Poems

[Pensive]

In last few days, I read cheerful poems having a touch of optimism in them. But, now, I am looking for something different: a poignant poem perhaps. A dark poem. Do you have any recommendations? I would be grateful if anyone can post such a poem.

[mir]

By Wilfred Owen. This is one of my favorite poems, despite its terrible subject.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas!7 Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

[Quark]

Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold--If this isn't depressing and poignant, I don't know what is.


The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.


Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

[Pensive]

Very emotional poems, and dark. Exactly what I wanted. Thanks a lot!

[HandyAndy]

Nice poems I agree! These are dark I agree also!

HandyAndy

[JBI]

Try a little Sylvia Plath.

[Pensive]

Try a little Sylvia Plath.

Well, yes, I have tried some of her poems out of which I liked Daddy the most. It had a good usage of metaphors in it.

[kandaurov]

It might not be your cup of tea, or not dark enough, but I thought I'd share this simple, melancholy poem of Yeat's. One of my favourite poems of his.

'When you are old'

WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

[Ron Price]

There's more to Matthew Arnold than Dover Beach
__________________________________
STAGIRIUS

In 1844 the British poet Matthew Arnold(1822-1888), who had started writing poetry in his teens, began writing a poem entitled Stagirius.1 That same year Arnold graduated from Oxford and began teaching the classics at Rugby School. Arnold’s poem Stagirius was not published until 1849 and then in 1855. In this poem Arnold asks release from doubt and spiritual pride. In 1857 he was appointed Professor of Poetry at Oxford. His poetry reveals the spiritual unrest and distraction of the age and his attraction to certain Greek and Roman guides and modern poetic teachers. –Ron Price wit thanks to “Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold,” The Project Gutenburg Ebook, 2004.

They were busy years for you,
the most turbulent and the most
glorious in the greatest cycle of
religious history, they are, too,
the most spectacular, the most
tragic and the most eventful….

But, as you say, Stagirius was mad
and the world was mad, you knew
only too well with the severity of
that inward tempest. That uniform
attachment to a simple model with
its abstruse and arbitrary eschatology
had become ridiculous. You were not
fit for any evangelical poverty, for any
evangelical anything; you could not
consume your life in penance, solitude
and religious zeal, you had too sociable
a demeanour, you sought that wide and
luminous view with its sweet calm and
sought a oneness with the life of humankind.

Ron Price
6 April 2007

1 Stagirius was a young friend of Chrysostom.(349-407 AD) They belonged to a brotherhood of monastics. He was not able to endure the ascetic disciplines of the monastic order because of his affluent background. He lived at the time of the famous ascetic Simeon the Stylite who has become famous in history for his asceticism.

[Artem85]

last poem very good. I like it. And second poem. I like Alexandr Pushkin
у лукоморья дуб зеленій
златая цепь на дубе том
и днем и ночью кот ученій
все ходит по цепи кругом,
иде направо - песнь заводит,
налево - сказку говорит,
там чудеса, там леший бродит,
русалки на ветвях сидят...:)

Кафе (http://kudapoyti.com.ua)

[Pensive]

It might not be your cup of tea, or not dark enough, but I thought I'd share this simple, melancholy poem of Yeat's. One of my favourite poems of his.

'When you are old'

WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true;
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

I have already read it, and I like it a lot. This is my favourite Yeats's poem (out of those I have read, of course). :)

Thanks Ron Price, and Artem85, though I can't really understand the language in which this poem is written, Artem. Do you have an English translation of this poem available? :)

[Madhuri]

Artem85, though I can't really understand the language in which this poem is written, Artem. Do you have an English translation of this poem available? :)

This seems to be in Russian. You can use any web translation tool for the English version.

See if this site works -- http://www.freetranslation.com/ (I think Kathy mentioned this in some thread).

[Pensive]

This seems to be in Russian. You can use any web translation tool for the English version.

See if this site works -- http://www.freetranslation.com/ (I think Kathy mentioned this in some thread).

