Famous Appalling Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Appalling poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous appalling poems. These examples illustrate what a famous appalling poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Ginsberg, Allen
...r>..how sad, no way
to change the mad
cultivated asphodel, the
visible reality...
and skin's appalling
petals--how inspired
to be so Iying in the living
room drunk naked
and dreaming, in the absence
of electricity...
over and over eating the low root
of the asphodel,
gray fate...
rolling in generation
on the flowery couch
as on a bank in Arden--
my only rose tonite's the treat
of my own nudity.
Fal...Read more of this...
by
Pushkin, Alexander
...utes' agony;
Emerge in any form or fashion:
A distant star across the sphere,
A gentle sound, a puff of air or
The most appalling wraith of terror,
I care not how: appear, appear!..
I call you -- not to speak my scorn
Of people whose ill-fated malice
Has killed my friend, and not to learn
The secrets of the nether-palace,
And not because a doubt may tear
My heart at times... but as I suffer,
I want to say that still I love her,
That still I'm yours: appea...Read more of this...
by
Auden, Wystan Hugh (W H)
...ly life leaks away,And Time will have his fancyTo-morrow or to-day. 'Into many a green valleyDrifts the appalling snow;Time breaks the threaded dancesAnd the diver's brilliant bow. 'O plunge your hands in water,Plunge them in up to the wrist;Stare, stare in the basinAnd wonder what you've missed. 'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,The desert sighs in the bed,And the crack in the tea-cup opensA lane to the land of the de...Read more of this...
by
Harrison, Tony
...find the right words on my own.
I've got the envelope that he'd been scrawling,
mis-spelt, mawkish, stylistically appalling
but I can't squeeze more love into their stone....Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...chance
At sixteen I decided to be a poet,
Writing another’s love poems,
Earning my first praise. My verses
Were appalling until I learned
From Eliot and Alvarez - praise
Where praise is due.
10
The caf? staff are chatting in subdued tones,
Wearing white, wondering if they’ll survive
The winter, so do I; at fifty-four I must decide
For poetry, my sons educated just, one at Balliol
One at the Royal College, I have cast my lot
With Lady Luck, I own no pr...Read more of this...
by
Collins, Billy
...trains missed by seconds,
though they know in their adult hearts,
even as they threaten to banish Timmy to bed
for his appalling behavior,
that their bosses are Big Fatty Stupids,
their wives are Dopey Dopeheads
and that they themselves are Mr. Sillypants....Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...ng the net
Of all decorum which holds the whirlwind back.
Now, rich order of walls is fallen; rooks croak
Above the appalling ruin; in bleak light
Of your stormy eye, magic takes flight
Like a daunted witch, quitting castle when real days break.
Fractured pillars frame prospects of rock;
While you stand heroic in coat and tie, I sit
Composed in Grecian tunic and psyche-knot,
Rooted to your black look, the play turned tragic:
Which such blight wrought on our bankrupt ...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...f torture-pilgrimage;
Until their grieved bodies 'gan to bloat
And puff from the tail's end to stifled throat:
Then was appalling silence: then a sight
More wildering than all that hoarse affright;
For the whole herd, as by a whirlwind writhen,
Went through the dismal air like one huge Python
Antagonizing Boreas,--and so vanish'd.
Yet there was not a breath of wind: she banish'd
These phantoms with a nod. Lo! from the dark
Came waggish fauns, and nymphs, and satyrs st...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Mary Darby
...m'd guilty, past recalling:
The BARON now his life demands
Where the tall Gibbet skirts the lands
With black'ning bones appalling!
Low at the BARON'S feet, in tears
Fair ZORIETTO kneeling,
The Goatherd's life requir'd;--but found
That Pride can give the deepest wound
Without the pang of feeling.
That Pow'r can mock the suff'rer's woes
And triumph o'er the sighing;
Can scorn the noblest mind oppress'd,
Can fill with thorns the feeling breast
Soft pity's tear denying....Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...er by taper lit,
Until it glows above the trees
As mellow as a Cheddar cheese.
And up and up I watch it press
Into appalling loneliness;
Like realms of ice without a stain,
A corpse Moon come to life again.
Ruthless it drowns a sturdy star
That seeks its regal way to bar;
Seeming with conscious power to grow,
And sweeter, purer, gladder glow.
