Famous Convict Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Convict poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous convict poems. These examples illustrate what a famous convict poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Hardy, Thomas
...table smiled, and said no word,
As if unconscious of what he heard;
And so they went on till the train came in--
The convict, and boy with the violin....Read more of this...
by
Lindley, John
...let go.
I’m the cutesy picaninny
with my hair tied up in bows.
I’m the funny little shoeshine boy.
I’m the convict on the run;
the ****** in the woodpile
when the cotton pickin’s done.
I’m a blacklist in Kentucky.
I’m the night when hound dogs bay.
I’m the cut-price, easy light relief
growing darker by the day.
I’m the “yessir, Massa, right away”
that the audience so enjoys.
I’m the full-grown man of twenty-five
but still they call me ‘boy’...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...thou? The Gone.
Where is he gone? Into the dark.—
O sad, and ever-plaining surge!
Whence art thou? From the convict-bark.
And why thy mournful voice? A dirge.
EDWIN ARNOLD, C.S.I.
...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...me fool who felt
that he could make the flight. Now you roll
in your sleep, seasick
on your own breathing, poor old convict....Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...it comes like a convict
squeezing through bars
and is gone before
the promptest siren
it suddenly turns
in the ear or rides
the eye of a thought
before dissolving
i have it in a faint
taste or shudder
an ache like a spring
high in the mountains
it was once called love
and now a longing
for a song to be heard
that doesn't bear singing...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...
I leave the verdict to your senses,
And jury of your consciences;
Which though they're neither good nor true,
Must yet convict you and your crew.
"Ungrateful sons! a factious band,
That rise against your parent land!
Ye viper race, that burst in strife
The genial womb that gave you life,
Tear with sharp fangs and forked tongue
The indulgent bowels whence ye sprung;
And scorn the debt and obligation,
You justly owe the British nation,
Which, since you cannot pay, your c...Read more of this...
by
Trumbull, John
...the land,
Eager, as frighted mermaids, flee
T' our boasted element, the sea,
And tow'rd their town of refuge fly,
Like convict Jews condemn'd to die.
Then to the north I turn'd my eyes,
Where Saratoga's heights arise,
And saw our chosen vet'ran band
Descend in terror o'er the land;
T' oppose this fury of alarms,
Saw all New-England wake to arms,
And every Yankee, full of mettle,
Swarm forth, like bees at sound of kettle.
Not Rome, when Tarquin raped Lucretia,
Saw wil...Read more of this...
by
Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor
...
I mean, the master's rule--
is made to seem possession by the slave.
The vassal says: my king;
my prison, the convict says;
and any humble slave
will call the master his without offense.
Thus, when I call you mine,
it's not that I expect
you'll be considered such--
only that I hope I may be yours.
I saw you-need more be said?
To broadcast a fire,
telling the cause suffices--
no need to apportion blame for the effect.
Seeing you so exalted
...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
...'s on in Castleton,
and stout upholders of our law and order
one day thought its depth worth wagering on
and borrowed a convict hush-hush from his warder
and winched him down; and back, flayed, grey, mad, dumb.
Not even a good flogging made him holler!
O gentlemen, a better way to plumb
the depths of Britain's dangling a scholar,
say, here at the booming shaft at Towanroath,
now National Trust, a place where they got tin,
those gentlemen who silenced the men's oath
and ...Read more of this...
by
Jonson, Ben
...LXVIII. — ON PLAYWRIGHT. PLAYWRIGHT convict of public wrongs to men, Takes private beatings, and begins again. Two kinds of valour he doth shew at once; Active in's brain, and passive in his bones....Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...d, nor train, where none
Are to behold the judgement, but the judged,
Those two; the third best absent is condemned,
Convict by flight, and rebel to all law:
Conviction to the serpent none belongs.
Thus saying, from his radiant seat he rose
Of high collateral glory: Him Thrones, and Powers,
Princedoms, and Dominations ministrant,
Accompanied to Heaven-gate; from whence
Eden, and all the coast, in prospect lay.
