Here are my favorite poems about self-harm categorized:
- Poems about self-harm and depression
- Poems about madness and self-harm
- Poems about healing from self-harm
So if you want the best poems about self-harm, then you’re in the right place.
Let’s get started!
Warning: This poem collection may upset or trigger you. Please read this with caution.
If you or someone you know is going through something difficult, struggling with thoughts of suicide, or self-harm, you’re not alone.
Helplines can provide free, confidential, and immediate support:
- Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988
- Crisis Text Line: Text “DESERVE” TO 741-741
- Lifeline Crisis Chat (Online live messaging): https://988lifeline.org/chat
Gut-Wrenching Poems About Self-Harm
Discover a selection of deeply moving poems that explore the topic of self-harm, including powerful pieces about the pain of depression and anxiety, as well as inspiring works that offer hope and healing.
Explore some of the most moving and insightful poems about self-harm ever written, and find solace in the knowledge that you are not alone in your struggles.
Whether you’re seeking understanding, comfort, or hope, these powerful poems are sure to resonate with you on a deep level, and help you to navigate your journey towards healing and recovery.
Keep reading and enjoy!
My #1 Favorite Poem About Self-Harm
“Resumé” by Dorothy Parker
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
Poems About Self-Harm and Depression
“Indian Woman’s Death Song” by Felicia Hemans
Down a broad river of the western wilds,
Piercing thick forest-glooms, a light canoe
Swept with the current: fearful was the speed
Of the frail bark, as by a tempest’s wing
Borne leaf-like on to where the mist of spray
Rose with the cataract’s thunder. Yet within,
Proudly, and dauntlessly, and all alone,
Save that a babe lay sleeping at her breast,
A woman stood! Upon her Indian brow
Sat a strange gladness, and her dark hair waved
As if triumphantly. She press’d her child,
In its bright slumber, to her beating heart,
And lifted her sweet voice, that rose awhile
Above the sound of waters, high and clear,
Wafting a wild proud strain—a song of death.
“The Suicide” by Alfred Lichtenstein
White, I lie
On the remains of an amusement park
Between jagged buildings –
Burning flower… shining sea…
Toes and hands
Reach out into emptiness.
Longing tears the weeping body to pieces.
The little moon glides above me.
Eyes grope
Gently into the deep world,
Sunken hats
Wandering stars.
“From Paradise Lost” by John Milton
But is there yet no other way, besides
These painful passages; how we may come
To death, and mix with our connatural dust?
Nor love thy life, nor hate: but what thou liv’st
Live well; how long or short permit to Heaven.
“I Shall Not Care” by Sara Teasdale
When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Tho’ you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.
I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough,
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.
“The Suicide” by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
A shadowed form before the light,
A gleaming face against the night,
Clutched hands across a halo bright
Of blowing hair, – her fixed sight
Stares down where moving black, below,
The river’s deathly waves in murmurous silence flow.
The moon falls fainting on the sky,
The dark woods bow their heads in sorrow,
The earth sends up a misty sigh:
A soul defies the morrow!
“Suicide” by William Ernest Henley
Staring corpselike at the ceiling,
See his harsh, unrazored features,
Ghastly brown against the pillow,
And his throat-so strangely bandaged!
Lack of work and lack of victuals,
A debauch of smuggled whisky,
And his children in the workhouse
Made the world so black a riddle
That he plunged for a solution;
And, although his knife was edgeless,
He was sinking fast towards one,
When they came, and found, and saved him.
Stupid now with shame and sorrow,
In the night I hear him sobbing.
But sometimes he talks a little.
He has told me all his troubles.
In his broad face, tanned and bloodless,
White and wild his eyeballs glisten;
And his smile, occult and tragic,
Yet so slavish, makes you shudder!
“On the Threshold” by Unknown
I am standing on the threshold of eternity at last,
As reckless of the future as I have been of the past;
I am void of all ambition, I am dead of every hope;
The coil of life is ended; I am letting go the rope.
I have drifted down the stream of life till weary, sore oppressed;
And I’m tired of all the motion and simply want a rest.
