Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Banished Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Burns, Robert
...d:
 How His first followers and servants sped;
The precepts sage they wrote to many a land:
 How he, who lone in Patmos banished,
Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand,
And heard great Bab’lon’s doom pronounc’d by Heaven’s command.


Then, kneeling down to Heaven’s Eternal King,
 The saint, the father, and the husband prays:
Hope “springs exulting on triumphant wing,” 1
 That thus they all shall meet in future days,
 There, ever bask in uncreated rays,
No more to sigh, or s...Read more of this...



by Seeger, Alan
...br> But reflect! 
The greaser has spat on you more than once; 
He has handed you multiple affronts; 
He has robbed you, banished you, burned and killed; 
He has gone untrounced for the blood he spilled; 
He has jeering used for his bootblack's rag 
The stars and stripes of the gringo's flag; 
And you, in the depths of your easy-chair -- 
What did you do, what did you care? 
Did you find the season too cold and damp 
To change the counter for the camp? 
Were you frightened by ...Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...ere spoilers sit, 
Trampling the children of men.

Prophet, what of the night? - 
I stand by the verge of the sea, 
Banished, uncomforted, free, 
Hearing the noise of the waves 
And sudden flashes that smite 
Some man's tyrannous head, 
Thundering, heard among graves 
That hide the hosts of his dead.

Mourners, what of the night? - 
All night through without sleep 
We weep, and we weep, and we weep. 
Who shall give us our sons ? 
Beaks of raven and kite,
Mouths of...Read more of this...

by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
..., 
It is then that I vow we must part for ever, 
That I will forget you, and put you away
Out of my life, as a dream is banished
Out of the mind when the dreamer awakes; 
That I know it will be when the spell has vanished, 
Better for both of our sakes.

When the court of the mind is ruled by Reason, 
I know it wiser for us to part; 
But Love is a spy who is plotting treason, 
In league with that warm, red rebel, the Heart.
They whisper to me that the King is cruel, 
...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...l restore all soon.
 LADY. 'T will not, false
traitor!
'T will not restore the truth and honesty
That thou hast banished from thy tongue with lies.
Was this the cottage and the safe abode
Thou told'st me of? What grim aspects are these,
These oughly-headed monsters? Mercy guard me!
Hence with thy brewed enchantments, foul deceiver!
Hast thou betrayed my credulous innocence
With vizored falsehood and base forgery?
And would'st thou seek again to trap me here
With l...Read more of this...



by Clampitt, Amy
...t
and forgotten; granite
subsumed, a rumor
in a mumble of ocean.
 Tactile
definition, however, has not been
totally banished: hanging
tassel by tassel, panicled
foxtail and needlegrass,
dropseed, furred hawkweed,
and last season's rose-hips
are vested in silenced
chimes of the finest,
clearest sea-crystal.
 Opacity
opens up rooms, a showcase
for the hueless moonflower
corolla, as Georgia
O'Keefe might have seen it,
of foghorns; the nodding
campanula of bell buoys;
the...Read more of this...

by Bronte, Charlotte
...y,
The secret influence which estranged him;
Love may restore him yet to me. 

False thought­false hope­in scorn be banished ! 
I am not loved­nor loved have been; 
Recall not, then, the dreams scarce vanished, 
Traitors ! mislead me not again !

To words like yours I bid defiance, 
'Tis such my mental wreck have made; 
Of God alone, and self-reliance, 
I ask for solace­hope for aid.

Morn comes­and ere meridian glory
O'er these, my natal woods, shall smile, 
Both lon...Read more of this...

by Hikmet, Nazim
...,
thumbing my nose at friend and foe
five times a day,
undaunted,
claim
I can prove it;
if I can't, 
I'll be ruined and banished
forever from the realm of poesy.

 1928


Part One
Excerpts from Gioconda's Diary

15 March 1924: Paris, Louvre Museum

At last I am bored with the Louvre Museum.
You can get fed up with boredom very fast.
I am fed up with my boredom.
And from the devastation inside me
 I drew this lesson;
 to visit
 a museum is fine,
 to be a museum...Read more of this...

