Poetic Despair Quotes

We Poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.

Cruel of heart, lay down my song. Your reading eyes have done me wrong. Not for you was the pen bitten, And the mind wrung, and the song written.

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, The sleepless soul that perished in his pride; Of him who walked in glory and in joy, Following his plough, along the mountain-side. By our own spirits we are deified; We Poets in our youth begin in gladness, But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.

Shall I part my hair behind Do I dare to eat a peach I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!” Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.

Say I feel all sad and self-indulgent, then get stung by a wasp, my misery feels quite abstract and I long just to be in spiritual pain once more - 'damn you tiny assassin, clad in yellow and black, how I crave my former innocence where melancholy was my only trial'.

If poets often commit suicide, it is not because their poems are bad but because they are good. Whoever heard of a bad poet committing suicide? The reader is only a little better off. The exhilaration of a good poem lasts twenty minutes, an hour at most. Unlike the scientist, the artist has reentry problems that are frequent and catastrophic.

T.S. Eliot was one of the first poets introduced to me when I started studying literature and has felt like a close friend ever since. No one nails urban despair quite like Eliot.

The arrogance of poets is only a defense; doubt gnaws the greatest among them; they need our testimony to escape despair.