Dreaming serenely up the sky
Until exultantly on high,
It shimmers with superb delight,
The silver navel of the night.Read more of this...
by
Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...Cedars, Libanus, been struck
As the lythe Oziers twisted round;
Thus! Cadez, has thy Wilderness been shook,
When the appalling, and tremendous Sound
Of rattl'ing Tempests o'er you broke,
And made your stubborn Glories bow,
When in such Whirlwinds the Almighty spoke,
Warning Judea then, as our Britannia now.
Yet these were the remoter Harms,
Foreign the Care, and distant the Alarms:
Whilst but sheltring Trees alone,
Master'd soon, and soon o'erthrown,
Felt th...Read more of this...
by
Bronte, Charlotte
...ruel hurt!
Accessible is Pilate's heart to fear,
Omens will shake his soul, like autumn leaf;
Could he this night's appalling vision hear,
This just man's bonds were loosed, his life were safe,
Unless that bitter priesthood should prevail,
And make even terror to their malice quail.
Yet if I tell the dreambut let me pause.
What dream ? Erewhile the characters were clear,
Graved on my brainat once some unknown cause
Has dimmed and rased the thoughts, which n...Read more of this...
by
Dove, Rita
...eks."Why,
the aplomb with which we've managed
to support our Art"--meaning he'd convinced
her to pose nude for his appalling canvases,
faintly futuristic landscapes strewn
with carwrecks and bodies being chewed
by rabid cocker spaniels."I'd like to come by
the studio," I ventured, "and see the new stuff."
"Yes, if you wish . . ."A delicate rebuff
before the warning: "He dresses all
in black now.Me, he drapes in blues and carmine--
and even thoug...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...uch the sounds which, while I strove
To wake a lay of war or love,
Came marring all the festal mirth,
Appalling me who gave them birth,
And, disobedient to my call,
Wailed loud through Bothwell's bannered hall.
Ere Douglases, to ruin driven,
Were exiled from their native heaven.—
O! if yet worse mishap and woe
My master's house must undergo,
Or aught but weal to Ellen fair
Brood in these accents of despair,
...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...g,
And forests still as sepulchres with never trail or track;
And valleys packed with purple gloom, and mountain peaks appalling,
And I tell them of my cabin on the shore at Fond du Lac;
And I find myself a-thinking: Sure I wish that I was back.
So I brag of bear and beaver while the batteries are roaring,
And the fellows on the firing steps are blazing at the foe;
And I yarn of fur and feather when the `marmites' are a-soaring,
And they listen to my stories, seven ...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...ensive Trees --
Our interview -- was transient --
Of me, himself was shy --
And God forbid I look behind --
Since that appalling Day!...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Mary Darby
...Castle, from that fatal moment
When poor Singing MARY was laid in her grave,
Each night was surrounded by Screech-owls appalling,
Which o'er the black turrets their pinions would wave!
On the ramparts that frown'd on the river, swift flowing,
They hover'd, still hooting a terrible song,
When his windows would rattle, the Winter blast blowing,
They would shriek like a ghost, the dark alleys among!
Wherever he wander'd they followed him crying,
At dawnlight, at Eve, still the...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...and Carrie."
Did he, therefore, jilt Miss Boffkin -- impulse of a baser mind?
No! He started epileptic fits of an appalling kind.
[Of his modus operandi only this much I could gather: --
"Pears's shaving sticks will give you little taste and lots of lather."]
Frequently in public places his affliction used to smite
Sleary with distressing vigour -- always in the Boffkins' sight.
Ere a week was over Minnie weepingly returned his ring,
Told him his "unhappy w...Read more of this...
by
Rilke, Rainer Maria
...of Tobias
when one of you veiling his radiance stood at the front door
slightly disguised for the journey no longer appalling;
(a young man like the one who curiously peeked through the window).
But if the archangel now perilous from behind the stars
took even one step down toward us: our own heart beating
higher and higher would bear us to death. Who are you?
Early successes Creation's pampered favorites
mountain-ranges peaks growing red in the dawn
of a...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...ld never breathe in.
The black bunched in there like a bat,
No light
But the torch and its faint
Chinese yellow on appalling objects ----
Black asininity. Decay.
Possession.
It is they who own me.
Neither cruel nor indifferent,
Only ignorant.
This is the time of hanging on for the bees--the bees
So slow I hardly know them,
Filing like soldiers
To the syrup tin
To make up for the honey I've taken.
Tate and Lyle keeps them going,
The refined snow....Read more of this...
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