Sad poems
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Sonnet XXI: Why Do I Live
© Mary Darby Robinson
Why do I live to loath the cheerful day,
To shun the smiles of Fame, and mark the hours
On tardy pinions move, while ceaseless show'rs
Down my wan cheek in lucid currents stray?
Ode To Sadness
© Pablo Neruda
Sadness, scarab
with seven crippled feet,
spiderweb egg,
scramble-brained rat,
Ode To Sleep
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
With a gray fleetness, moaning the dead day;
The wings of Silence overfolding space,
Droop with dusk grandeur from the heavenly steep,
And through the stillness gleams thy starry face,
Serenest Angel--Sleep!
Rinaldo to Laura Maria
© Mary Darby Robinson
There tell me I am most despis'd,
E'en by thyself, whom most I priz'd,
So shall I gladly welcome fate,
And perish in thy perfect hate:
So shall I better bear th' eternal pain,
Never to see thy Form, or hear thy Voice again.
Anactoria
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
MY LIFE is bitter with thy love; thine eyes
Blind me, thy tresses burn me, thy sharp sighs
Divine Justice Amiable
© William Cowper
Thou hast no lightnings, O thou Just!
Or I their force should know;
And, if thou strike me into dust,
My soul approves the blow.
Edmund's Wedding
© Mary Darby Robinson
By the side of the brook, where the willow is waving
Why sits the wan Youth, in his wedding-suit gay!
Now sighing so deeply, now frantickly raving
Beneath the pale light of the moon's sickly ray.
The Bride
© Caroline Norton
Where time and sorrow, guilt and care,
Have past and left their withering there:-
These are her joys; and she doth roam
Around her dear but desert home;
Peopling the vacant seats, till tears arise,
And blot the dim sweet vision from her eyes.
A Voice From The Factories
© Caroline Norton
WHEN fallen man from Paradise was driven,
Forth to a world of labour, death, and care;
Still, of his native Eden, bounteous Heaven
Resolved one brief memorial to spare,
Solomon on the Vanity of the World, A Poem. In Three Books. - Pleasure. Book II.
© Matthew Prior
My full design with vast expense achieved,
I came, beheld, admired, reflected, grieved:
I chid the folly of my thoughtless haste,
For, the work perfected, the joy was past.
The Devil And The Governor
© William Forster
A Dramatic Sketch.
SceneAn Office. Governor discovered seated at a writing-table.
Sadness and Joy
© William Henry Davies
I pray you, Sadness, leave me soon,
In sweet invention thou art poor!
Thy sister, Joy can make ten songs
While thou art making four.
Aechdeacon Barbour
© John Greenleaf Whittier
THROUGH the long hall the shuttered windows shed
A dubious light on every upturned head;
On locks like those of Absalom the fair,
On the bald apex ringed with scanty hair,
To a Republican Friend
© Matthew Arnold
God knows it, I am with you. If to prize
Those virtues, priz'd and practis'd by too few,
But priz'd, but lov'd, but eminent in you,
Man's fundamental life: if to despise
The Buried Life
© Matthew Arnold
Ah! well for us, if even we,
Even for a moment, can get free
Our heart, and have our lips unchain'd;
For that which seals them hath been deep-ordain'd!
Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse
© Matthew Arnold
Through Alpine meadows soft-suffused
With rain, where thick the crocus blows,
Past the dark forges long disused,
The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes.
The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride,
Through forest, up the mountain-side.
Sohrab and Rustum
© Matthew Arnold
"Ferood, and ye, Persians and Tartars, hear!
Let there be truce between the hosts to-day.
But choose a champion from the Persian lords
To fight our champion Sohrab, man to man."
The ride to bumpville
© Eugene Field
Play that my knee was a calico mare
Saddled and bridled for Bumpville;
Leap to the back of this steed, if you dare,
And gallop away to Bumpville!
