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Best Famous Cancel Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Cancel poems. This is a select list of the best famous Cancel poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Cancel poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of cancel poems.

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Written by Charlotte Bronte | Create an image from this poem

Life

 I leave the office, take the stairs,
in time to mail a letter
before 3 in the afternoon--the last dispatch.
The red, white and blue air mail
falls past the slot for foreign mail
and hits bottom with a sound
that tells me my letter is alone.
They will have to bring in a plane
from a place of coastline and beaches,
from a climate of fresh figs and apricot,
to cradle my one letter. Up in the air
it will leave behind some of its ugly nuance,
its unpleasant habit of humanity
which wants to smear itself over others:
the spot in which it wasn't clear, perhaps,
how to take my words, which were suggestive,
the paragraph in which the names of flowers,
ostensibly to indicate travel,
make a bed for lovers,
the parts that contain spit and phlegm,
the words only a wet tongue can manage,
hissing sounds and letters of the alphabet
which can only be formed
by biting down on the bottom lip.
In the next-to-last paragraph, some hair
came off in the comb. Then clothes
were gathered from everywhere in the room
in one sentence, and the sun rose
while a door closed with sincerity.
No doubt such sincerity will be judged,
but first the investigation of the postmark.
Am I where I was expected? Did I have at hand
the right denominations of stamps,
or did I make a childish quilt of ones and sevens?
Ah yes, they will have to cancel me twice.
Once to make my words worthless.
Once more to stop me from writing.


Written by Sarojini Naidu | Create an image from this poem

An Indian Love Song

 He

Lift up the veils that darken the delicate moon 
of thy glory and grace,
Withhold not, O love, from the night 
of my longing the joy of thy luminous face,
Give me a spear of the scented keora 
guarding thy pinioned curls, 
Or a silken thread from the fringes 
that trouble the dream of thy glimmering pearls;
Faint grows my soul with thy tresses' perfume 
and the song of thy anklets' caprice,
Revive me, I pray, with the magical nectar 
that dwells in the flower of thy kiss.

She 

How shall I yield to the voice of thy pleading, 
how shall I grant thy prayer,
Or give thee a rose-red silken tassel, 
a scented leaf from my hair?
Or fling in the flame of thy heart's desire the veils that cover my face,
Profane the law of my father's creed for a foe 
of my father's race?
Thy kinsmen have broken our sacred altars and slaughtered our sacred kine,
The feud of old faiths and the blood of old battles sever thy people and mine.

He

What are the sins of my race, Beloved, 
what are my people to thee? 
And what are thy shrines, and kine and kindred, 
what are thy gods to me?
Love recks not of feuds and bitter follies, 
of stranger, comrade or kin,
Alike in his ear sound the temple bells 
and the cry of the muezzin.
For Love shall cancel the ancient wrong 
and conquer the ancient rage,
Redeem with his tears the memoried sorrow 
that sullied a bygone age.
Written by Edwin Arlington Robinson | Create an image from this poem

London Bridge

 “Do I hear them? Yes, I hear the children singing—and what of it? 
Have you come with eyes afire to find me now and ask me that? 
If I were not their father and if you were not their mother, 
We might believe they made a noise…. What are you—driving at!” 

“Well, be glad that you can hear them, and be glad they are so near us,— 
For I have heard the stars of heaven, and they were nearer still. 
All within an hour it is that I have heard them calling, 
And though I pray for them to cease, I know they never will; 
For their music on my heart, though you may freeze it, will fall always, 
Like summer snow that never melts upon a mountain-top.
Do you hear them? Do you hear them overhead—the children—singing? 
Do you hear the children singing?… God, will you make them stop!” 

“And what now in His holy name have you to do with mountains? 
We’re back to town again, my dear, and we’ve a dance tonight. 
Frozen hearts and falling music? Snow and stars, and—what the devil!
Say it over to me slowly, and be sure you have it right.” 

“God knows if I be right or wrong in saying what I tell you, 
Or if I know the meaning any more of what I say. 
All I know is, it will kill me if I try to keep it hidden— 
Well, I met him…. Yes, I met him, and I talked with him—today.”

