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).

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83. The Cotter's Saturday Night

by Robert Burns
 MY lov’d, my honour’d, much respected friend!
 No mercenary bard his homage pays;
With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end,
 My dearest meed, a friend’s esteem and praise:
 To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,
The lowly train in life’s sequester’d scene,
 The native feelings strong, the guileless ways,
What Aiken in a cottage would have been;
Ah! tho’ his worth...Read more of this...

We are all lovers, all drunkards, all adorers of wine

by Omar Khayyam
We are all lovers, all drunkards, all adorers of wine.
We are all united in the tavern, having banished far
from us all that is good, all that is evil, all reflection
and revery. Oh! expect not intelligence or reason of us,
for we are all overcome with wine....Read more of this...

Lines Written In Dejection

by William Butler Yeats
 When have I last looked on
The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies
Of the dark leopards of the moon?
All the wild witches, those most noble ladies,
For all their broom-sticks and their tears,
Their angry tears, are gone.

The holy centaurs of the hills are vanished;
I have nothing but the embittered sun;
Banished heroic mother moon and vanished,
And now that I have...Read more of this...

A Watch In The Night

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Watchman, what of the night? - 
Storm and thunder and rain, 
Lights that waver and wane,
Leaving the watchfires unlit. 
Only the balefires are bright, 
And the flash of the lamps now and then 
From a palace where spoilers sit, 
Trampling the children of men.

Prophet, what of the night? - 
I stand by the verge of the sea, 
Banished, uncomforted,...Read more of this...

Modern Love XXIII: Tis Christmas Weather

by George Meredith
 'Tis Christmas weather, and a country house 
Receives us: rooms are full: we can but get 
An attic-crib. Such lovers will not fret 
At that, it is half-said. The great carouse 
Knocks hard upon the midnight's hollow door, 
But when I knock at hers, I see the pit. 
Why did I come here in that dullard fit? 
I enter,...Read more of this...

If Im lost -- now

by Emily Dickinson
 If I'm lost -- now
That I was found --
Shall still my transport be --
That once -- on me -- those Jasper Gates
Blazed open -- suddenly --

That in my awkward -- gazing -- face --
The Angels -- softly peered --
And touched me with their fleeces,
Almost as if they cared --
I'm banished -- now -- you know it --
How foreign that...Read more of this...

For Osip Mandelstam

by Anna Akhmatova
 And the town is frozen solid in a vice,
Trees, walls, snow, beneath a glass.
Over crystal, on slippery tracks of ice,
the painted sleighs and I, together, pass.
And over St Peter’s there are poplars, crows
there’s a pale green dome there that glows,
dim in the sun-shrouded dust.
The field of heroes lingers in my thought,
Kulikovo’s barbarian battleground.
The frozen poplars, like glasses for a...Read more of this...

Ode for the Keats Centenary

by Duncan Campbell Scott
 The Muse is stern unto her favoured sons,
Giving to some the keys of all the joy
Of the green earth, but holding even that joy
Back from their life;
Bidding them feed on hope,
A plant of bitter growth,
Deep-rooted in the past;
Truth, 'tis a doubtful art
To make Hope sweeten
Time as it flows;
For no man knows
Until the very last,
Whether it be a sovereign herb...Read more of this...

Rapunzel

by Anne Sexton
 A woman 
who loves a woman 
is forever young. 
The mentor 
and the student 
feed off each other. 
Many a girl 
had an old aunt 
who locked her in the study 
to keep the boys away. 
They would play rummy 
or lie on the couch 
and touch and touch. 
Old breast against young breast... 
Let your dress fall down...Read more of this...

The moon of Ramazan is risen, see!

by Omar Khayyam
The moon of Ramazan is risen, see!
Alas, our wine must henceforth banished be;
Well! on Sha'ban's last day I'll drink enough
To keep me drunk till Bairam's jubilee....Read more of this...

The Spirit Medium

by William Butler Yeats
 Poetry, music, I have loved, and yet
Because of those new dead
That come into my soul and escape
Confusion of the bed,
Or those begotten or unbegotten
Perning in a band,
I bend my body to the spade
Or grope with a dirty hand.

Or those begotten or unbegotten,
For I would not recall
Some that being unbegotten
Are not individual,
But copy some one action,
Moulding it of dust or...Read more of this...

Psalm XXXVI: High in the Heavns

by Isaac Watts
 High in the heav'ns, eternal God,
Thy goodness in full glory shines;
Thy truth shall break through ev'ry cloud
That veils and darkens thy designs.

For ever firm thy justice stands,
As mountains their foundations keep;
Wise are the wonders of thy hands;
Thy judgments are a mighty deep.

Thy providence is kind and large,
Both man and beast thy bounty share;
The whole creation is thy charge,
But saints...Read more of this...

Resurrection

by Sidney Lanier
 Sometimes in morning sunlights by the river
Where in the early fall long grasses wave,
Light winds from over the moorland sink and shiver
And sigh as if just blown across a grave.

And then I pause and listen to this sighing.
I look with strange eyes on the well-known stream.
I hear wild birth-cries uttered by the dying.
I know men waking who appear to...Read more of this...

