Failure

Related poetry:

1. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
2. Coucy The rooks aclamor when one enters here Startle the empty towers far overhead; Through gaping walls the summer fields appear, Green, tan, or, poppy-mingled, tinged with red. The courts where revel rang deep grass and moss Cover, and tangled vines have overgrown The gate where banners blazoned with a cross Rolled forth to toss round […]...
3. Failure He wrote a play; by day and night He strove with passion and delight; Yet knew, long ere the curtain drop, His drama was a sorry flop. In Parliament he sought a seat; Election Day brought dire defeat; Yet he had wooed with word and pen Prodigiously his fellow men. And then he wrote a […]...
4. To Failure You do not come dramatically, with dragons That rear up with my life between their paws And dash me butchered down beside the wagons, The horses panicking; nor as a clause Clearly set out to warn what can be lost, What out-of-pocket charges must be borne Expenses met; nor as a draughty ghost That’s seen, […]...
5. Successful Failure I wonder if successful men Are always happy? And do they sing with gusto when Springtime is sappy? Although I am of snow-white hair And nighly mortal, Each time I sniff the April air I chortle. I wonder if a millionaire Jigs with enjoyment, Having such heaps of time to spare For daft employment. For […]...
6. Temple Tree Path Narrow path sunless temple locust tree Deep dark much green moss Should gate except meet sweep In case have hill monk come A narrow, sunless path to the temple tree, Deep and dark; abundant green moss. Wait by the gate when finished sweeping the yard, In case a monk should come down from the hill....
7. The Poet Fears Failure The poet fears failure & so she says “Hold on pen What if the critics Hate me?” & with that question She blots out more lines Than any critic could. The critic is only doing his job: Keeping the poet lonely. He barks Like a dog at the door When the master comes home. It’s […]...
8. Hope in Failure THOUGH now thou hast failed and art fallen, despair not because of defeat, Though lost for a while be thy heaven and weary of earth be thy feet, For all will be beauty about thee hereafter through sorrowful years, And lovely the dews for thy chilling and ruby thy heart-drip of tears. The eyes that […]...
9. The Shrubbery, Written in a Time of Affliction Oh happy shades to me unblest! Friendly to peace, but not to me! How ill the scene that offers rest, And heart that cannot rest, agree! This glassy stream, that spreading pine, Those alders quiv’ring to the breeze, Might sooth a soul less hurt than mine, And please, if any thing could please. But fix’d […]...
10. A Study Light cloud pavilion light rain Dark yard day weary open Sit look green moss colour About to on person clothes come There’s light cloud, and drizzle round the pavilion, In the dark yard, I wearily open a gate. I sit and look at the colour of green moss, Ready for people’s clothing to pick up....
11. The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter After Li Po While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead I played at the front gate, pulling flowers. You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse, You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums. And we went on living in the village of Chokan: Two small people, without dislike or suspicion. […]...
12. Psalm 14 part 2 The folly of persecutors. Are sinners now so senseless grown That they the saints devour? And never worship at thy throne, Nor fear thine awful power? Great God! appear to their surprise; Reveal thy dreadful name; Let them no more thy wrath despise, Nor turn our hope to shame. Dost thou not dwell among the […]...
13. Anxiety The hoar-frost crumbles in the sun, The crisping steam of a train Melts in the air, while two black birds Sweep past the window again. Along the vacant road, a red Bicycle approaches; I wait In a thaw of anxiety, for the boy To leap down at our gate. He has passed us by; but […]...
14. Psalm 84 v.1-4,10, paraphrased C. M. Delight in ordinances of worship; or, God present in his churches. My soul, how lovely is the place To which thy God resorts! ‘Tis heav’n to see his smiling face, Though in his earthly courts. There the great Monarch of the skies His saving power displays, And light breaks in upon […]...
15. Lucy Ashton's Song Look not thou on beauty’s charming; Sit thou still when kings are arming; Taste not when the wine-cup glistens; Speak not when the people listens; Stop thine ear against the singer; From the red gold keep thy finger; Vacant heart and hand and eye, Easy live and quiet die....
16. Blow, Bugle, Blow THE splendour falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. O hark, O hear! how thin and clear, And thinner, clearer, farther going! O […]...
17. H. Baptism II Since, Lord, to thee A narrow way and little gate Is all the passage, on my infancy Thou didst lay hold, and antedate My faith in me. O let me still Write thee great God, and me a child: Let me be soft and supple to thy will, Small to my self, to others mild, […]...
18. Day And Night Through my heart’s palace Thoughts unnumbered throng; And there, most quiet and, as a child, most wise, High-throned you sit, and gracious. All day long Great Hopes gold-armoured, jester Fantasies, And pilgrim Dreams, and little beggar Sighs, Bow to your benediction, go their way. And the grave jewelled courtier Memories Worship and love and tend […]...
19. TO ROBIN RED-BREAST Laid out for dead, let thy last kindness be With leaves and moss-work for to cover me; And while the wood-nymphs my cold corpse inter, Sing thou my dirge, sweet-warbling chorister! For epitaph, in foliage, next write this: HERE, HERE THE TOMB OF ROBIN HERRICK IS!...
20. The Refugees In the shabby train no seat is vacant. The child in the ripped mask Sprawls undisturbed in the waste Of the smashed compartment. Is their calm extravagant? They had faces and lives like you. What was it they possessed That they were willing to trade for this? The dried blood sparkles along the mask Of […]...
