Famous Benighted Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Desert Places

by Robert Frost
 Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it—it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more...Read more of this...

Fuzzy-Wuzzy

by Rudyard Kipling
 (Soudan Expeditionary Force)
We've fought with many men acrost the seas,
 An' some of 'em was brave an' some was not:
The Paythan an' the Zulu an' Burmese;
 But the Fuzzy was the finest o' the lot.
We never got a ha'porth's change of 'im:
 'E squatted in the scrub an' 'ocked our 'orses,
'E cut our sentries up at Suakim,
 An' 'e...Read more of this...

On The Death Of Anne Bronte

by Charlotte Bronte
 There's little joy in life for me,
And little terror in the grave;
I've lived the parting hour to see
Of one I would have died to save.

Calmly to watch the failing breath,
Wishing each sigh might be the last;
Longing to see the shade of death
O'er those beloved features cast;

The cloud, the stillness that must part
The darling of my life from me;
And then...Read more of this...

On Being Brought from Africa to America

by Phillis Wheatley
 'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, *****'s, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train....Read more of this...

The Cheat Of Cupid; Or The Ungentle Guest

by Robert Herrick
 One silent night of late,
When every creature rested,
Came one unto my gate,
And knocking, me molested.

Who's that, said I, beats there,
And troubles thus the sleepy?
Cast off; said he, all fear,
And let not locks thus keep ye.

For I a boy am, who
By moonless nights have swerved;
And all with showers wet through,
And e'en with cold half starved.

I pitiful arose,
And soon a taper...Read more of this...

A Dream

by Helen Hunt Jackson
 Once a dream did weave a shade,
O'er my Angel-guarded bed.
That an Emmet lost it's way
Where on grass methought I lay.

Troubled wildered and forlorn
Dark benighted travel-worn,
Over many a tangled spray,
All heart-broke I heard her say.

O my children! do they cry,
Do they hear their father sigh.
Now they look abroad to see,
Now return and weep for me.

Pitying I dropp'd a tear;
But I...Read more of this...

Republican Pioneers

by Henry Lawson
 We're marching along, we're gath'ring strong' 
We place on our right reliance, 
We fling in the air, for all who care, 
Our first loud notes of defiance! 
We fling in the air, 
For all who care, 
Our first loud notes of defiance! 

Laugh long and loud, you toady crowd, 
At the men you call benighted, 
In spite of your...Read more of this...

The Battle of El-Teb

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Ye sons of Great Britain, I think no shame
To write in praise of brave General Graham!
Whose name will be handed down to posterity without any stigma,
Because, at the battle of El-Teb, he defeated Osman Digna.

With an army about five thousand strong,
To El-Teb, in the year 1884, he marched along,
And bivouacked there for the night;
While around their fires they only...Read more of this...

An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ with Penetential Cries

by Jupiter Hammon
 Salvation comes by Christ alone,
The only Son of God;
Redemption now to every one,
That love his holy Word.

Dear Jesus, we would fly to Thee,
And leave off every Sin,
Thy tender Mercy well agree;
Salvation from our King. 

Salvation comes now from the Lord,
Our victorious King.
His holy Name be well ador'd,
Salvation surely bring.

Dear Jesus, give thy Spirit now, 
Thy Grace to every Nation,
That...Read more of this...

Meditations In Time Of Civil War

by William Butler Yeats
 I. Ancestral Houses

Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
Life overflows without ambitious pains;
And rains down life until the basin spills,
And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills
And never stoop to a mechanical
Or servile shape, at others' beck and call.

Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had...Read more of this...

From Sunset to Star Rise

by Christina Rossetti
 Go from me, summer friends, and tarry not: 
I am no summer friend, but wintry cold, 
A silly sheep benighted from the fold, 
A sluggard with a thorn-choked garden plot. 
Take counsel, sever from my lot your lot, 
Dwell in your pleasant places, hoard your gold; 
Lest you with me should shiver on the wold, 
Athirst and hungering on...Read more of this...

At Castle Boterel

by Thomas Hardy
 As I drive to the junction of lane and highway, 
And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette, 
I look behind at the fading byway, 
And see on its slope, now glistening wet, 
Distinctly yet

Myself and a girlish form benighted
In dry March weather. We climb the road
Beside a chaise. We had just alighted
To ease the sturdy pony's load
When he sighed and...Read more of this...

