Failure poems
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Reply To A Magistrate
© Wang Wei
You want to taste success or failure?
A lone fisherman sings out on the water.
No Use Sighin'
© Edgar Albert Guest
No use frettin' when the rain comes down,
No use grievin' when the gray clouds frown,
No use sighin' when the wind blows strong,
No use wailin' when the world's all wrong;
Only thing that a man can do
Is work an' wait till the sky gets blue.
In Remembrance Of Joseph Sturge
© John Greenleaf Whittier
In the fair land o'erwatched by Ischia's mountains,
Across the charmed bay
Whose blue waves keep with Capri's silver fountains
Perpetual holiday,
A Prayer
© Edgar Albert Guest
God grant me kindly thought
And patience through the day,
And in the things I've wrought
Let no man living say
That hate's grim mark has stained
What little joy I've gained.
Youth
© Edgar Albert Guest
If I had youth I'd bid the world to try me;
I'd answer every challenge to my will.
Defeat
© Edgar Albert Guest
No one is beat till he quits,
No one is through till he stops,
No matter how hard Failure hits,
No matter how often he drops,
A fellow's not down till he lies
In the dust and refuses to rise
The Flag
© Julia Ward Howe
There's a flag hangs over my threshold, whose folds are more dear to me
Than the blood that thrills in my bosom its earnest of liberty;
And dear are the stars it harbors in its sunny field of blue
As the hope of a further heaven that lights all our dim lives through.
An Experiment In Translation
© Alfred Austin
Blest husbandmen! if they but knew their bliss!
For whom, from war remote, fair-minded Earth
What Time the Morning Stars Arise
© Jean Blewett
ABOVE him spreads the purple sky,
Beneath him spreads the ether sea,
And everywhere about him lie
Dim ports of space, and mystery.
When Nature Wants a Man
© Angela Morgan
Watch her method, watch her ways!
How she ruthlessly perfects
Whom she royally elects;
How she hammers him and hurts him
And with mighty blows converts him
Into trial shapes of clay which only Nature understands--
Griselda: A Society Novel In Verse - Chapter V
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Griselda's madness lasted forty days,
Forty eternities! Men went their ways,
And suns arose and set, and women smiled,
And tongues wagged lightly in impeachment wild
Ghosts Of The Old Year
© James Weldon Johnson
The snow has ceased its fluttering flight,
The wind sunk to a whisper light,
Natural Gifts.
© Robert Crawford
The gifts o' the gods; not all men have them, ay,
And some indeed that have them know it not;
And some that have them not, deem that they have,
And there's the mischief: it is this that makes
Bereavement Of The Fields
© William Wilfred Campbell
Soft fall the February snows, and soft
Falls on my heart the snow of wintry pain;
For never more, by wood or field or croft,
Will he we knew walk with his loved again;
Failure
© Rupert Brooke
All the great courts were quiet in the sun,
And full of vacant echoes: moss had grown
Over the glassy pavement, and begun
To creep within the dusty council-halls.
An idle wind blew round an empty throne
And stirred the heavy curtains on the walls.
The Poet Fears Failure
© Erica Jong
The critic is only doing his job:
keeping the poet lonely.
He barks
like a dog at the door
when the master comes home.
The Beauteous Terrorist
© Sir Henry Parkes
Soft as the morning's pearly light,
Where yet may rise the thunder-cloud,
Her gentle face was ever bright
With noble thought and purpose proud.
The Tangled Skein
© William Schwenck Gilbert
Try we life-long, we can never
Straighten out life's tangled skein,
The Ballad of the White Horse
© Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Of great limbs gone to chaos,
A great face turned to night-
Why bend above a shapeless shroud
Seeking in such archaic cloud
Sight of strong lords and light?
Old Years And New
© Edgar Albert Guest
Old years and new years, all blended into one,
The best of what there is to be, the best of what is gone--
Let's bury all the failures in the dim and dusty past
And keep the smiles of friendship and laughter to the last.
