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Famous Allegorical Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Allegorical poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous allegorical poems. These examples illustrate what a famous allegorical poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Doty, Mark
...ing horizontally 
above the soldiers, her robe billowing like plaster dust, 
seemed so far above us, another century's 
allegorical decor, an afterthought 
who'd never descend to the purely physical 
soldiers, the nearly breathing bronze ranks crushed 

into a terrible compression of perspective, 
as if the world hurried them into the ditch. 
"The unreadable," Wilde said, "is what occurs." 
And when the brutish metal rears 
above the wall of unglazed windows --
where,...Read more of this...



by Yeats, William Butler
...

 II

What can I but enumerate old themes?
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, starved for the bosom of his faery bride?

And then a counter-truth filled out its play,
'The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it;
She, pity-crazed, had give...Read more of this...

by Merrill, James
...still-warm gramophone

Only to dream he is at the première of a Handel
Opera long thought lost--Il Cane Minore.
Its allegorical subject is his story!
A little dog revolving round a spindle

Gives rise to harmonies beyond belief,
A cast of stars . . . . Is there in Victor's heart
No honey for the vanquished?Art is art.
The life it asks of us is a dog's life....Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...fty urn?
But why a little soldier in an obsolete dress?
I'd rather see a Goddess with a spear, I confess.
Something allegorical and fine. Why, yes --
I cannot take my eyes from him. I don't 
know why at all.
I've looked so long the whole thing swims. I feel he 
ought to fall.
Foreshortened there among the clouds he's pitifully small.
What do you say? There used to be an 
Emperor standing there,
With flowing robes and laurel crown. Really? Yet 
...Read more of this...

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