Down he descended straight; the speed of Gods
T...Read more of this...
by
Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor
...
I mean, the master's rule--
is made to seem possession by the slave.
The vassal says: my king;
my prison, the convict says;
and any humble slave
will call the master his without offense.
Thus, when I call you mine,
it's not that I expect
you'll be considered such--
only that I hope I may be yours.
I saw you-need more be said?
To broadcast a fire,
telling the cause suffices--
no need to apportion blame for the effect.
Seeing you so exalted
...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...
Mountains fall before this grief,
A mighty river stops its flow,
But prison doors stay firmly bolted
Shutting off the convict burrows
And an anguish close to death.
Fresh winds softly blow for someone,
Gentle sunsets warm them through; we don't know this,
We are everywhere the same, listening
To the scrape and turn of hateful keys
And the heavy tread of marching soldiers.
Waking early, as if for early mass,
Walking through the capital run wild, gone to seed,
We'd me...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...1
O sight of shame, and pain, and dole!
O fearful thought—a convict Soul!
RANG the refrain along the hall, the prison,
Rose to the roof, the vaults of heaven above,
Pouring in floods of melody, in tones so pensive, sweet and strong, the like whereof was
never
heard,
Reaching the far-off sentry, and the armed guards, who ceas’d their pacing,
Making the hearer’s pulses stop for extasy and awe.
2 O sight of p...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...om,
And the Governor all in shiny black,
With the yellow face of Doom.
He does not rise in piteous haste
To put on convict-clothes,
While some coarse-mouthed Doctor gloats,
and notes
Each new and nerve-twitched pose,
Fingering a watch whose little ticks
Are like horrible hammer-blows.
He does not know that sickening thirst
That sands one's throat, before
The hangman with his gardener's gloves
Slips through the padded door,
And binds one with three leathern thongs,
T...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...THE SINS of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson.
The sins of Kalamazoo are a convict gray, a dishwater drab.
And the people who sin the sins of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson.
They run to drabs and grays—and some of them sing they shall be washed whiter than snow—and some: We should worry.
Yes, Kalamazoo is a spot on the map
And the passenger trains stop there
And the factory smokestacks smoke
And the grocer...Read more of this...
by
Henley, William Ernest
...an-eye, and kicks you out of his way
And then -- and then, who knows
But the kind Grave
Turns on you, and you feel the convict Worm,
In that black bridewell working out his term,
Hanker and grope and crave?
"Poor fool that might --
That might, yet would not, dared not, let this be,
Think of it, here and thus made over to me
In the implacable night!"
And writhing, fain
And like a triumphing lover, he shall take,
His fill where no high memory lives to make
His obscene victor...Read more of this...
by
Mayakovsky, Vladimir
...eye!
A thousand times over reap of revenge the crops'
Never stop!
Petrify, stun,
howl into every ear:
“The earth is a convict, hear,
his head half shaved by the sun!”
An eye for an eye!
Kill me,
bury me -
I’ll dig myself out,
the knives of my teeth by stone — no wonder!-
made sharper,
A snarling dog, under
the plank-beds of barracks I’ll crawl,
sneaking out to bite feet that smell
of sweat and of market stalls!
You'll leap from bed in the night’s early hours.
“Moo!” ...Read more of this...
by
Swift, Jonathan
...nor judge's frown,
Nor topics brought to please the crown,
Nor witness hired, nor jury picked,
Prevail to bring him in convict.
In exile, with a steady heart,
He spent his life's declining part;
Where folly, pride, and faction sway,
Remote from St John, Pope, and Gay.
Alas, poor Dean! his only scope
Was to be held a misanthrope.
This into gen'ral odium drew him,
Which, if he liked, much good may't do him.
His zeal was not to lash our crimes,
But discontent ag...Read more of this...
by
Neruda, Pablo
...e ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.
That's why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the
night.
And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist
houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.<...Read more of this...
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