Best Famous Contradictions Poems

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

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• All Famous Contradictions Poems

Written by Walt Whitman | Respondez! RESPONDEZ! Respondez! (The war is completed—the price is paid—the title is settled beyond recall;) Let every one answer! let those who sleep be waked! let none evade! Must we still go on with our affectations and sneaking? Let me bring this to a close—I pronounce openly for a new distribution of roles; Let that which stood in front go behind! and let that which was behind advance to the front and speak; Let murderers, bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions! Let the old propositions be postponed! Let faces and theories be turn’d inside out! let meanings be freely criminal, as well as results! Let there be no suggestion above the suggestion of drudgery! Let none be pointed toward his destination! (Say! do you know your destination?) Let men and women be mock’d with bodies and mock’d with Souls! Let the love that waits in them, wait! let it die, or pass stillborn to other spheres! Let the sympathy that waits in every man, wait! or let it also pass, a dwarf, to other spheres! Let contradictions prevail! let one thing contradict another! and let one line of my poems contradict another! Let the people sprawl with yearning, aimless hands! let their tongues be broken! let their eyes be discouraged! let none descend into their hearts with the fresh lusciousness of love! (Stifled, O days! O lands! in every public and private corruption! Smother’d in thievery, impotence, shamelessness, mountain-high; Brazen effrontery, scheming, rolling like ocean’s waves around and upon you, O my days! my lands! For not even those thunderstorms, nor fiercest lightnings of the war, have purified the atmosphere;) —Let the theory of America still be management, caste, comparison! (Say! what other theory would you?) Let them that distrust birth and death still lead the rest! (Say! why shall they not lead you?) Let the crust of hell be neared and trod on! let the days be darker than the nights! let slumber bring less slumber than waking time brings! Let the world never appear to him or her for whom it was all made! Let the heart of the young man still exile itself from the heart of the old man! and let the heart of the old man be exiled from that of the young man! Let the sun and moon go! let scenery take the applause of the audience! let there be apathy under the stars! Let freedom prove no man’s inalienable right! every one who can tyrannize, let him tyrannize to his satisfaction! Let none but infidels be countenanced! Let the eminence of meanness, treachery, sarcasm, hate, greed, indecency, impotence, lust, be taken for granted above all! let writers, judges, governments, households, religions, philosophies, take such for granted above all! Let the worst men beget children out of the worst women! Let the priest still play at immortality! Let death be inaugurated! Let nothing remain but the ashes of teachers, artists, moralists, lawyers, and learn’d and polite persons! Let him who is without my poems be assassinated! Let the cow, the horse, the camel, the garden-bee—let the mudfish, the lobster, the mussel, eel, the sting-ray, and the grunting pig-fish—let these, and the like of these, be put on a perfect equality with man and woman! Let churches accommodate serpents, vermin, and the corpses of those who have died of the most filthy of diseases! Let marriage slip down among fools, and be for none but fools! Let men among themselves talk and think forever obscenely of women! and let women among themselves talk and think obscenely of men! Let us all, without missing one, be exposed in public, naked, monthly, at the peril of our lives! let our bodies be freely handled and examined by whoever chooses! Let nothing but copies at second hand be permitted to exist upon the earth! Let the earth desert God, nor let there ever henceforth be mention’d the name of God! Let there be no God! Let there be money, business, imports, exports, custom, authority, precedents, pallor, dyspepsia, smut, ignorance, unbelief! Let judges and criminals be transposed! let the prison-keepers be put in prison! let those that were prisoners take the keys! Say! why might they not just as well be transposed?) Let the slaves be masters! let the masters become slaves! Let the reformers descend from the stands where they are forever bawling! let an idiot or insane person appear on each of the stands! Let the Asiatic, the African, the European, the American, and the Australian, go armed against the murderous stealthiness of each other! let them sleep armed! let none believe in good will! Let there be no unfashionable wisdom! let such be scorn’d and derided off from the earth! Let a floating cloud in the sky—let a wave of the sea—let growing mint, spinach, onions, tomatoes—let these be exhibited as shows, at a great price for admission! Let all the men of These States stand aside for a few smouchers! let the few seize on what they choose! let the rest gawk, giggle, starve, obey! Let shadows be furnish’d with genitals! let substances be deprived of their genitals! Let there be wealthy and immense cities—but still through any of them, not a single poet, savior, knower, lover! Let the infidels of These States laugh all faith away! If one man be found who has faith, let the rest set upon him! Let them affright faith! let them destroy the power of breeding faith! Let the she-harlots and the he-harlots be prudent! let them dance on, while seeming lasts! (O seeming! seeming! seeming!) Let the preachers recite creeds! let them still teach only what they have been taught! Let insanity still have charge of sanity! Let books take the place of trees, animals, rivers, clouds! Let the daub’d portraits of heroes supersede heroes! Let the manhood of man never take steps after itself! Let it take steps after eunuchs, and after consumptive and genteel persons! Let the white person again tread the black person under his heel! (Say! which is trodden under heel, after all?) Let the reflections of the things of the world be studied in mirrors! let the things themselves still continue unstudied! Let a man seek pleasure everywhere except in himself! Let a woman seek happiness everywhere except in herself! (What real happiness have you had one single hour through your whole life?) Let the limited years of life do nothing for the limitless years of death! (What do you suppose death will do, then?)

