somethingdarker | Potential Titles: Despair

The cloak of despair thrown over - Hanif Abdurraqib "I Was told the Sunlight Was a Cure"

Snap, like glass, for sheer despair - Harold Acton "In the Month of Athyr"

The lurking canker of despair - Mrs. Lois B. Adams "Hath Not Thy Rose a Canker"

Gave the strain to wild despair - "The Alter'd Lay"

The atmospheric furnace of despair - Mary Jo Bang "The Wallpaper behind the Day"

Growing in the garden of Despair - Ardelia Maria Barton "Seek for the Good in Life"

Unimagined lyrics of despair - Lucius Beebe "Autumn Lament"

Despair from her weaving old - Stephen Vincent Benet "The Last Vision of Helen"

Taste the elegant tortures of Despair - Stephen Vincent Benet "Portrait of Young Love"

When despair for the world grows in me - Wendell Berry "The Peace of Wild Things"

Builds a heaven in hell's despair - William Blake "The Clod and the Pebble"

Her locks covered with grey despair - William Blake "Earth's Answer"

One long circle of despairing grace - Maxwell Bodenheim "Rattlesnake Mountain Fable I"

A whole tin bucket of despairs - Lucie Brock-Broido "Self-Portrait as a Herd of One"

My heart shall never know despair - Anne Bronte "Consolation"

The yoke of absolute despair - Charlotte Bronte "Frances"

Despair was powerless to destroy - Emily Bronte "Remembrance"

A distance measureless as my despair - Marie Hedderwick Browne "My House Is Left Unto Me Desolate"

The photonegative of despair - Anthony Butts "Embers"

Or dark with sublime despair - May Byron "Sea-Ghosts"

Of harsh neglect, regret, despair - Professor Campbell "To the Lily of the Valley" [Graham's Magazine v.XXXV no.3, Sept. 1849]

So deep a flood of turbulent despair - Edward Carpenter "As Round a Lighthouse to--"

And darker hearts' despair - Arthur Hugh Clough "The New Sinai"

The grocer of despair - Leonard Cohen "Field Commander Cohen"

Down the wet ways of despair - Arthur Colton "West-Easterly Moralities"

With masks of malice and of despair - Helen Gray Cone "The House of Hate"

The hour of his heart's despairing - James H. Cousins "The Southern Cross"

Heart of lead and wry despair - George Cronyn "Song (After an old English tune)"

washed with a wild and thin despair of violin - E. E. Cummings "Songs (III)"

Challenge me from dull despair - Clinton Dangerfield "Autumn"

The charred remains of despair's good times - Jim Daniels "Foundation"

Rage and wild despair their hands supply - Luís de Camões "The Lusiad; or, The Discovery of India: Book I. Argument" transl. by William Julius Mickle

And arrows of despair spare not to pierce - Christine de Pisan "Ballad [In this sad world have pity, my lady dear]" (transl. by Laurence Binyon and Eric Robert Dalrymple Maclagan)

Will never stay in the mansions of despair - Christine de Pisan "Ballad [Thou, O Love, the traitor art]" (transl. by Laurence Binyon and Eric Robert Dalrymple Maclagan)

Pale despair rules no longer - Christine de Pisan "Virelay [Sweet, in whom my joy must be]" (transl. by Laurence Binyon and Eric Robert Dalrymple Maclagan)

Never bid the Sphinx despair - Edward Dowden "Watershed"

And despair's wild hunch - Stephen Dunn "The Gambler at Home"

The land that is sown with the harvest of despair - "Enceladus" [Atlantic Monthly v.8 no.22, Aug. 1859]

The liquified despair of our ancestors - Lysz Flo "Railroad del Mar"

Despair is still servant to the violet - Katie Ford "Song After Sadness"

The perfect symmetry of their despairs - Maxwell E. Foster "Five Sonnets 2 (February 1923)"

The burning tears of wild despair - M.G. "Apostrophe to Time" (The Knickerbocker v.23:4, April 1844)

Nerved with the strength of wild despair - Mary Gardiner "The Sacrifice" [The Knickerbocker Feb. 1844]

Broken by the chasms of despair - Charlotte Perkins Gilman "Why Not?"

Where ecstasy cohabits with despair - Dana Gioia "Psalm of the Heights"

Whose patron saints are longing and despair - Rigoberto Gonzalez "Casa"

In pale-mouthed despair - Sadakichi Hartmann "My Rubaiyat XXXV"

The stern and lofty councils of despair - Felicia Hemans "The Abencerrage Canto III"

The bitter tear-drop of despair - Felicia Hemans "The Domestic Affections"

That image of despair retain - Felicia Hemans "The Sceptic"

My love's despairing cry filled hell with melody - Sophia Magaretta Hensley "Eurydice"

That sweeps up dolphins and despair - Conrad Hilberry "Music"

Will find a path from these despairs - Thomas Hood "The Two Swans"

In despair to reckon up the bitter cost - Henry Clayton Hopkins "To --"

Hot winds from the waste of despair - William H.C. Hosmer "Erin Waking" [Graham's Magazine v.XXII no.12, Dec. 1848]

Waken relief from despair - Douglas Hyde "My Grief on the Sea"

