Failure poems
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Ghosts In England
© Robinson Jeffers
At East Lulworth the dead were friendly and pitiful, I saw them
peek from their ancient earthworks on the coast hills
To Aubrey De Vere
© George MacDonald
Ray of the Dawn of Truth, Aubrey de Vere,
Forgive my play fantastic with thy name,
Paracelsus: Part III: Paracelsus
© Robert Browning
Paracelsus.
Heap logs and let the blaze laugh out!
Sorrow
© Robert Laurence Binyon
Woe to him that has not known the woe of man,
Who has not felt within him burning all the want
Of desolated bosoms, since the world began;
Felt, as his own, the burden of the fears that daunt;
Who has not eaten failure's bitter bread, and been
Among those ghosts of hope that haunt the day, unseen.
On The Plaza
© Bliss William Carman
One August day I sat beside
A café window open wide
To let the shower-fresh ened air
Blow in across the Plaza, where
Commission
© Ezra Pound
Go, my songs, to the lonely and the unsatisfied,
Go also to the nerve-racked, go to the enslaved-by-convention,
Bear to them my contempt for their oppressors.
Go as a great wave of cool water,
Bear my contempt of oppressors.
Pippa Passes: Part IV: Night
© Robert Browning
Thanks, friends, many thanks! I chiefly desire life now, that I may recompense every one of you. Most I know something of already. What, a repast prepared?Benedicto benedicatur . . . ugh, ugh! Where was I? Oh, as you were remarking, Ugo, the weather is mild, very unlike winter-weather: but I am a Sicilian, you know, and shiver in your Julys here. To be sure, when 't was full summer at Messina, as we priests used to cross in procession the great square on Assumption Day, you might see our thickest yellow tapers twist suddenly in two, each like a falling star, or sink down on themselves in a gore of wax. But go, my friends, but go! [To the Intendant]
Not you, Ugo! [The others leave the apartment]
I have long wanted to converse with you, Ugo.
Stringy Bark and Green Hide
© Anonymous
I sing of a commodity, it's one that will not fail yer,
I mean the common oddity, the mainstay of Australia;
Gold it is a precious thing, for commerce it increases,
But stringy bark and green hide, can beat it all to pieces.
Stringy bark and green hide, that will never fail yer!
Stringy bark and green hide, the mainstay of Australia.
For The New Year
© Edith Nesbit
FLUSHED with a crimson sunrise beauty,
The fair new year its promise gave;
The Paint-Kings
© Washington Allston
Fair Ellen was long the delight of the young,
No damsel could with her compare;
Her charms were the theme of the heart and the tongue.
And bards without number in extacies sung,
The beauties of Ellen the fair.
Bluebeard
© Harry Graham
Yes, I am Bluebeard, and my name
Is one that children cannot stand;
Yet once I used to be so tame
I'd eat out of a person's hand;
So gentle was I wont to be
A Curate might have played with me.
The Little Country Bus
© Edgar Albert Guest
Theres no lock upon your door,
And the polish that you wore
I Ain't Dead Yet
© Edgar Albert Guest
Time was I used to worry and I'd sit around an' sigh,
And think with every ache I got that I was goin' to die,
Musings
© Madison Julius Cawein
All who have toiled for Art, who've won or lost,
Sat equal priests at her high Pentecost;
Only the chrism and sacrament of flame,
Anointing all, inspired not all the same.
We, Who Were Slain In Unlit Pathways
© Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Wishing for the roses of your lips
we offered ourselves to a gallows' twig
Longing for the radiance of your glowing hands
we let ourselves be slain in unlit pathways
Fortune
© Madison Julius Cawein
Within the hollowed hand of God,
Blood-red they lie, the dice of fate,
That have no time nor period,
And know no early and no late.
Aurora Leigh: Book Fifth
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"A flower, a flower," exclaimed
My German student,-his own eyes full-blown
Bent on her. He was twenty, certainly.
The Ring And The Book - Chapter VI - Giuseppe Caponsacchi
© Robert Browning
Again the morning found me. I will work,
Tie down my foolish thoughts. Thank God so far!
I have saved her from a scandal, stopped the tongues
Had broken else into a cackle and hiss
Around the noble name. Duty is still
Wisdom: I have been wise. So the day wore.
