Famous Assassin Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Assassin poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous assassin poems. These examples illustrate what a famous assassin poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Crane, Stephen
...A man feared that he might find an assassin;
Another that he might find a victim.
One was more wise than the other....Read more of this...
by
Crane, Stephen
...A youth in apparel that glittered
Went to walk in a grim forest.
There he met an assassin
Attired all in garb of old days;
He, scowling through the thickets,
And dagger poised quivering,
Rushed upon the youth.
"Sir," said this latter,
"I am enchanted, believe me,
To die, thus,
In this medieval fashion,
According to the best legends;
Ah, what joy!"
Then took he the wound, smiling,
And died, content....Read more of this...
by
Flynn, Nick
...a flower
became submerged with us. A million years
went by. A hundred. Swarm of hoverflies,
cockroach, assassin bug, all
trapped, suspended
in that moment of fullness,
a Pompeii, the mother
covering her child's head forever....Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...toast.
Take it away and eat it, and shoot rats.
Ha! there he comes. Your rat will never fail,
My punctual assassin, to prevail—
While he has power to crawl,
Or teeth to gnaw withal—
Where kings are caged. Why has a king no cats?
You say that I’ll achieve it if I try?
Swallow it?—No, not I …
God, what a way to die!...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...Apparently with no surprise
To any happy Flower
The Frost beheads it at its play --
In accidental power --
The blonde Assassin passes on --
The Sun proceeds unmoved
To measure off another Day
For an Approving God....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ry—the murderous, treacherous conspiracy to raise it upon the ruins of all the
rest;
On and on to the grapple with it—Assassin! then your life or ours be the
stake—and
respite no more.
7
(Lo! high toward heaven, this day,
Libertad! from the conqueress’ field return’d,
I mark the new aureola around your head;
No more of soft astral, but dazzling and fierce,
With war’s flames, and the lambent lightnings playing,
And your port immovable where you stand;
With still ...Read more of this...
by
Crowley, Aleister
...serpent is
That poises head and hood, and makes his body tremble to the drone
Of tom-tom and of cymbal wooed by love's assassin sorceries!
El Arabi! El Arabi!
The moon is down; we are alone;
May not our mouths meet, madden, mix, melt in the starlight of a kiss?
El Arabi!
There by the palms, the desert's edge, I drew thee to my heart and held
Thy shy slim beauty for a splendid second; and fell moaning back,
Smitten by Love's forked flashing rod -as if the uprooted mandrake y...Read more of this...
by
Yeats, William Butler
...sed and it is pure,
The blood of innocence has left no stain.
There, on blood-saturated ground, have stood
Soldier, assassin, executioner.
Whether for daily pittance or in blind fear
Or out of abstract hatred, and shed blood,
But could not cast a single jet thereon.
Odour of blood on the ancestral stair!
And we that have shed none must gather there
And clamour in drunken frenzy for the moon.
IV
Upon the dusty, glittering windows cling,
And seem to cling upon...Read more of this...
by
Sandburg, Carl
...WHEN Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin … in the dust, in the cool tombs.
And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes … in the dust, in the cool tombs.
Pocahontas’ body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or a pawpaw in May, did she wonder? does she remember? … in the dust, in the cool tombs?
Take any streetful...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...re done --
Has a fictitious Charter
Or it has none --
Balked in the vastest instance
But to renew --
Felled by but one assassin --
Prosperity --...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...nt hanging now --
The Joy that in his happy Throat
Was waiting to be poured
Gored through and through with Death, to be
Assassin of a Bird
Resembles to my outraged mind
The firing in Heaven,
On Angels -- squandering for you
Their Miracles of Tune --...Read more of this...
by
Bryant, William Cullen
...thy dim and shadowy brow
They place an iron crown, and call thee king
Of terrors, and the spoiler of the world,
Deadly assassin, that strik'st down the fair,
The loved, the good--that breath'st upon the lights
Of virtue set along the vale of life,
And they go out in darkness. I am come,
Not with reproaches, not with cries and prayers,
Such as have stormed thy stern insensible ear
From the beginning. I am come to speak
Thy praises. True it is, that I have wept
Thy...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...an Unarmed, one's a'self encounter --
In lonesome Place --
Ourself behind ourself, concealed --
Should startle most --
Assassin hid in our Apartment
Be Horror's least.
The Body -- borrows a Revolver --
He bolts the Door --
O'erlooking a superior spectre --
Or More --...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...the flaming mount appeared
In Dothan, covered with a camp of fire,
Against the Syrian king, who to surprise
One man, assassin-like, had levied war,
War unproclaimed. The princely Hierarch
In their bright stand there left his Powers, to seise
Possession of the garden; he alone,
To find where Adam sheltered, took his way,
Not unperceived of Adam; who to Eve,
While the great visitant approached, thus spake.
Eve$ now expect great tidings, which perhaps
Of us wi...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...e were despatch’d with bayonets, or batter’d with the blunts of
muskets;
A youth not seventeen years old seiz’d his assassin till two more came to
release him;
The three were all torn, and cover’d with the boy’s blood.
At eleven o’clock began the burning of the bodies:
That is the tale of the murder of the four hundred and twelve young men.
35
Would you hear of an old-fashion’d sea-fight?
Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars? ...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...love thee well, dear Love,' quoth she, `and yet
Would that thy creed with mine completely met,
As one, not two.'
"Assassin! Thief! Opinion, 'tis thy work.
By Church, by throne, by hearth, by every good
That's in the Town of Time, I see thee lurk,
And e'er some shadow stays where thou hast stood.
Thou hand'st sweet Socrates his hemlock sour;
Thou sav'st Barabbas in that hideous hour,
And stabb'st the good
"Deliverer Christ; thou rack'st the souls of men;
Thou to...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...The correct death is written in.
I will fill the need.
My bow is stiff.
My bow is in readiness.
I am the bullet and the hook.
I am cocked and held ready.
In my sights I carve him
like a sculptor. I mold out
his last look at everyone.
I carry his eyes and his
brain bone at every position.
I know his male sex and I do
marc...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...Bill, I'm ready. You can pump me full of lead
And take it, but - you've got to kill me first."
Now I'm no foul assassin, though I'm full of sinful ways,
And I knew right there the fellow had me beat;
For I felt a yellow mongrel in the glory of his gaze,
And I flung my foolish firearm at his feet,
Then wearily I turned away, and dropped upon my bunk,
And there I lay and blubbered like a kid.
"Forgive me, pard," says I at last, "for acting like a skunk,
But hide th...Read more of this...
by
Walcott, Derek
...ep,
drawn by that magnet which pulls down half the world
between a star and a star, by that black power
that has the assassin dreaming of snow,
that poleaxes the tyrant to a sleeping child.
The house is rocking at anchor, but as he falls
his mind is a mill wheel in moonlight,
and he hears, in the sleep of his moonlight, the drowned
bell of Port Royal's cathedral, sees the copper pennies
of bubbles rising from the empty eye-pockets
of green buccaneers, the parrot...Read more of this...
by
Justice, Donald
...One of those men who can be a car salesman or a tourist from Syracuse or a
hired assassin.
-- John D. MacDonald
You would not recognize me.
Mine is the face which blooms in
The dank mirrors of washrooms
As you grope for the light switch.
My eyes have the expression
Of the cold eyes of statues
Watching their pigeons return
From the feed you have scattered,
And I stand on my corner
With the same marble patience.
If I...Read more of this...
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