by Kunitz, Stanley
...broken but endures,
limber and firm
in the state of his shining,
forever inheriting his salt kingdom,
from which he is banished
forever....Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...honour dishonourable, 
Sin-bred, how have ye troubled all mankind 
With shows instead, mere shows of seeming pure, 
And banished from man's life his happiest life, 
Simplicity and spotless innocence! 
So passed they naked on, nor shunned the sight 
Of God or Angel; for they thought no ill: 
So hand in hand they passed, the loveliest pair, 
That ever since in love's embraces met; 
Adam the goodliest man of men since born 
His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve. 
Under ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...escent, leaves all waste beyond 
The realm of Aladule, in his retreat 
To Tauris or Casbeen: So these, the late 
Heaven-banished host, left desart utmost Hell 
Many a dark league, reduced in careful watch 
Round their metropolis; and now expecting 
Each hour their great adventurer, from the search 
Of foreign worlds: He through the midst unmarked, 
In show plebeian Angel militant 
Of lowest order, passed; and from the door 
Of that Plutonian hall, invisible 
Ascended his high...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...tay, 
Is to go hence unwilling; thou to me 
Art all things under $Heaven, all places thou, 
Who for my wilful crime art banished hence. 
This further consolation yet secure 
I carry hence; though all by me is lost, 
Such favour I unworthy am vouchsafed, 
By me the Promised Seed shall all restore. 
So spake our mother Eve; and Adam heard 
Well pleased, but answered not: For now, too nigh 
The Arch-Angel stood; and, from the other hill 
To their fixed station, all in br...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...scars of wanton wars are vanished;
And what blue bruises grappling Sense had left
And sad remains of redder stains are banished,
And the dim blotch of heart-committed theft.

O still vast vision of transfigured features
Unvisited by secret crimes or dooms,
Remain, remain amid these water-creatures,
Stand, shine among yon water-lily blooms.

For eighteen centuries ripple down the river,
And windy times the stalks of empires wave,
-- Let the winds come from the moor an...Read more of this...

by Jong, Erica
...y brooms
cackling or singing more sweetly than Circe,
as they flew over rooftops
blessing & cursing their
kind.

We banished & burned them
making them smoke in the throat of god;
we declared ourselves
"enlightened."
"The dark age of horrors is past,"
said my mother to me in 1952,
seven years after our people went up in smoke,
leaving a few teeth, a pile of bones. 

The smoke curls and beckons.
It is blue & lavender
& green as the undersea world.
It will ta...Read more of this...

by Po, Li
...h my whip studded with
jade and coral presented to me by the Emperor,
my life was free and easy, people calling me
the "Banished Immortal." Hsi Shih was good
at smiling as well as frowning, useless
for ordinary girls to try and imitate her.
Surely it was only her loveliness the king adored,
but unfortunately jealousy within the palace
led to her death....Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...ren understood;
For we shall recognize as truth at last,
What here as beauty only we have viewed.

When the Creator banished from his sight
Frail man to dark mortality's abode,
And granted him a late return to light,
Only by treading reason's arduous road,--
When each immortal turned his face away,
She, the compassionate, alone
Took up her dwelling in that house of clay,
With the deserted, banished one.
With drooping wing she hovers here
Around her darling, near the s...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...nd the charm completest,
There came, shall I say, a snap---
And the charm vanished!
And my sense returned, so strangely banished,
And, starting as from a nap,
I knew the crone was bewitching my lady,
With Jacynth asleep; and but one spring made I
Down from the casement, round to the portal,
Another minute and I had entered,---
When the door opened, and more than mortal
Stood, with a face where to my mind centred
All beauties I ever saw or shall see,
The Duchess: I stopped as ...Read more of this...

by Hood, Thomas
...ocoon,
About its nooks and hinges.

The spider shunned the interdicted room,
The moth, the beetle, and the fly were banished,
And when the sunbeam fell athwart the gloom,
The very midge had vanished.

One lonely ray that glanced upon a bed,
As if with awful aim direct and certain,
To show the Bloody Hand, in burning red,
Embroidered on the curtain....Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...ugh from the wild,
          Thou canst save amid despair.
     Safe may we sleep beneath thy care,
          Though banished, outcast, and reviled—
     Maiden! hear a maiden's prayer;
          Mother, hear a suppliant child!
                                              Ave Maria!

     Ave Maria! undefiled!
          The flinty couch we now must share
     Shall seem with down of eider piled,
          If thy protection hover there.
     The murky cavern's hea...Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...The need to love that all the stars obey
Entered my heart and banished all beside.
Bare were the gardens where I used to stray;
Faded the flowers that one time satisfied.

Before the beauty of the west on fire,
The moonlit hills from cloister-casements viewed
Cloud-like arose the image of desire,
And cast out peace and maddened solitude.

I sought the City and the hopes it held:
With smoke and brooding vapo...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Banished poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things