I have tasted all the pleasures that life can hold for man.
I have scanned the whole world over till there’s nothing left to scan.
I have heard the finest music, I have read the rarest books,
I have drunk the purest vintage, I have tasted all the cooks;
I have run the scale of living and have sounded every tone,
There is nothing left to live for and I long to be alone.
Alone and unmolested where the vultures do not rave,
And the only refuge left me is the quiet, placid grave;
I am judge and jury mingled, and the verdict that I give
Is, that minus friends and money it is foolishness to live.
In a day or two my body will be found out in the lake;
The coroner will get a fee; and the printer get a ” take ” ;
The usual verdict — ” Suicide, from causes yet unknown. “
And Golgotha draws another blank, a mound without a stone.
To change the usual verdict I will give the reason now,
Before the rigid seal of death is stamped upon my brow.
‘Tis the old familiar story of passion, love and crime,
Repeated thru the ages since Cleopatra’s time.
A woman’s lips, a woman’s eye — a siren all in all,
A modern Circe fit to cause the strongest men to fall;
A wedded life, some blissful years, and poverty drops in
With care and doubt and liquor from whisky down to gin.
The story told by Tolstoi in comparison to mine
Is moonlight unto sunlight, as water unto wine;
The jealous pangs I suffered, the sleepless nights of woe
I pray no other mortal may ever undergo.
But I’ve said enough, I fancy, to make the reason plain —
Enough to show the causes of a shattered heart and brain;
What wonder then that life holds not a single thread to bind
A wish or hope to live for, an interest in mankind.
Already dead but living, a fact that I regret,
A man without desire excepting to forget;
And since there is denied me one, why should I linger here,
A dead leaf from the frost of a long-forgotten year?
So au revoir, old cronies; if there’s a meeting place beyond,
I’ll let you know in spirit, and I know you will respond;
I’m going now, old comrades, to heaven or to hell;
I’ll let you know which shortly — farewell, a long farewell.
“Suicide’s Note” by Langston Hughes
The calm,
Cool face of the river
Asked me for a kiss.
“Despair” by Madison Julius Cawein
Shut in with phantoms of life’s hollow hopes,
And shadows of old sins satiety slew,
And the young ghosts of the dead dreams love knew,
Out of the day into the night she gropes.
Behind her, high the silvered summit slopes
Of strength and faith, she will not turn to view;
But towards the cave of weakness, harsh of hue,
She goes, where all the dropsied horror ropes.
There is a voice of waters in her ears,
And on her brow a wind that never dies:
One is the anguish of desired tears;
One is the sorrow of unuttered sighs;
And, burdened with the immemorial years,
Downward she goes with never lifted eyes.
“Despair” by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Let me close the eyes of my soul
That I may not see
What stands between thee and me.
Let me shut the ears of my heart
That I may not hear
A voice that drowns yours, my dear.
Let me cut the cords of my life,
Of my desolate being,
Since cursed is my hearing and seeing.
“The Suicide’s Argument” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Ere the birth of my life, if I wished it or no
No question was asked me, it could not be so!
If the life was the question, a thing sent to try
And to live on be yes; what can no be? to die.
Is’t returned, as ’twas sent? Is’t no worse for the wear?
Think first, what you are! Call to mind what you were!
I gave you innocence, I gave you hope,
Gave health, and genius, and an ample scope,
Return you me guilt, lethargy, despair?
Make out the invent’ry; inspect, compare!
Then die, if die you dare!
“Midnight Oil” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Cut if you will, with Sleep’s dull knife,
Each day to half its length, my friend,-
The years that Time take off my life,
He’ll take from off the other end!
Poems About Madness and Self Harm
“The Mill” by Edwin Arlington Robinson
The miller’s wife had waited long,
The tea was cold, the fire was dead;
And there might yet be nothing wrong
In how he went and what he said:
“There are no millers any more,”
Was all that she had heard him say;
And he had lingered at the door
So long that it seemed yesterday.
