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Famous Short Fate Poems

Famous Short Fate Poems. Short Fate Poetry by Famous Poets. A collection of the all-time best Fate short poems


by Mark Twain
 Good-bye! a kind good-bye,
I bid you now, my friend,
And though 'tis sad to speak the word,
To destiny I bend

And though it be decreed by Fate
That we ne'er meet again,
Your image, graven on my heart,
Forever shall remain.
Aye, in my heart thoult have a place, Among the friends held dear,- Nor shall the hand of Time efface The memories written there.
Goodbye, S.
L.
C.



by Alice Walker
(FOR MARTYRS)


They who feel death close as a breath
Speak loudly in unlighted rooms
Lounge upright in articulate gesture
Before the herd of jealous Gods


Fate finds them receiving
At home.
Grim the warrior forest who present Casual silence with casual battle cries Or stand unflinchingly lodged In common sand Crucified.

by Edward Estlin (E E) Cummings
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves 
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers.
Don't cry the best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids' flutter which says we are for each other: then laugh leaning back in my arms for life's not a paragraph and death i think is no parenthesis

by Thomas Hardy
 How great my grief, my joys how few, 
Since first it was my fate to know thee! 
- Have the slow years not brought to view 
How great my grief, my joys how few, 
Nor memory shaped old times anew, 
 Nor loving-kindness helped to show thee 
How great my grief, my joys how few, 
 Since first it was my fate to know thee?

by Dorothy Parker
 If I had a shiny gun,
I could have a world of fun
Speeding bullets through the brains
Of the folk who give me pains;

Or had I some poison gas,
I could make the moments pass
Bumping off a number of
People whom I do not love.
But I have no lethal weapon- Thus does Fate our pleasure step on! So they still are quick and well Who should be, by rights, in hell.



by Richard Flecknoe
All human things are subject to decay.
And, when fate summons, monarchs must obey.
This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young
Was called to empire, and had governed long;
In prose and verse was owned, without dispute,
Throughout the realms of nonsense, absolute.

Hymn  Create an image from this poem
by Edgar Allan Poe
 At morn- at noon- at twilight dim-
Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!
In joy and woe- in good and ill-
Mother of God, be with me still!
When the hours flew brightly by,
And not a cloud obscured the sky,
My soul, lest it should truant be,
Thy grace did guide to thine and thee;
Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast
Darkly my Present and my Past,
Let my Future radiant shine
With sweet hopes of thee and thine!

by Alexander Pushkin
 He's blessed, who lives in peace, that's distant
From the ignorant fobs with calls,
Who can provide his every instance
With dreams, or labors, or recalls;
To whom the fate sends friends in score,
Who hides himself by Savior's back
From bashful fools, which lull and bore,
And from the impudent ones, which wake.

by Sara Teasdale
 Did you never know, long ago, how much you loved me—
That your love would never lessen and never go?
You were young then, proud and fresh-hearted,
You were too young to know.
Fate is a wind, and red leaves fly before it Far apart, far away in the gusty time of year— Seldom we meet now, but when I hear you speaking, I know your secret, my dear, my dear.

by Jane Austen
 Of a Ministry pitiful, angry, mean,
A gallant commander the victim is seen.
For promptitude, vigour, success, does he stand Condemn'd to receive a severe reprimand! To his foes I could wish a resemblance in fate: That they, too, may suffer themselves, soon or late, The injustice they warrent.
But vain is my spite They cannot so suffer who never do right.

by Paul Eluard
 I cannot be known
Better than you know me 

Your eyes in which we sleep
We together
Have made for my man's gleam
A better fate than for the common nights 

Your eyes in which I travel
Have given to signs along the roads
A meaning alien to the earth 

In your eyes who reveal to us
Our endless solitude 

Are no longer what they thought themselves to be 

You cannot be known
Better than I know you.

by José Martí
Opening the moorish grate
To lean upon the wet sill,
Pale as the moon, and so still, 
A lover ponders his fate.
Pale, beneath her canopy Of red silk and turtledove, Eve, who says nothing of love, A violet plucks in her tea.

