft-toned words, the searching eyes,
And stand forever oblivious,
Not so much of the sorrow itself
As of the hand that healed it....Read more of this...
by
Ingelow, Jean
...inners in,
By Thy last silence in the judgment-hall,
By long foreknowledge of the deadly tree,
By darkness, by the wormwood and the gall,
I pray Thee visit me.
Come, lest this heart should, cold and cast away,
Die ere the guest adored she entertain—
Lest eyes which never saw Thine earthly day
Should miss Thy heavenly reign.
Come, weary-eyed from seeking in the night
Thy wanderers strayed upon the pathless wold,
Who wounded, dying, cry to Thee for ...Read more of this...
by
Bronte, Anne
...swell:
While all the good I would impart,
The feelings I would share,
Are driven backward to my heart,
And turned to wormwood, there;
If clouds must ever keep from sight
The glories of the Sun,
And I must suffer Winter's blight,
Ere Summer is begun;
If life must be so full of care,
Then call me soon to Thee;
Or give me strength enough to bear
My load of misery....Read more of this...
by
Hardy, Thomas
...e askance?
Do scribes aver the Comic to be Reverend still?
"Still rule those minds on earth
At whom sage Milton's wormwood words were hurled:
'Truth like a bastard comes into the world
Never without ill-fame to him who gives her birth'?"...Read more of this...
by
Pinsky, Robert
...at play:
Let those scorn you who never
Starved in your dearth. If I
Dare to disparage
Your harp of shadows I taste
Wormwood and motor oil, I pour
Ashes on my head. You are the wound. You
Be the medicine....Read more of this...
by
Wheatley, Phillis
...race,
Who scorn her warnings and despise her grace?
By her unveil'd each horrid crime appears,
Her awful hand a cup of wormwood bears.
Days, years mispent, O what a hell of woe!
Hers the worst tortures that our souls can know.
Now eighteen years their destin'd course have run,
In fast succession round the central sun.
How did the follies of that period pass
Unnotic'd, but behold them writ in brass!
In Recollection see them fresh return,
And sure 'tis mine to be a...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...own to the place made theirs by the cold work of the sea.
Roses have had their day, and the dusk is on yarrow and wormwood—
Dusk that is over the grass, drenched with memorial dew;
Trellises lie like bones in a ruin that once was a garden,
Swallows have lingered and ceased, shadows and echoes are all.
II
Where is he lying to-night, as I turn away down to the valley,
Down where the lamps of men tell me the streets are alive?
Where shall I ask, and of whom, in...Read more of this...
by
Herbert, George
...;
My God, accept of my confession.
Sweeten at length this bitter bowl,
Which thou hast pour'd into my soul;
Thy wormwood turn to health, winds to fair weather:
For if thou stay,
I and this day,
As we did rise, we die together.
When thou for sin rebukest man,
Forthwith he waxeth woe and wan:
Bitterness fills our bowels; all our hearts
Pine, and decay,
And dropp away,
And carry with them th'other parts.
But thou wilt sin and grief destroy;
That so the ...Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...akirs preach;
"Bard, when thee would Allah teach,
And lift thee to his holy mount,
He sends thee from his bitter fount,
Wormwood; saying, Go thy ways,
Drink not the Malaga of praise,
But do the deed thy fellows hate,
And compromise thy peaceful state.
Smite the white breasts which thee fed,
Stuff sharp thorns beneath the head
Of them thou shouldst have comforted.
For out of woe and out of crime
Draws the heart a lore sublime."
And yet it seemeth not to me
That the...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...ins such act record;
Thou wilt absolve me from the deed,
For he was hostile to thy creed!
The very name of Nazarene
Was wormwood to his Paynim spleen.
Ungrateful fool! since but for brands
Well wielded in some hardy hands,
And wounds by Galileans given -
The surest pass to Turkish heaven
For him his Houris still might wait
Impatient at the Prophet's gate.
I loved her - love will find its way
Through paths where wolves would fear to prey;
And if it dares enough, 'twere...Read more of this...
by
Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...by Fleas.
Why, prithee, shatter-headed Fop,
The laughing Gods reply;
Hast thou forgot thy Broom, and Mop,
And Wormwood growing nigh?
Go sweep, and wash, and strew thy Floor,
As all good Housewives teach;
And do not thus for Thunders roar,
To make some fatal Breach:
Which You, nor your succeeding Heir,
Nor yet a long Descent
Shall find out Methods to repair,
Tho' Prudence may prevent.
For Club, and Bolts, a Nation call'd of late,
Nor wou'd be eas'd b...Read more of this...
by
Jonson, Ben
...K, when some but see Thy title, EPIGRAMS, and named of me, Thou shouldst be bold, licentious, full of gall, Wormwood, and sulphur, sharp, and tooth'd withal ; Become a petulent thing, hurl ink, and wit, As madmen stones ; not caring whom they hit. Deceive their malice, who could wish it so ; And by thy wiser temper, let men know Thou art not so covetous of least self-fame, Made from the hazard of another's shame ; Much less, with lewd,...Read more of this...
by
Blok, Aleksandr
......
And there was a fatal pleasure
In trampling on cherished and holy things;
And this passion, bitter as wormwood,
Was a frenzied delight for the heart!...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...ight,
The ashen shadows melted down.
I only took with me the cross,
That you had given on day of treason
That wormwood steppe should be in bloom
And winds, like sirens, sing in season.
And here upon an empty wall
He keeps me from the broodings dour
And I don't fear to recall
Anything - even the final hour.
Village of the Tsar Statue
Upon the swan pond maple leaves
Are gathered already, you see,
And bloodied are the branches dark
Of slow...Read more of this...
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