Failure poems

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The Genius Of The Crowd

© Charles Bukowski

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

The Goose Fish

© Howard Nemerov

On the long shore, lit by the moon
To show them properly alone,
Two lovers suddenly embraced
So that their shadows were as one.

Whoever disenchants

© Emily Dickinson

Whoever disenchants
A single Human soul
By failure of irreverence
Is guilty of the whole.

Had I presumed to hope --

© Emily Dickinson

Had I presumed to hope --
The loss had been to Me
A Value -- for the Greatness' Sake --
As Giants -- gone away --

I tell you, Leffingwell was more than these;
And if he prove a rather sorry knight,
What quiverings in the distance of what light
May not have lured him with high promises,
And then gone down?He may have been deceived;
He may have lied,he did; and he believed.

Tasker Norcross

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Ferguson,
Who talked himself at last out of the world
He censured, and is therefore silent now,
Agreed indifferently: My friends are dead
Or most of them.

Shadrach O'Leary

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

But this was not the end. A year ago
I met himand to meet was to admire:
Forgotten were the ladies and the lyre,
And the small, ink-fed Eros of his dream.
By questioning I found a man to know
A failure spared, a Shadrach of the Gleam.

Demos

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

All you that are enamored of my name
And least intent on what most I require,
Beware; for my design and your desire,
Deplorably, are not as yet the same.

The Wandering Jew

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

I saw by looking in his eyes
That they remembered everything;
And this was how I came to know
That he was here, still wandering.

The Man Against the Sky

Between me and the sunset, like a dome
Against the glory of a world on fire,
Now burned a sudden hill,
Bleak, round, and high, by flame-lit height made higher,

Captain Craig

II doubt if ten men in all Tilbury Town
Had ever shaken hands with Captain Craig,
Or called him by his name, or looked at him
So curiously, or so concernedly,

The Wise Brothers

So long adrift, so fast aground,
What foam and ruin have we found
We, the Wise Brothers?
Could heaven and earth be framed amiss,
That we should land in fine like this
We, and no others?

Octaves

I We thrill too strangely at the master's touch;
We shrink too sadly from the larger self
Which for its own completeness agitates
And undetermines us; we do not feel --

Why He Was There

Calm as he was of old when we were young,
He sat there gazing at the pallid flame
Before him. "And how far will this go on?"
I thought. He felt the failure of my tongue,
And smiled: "I was not here until you came;
And I shall not be here when you are gone."

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