Sick with a fear that had no form
She knew that she was there at last;
And in the mill there was a warm
And mealy fragrance of the past.
What else there was would only seem
To say again what he had meant;
And what was hanging from a beam
Would not have heeded where she went.
And if she thought it followed her,
She may have reasoned in the dark
That one way of the few there were
Would hide her and would leave no mark:
Black water, smooth above the weir
Like starry velvet in the night,
Though ruffled once, would soon appear
The same as ever to the sight.
“The Dead Man Walking” by Thomas Hardy
They hail me as one living,
But don’t they know
That I have died of late years,
Untombed although?
I am but a shape that stands here,
A pulseless mould,
A pale past picture, screening
Ashes gone cold.
Not at a minute’s warning,
Not in a loud hour,
For me ceased Time’s enchantments
In hall and bower.
There was no tragic transit,
No catch of breath,
When silent seasons inched me
On to this death ….
— A Troubadour-youth I rambled
With Life for lyre,
The beats of being raging
In me like fire.
But when I practised eyeing
The goal of men,
It iced me, and I perished
A little then.
When passed my friend, my kinsfolk,
Through the Last Door,
And left me standing bleakly,
I died yet more;
And when my Love’s heart kindled
In hate of me,
Wherefore I knew not, died I
One more degree.
And if when I died fully
I cannot say,
And changed into the corpse-thing
I am to-day,
Yet is it that, though whiling
The time somehow
In walking, talking, smiling,
I live not now.
“Melancholia” by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Silently without my window,
Tapping gently at the pane,
Falls the rain.
Through the trees sighs the breeze
Like a soul in pain.
Here alone I sit and weep;
Thought hath banished sleep.
Wearily I sit and listen
To the water’s ceaseless drip.
To my lip
Fate turns up the bitter cup,
Forcing me to sip;
‘Tis a bitter, bitter drink,
Thus I sit and think,—
Thinking things unknown and awful,
Thoughts on wild, uncanny themes,
Waking dreams.
Spectres dark, corpses stark,
Show the gaping seams
Whence the cold and cruel knife
Stole away their life.
Bloodshot eyes all strained and staring,
Gazing ghastly into mine;
Blood like wine
On the brow—clotted now—
Shows death’s dreadful sign.
Lonely vigil still I keep;
Would that I might sleep!
Still, oh, still, my brain is whirling!
Still runs on my stream of thought;
I am caught
In the net fate hath set.
Mind and soul are brought
To destruction’s very brink;
Yet I can but think!
Eyes that look into the future, —
Peeping forth from out my mind,
They will find
Some new weight, soon or late,
On my soul to bind,
Crushing all its courage out,—
Heavier than doubt.
Dawn, the Eastern monarch’s daughter,
Rising from her dewy bed,
Lays her head
‘Gainst the clouds’ sombre shrouds
Now half fringed with red.
O’er the land she ‘gins to peep;
Come, O gentle Sleep!
Hark! the morning cock is crowing;
Dreams, like ghosts, must hie away;
‘Tis the day.
Rosy morn now is born;
Dark thoughts may not stay.
Day my brain from foes will keep;
Now, my soul, I sleep.
“Stones” by Alfred Kreymborg
It is best now
to give suffering its way with me,
like a sea with a stone,
and let the spray which is others’ joy—
the spray dancing on those
I bumped against
while bounding and tumbling and rolling here—
give me content.
Suffering
carves smoothness
which cannot cut any longer—
should I roll again
“An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” by William Butler Yeats
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
“Richard Cory” by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich – yes, richer than a king –
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
“Sorrows of Werther” by William Makepeace Thackeray
Werther had a love for Charlotte
Such as words could never utter;
Would you know how first he met her?
She was cutting bread and butter.
Charlotte was a married lady,
And a moral man was Werther,
And, for all the wealth of Indies,
Would do nothing for to hurt her.
So he sighed and pined and ogled,
And his passion boiled and bubbled,
Till he blew his silly brains out,
And no more was by it troubled.