The Veiled Statue At Sais

by Friedrich von Schiller
 A youth, impelled by a burning thirst for knowledge
To roam to Sais, in fair Egypt's land,
The priesthood's secret learning to explore,
Had passed through many a grade with eager haste,
And still was hurrying on with fond impatience.
Scarce could the Hierophant impose a rein
Upon his headlong efforts. "What avails
A part without the whole?" the youth exclaimed;
"Can there be here a lesser...Read more of this...

Before Her Portrait In Youth

by Francis Thompson
 As lovers, banished from their lady's face
And hopeless of her grace,
Fashion a ghostly sweetness in its place,
Fondly adore
Some stealth-won cast attire she wore,
A kerchief or a glove:
And at the lover's beck
Into the glove there fleets the hand,
Or at impetuous command
Up from the kerchief floats the virgin neck:
So I, in very lowlihead of love, -
Too shyly reverencing
To let one thought's...Read more of this...

Communism

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 When my blood flows calm as a purling river, 
When my heart is asleep and my brain has sway, 
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...Read more of this...

The Glory Of The Heavens

by Emile Verhaeren
Shining in dim transparence, the whole of infinity lies
Behind the veil that the finger of radiant winter weaves
And down on us falls the foliage of stars in glittering sheaves;
From out the depths of the forest, the forest obscure of the skies,


The wingèd sea with her shadowy floods as of dappled silk
Speeds, 'neath the golden fires, her pale immensity o'er;
And diamond-rayed,...Read more of this...

Ballad Of The Banished And Returning Count

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 [Goethe began to write an opera called Lowenstuhl, 
founded upon the old tradition which forms the subject of this Ballad, 
but he never carried out his design.]

OH, enter old minstrel, thou time-honour'd one!
We children are here in the hall all alone,

The portals we straightway will bar.
Our mother is praying, our father is gone

To the forest, on wolves to make...Read more of this...

Psalm 44

by Isaac Watts
 v.1-8,8,15-26 
C. M.
The church's complaint in persecution.

Lord, we have heard thy works of old,
Thy works of power and grace,
When to our ears our fathers told
The wonders of their days.

How thou didst build thy churches here,
And make thy gospel known;
Amongst them did thine arm appear,
Thy light and glory shone.

In God they boasted all the day,
And in a cheerful throng
Did thousands...Read more of this...

Hymn 126

by Isaac Watts
 Charity and uncharitableness.

Rom. 14:17,19; 1 Cor. 10:32. 

Not diff'rent food, or diff'rent dress,
Compose the kingdom of our Lord;
But peace, and joy, and righteousness,
Faith, and obedience to his word.

When weaker Christians we despise,
We do the gospel mighty wrong;
For God, the gracious and the wise,
Receives the feeble with the strong.

Let pride and wrath be banished hence;
Meekness and love our souls pursue;
Nor...Read more of this...

The Blue Mountains

by Henry Lawson
 Above the ashes straight and tall, 
Through ferns with moisture dripping, 
I climb beneath the sandstone wall, 
My feet on mosses slipping. 

Like ramparts round the valley's edge 
The tinted cliffs are standing, 
With many a broken wall and ledge, 
And many a rocky landing. 

And round about their rugged feet 
Deep ferny dells are hidden 
In shadowed depths,...Read more of this...

A Tribute to Mr Murphy and the Blue Ribbon Army

by William Topaz McGonagall
 All hail to Mr Murphy, he is a hero brave,
That has crossed the mighty Atlantic wave,
For what purpose let me pause and think-
I answer, to warn the people not to taste strong drink. 

And, I'm sure, if they take his advice, they never will rue
The day they joined the Blue Ribbon Army in the year 1882;
And I hope to...Read more of this...

Staying Overnight with Abbot Zan (Abbot of Dayun Temple in the capital, exiled to this place)

by Du Fu
 Cane tin how come here Autumn wind already sough Rain waste large court chrysanthemum Frost topple half pool lotus Banish rather against nature Void not leave Chan Mutual meet all night stay Gansu moon toward man round  How did your tin-edged cane get here? The autumn wind's already sighing. The rain's laid waste the great...Read more of this...

345. Song—Frae the friends and land I love

by Robert Burns
 FRAE the friends and land I love,
 Driv’n by Fortune’s felly spite;
Frae my best belov’d I rove,
 Never mair to taste delight:
Never mair maun hope to find
 Ease frae toil, relief frae care;
When Remembrance wracks the mind,
 Pleasures but unveil despair.


Brightest climes shall mirk appear,
 Desert ilka blooming shore,
Till the Fates, nae mair severe,
 Friendship, love, and peace restore,
Till...Read more of this...

Song Of The Jade Cup

by Li Po
 A jade cup was broken because old age came
too soon to give fulfilment to hopes; after drinking
three cups of wine I wiped my sword and
started to dance under an autumn moon first
singing in a high voice then unable to halt
tears coming; I remember the day when first
I was summoned to court and I was feasted splendidly
writing poems in praise...Read more of this...

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