“You met him? Did you meet the ghost of someone you had poisoned, 
Long ago, before I knew you for the woman that you are? 
Take a chair; and don’t begin your stories always in the middle. 
Was he man, or was he demon? Anyhow, you’ve gone too far 
To go back, and I’m your servant. I’m the lord, but you’re the master.
Now go on with what you know, for I’m excited.” 

“Do you mean— 
Do you mean to make me try to think that you know less than I do?” 

“I know that you foreshadow the beginning of a scene. 
Pray be careful, and as accurate as if the doors of heaven
Were to swing or to stay bolted from now on for evermore.” 

“Do you conceive, with all your smooth contempt of every feeling, 
Of hiding what you know and what you must have known before? 
Is it worth a woman’s torture to stand here and have you smiling, 
With only your poor fetish of possession on your side?
No thing but one is wholly sure, and that’s not one to scare me; 
When I meet it I may say to God at last that I have tried. 
And yet, for all I know, or all I dare believe, my trials 
Henceforward will be more for you to bear than are your own; 
And you must give me keys of yours to rooms I have not entered.
Do you see me on your threshold all my life, and there alone? 
Will you tell me where you see me in your fancy—when it leads you 
Far enough beyond the moment for a glance at the abyss?” 

“Will you tell me what intrinsic and amazing sort of nonsense 
You are crowding on the patience of the man who gives you—this?
Look around you and be sorry you’re not living in an attic, 
With a civet and a fish-net, and with you to pay the rent. 
I say words that you can spell without the use of all your letters; 
And I grant, if you insist, that I’ve a guess at what you meant.” 

“Have I told you, then, for nothing, that I met him? Are you trying
To be merry while you try to make me hate you?” 

“Think again, 
My dear, before you tell me, in a language unbecoming 
To a lady, what you plan to tell me next. If I complain, 
If I seem an atom peevish at the preference you mention—
Or imply, to be precise—you may believe, or you may not, 
That I’m a trifle more aware of what he wants than you are. 
But I shouldn’t throw that at you. Make believe that I forgot. 
Make believe that he’s a genius, if you like,—but in the meantime 
Don’t go back to rocking-horses. There, there, there, now.”

“Make believe! 
When you see me standing helpless on a plank above a whirlpool, 
Do I drown, or do I hear you when you say it? Make believe? 
How much more am I to say or do for you before I tell you 
That I met him! What’s to follow now may be for you to choose.
Do you hear me? Won’t you listen? It’s an easy thing to listen….” 

“And it’s easy to be crazy when there’s everything to lose.” 
“If at last you have a notion that I mean what I am saying, 
Do I seem to tell you nothing when I tell you I shall try? 
If you save me, and I lose him—I don’t know—it won’t much matter.
I dare say that I’ve lied enough, but now I do not lie.” 

“Do you fancy me the one man who has waited and said nothing 
While a wife has dragged an old infatuation from a tomb? 
Give the thing a little air and it will vanish into ashes. 
There you are—piff! presto!”

“When I came into this room, 
It seemed as if I saw the place, and you there at your table, 
As you are now at this moment, for the last time in my life; 
And I told myself before I came to find you, ‘I shall tell him, 
If I can, what I have learned of him since I became his wife.’
And if you say, as I’ve no doubt you will before I finish, 
That you have tried unceasingly, with all your might and main, 
To teach me, knowing more than I of what it was I needed, 
Don’t think, with all you may have thought, that you have tried in vain; 
For you have taught me more than hides in all the shelves of knowledge
Of how little you found that’s in me and was in me all along. 
I believed, if I intruded nothing on you that I cared for, 
I’d be half as much as horses,—and it seems that I was wrong; 
I believed there was enough of earth in me, with all my nonsense 
Over things that made you sleepy, to keep something still awake;
But you taught me soon to read my book, and God knows I have read it— 
Ages longer than an angel would have read it for your sake. 
I have said that you must open other doors than I have entered, 
But I wondered while I said it if I might not be obscure. 
Is there anything in all your pedigrees and inventories
With a value more elusive than a dollar’s? Are you sure 
That if I starve another year for you I shall be stronger 
To endure another like it—and another—till I’m dead?” 

“Has your tame cat sold a picture?—or more likely had a windfall? 
Or for God’s sake, what’s broke loose? Have you a bee-hive in your head?
A little more of this from you will not be easy hearing 
Do you know that? Understand it, if you do; for if you won’t…. 
What the devil are you saying! Make believe you never said it, 
And I’ll say I never heard it…. Oh, you…. If you….” 