Charlotte, having seen his body
Borne before her on a shutter,
Like a well-conducted person,
Went on cutting bread and butter.
“A Ballad Of Suicide” by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
The gallows in my garden, people say,
Is new and neat and adequately tall;
I tie the noose on in a knowing way
As one that knots his necktie for a ball;
But just as all the neighbours-on the wall –
Are drawing a long breath to shout “Hurray!”
The strangest whim has seized me. . . . After all
I think I will not hang myself to-day.
To-morrow is the time I get my pay-
My uncle’s sword is hanging in the hall –
I see a little cloud all pink and grey-
Perhaps the rector’s mother will not call –
I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall
That mushrooms could be cooked another way-
I never read the works of Juvenal –
I think I will not hang myself to-day.
The world will have another washing-day;
The decadents decay; the pedants pall;
And H. G. Wells has found that children play,
And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall,
Rationalists are growing rational –
And through thick woods one finds a stream astray
So secret that the very sky seems small –
I think I will not hang myself to-day.
ENVOI
Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal,
The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way;
Even to-day your royal head may fall,
I think I will not hang myself to-day
“Suicide in the Trenches” by Siegfried Loraine Sassoon
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You snug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
“On His Own Death” by Walter Savage Landor
Death stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear:
Of his strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.
“The Suicide” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Vast was the wealth I carried in life’s pack –
Youth, health, ambition, hope and trust; but Time
And Fate, those robbers fit for any crime,
Stole all, and left me but the empty sack.
Before me lay a long and lonely track
Of darkling hills and barren steeps to climb;
Behind me lay in shadows the sublime
Lost lands of Love’s delight. Alack! Alack!
Unwearied, and with springing steps elate,
I had conveyed my wealth along the road.
The empty sack proved now a heavier load:
I was borne down beneath its worthless weight.
I stumbled on, and knocked at Death’s dark gate.
There was no answer. Stung by sorrow’s goad
I forced my way into that grim abode,
And laughed, and flung Life’s empty sack to Fate.
Unknown and uninvited I passed in
To that strange land that hangs between two goals,
Round which a dark and solemn river rolls –
More dread its silence than the loud earth’s din.
And now, where was the peace I hoped to win?
Black-masted ships slid past me in great shoals,
Their bloody decks thronged with mistaken souls.
(God punishes mistakes sometimes like sin.)
Not rest and not oblivion I found.
My suffering self dwelt with me just the same;
But here no sleep was, and no sweet dreams came
To give me respite. Tyrant Death, uncrowned
By my own hand, still King of Terrors, frowned
Upon my shuddering soul, that shrank in shame
Before those eyes where sorrow blent with blame,
And those accusing lips that made no sound.
What gruesome shapes dawned on my startled sight
What awful sighs broke on my listening ear!
The anguish of the earth, augmented here
A thousand-fold, made one continuous night.
The sack I flung away in impious spite
Hung yet upon me, filled, I saw in fear.
With tears that rained from earth’s adjacent sphere,
And turned to stones in falling from that height.
And close about me pressed a grieving throng,
Each with his heavy sack, which bowed him so
His face was hidden. One of these mourned: “Know
Who enters here but finds the way more long
To those fair realms where sounds the angels’ song.
There is no man-made exit out of woe;
Ye cannot dash the locked door down and go
To claim thy rightful joy through paths of wrong.”
He passed into the shadows dim and grey,
And left me to pursue my path alone.
With terror greater than I yet had known.
Hard on my soul the awful knowledge lay,
Death had not ended life nor found God’s way;
But, with my same sad sorrows still my own,
Where by-roads led to by-roads, thistle-sown,
I had but wandered off and gone astray.
With earth still near enough to hear its sighs,
With heaven afar and hell but just below,
Still on and on my lonely soul must go
Until I earn the right to Paradise.
We cannot force our way into God’s skies,
Nor rush into the rest we long to know;
But patiently, with bleeding steps and slow
Toil on to where selfhood in Godhood dies.