For K.R. on her Sixtieth Birthday

by Richard Wilbur
 Blow out the candles of your cake.
They will not leave you in the dark,
Who round with grace this dusky arc
Of the grand tour which souls must take.

You who have sounded William Blake,
And the still pool, to Plato's mark,
Blow out the candles of your cake.
They will not leave you in the dark.

Yet, for your friends' benighted sake,
Detain your upward-flying spark;
Get...Read more of this...

Ode to Della Crusca

by Mary Darby Robinson
 ENLIGHTEN'D Patron of the sacred Lyre?
Whose ever-varying, ever-witching song
Revibrates on the heart
With magic thrilling touch,
Till ev'ry nerve with quiv'ring throb divine,
In madd'ning tumults, owns thy wondrous pow'r;
For well thy dulcet notes
Can wind the mazy song,
In labyrinth of wild fantastic form;
Or with empassion'd pathos woo the soul
With sounds more sweetly mild,
Than SAPPHO's plaint forlorn,
When bending o'er the wave she sung...Read more of this...

Lovers Gifts XXII: I Shall Gladly Suffer

by Rabindranath Tagore
 I shall gladly suffer the pride of culture to die out in my house,
if only in some happy future I am born a herd-boy in the Brinda
forest.
The herd-boy who grazes his cattle sitting under the banyan
tree, and idly weaves gunja flowers into garlands, who loves to
splash and plunge in the Jamuna's cool deep stream.
He calls his companions to wake...Read more of this...

The Great Yellow River Inundation in China

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas in the year of 1887, and on the 28th of September,
Which many people of Honan, in China, will long remember;
Especially those that survived the mighty deluge,
That fled to the mountains, and tops of trees, for refuge. 

The river burst its embankments suddenly at dead of night,
And the rushing torrent swept all before it left and right;
All over the...Read more of this...

When Cold in the Earth

by Thomas Moore
 When cold in the earth lies the friend thou hast loved, 
Be his faults and his follies forgot by thee then; 
Or, if from their slumber the veil be removed, 
Weep o'er them in silence, and close it again. 
And oh! if 'tis pain to remember how far 
From the pathways of light he was tempted to roam, 
Be...Read more of this...

Id Mourn the Hopes

by Thomas Moore
 I'd mourn the hopes that leave me, 
If thy smiles had left me too; 
I'd weep when friends deceive me, 
If thou wert, like them, untrue. 
But while I've thee before me, 
With heart so warm and eyes so bright, 
No clouds can linger o'er me, 
That smile turns them all to light. 

'Tis not in fate to harm...Read more of this...

To Ireland In The Coming Times

by William Butler Yeats
 Know, that I would accounted be
True brother of a company
That sang, to sweeten Ireland's wrong,
Ballad and story, rann and song;
Nor be I any less of them,
Because the red-rose-bordered hem
Of her, whose history began
Before God made the angelic clan,
Trails all about the written page.
When Time began to rant and rage
The measure of her flying feet
Made Ireland's heart hegin to beat;
And...Read more of this...

Desmonds Song

by Thomas Moore
 By the Feal's wave benighted, 
No star in the skies, 
To thy door by Love lighted, 
I first saw those eyes. 
Some voice whisper'd o'er me, 
As the threshold I cross'd, 
There was ruin before me, 
If I loved, I was lost. 

Love came, and brought sorrow 
Too soon in his train; 
Yet so sweet, that to-morrow 
'Twere welcome...Read more of this...

One Being Brought From Africa To America

by Phillis Wheatley
 'TWAS mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought now knew,
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
'Their colour is a diabolic die.'
Remember, Christians, *******, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train....Read more of this...

De Profundis

by Thomas Hardy
 I 

"Percussus sum sicut foenum, et aruit cor meum." 
- Ps. ci 

 Wintertime nighs; 
But my bereavement-pain 
It cannot bring again: 
 Twice no one dies. 

 Flower-petals flee; 
But, since it once hath been, 
No more that severing scene 
 Can harrow me. 

 Birds faint in dread: 
I shall not lose old strength 
In the lone...Read more of this...

The Ballad Of Salvation Bill

by Robert William Service
 'Twas in the bleary middle of the hard-boiled Arctic night,
I was lonesome as a loon, so if you can,
Imagine my emotions of amazement and delight
When I bumped into that Missionary Man.
He was lying lost and dying in the moon's unholy leer,
And frozen from his toes to finger-tips'
The famished wolf-pack ringed him; but he didn't seem to fear,
As he pressed...Read more of this...

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