Said good-bye to despair - Georgia Douglas Johnson "I've Learned to Sing"

Interpreters and prophets of despair - Lionel Johnson "Mystic and Cavalier"

Prisoners of strong despair - Lionel Johnson "Our Lady of the Snows"

Have you no wisdom thus to despair? - James Joyce "I Hear an Army"

Builds a bulkhead 'twixt Despair and the Edge of Nothing - Rudyard Kipling "The Supports"

Cranked to eleven by the sublimation of despair - Edgar Kunz "New Year"

And know not it is dark despair - Archibald Lampman "A Song"

Whisper to the despairing exiles - Emma Lazarus "By the Waters of Babylon"

This emanation of a long-endured despair - Henry S. Leigh "To a Certain Somebody"

Lapse into utter and grim despair - Henry S. Leigh "Weatherbound in the Suburbs"

Despairing of my own energy - R.B. Lemberg "Iron Burns Out"

packed tightly in a carped of underground despair - Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li "the mezzanine"

And the garden known alone in despair - Naomi Long Madgett "Trinity: A Dream Sequence"

Begotten by despair upon Impossibility - Andrew Marvell "The Definition of Love"

In the desert of despair I cried - Baba Rahim Mashrab "Love Ghazal of Mashrab (6)" transl. by Aziz Isa Elkun

Cut with the edge of despair - Arch Alfred McKillen "Apocalypse"

Despair its portals soon assails - H.P. McKnight "Hope--Eternity"

Wild for speed to cheat despair - George Meredith "The Nuptials of Attila"

Fell the the siege of his despair - Michael Mesic "Gaudi"

Broken windmills mark distances of despair - N. Scott Momaday "A Darkness Comes"

Bleeding in the dust of rank despairs - Christopher Morley "After Hearing German Music"

Must wear the hue and coldness of despair - Morna "Ianthe"

After long struggles of despair - Lewis Morris "The Epic of Hades book I: Tartarus: Sisyphus"

The whisper of despair - Walter Dean Myers "John Brambles, 55, Numbers Runner"

And turns their brightness to dark despair - Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton "The Undying One, Canto I"

Dream of dull despair - Margaret Fuller Ossoli "Sadness"

Howling in murderous despair - Grace Paley [untitled]

An angled argument against despair - Carl Phillips "On Being Asked to Be More Specific When It Comes to Longing"

Souls born of dust's despair - Marjorie L.C. Pickthall "Mary Shepherdess"

The cold sceptre of despair - L.J. Pierson "Woman's Dower"

And despair lays present ambush - Alan Porter "Introduction to a Narrative Poem"

Notes of despair unuttered - E.J. Pratt "The Conclusion of 'Rachel'"

Chill remorse and black despair - Anne Proctor "Verse: A Legend of Provence"

Stings his soul with a deeper despair - Kate Putnam "Our Martyrs" [The Continental Monthly v.6 no.2, August 1864]

Vainly builds itself on dark despair - Quince "Age" [The Knickerbocker v.10 no.3 Sept. 1837]

Scoffed to see my soul's despair - Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall "An August Night"

The despair that flows down in widest rivers - Muriel Rukeyser "Elegy in Joy [excerpt]"

The ultimate articulations of despair - Kay Ryan "Shipwreck"

Searching the pit of despair - Robert W. Service "The Law of the Yukon"

Ironing out the kinks in despair - Diane Seuss "There is a force that breaks the body"

Where solitude is like despair - Percy Bysshe Shelley "Dedication of the Revolt of Islam to His Wife"

Cold as my Despair - Charlotte Smith from "Montalbert"

Grief's long protest and despair - Effie Smith "A Mountain Graveyard"

Crowning their victory by loose despair - Edmund Clarence Stedman "Refuge in Nature"

The moments purchased by despair - George Sterling "At Midnight"

Of that wan orchid of despair - George Sterling "The Sibyl of Dreams"

Washed in tears, in blood, in rivers of despair - Carmen Sylva "Rest"

Break the seals of mute despair unbidden - James Thomson "The City of Dreadful Night"

Through the midnight of despair - John Todhunter "The Sunburst"

Chill ignoble ashes for despair to strew - Iris Tree "[Blow upon blow they bruise the daylight wan]"

Flings her light despairing - Iris Tree "[Lulled are the dazzling colours of the day]"

Yields only that despair - Paul Valery "Palme" as translated by May Sarton in 1954

Touching voice of our despair - Paul Verlaine "En Sourdine" transl. by Gertrude Hall Brownell

Piloted by dark despair - Wm. Wallace "Perditi"

Upon the altar of my heart's despair - Helen Hay Whitney "The Last Gift"

Great in loneliness of grey despair - Helen Hay Whitney "Little Sad Face"

And the Warder is Despair - Oscar Wilde "The Ballad of Reading Gaol"

To frame the circumference of their open despair - Nicholas Wong "101, Taipei"

Unlike despair, happiness knows no final answer - Charles Wright "Only the I-Ching Hexagrams Are Lacking"

To feed my fond despair - John Wright "The Maiden Fair"

The pang of death-despair pass over - Dermot O'Curnan "Love's Despair" transl. by George Sigerson

Desperate/Desperation.

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