“If I don’t?”
“There are men who say there’s reason hidden somewhere in a woman, 
But I doubt if God himself remembers where the key was hung.” 

“He may not; for they say that even God himself is growing. 
I wonder if He makes believe that He is growing young; 
I wonder if He makes believe that women who are giving
All they have in holy loathing to a stranger all their lives 
Are the wise ones who build houses in the Bible….” 

“Stop—you devil!” 
“…Or that souls are any whiter when their bodies are called wives. 
If a dollar’s worth of gold will hoop the walls of hell together,
Why need heaven be such a ruin of a place that never was? 
And if at last I lied my starving soul away to nothing, 
Are you sure you might not miss it? Have you come to such a pass 
That you would have me longer in your arms if you discovered 
That I made you into someone else…. Oh!…Well, there are worse ways.
But why aim it at my feet—unless you fear you may be sorry…. 
There are many days ahead of you.” 

“I do not see those days.” 
“I can see them. Granted even I am wrong, there are the children. 
And are they to praise their father for his insight if we die?
Do you hear them? Do you hear them overhead—the children—singing? 
Do you hear them? Do you hear the children?” 
“Damn the children!” 

“Why? 
What have they done?…Well, then,—do it…. Do it now, and have it over.”
“Oh, you devil!…Oh, you….” 

“No, I’m not a devil, I’m a prophet— 
One who sees the end already of so much that one end more 
Would have now the small importance of one other small illusion, 
Which in turn would have a welcome where the rest have gone before.
But if I were you, my fancy would look on a little farther 
For the glimpse of a release that may be somewhere still in sight. 
Furthermore, you must remember those two hundred invitations 
For the dancing after dinner. We shall have to shine tonight. 
We shall dance, and be as happy as a pair of merry spectres,
On the grave of all the lies that we shall never have to tell; 
We shall dance among the ruins of the tomb of our endurance, 
And I have not a doubt that we shall do it very well. 
There!—I’m glad you’ve put it back; for I don’t like it. Shut the drawer now. 
No—no—don’t cancel anything. I’ll dance until I drop.
I can’t walk yet, but I’m going to…. Go away somewhere, and leave me…. 
Oh, you children! Oh, you children!…God, will they never stop!”
Written by George Herbert | Create an image from this poem

Redemption

 Having been tenant long to a rich lord, 
Not thriving, I resolved to be bold, 
And make a suit unto him, to afford 
A new small-rented lease, and cancel the old. 
In heaven at his manor I him sought; 
They told me there that he was lately gone 
About some land, which he had dearly bought 
Long since on earth, to take possession.
I straight returned, and knowing his great birth, 
Sought him accordingly in great resorts; 
In cities, theaters, gardens, parks, and courts; 
At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth 
Of thieves and murderers; there I him espied, 
Who straight, Your suit is granted, said, and died.
Written by Robinson Jeffers | Create an image from this poem

Contemplation Of The Sword

 Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel, 
 formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms 
 and counter-storms of general destruction; killing 
 of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or 
 less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice, 
 the innocent air
Perverted into assasin and poisoner.

The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible 
 baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement, 
 mass-tourture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man's forhead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for 
 happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.

Dear God, who are the whole splendor of things and the sacred 
 stars, but also the cruelty and greed, the treacheries
And vileness, insanities and filth and anguish: now that this 
 thing comes near us again I am finding it hard
To praise you with a whole heart.
I know what pain is, but pain can shine. I know what death is, 
 I have sometimes
Longed for it. But cruelty and slavery and degredation, 
 pestilence, filth, the pitifulness
Of men like hurt little birds and animals . . . if you were 
 only
Waves beating rock, the wind and the iron-cored earth,
With what a heart I could praise your beauty.
You will not repent, nor cancel life, nor free man from anguish
For many ages to come. You are the one that tortures himself to 
 discover himself: I am
One that watches you and discovers you, and praises you in little 
 parables, idyl or tragedy, beautiful
Intolerable God.
The sword: that is:
I have two sons whom I love. They are twins, they were born 
 in nineteen sixteen, which seemed to us a dark year
Of a great war, and they are now of the age
That war prefers. The first-born is like his mother, he is so 
 beautiful
That persons I hardly know have stopped me on the street to 
 speak of the grave beauty of the boy's face.
The second-born has strength for his beauty; when he strips 
 for swimming the hero shoulders and wrestler loins
Make him seem clothed. The sword: that is: loathsome disfigurements, 
 blindness, mutilation, locked lips of boys
Too proud to scream.
Reason will not decide at last: the sword will decide.