“Suicide” by George Hardinge
When, by a sudden act of guilt,
The hands of men their blood have spilt,
We pierce with stakes the murder’d frame,
And cover it with marks of shame;
But overlook the Suicide
Of a miscalculated pride,
Which courts the mist that clouds the day,
And throws the light of joy away;
Nor deem the character impair’d,
Of lingering death-beds ill-prepar’d;
Nor brand the dissipated mind,
Which is to all reflection blind;
And, as if piqued at life’s delay,
Kills with impertinence the day!
“Rest” by Ameen Rihani
Long have I a word enshrined
And worshipped with a piety blind!
Long have I been seeking Rest
In the East and in the West!
Here and there and everywhere
Have I seen her shadow fair ;
But the shadow seems to fade
Like the flowers of yonder glade.
In my lone retreat I sought
Her, but dreams against me fought.
In my nights for her I pray,
But with sleep she stays away.
Foolish is thine effort, vain—
Fruitless, hopeless is thy pain!
With the march of Motion keep,
In thy walk and in thy sleep
Beyond thy finite power it lies
To chain the coursers of the skies.
Even nomads and cells minute
Worlds of unrest constitute.
Rest is no where to be found ;
Each to all in suffering bound.
And no power can deliver thee,
Mortal, from activity.
In thy life as in thy death,
In thy heart as in thy breath,
On the earth as in the skies
Restless Motion never dies.
Always raging, always spinning,
Endless and without beginning.
Death, like me, is seeking Rest,
And all the seas are in her quest ;
But ah, poor souls, she is beyond
Our grasp ; we must go on and on.
No, nor even the grave is free
From the laws that shackle me ;
New life from his worms takes wing,
And on his face fresh blossoms spring.
“The Suicide’s Grave” by William Schwenck Gilbert
On a tree by a river a little tomtit
Sang “Willow, titwillow, titwillow!”
And I said to him, “Dicky-bird, why do you sit
Singing ‘Willow, titwillow, titwillow’?
Is it weakness of intellect, birdie?” I cried,
“Or a rather tough worm in your little inside?”
With a shake of his poor little head he replied,
“Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow!”
He slapped at his chest, as he sat on that bough,
Singing “Willow, titwillow, titwillow!”
And a cold perspiration bespangled his brow,
Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow!
He sobbed and he sighed, and a gurgle he gave,
Then he threw himself into the billowy wave,
And an echo arose from the suicide’s grave –
“Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow!”
Now I feel just as sure as I’m sure that my name
Isn’t Willow, titwillow, titwillow,
That ’twas blighted affection that made him exclaim,
“Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow!”
And if you remain callous and obdurate, I
Shall perish as he did, and you will know why,
Though I probably shall not exclaim as I die,
“Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow!”
“Darkness” by John Crowe Ransom
When hurrying home on a rainy night
And hearing tree-tops rubbed and tossed,
And seeing never a friendly star
And feeling your way when paths are crossed:
Stop fast and turn three times around
And try the logic of the lost.
Where is the heavenly light you dreamed?
Where is your hearth and glowing ash?
Where is your love by the mellow moon?
Here is not even a lightning-flash,
And in a place no worse than this
Lost men shall wail and teeth shall gnash.
Lightning is quick and perilous,
The dawn comes on too slow and pale,
Your love brings only a yellow lamp,
Yet of these lights one shall avail:
The dark shall break for one of these,
I’ve never known this thing to fail.
Poems About Healing From Self Harm
“Unexpressed” by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Deep in my heart that aches with the repression,
And strives with plenitude of bitter pain,
There lives a thought that clamors for expression,
And spends its undelivered force in vain.
What boots it that some other may have thought it?
The right of thoughts’ expression is divine;
The price of pain I pay for it has bought it,
I care not who lays claim to it —‘t is mine!
And yet not mine until it be delivered;
The manner of its birth shall prove the test.
Alas, alas, my rock of pride is shivered—
I beat my brow—the thought still unexpressed.
“Ode on Melancholy” by John Keats
No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;
His soul shalt taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.