Thanks Madhuri for the link. The translation comes like this:

At a curved seashore an oak зеленій
Golden circuit on an oak volume
And day and night a cat ученій
All goes on a circuit around,
иде to the right - песнь gets,
On the left - a fairy tale speaks,
There miracles, there леший wanders,
Mermaids on branches sit

But I can't seem to follow it with some words which are not translated.

[Madhuri]

You are welcome Pensy :D

I checked on another translation site -- http://translation2.paralink.com/ I got the same result as yours. Maybe these are some typical words, that are not added in the translation dictionary. Only Artem85 can help now.

[Mayhem]

Written by Lt. Henry G. Lee the day after Pearl Harbour. He was stationed in the Philipines and realised the Hell he was about to be thrown into. Unfortunately, he didn't survive the war.

“Prayer Before Battle (To Mars)”
(December 8, 1941)
Before thine ancient altar, God of War,
Forlorn, afraid, alone, I kneel to pray.
The gentle shepherd whom I would adore,
Faced by thy blazing plaything, slips away.
And I am drained of faith — alone — alone.
Who now needs faith to face thy outthrust sword,
Bereft of hope, turned to pagan to the bone.
I kneel to thee and hail thee as my Lord.
From such a God as thee, I ask not life,
My life is forfeited, the hour is late.
Thou need not swerve the bullet, dull the knife.
I ask but strength to ride the wave of fate.
And one thing more — to validate this strife,
And my own sacrifice — teach me to hate.”

[formality hater]

I am sure you have come across these verses of SHELLEY:


And like a dying lady,lean and pale,
Who totters forth,wrapped in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber,led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky East,
A white and shapeless mass.

[Pensive]

“Prayer Before Battle (To Mars)”
(December 8, 1941)
Before thine ancient altar, God of War,
Forlorn, afraid, alone, I kneel to pray.
The gentle shepherd whom I would adore,
Faced by thy blazing plaything, slips away.
And I am drained of faith — alone — alone.
Who now needs faith to face thy outthrust sword,
Bereft of hope, turned to pagan to the bone.
I kneel to thee and hail thee as my Lord.
From such a God as thee, I ask not life,
My life is forfeited, the hour is late.
Thou need not swerve the bullet, dull the knife.
I ask but strength to ride the wave of fate.
And one thing more — to validate this strife,
And my own sacrifice — teach me to hate.”

Thanks Mayhem for posting this. :)


I am sure you have come across these verses of SHELLEY:


And like a dying lady,lean and pale,
Who totters forth,wrapped in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber,led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky East,
A white and shapeless mass.

Actually, no. I haven't read much of Shelley. Thanks for posting it. :)

[quasimodo1]

To Pensive: This may be a love poem... http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=418730#post418730 but also qualifies your requirements. Is this your own project or a university thing? quasi

[Pensive]

To Pensive: This may be a love poem... http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?p=418730#post418730

Thanks for the link, quas! I have not yet read this Ballad though I have read the poem Annabel Lee which I immensely liked. I should better read it now.


Is this your own project or a university thing? quasi

Nope, not a university project.

[detritus]

These are rather melancholy and wistful, and they also delighted me very much.

As I stand alone
On the beach of Narumi,
I feel the expanse of the sea
That severs me so
From the ancient capital.

- Asukai Masaaki

Dead my old fine hopes
And dry my dreaming
But still...
Iris, blue each spring

- Shushiki

Dew evaporates
And all our world
Is dew...so dear,
So fresh, so fleeting

-Issa

A saddening world:
Flowers whose sweet
Blooms must fall...
As we too, alas...

-Issa

Thus too my lovely life
Must end, another
Flower...
To fall and float away

-Onitsura

Deepen, drop, and die
Many-hued
Chrysanthemums...
One black earth for all

-Ryusui

I think Anna Akhmatova's 'Requiem' is decidedly dark and poignant. There is a translation here: poetryloverspage.com/poets/akhmatova/requiem