Written by Hart Crane | Create an image from this poem

The Visible The Untrue

 Yes, I being
the terrible puppet of my dreams, shall
lavish this on you—
the dense mine of the orchid, split in two.
And the fingernails that cinch such
environs?
And what about the staunch neighbor tabulations,
with all their zest for doom?

I'm wearing badges
that cancel all your kindness. Forthright
I watch the silver Zeppelin
destroy the sky. To
stir your confidence?
To rouse what sanctions—?

The silver strophe... the canto
bright with myth ... Such
distances leap landward without
evil smile. And, as for me....

The window weight throbs in its blind
partition. To extinguish what I have of faith.
Yes, light. And it is always
always, always the eternal rainbow
And it is always the day, the farewell day unkind.
Written by Stanley Kunitz | Create an image from this poem

Single Vision

 Before I am completely shriven
I shall reject my inch of heaven.

Cancel my eyes, and, standing, sink
Into my deepest self; there drink

Memory down. The banner of
My blood, unfurled, will not be love,

Only the pity and the pride
Of it, pinned to my open side.

When I have utterly refined
The composition of my mind,

Shaped language of my marrow till
Its forms are instant to my will,

Suffered the leaf of my heart to fall
Under the wind, and, stripping all

The tender blanket from my bone,
Rise like a skeleton in the sun,

I shall have risen to disown
The good mortality I won.

Drectly risen with the stain
Of life upon my crested brain,

Which I shall shake against my ghost
To frighten him, when I am lost.

Gladly as any poison, yield
My halved conscience, brightly peeled;

Infect him, since we live but once,
With the unused evil in my bones.

I'll shed the tear of souls, the true
Sweat, Blake's intellectual dew,

Before I am resigned to slip
A dusty finger on my lip.
Written by John Davidson | Create an image from this poem

War Song

 In anguish we uplift 
A new unhallowed song: 
The race is to the swift; 
The battle to the strong. 

Of old it was ordained 
That we, in packs like curs, 
Some thirty million trained 
And licensed murderers, 

In crime should live and act, 
If cunning folk say sooth 
Who flay the naked fact 
And carve the heart of truth. 

The rulers cry aloud, 
"We cannot cancel war, 
The end and bloody shroud 
Of wrongs the worst abhor, 
And order's swaddling band: 
Know that relentless strife 
Remains by sea and land 
The holiest law of life. 
From fear in every guise, 
From sloth, from lust of pelf, 
By war's great sacrifice 
The world redeems itself. 
War is the source, the theme 
Of art; the goal, the bent 
And brilliant academe 
Of noble sentiment; 
The augury, the dawn 
Of golden times of grace; 
The true catholicon, 
And blood-bath of the race." 

We thirty million trained 
And licensed murderers, 
Like zanies rigged, and chained 
By drill and scourge and curse 
In shackles of despair 
We know not how to break -- 
What do we victims care 
For art, what interest take 
In things unseen, unheard? 
Some diplomat no doubt 
Will launch a heedless word, 
And lurking war leap out! 

We spell-bound armies then, 
Huge brutes in dumb distress, 
Machines compact of men 
Who once had consciences, 
Must trample harvests down -- 
Vineyard, and corn and oil; 
Dismantle town by town, 
Hamlet and homestead spoil 
On each appointed path, 
Till lust of havoc light 
A blood-red blaze of wrath 
In every frenzied sight. 

In many a mountain pass, 
Or meadow green and fresh, 
Mass shall encounter mass 
Of shuddering human flesh; 
Opposing ordnance roar 
Across the swaths of slain, 
And blood in torrents pour 
In vain -- always in vain, 
For war breeds war again! 

The shameful dream is past, 
The subtle maze untrod: 
We recognise at last 
That war is not of God.
Written by Philip Levine | Create an image from this poem

Where We Live Now

 1 

We live here because the houses 
are clean, the lawns run 
right to the street 

and the streets run away. 
No one walks here. 
No one wakens at night or dies. 

