Failure poems
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The Ring And The Book - Chapter IX - Juris Doctor Johannes-Baptista Bottinius
© Robert Browning
Thus
Would I defend the step,were the thing true
Which is a fable,see my former speech,
That Guido slept (who never slept a wink)
Through treachery, an opiate from his wife,
Who not so much as knew what opiates mean.
Non Dolet!
© Edith Wharton
So weary a world it lies, forlorn of day,
And yet not wholly dark,
Since evermore some soul that missed the mark
Calls back to those agrope
In the mad maze of hope,
Courage, my brothersI have found the way!
Gitanjali
© Rabindranath Tagore
1.
Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.
Columbus
© James Russell Lowell
One poor day!--
Remember whose and not how short it is!
It is God's day, it is Columbus's.
A lavish day! One day, with life and heart,
Is more than time enough to find a world.
Success And Failure
© Edgar Albert Guest
I do not think all failure's undeserved,
And all success is merely someone's luck;
Some men are down because they were unnerved,
And some are up because they kept their pluck.
Some men are down because they chose to shirk;
Some men are high because they did their work.
Tale V
© George Crabbe
these,
All that on idle, ardent spirits seize;
Robbers at land and pirates on the main,
Enchanters foil'd, spells broken, giants slain;
Legends of love, with tales of halls and bowers,
Choice of rare songs, and garlands of choice
The Hand In The Dark
© Ada Cambridge
How calm the spangled city spread below!
How cool the night! How fair the starry skies!
How sweet the dewy breezes! But I know
What, under all their seeming beauty, lies.
The Sunset, Woven Of Soft Lights
© Katharine Lee Bates
THE sunset, woven of soft lights
And tender colors, lingers late,
The Remedy
© Harry Kemp
When you've failed with ordered people, when you've sunk neck-deep again
In the sluggish wash and jetsam of the slackened tides of men,
Don't get old and mean and bitter, - there's a primal remedy -
Just take a ship to sea, my lad, just take a ship to sea.
Pretence. Part I - Table-Talk
© John Kenyon
The youth, who long hath trod with trusting feet,
Starts from the flash which shows him life's deceit;
Then, with slow footstep, ponders, undeceived,
On all his heart, for many a year, believed;
But hence he eyes the world with sharpened view,
And learns, too soon, to separate false from true.
Failure of Communion
© Judith Wright
What is the space between,
enclosing us in one
united person, yet
dividing each alone.
A Farewell To Youth
© Alfred Austin
Ere that I say farewell to youth, and take
The homely road that leads to life's decline,
Vesalius In Zante
© Edith Wharton
Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.
I loved light ever, light in eye and brain
No tapers mirrored in long palace floors,
Nor dedicated depths of silent aisles,
But just the common dusty wind-blown day
That roofs earths millions.
Supplication
© Edgar Lee Masters
Oh Lord, when all our bones are thrust
Beyond the gaze of all but Thine;
And these blaspheming tongues are dust
Which babbled of Thy name divine,
The Happy Man
© Edgar Albert Guest
If you would know a happy man,
Go find the fellow who
Has had a bout with trouble grim
And just come smiling through.
The Angel In The House. Book I. Canto V.
© Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
IV Venus Victrix
Fatal in force, yet gentle in will,
Defeats, from her, are tender pacts,
For, like the kindly lodestone, still
She's drawn herself by what she attracts.
If I Had Youth
© Edgar Albert Guest
If I had youth I'd bid the world to try me;
I'd answer every challenge to my will.
The Ring And The Book - Chapter III - The Other Half-Rome
© Robert Browning
ANOTHER DAY that finds her living yet,
Little Pompilia, with the patient brow
The Parish Register - Part III: Burials
© George Crabbe
drown'd.
"Is this a landsman's love? Be certain then,
"We part for ever!"--and they cried, "Amen!"
His words were truth's:- Some forty summers
