Top 10 poems of 2022
Are you a poem lover? Well, this article is for you. Here we have added the 10 best poems of 2022.
1. William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29.
When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate …
2. John Donne, ‘Death Be Not Proud’.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
3. Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘Fate’.
Deep in the man sits fast his fate
To mould his fortunes, mean or great:
Unknown to Cromwell as to me
Was Cromwell’s measure or degree;
Unknown to him as to his horse,
If he than his groom be better or worse.
He works, plots, fights, in rude affairs,
With squires, lords, kings, his craft compares,
Till late he learned, through doubt and fear,
Broad England harbored not his peer:
Obeying Time, the last to own
The Genius from its cloudy throne.
For the prevision is allied
Unto the thing so signified;
Or say, the foresight that awaits
Is the same Genius that creates.
4. Emily Dickinson, ‘Superiority to Fate’.
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.
5. William Ernest Henley, ‘Invictus’.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul …
A stirring poem, this, about the importance of taking charge of one’s own fate and guiding one’s destiny.
6. Carolyn Wells, ‘Fate’.
Two shall be born the whole world wide apart,
And speak in different tongues, and pay their debts
In different kinds of coin; and give no heed
Each to the other’s being. And know not
That each might suit the other to a T,
If they were but correctly introduced.
And these, unconsciously, shall bend their steps,
Escaping Spaniards and defying war,
Unerringly toward the same trysting-place,
Albeit they know it not. Until at last
They enter the same door, and suddenly
They meet. And ere they’ve seen each other’s face
They fall into each other’s arms, upon
The Broadway cable car – and this is Fate!
7. W. B. Yeats, ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death’.
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 a loss
Or leave them happier than before …
8. Adelaide Crapsey, ‘Fate Defied’.
As it
Were tissue of silver
I’ll wear, O fate, thy grey,
And go mistily radiant, clad
Like the moon.
9. Langston Hughes, ‘Laughers’.
Hughes (1902-67) was one of the leading writers of the Harlem Renaissance. In this poem, he considers ‘My people, fellow African-American people of New York who work at a variety of jobs and laugh in the face of Fate, which constantly seeks to keep them down.
10. Cynthia Manick, ‘Things I Will Tell My Children about Destiny’.
Let’s conclude this pick of the best poems about fate with a glorious poem from another poet associated with New York. Manick is the author of Blue Hallelujahs (Black Lawrence Press, 2016), and in this poem, she offers a series of images and snapshots that relate to ‘destiny’ in some way. The emphasis is on not being restricted, as the repeated reference to a smile being best when ‘unpenned’ suggests.
Summing up, hope you enjoyed the poems. Do read them and do not try to miss you.