The cars sit open-eyed 
in the driveways. 
The lights are on all day. 

2 

At home forever, she has removed 
her long foreign names 
that stained her face like hair. 

She smiles at you, and you think 
tears will start from the corners 
of her mouth. Such a look 

of tenderness, you look away. 
She's your sister. Quietly she says, 
You're a ****, I'll get you for it. 

3 

Money's the same, he says. 
He brings it home in white slabs 
that smell like soap. 

Throws them down 
on the table as though 
he didn't care. 

The children hear 
and come in from play glowing 
like honey and so hungry. 

4 

With it all we have 
such a talent for laughing. 
We can laugh at anything. 

And we forget no one. 
She listens to mother 
on the phone, and he remembers 

the exact phrasing of a child's sorrows, 
the oaths taken by bear and tiger 
never to forgive. 

5 

On Sunday we're having a party. 
The children are taken away 
in a black Dodge, their faces erased 

from the mirrors. Outside a scum 
is forming on the afternoon. 
A car parks but no one gets out. 

Brother is loading the fridge. 
Sister is polishing and spraying herself. 
Today we're having a party. 

6 

For fun we talk about you. 
Everything's better for being said. 
That's a rule. 

This is going to be some long night, she says. 
How could you? How could you? 
For the love of mother, he says. 

There will be no dawn 
until the laughing stops. Even the pines 
are burning in the dark. 

7 

Why do you love me? he says. 
Because. Because. 
You're best to me, she purrs. 

In the kitchen, in the closets, 
behind the doors, above the toilets, 
the calendars are eating it up. 

One blackened one watches you 
like another window. Why 
are you listening? it says. 

8 

No one says, There's a war. 
No one says, Children are burning. 
No one says, Bizniz as usual. 

But you have to take it all back. 
You have to hunt through your socks 
and dirty underwear 

and crush each word. If you're serious 
you have to sit in the corner 
and eat ten new dollars. Eat'em. 

9 

Whose rifles are brooding 
in the closet? What are 
the bolts whispering 

back and forth? And the pyramids 
of ammunition, so many 
hungry mouths to feed. 

When you hide in bed 
the revolver under the pillow 
smiles and shows its teeth. 

10 

On the last night the children 
waken from the same dream 
of leaves burning. 

Two girls in the dark 
knowing there are no wolves 
or bad men in the room. 

Only electricity on the loose, 
the television screaming at itself, 
the dishwasher tearing its heart out. 

11 

We're going away. The house 
is too warm. We disconnect 
the telephone. 

Bones, cans, broken dolls, bronzed shoes, 
ground down to face powder. Burn 
the toilet paper collected in the basement. 

Take back the bottles. 
The back stairs are raining glass. 
Cancel the milk. 

12 

You may go now, says Cupboard. 
I won't talk, 
says Clock. 

Your bag is black and waiting. 
How can you leave your house? 
The stove hunches its shoulders, 

the kitchen table stares at the sky. 
You're heaving yourself out in the snow 
groping toward the front door.
Written by Thomas Hardy | Create an image from this poem

By the Earths Corpse

 I 

 "O Lord, why grievest Thou? - 
 Since Life has ceased to be 
 Upon this globe, now cold 
 As lunar land and sea, 
And humankind, and fowl, and fur 
 Are gone eternally, 
All is the same to Thee as ere 
 They knew mortality." 

II 

"O Time," replied the Lord, 
 "Thou read'st me ill, I ween; 
Were all THE SAME, I should not grieve 
 At that late earthly scene, 
Now blestly past--though planned by me 
 With interest close and keen! - 
Nay, nay: things now are NOT the same 
 As they have earlier been. 

III 

 "Written indelibly 
 On my eternal mind 
 Are all the wrongs endured 
 By Earth's poor patient kind, 
Which my too oft unconscious hand 
 Let enter undesigned. 
No god can cancel deeds foredone, 
 Or thy old coils unwind! 

IV 

 "As when, in Noe's days, 
 I whelmed the plains with sea, 
 So at this last, when flesh 
 And herb but fossils be, 
And, all extinct, their piteous dust 
 Revolves obliviously, 
That I made Earth, and life, and man, 
 It still repenteth me!"

Book: Reflection on the Important Things