Failure poems

 / page 10 of 20 /
star nullstar nullstar nullstar nullstar null

Watch-Night

© Mary Hannay Foott

Midnight,—musical and splendid,—

 And the Old Year’s life is ended,—

star nullstar nullstar nullstar nullstar null

Eureka - A Prose Poem

© Edgar Allan Poe

EUREKA:

AN ESSAY ON THE MATERIAL AND SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE

star nullstar nullstar nullstar nullstar null

A Grammarian's Funeral Shortly After The Revival Of Learning

© Robert Browning

Let us begin and carry up this corpse,

  Singing together.

star nullstar nullstar nullstar nullstar null

My Soul Is Marching On!

© Paramahansa Yogananda

The shining stars are sunk in darkness deep,
The weary sun is dead at night,
The moon’s soft smile doth fade anon;
But still my soul is marching on!

star nullstar nullstar nullstar nullstar null

Eyewash

© Niall Montgomery

EYES always open eyes
onions we were all found under
eyes never in a hurry wait for me
blink at the smash preserve the negative hold on a minute
(we are taking actuality as a section through sentiment at that point)

star nullstar nullstar nullstar nullstar null

Four Quartets 2: East Coker

© Thomas Stearns Eliot

Dawn points, and another day
Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind
Wrinkles and slides. I am here
Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.

star nullstar nullstar nullstar nullstar null

M'Fingal - Canto III

© John Trumbull


By this, M'Fingal with his train
Advanced upon th' adjacent plain,
And full with loyalty possest,
Pour'd forth the zeal, that fired his breast.

star nullstar nullstar nullstar nullstar null

M'Fingal - Canto II

© John Trumbull


"T' evade these crimes of blackest grain
You prate of liberty in vain,
And strive to hide your vile designs
In terms abstruse, like school-divines.

star nullstar nullstar nullstar nullstar null

nobody loses all the time (X)

© Edward Estlin Cummings

i had an uncle named
Sol who was a born failure and
nearly everybody said he should have gone
into vaudeville perhaps because my Uncle Sol could
sing McCann He Was A Diver on Xmas Eve like Hell Itself which
may or may not account for the fact that my Uncle

star nullstar nullstar nullstar nullstar null

Carol of Words.

© Walt Whitman

1
EARTH, round, rolling, compact—suns, moons, animals—all these are words to be
said;
Watery, vegetable, sauroid advances—beings, premonitions, lispings of the future,

star nullstar nullstar nullstar nullstar null

To a foil’d European Revolutionaire.

© Walt Whitman

1
COURAGE yet! my brother or my sister!
Keep on! Liberty is to be subserv’d, whatever occurs;
That is nothing, that is quell’d by one or two failures, or any number of failures,

star nullstar nullstar nullstar nullstar null

Feb. 29, 1958

© Allen Ginsberg

Last nite I dreamed of T.S. Eliot
welcoming me to the land of dream
Sofas couches fog in England
Tea in his digs Chelsea rainbows

star nullstar nullstar nullstar nullstar null

New Year's Eve

© Henry Van Dyke

I The other night I had a dream, most clear
And comforting, complete
In every line, a crystal sphere,
And full of intimate and secret cheer.

star nullstar nullstar nullstar nullstar null

Apologia

© Oscar Wilde

Is it thy will that I should wax and wane,
Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey,
And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain
Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day?

star nullstar nullstar nullstar nullstar null

Hiawathas' photographing ( Part III )

© Lewis Carroll

Next the Son, the Stunning-Cantab:
He suggested curves of beauty,
Curves pervading all his figure,
Which the eye might follow onward,

star nullstar nullstar nullstar nullstar null

Hiawatha's Photographing (complete)

© Lewis Carroll

From his shoulder Hiawatha
Took the camera of rosewood,
Made of sliding, folding rosewood;
Neatly put it all together.
In its case it lay compactly,
Folded into nearly nothing;

star nullstar nullstar nullstar nullstar null

Tho’ Lack of Laurels and of Wreaths Not One

© Trumbull Stickney

Tho’ lack of laurels and of wreaths not one


Prove you our lives abortive, shall we yet

star nullstar nullstar nullstar nullstar null

At the Grave of My Guardian Angel: St. Louis Cemetery, New Orleans

© Larry Levis

I should rush out to my office & eat a small, freckled apple leftover 
From 1970 & entirely wizened & rotted by sunlight now,
Then lay my head on my desk & dream again of horses grazing, riderless & still saddled,
Under the smog of the freeway cloverleaf & within earshot of the music waltzing with itself out
Of the topless bars & laundromats of East L.A.

star nullstar nullstar nullstar nullstar null

Lincoln

© Delmore Schwartz

Manic-depressive Lincoln, national hero! 
How just and true that this great nation, being conceived 
In liberty by fugitives should find 
—Strange ways and plays of monstrous History—
This Hamlet-type to be the President—

star nullstar nullstar nullstar nullstar null

Afterword

© Louise Gluck

Reading what I have just written, I now believe
I stopped precipitously, so that my story seems to have been
slightly distorted, ending, as it did, not abruptly
but in a kind of artificial mist of the sort
sprayed onto stages to allow for difficult set changes.