Failure poems
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A Basket of Flowers
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
Dawn
On skies still and starlit
White lustres take hold,
And grey flushes scarlet,
Lord Of My Life
© Rabindranath Tagore
Didst thou store my days and nights,
my deeds and dreams for the alchemy of thy art,
and string in the chain of thy music my songs of autumn and spring,
and gather the flowers from my mature moments for thy crown?
"I was sad"
© Lesbia Harford
I was sad
Having signed up in a rebel band,
Having signed up to rid the land
Of a plague it had.
Failures
© Edgar Albert Guest
'Tis better to have tried in vain,
Sincerely striving for a goal,
Than to have lived upon the plain
An idle and a timid soul.
A Singing Bird In The City
© Dora Sigerson Shorter
Golden-throated, hath God sent thee for our comfort in the city?
Sweet, sweet! singing, singing all the day.
Dives In Torment
© Robert Norwood
THIS was my failure, who thought that the feast
Rivalled the rapture of bird on the wing;
Rivalled the lily all robed like a priest;
Smoke of the pollen when Rose-censers swing.
The Seeking Of The Waterfall
© John Greenleaf Whittier
They left their home of summer ease
Beneath the lowland's sheltering trees,
To seek, by ways unknown to all,
The promise of the waterfall.
"Because I failed, shall I asperse the End"
© Alfred Austin
Because I failed, shall I asperse the End
With scorn or doubt, my failure to excuse;
Amor Vincit Omnia
© Edgar Bowers
Love is no more.
It died as the mind dies: the pure desire
Relinquishing the blissful form it wore,
The ample joy and clarity expire.
History of the Twentieth Century (A Roadshow)
© Joseph Brodsky
Ladies and gentlemen and the day!
All ye made of sweet human clay!
Let me tell you: you are o'kay.
November
© John Crowe Ransom
THERE'S a patch of trees at the edge of the field,
And a brown little house that is kept so warm,
And a woman waiting by the hearth
Who still keeps most of a woman's charm.
Original Preface.
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In addition to those portions of Goethe's poetical works which
are given in this complete form, specimens of the different other
classes of them, such as the Epigrams, Elegies, &c., are added,
as well as a collection of the various Songs found in his Plays,
making a total number of about 400 Poems, embraced in the present
volume.
Because We Are Going
© Siegfried Sassoon
Because we are going from our wonted places
To be task-ridden by one shattering Aim,
Peter Anderson And Co.
© Henry Lawson
They tried everything and nothing 'twixt the shovel and the press,
And were more or less successful in their ventures -- mostly less.
Once they ran a country paper till the plant was seized for debt,
And the local sinners chuckle over dingy copies yet.
Fall In, My Men, Fall In
© Henry Lawson
The short hour's halt is ended,
The red gone from the west,
The broken wheel is mended,
And the dead men laid to rest.
The Shame of Going Back
© Henry Lawson
The Shame of Going Back And the reason of your failure isn't anybody's fault --
When you haven't got a billet, and the times are very slack,
There is nothing that can spur you like the shame of going back;
Crawling home with empty pockets,
Going back hard-up;
Oh! it's then you learn the meaning of humiliation's cup.
Wide Spaces
© Henry Lawson
When the man I was denounces all the things that I was not,
When the true souls stand like granite, while the souls of liars not
When the quids I gave are counted, and the trays I cadged forgot;
Vers De Société
© Philip Larkin
My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps
To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps
You'd care to join us? In a pig's arse, friend.
Day comes to an end.
The gas fire breathes, the trees are darkly swayed.
And so Dear Warlock-Williams: I'm afraid--
