Sad poems
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An Exchange between the Fingers and the Toes
© John Fuller
Fingers:
Cramped, you are hardly anything but fidgets.
Smokers of Paper
© Cesare Pavese
He’s brought me to hear his band. He sits in a corner
mouthing his clarinet. A hellish racket begins.
Bereavement
© William Lisle Bowles
Whose was that gentle voice, that, whispering sweet,
Promised methought long days of bliss sincere!
Sapphics
© Algernon Charles Swinburne
All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids,
Shed not dew, nor shook nor unclosed a feather,
Yet with lips shut close and with eyes of iron
Stood and beheld me.
Paradise Lost: Book X
© Patrick Kavanagh
So having said, he thus to Eve in few:
"Say, Woman, what is this which thou hast done?"
To whom sad Eve, with shame nigh overwhelm'd,
Confessing soon, yet not before her Judge
Bold or loquacious, thus abash'd replied,
"The Serpent me beguil'd, and I did eat."
Beowulf (modern English translation)
© Pierre Reverdy
LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
I Sing the Body Electric
© Walt Whitman
1
I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.
Passing Through
© Ai
“Earth is the birth of the blues,” sang Yellow Bertha,
as she chopped cotton beside Mama Rose.
Chomei at Toyama
© Ted Hughes
Swirl sleeping in the waterfall!
On motionless pools scum appearing
disappearing!
Old Folks at Home
© Stephen C. Foster
All de world am sad and dreary,
Ebry where I roam,
Oh! darkeys how my heart grows weary,
Far from de old folks at home.
At the Executed Murderer’s Grave
© James Wright
6
Staring politely, they will not mark my face
From any murderer’s, buried in this place.
Why should they? We are nothing but a man.
An Hymn Of Heavenly Beauty
© Edmund Spenser
Rapt with the rage of mine own ravish'd thought,
Through contemplation of those goodly sights,
The Man Who Married Magdalene
© Louis Simpson
The man who married Magdalene
Had not forgiven her.
God might pardon every sin ...
Love is no pardoner.
The Barrel-Organ
© Alfred Noyes
Go down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time.
Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London!),
And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer’s wonderland.
Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London!).
The Missionary - Canto Second
© William Lisle Bowles
The night was still and clear, when, o'er the snows,
Andes! thy melancholy Spirit rose,--
A shadow stern and sad: he stood alone,
Upon the topmost mountain's burning cone;
And whilst his eyes shone dim, through surging smoke,
Thus to the spirits of the fire he spoke:--
To a Lady that Desired I Would Love Her
© Thomas Carew
Now you have freely given me leave to love,
What will you do?
Shall I your mirth, or passion move,
When I begin to woo;
Will you torment, or scorn, or love me too?
Beowulf (Old English version)
© Pierre Reverdy
Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