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Seeking to find his home, Odysseus crosses each water;
Through Charybdis so dread; ay, and through Scylla's wild yells,
Through the alarms of the raging sea, the alarms of the land too,--
E'en to the kingdom of hell leads him his wandering course.
And at length, as he sleeps, to Ithaca's coast fate conducts him; There he awakes, and, with grief, knows not his fatherland now.

by Walt Whitman
 HOW they are provided for upon the earth, (appearing at intervals;) 
How dear and dreadful they are to the earth; 
How they inure to themselves as much as to any—What a paradox appears their age; 
How people respond to them, yet know them not; 
How there is something relentless in their fate, all times;
How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation and reward, 
And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same great purchase.

by John Dryden
 Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Be fair or foul or rain or shine The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power, But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

by Emily Dickinson
 Fate slew Him, but He did not drop --
She felled -- He did not fall --
Impaled Him on Her fiercest stakes --
He neutralized them all --

She stung Him -- sapped His firm Advance --
But when Her Worst was done
And He -- unmoved regarded Her --
Acknowledged Him a Man.

by Christopher Marlowe
 It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is overruled by fate.
When two are stripped, long ere the course begin, We wish that one should love, the other win; And one especially do we affect Of two gold ingots, like in each respect: The reason no man knows; let it suffice What we behold is censured by our eyes.
Where both deliberate, the love is slight: Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?

Stars  Create an image from this poem
by Robert Frost
 How countlessly they congregate
O'er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When wintry winds do blow!--

As if with keeness for our fate,
Our faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
Invisible at dawn,--

And yet with neither love nor hate,
Those starts like somw snow-white
Minerva's snow-white marble eyes
Without the gift of sight.

by Emily Dickinson
 A House upon the Height --
That Wagon never reached --
No Dead, were ever carried down --
No Peddler's Cart -- approached --

Whose Chimney never smoked --
Whose Windows -- Night and Morn --
Caught Sunrise first -- and Sunset -- last --
Then -- held an Empty Pane --

Whose fate -- Conjecture knew --
No other neighbor -- did --
And what it was -- we never lisped --
Because He -- never told --

by Ogden Nash
 I have a bone to pick with Fate.
Come here and tell me, girlie, Do you think my mind is maturing late, Or simply rotted early?

Gifts  Create an image from this poem
by James Thomson
 GIVE a man a horse he can ride, 
 Give a man a boat he can sail; 
And his rank and wealth, his strength and health, 
 On sea nor shore shall fail.
Give a man a pipe he can smoke, Give a man a book he can read: And his home is bright with a calm delight, Though the room be poor indeed.
Give a man a girl he can love, As I, O my love, love thee; And his heart is great with the pulse of Fate, At home, on land, on sea.

Song  Create an image from this poem
by Robert Creeley
 What I took in my hand
grew in weight.
You must understand it was not obscene.
Night comes.
We sleep.
Then if you know what say it.
Don't pretend.
Guises are what enemies wear.
You and I live in a prayer.
Helpless.
Helpless, should I speak.
Would you.
What do you think of me.
No woman ever was, was wiser than you.
None is more true.
But fate, love, fate scares me.
What I took in my hand grows in weight.

by Emily Dickinson
 Superiority to Fate
Is difficult to gain
'Tis not conferred of Any
But possible to earn

A pittance at a time
Until to Her surprise
The Soul with strict economy
Subsist till Paradise.

by Christopher Marlowe
 It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is over-rul'd by fate.
hen two are stript long ere the course begin, We wish that one should lose, the other win; And one especially do we affect Of two gold ingots, like in each respect: The reason no man knows; let it suffice, What we behold is censur'd by our eyes.
Where both deliberate, the love is slight: Who ever lov'd, that lov'd not at first sight.

by Emily Dickinson
 Uncertain lease -- develops lustre
On Time
Uncertain Grasp, appreciation
Of Sum --

The shorter Fate -- is oftener the chiefest
Because
Inheritors upon a tenure
Prize --


Book: Shattered Sighs