“Fire-Flowers: by Emily Pauline Johnson
And only where the forest fires have sped,
Scorching relentlessly the cool north lands,
A sweet wild flower lifts its purple head,
And, like some gentle spirit sorrow-fed,
It hides the scars with almost human hands.
And only to the heart that knows of grief,
Of desolating fire, of human pain,
There comes some purifying sweet belief,
Some fellow-feeling beautiful, if brief.
And life revives, and blossoms once again.
“Tasting the Earth” by James Oppenheim
In a dark hour, tasting the Earth.
As I lay on my couch in the muffled night, and the rain lashed at my window,
And my forsaken heart would give me no rest, no pause and no peace,
Though I turned my face far from the wailing of my bereavement…
Then I said: I will eat of this sorrow to its last shred,
I will take it unto me utterly,
I will see if I be not strong enough to contain it…
What do I fear? Discomfort?
How can it hurt me, this bitterness?
The miracle, then!
Turning toward it, and giving up to it,
I found it deeper than my own self…
O dark great mother-globe so close beneath me…
It was she with her inexhaustable grief,
Ages of blood-drenched jungles, and the smoking of craters, and the roar of tempests,
And moan of the forsaken seas,
It was she with the hills beginning to walk in the shapes of the dark-hearted animals,
It was she risen, dashing away tears and praying to dumb skies, in the pomp-crumbling tragedy of man…
It was she, container of all griefs, and the buried dust of broken hearts,
Cry of the christs and the lovers and the child-stripped mothers,
And ambition gone down to defeat, and the battle overborne,
And the dreams that have no waking…
My heart became her ancient heart:
On the food of the strong I fed, on dark strange life itself:
Wisdom-giving and sombre with the unremitting love of ages…
There was dank soil in my mouth,
And bitter sea on my lips,
In a dark hour, tasting the Earth.
“Brother, You’ll Take My Hand” by Henry Lawson
Not to the sober and staid,
Leading a quiet life,
But to men whose paths are laid
Ever through storm and strife—
Here is a song from me,
Sent to the tragic West,
Message of sympathy
To the hearts that can never rest.
This is the song I send
Out to the Western land—
Sinner, and martyr, and friend,
Brother! you’ll take my hand.
To you who have loved and lost;
To you whose souls have died
Cursing a fair false face
And the red warm lips that lied;
Loved with a boyish love,
With a love that was pure and true,
That set one woman above
The world that was known to you;
Eating your heart out now
Alone on a waste of sand—
I have been played with too.
Brother! you’ll take my hand.
To you who were loved too well,
And who cast that love aside
When your vanity was replete
And your passion was satisfied—
Haunted now day and night;
Haunted in every place
By the eyes of a suicide,
Set in a dead girl’s face.
Crouched in your misery
Out where the stars are grand—
O I am haunted too!
Brother! you’ll take my hand.
To you who had wealth or name,
Friends, love, and a future fair,
And who sacrificed all for drink
And the nights of Leicester Square:
In by the drunken town,
Out on the barren tramp,
Pacing it up and down
Alone by the listening camp;
Crouched in your agony,
Hiding your eyes with your hand—
I had the ball at my feet—
Brother! I understand.
There is a light for all;
Hold up your head and live!
Forgive the woman who wronged,
And the dead girl will forgive.
Brood not, but work for good;
Work in the world of men—
Strong is the man who fell
And rose from the depths again.
There shall be peace for you,
Sinners, who win the land.
I would fight upward too—
Brother! you’ll take my hand.
“The Rainy Day” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.
“A Shropshire Lad, XXX” by A. E. Housman
Others, I am not the first,
Have willed more mischief than they durst:
If in the breathless night I too
Shiver now, ’tis nothing new.
More than I, if truth were told,
Have stood and sweated hot and cold,
And through their reins in ice and fire
Fear contended with desire.
Agued once like me were they,
But I like them shall win my way
Lastly to the bed of mould
Where there’s neither heat nor cold.
But from my grave across my brow
Plays no wind of healing now,
And fire and ice within me fight
Beneath the suffocating night.