21. Psalm 130 Pardoning grace. Out of the deeps of long distress, The borders of despair, I sent my cries to seek thy grace, My groans to move thine ear. Great God, should thy severer eye, And thine impartial hand, Mark and revenge iniquity, No mortal flesh could stand. But there are pardons with my God For crimes […]...
22. Impromptu, to Lady Winchelsea In vain you boast Poetic Names of yore, And cite those Sapho’s we admire no more: Fate doom’d the Fall of ev’ry Female Wit, But doom’d it then when first Ardelia writ. Of all Examples by the World confest, I knew Ardelia could not quote the best; Who, like her Mistress on Britannia’s Throne; Fights, […]...
23. A Little Litany When God turned back eternity and was young, Ancient of Days, grown little for your mirth (As under the low arch the land is bright) Peered through you, gate of heaven and saw the earth. Or shutting out his shining skies awhile Built you about him for a house of gold To see in pictured […]...
24. A Girl The tree has entered my hands, The sap has ascended my arms, The tree has grown in my breast – Downward, The branches grow out of me, like arms. Tree you are, Moss you are, You are violets with wind above them. A child – so high – you are, And all this is folly […]...
25. Ante Aram Before thy shrine I kneel, an unknown worshipper, Chanting strange hymns to thee and sorrowful litanies, Incense of dirges, prayers that are as holy myrrh. Ah, goddess, on thy throne of tears and faint low sighs, Weary at last to theeward come the feet that err, And empty hearts grown tired of the world’s vanities. […]...
26. To Mesdames Zassetsky And Garschine THE wind may blaw the lee-gang way And aye the lift be mirk an’ gray, An deep the moss and steigh the brae Where a’ maun gang – There’s still an hoor in ilka day For luve and sang. And canty hearts are strangely steeled. By some dikeside they’ll find a bield, Some couthy neuk […]...
27. The Spirit of Poetry There is a quiet spirit in these woods, That dwells where’er the gentle south-wind blows; Where, underneath the white-thorn, in the glade, The wild flowers bloom, or, kissing the soft air, The leaves above their sunny palms outspread. With what a tender and impassioned voice It fills the nice and delicate ear of thought, When […]...
28. Sorrow of Departure Red lotus incense fades on The jeweled curtain. Autumn Comes again. Gently I open My silk dress and float alone On the orchid boat. Who can Take a letter beyond the clouds? Only the wild geese come back And write their ideograms On the sky under the full Moon that floods the West Chamber. Flowers, […]...
29. The Wicked Postman Why do you sit there on the floor so quiet and silent, tell me, Mother dear? The rain is coming in through the open window, making you all Wet, and you don’t mind it. Do you hear the gong striking four? It is time for my brother To come home from school. What has happened […]...
30. The Silver Lily The nights have grown cool again, like the nights Of early spring, and quiet again. Will Speech disturb you? We’re Alone now; we have no reason for silence. Can you see, over the garden-the full moon rises. I won’t see the next full moon. In spring, when the moon rose, it meant Time was endless. […]...
31. All overgrown by cunning moss All overgrown by cunning moss, All interspersed with weed, The little cage of “Currer Bell” In quiet “Haworth” laid. Gathered from many wanderings Gethsemane can tell Thro’ what transporting anguish She reached the Asphodel! Soft falls the sounds of Eden Upon her puzzled ear Oh what an afternoon for Heaven, When “Bronte” entered there!...
32. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
33. Some Like Poetry Write it. Write. In ordinary ink On ordinary paper: they were given no food, They all died of hunger. “All. How many? It’s a big meadow. How much grass For each one?” Write: I don’t know. History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, As though the one had […]...
34. John Horace Burleson I won the prize essay at school Here in the village, And published a novel before I was twenty-five. I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art; There married the banker’s daughter, And later became president of the bank- Always looking forward to some leisure To write an epic novel of […]...
35. Charlene-n-Booker 4ever And the old men, supervising grown grandsons, nephews, Any man a boy given this chance of making A new sidewalk outside the apartment building where Some of them live, three old men and their wives, The aging unmarrying children, and the child Who is a cousin, whose mother has sent her here Because she doesn’t […]...
36. The Fifth Ode Of Horace. Lib. I Quis multa gracilis te puer in Rosa Rendred almost word for word without Rhyme according to the Latin Measure, as near as the Language permit. WHAT slender Youth bedew’d with liquid odours Courts thee on Roses in some pleasant Cave, Pyrrha for whom bind’st thou In wreaths thy golden Hair, Plain in thy neatness; O […]...
37. The Little Box The little box gets her first teeth And her little length Little width little emptiness And all the rest she has The little box continues growing The cupboard that she was inside Is now inside her And she grows bigger bigger bigger Now the room is inside her And the house and the city and […]...
38. Saddest Poem I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars, And the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.” The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. On nights […]...
39. A Bronze Head Here at right of the entrance this bronze head, Human, superhuman, a bird’s round eye, Everything else withered and mummy-dead. What great tomb-haunter sweeps the distant sky (Something may linger there though all else die;) And finds there nothing to make its tetror less Hysterica passio of its own emptiness? No dark tomb-haunter once; her […]...
40. Psalm 116 part 2 v.12ff C. M. Vows made in trouble paid in the church. What shall I render to my God For all his kindness shown? My feet shall visit thine abode, My songs address thy throne. Among the saints that fill thine house My off’rings shall be paid; There shall my zeal perform the vows My soul […]...