Written by Sylvia Plath | An Appearance The smile of iceboxes annihilates me. Such blue currents in the veins of my loved one! I hear her great heart purr. From her lips ampersands and percent signs Exit like kisses. It is Monday in her mind: morals Launder and present themselves. What am I to make of these contradictions? I wear white cuffs, I bow. Is this love then, this red material Issuing from the steele needle that flies so blindingly? It will make little dresses and coats, It will cover a dynasty. How her body opens and shuts -- A Swiss watch, jeweled in the hinges! O heart, such disorganization! The stars are flashing like terrible numerals. ABC, her eyelids say.

Written by Eavan Boland | The Harbour This harbour was made by art and force. And called Kingstown and afterwards Dun Laoghaire. And holds the sea behind its barrier less than five miles from my house. Lord be with us say the makers of a nation. Lord look down say the builders of a harbour. They came and cut a shape out of ocean and left stone to close around their labour. Officers and their wives promenaded on this spot once and saw with their own eyes the opulent horizon and obedient skies which nine tenths of the law provided. And frigates with thirty-six guns, cruising the outer edges of influence, could idle and enter here and catch the tide of empire and arrogance and the Irish Sea rising and rising through a century of storms and cormorants and moonlight the whole length of this coast, while an ocean forgot an empire and the armed ships under it changed: to slime weed and cold salt and rust. City of shadows and of the gradual capitulations to the last invader this is the final one: signed in water and witnessed in granite and ugly bronze and gun-metal. And by me. I am your citizen: composed of your fictions, your compromise, I am a part of your story and its outcome. And ready to record its contradictions.

Written by Francois Villon | The Ballad Of The Proverbs So rough the goat will scratch, it cannot sleep. So often goes the pot to the well that it breaks. So long you heat iron, it will glow; so heavily you hammer it, it shatters. So good is the man as his praise; so far he will go, and he's forgotten; so bad he behaves, and he's despised. So loud you cry Christmas, it comes. So glib you talk, you end up in contradictions. So good is your credit as the favors you got. So much you promise that you will back out. So doggedly you beg that your wish is granted; so high climbs the price when you want a thing; so much you want it that you pay the price; so familiar it gets to you, you want it no more. So loud you cry Christmas, it comes. So, you love a dog. Then feed it! So long a song will run that people learn it. So long you keep the fruit, it will rot. So hot the struggle for a spot that it is won; so cool you keep your act that your spirit freezes; so hurriedly you act that you run into bad luck; so tight you embrace that your catch slips away. So loud you cry Christmas, it comes. So you scoff and laugh, and the fun is gone. So you crave and spend, and lose your shirt. So candid you are, no blow can be too low. So good as a gift should a promise be. So, if you love God, you obey the Church. So, when you give much, you borrow much. So, shifting winds turn to storm. So loud you cry Christmas, it comes. Prince, so long as a fool persists, he grows wiser; so, round the world he goes, but return he will, so humbled and beaten back into servility. So loud you cry Christmas, it is here.

Written by Rainer Maria Rilke | As Once The Winged Energy Of Delight As once the winged energy of delight carried you over childhood's dark abysses, now beyond your own life build the great arch of unimagined bridges. Wonders happen if we can succeed in passing through the harshest danger; but only in a bright and purely granted achievement can we realize the wonder. To work with Things in the indescribable relationship is not too hard for us; the pattern grows more intricate and subtle, and being swept along is not enough. Take your practiced powers and stretch them out until they span the chasm between two contradictions...For the god wants to know himself in you.

Written by Amy Levy | Contradictions Now, even, I cannot think it true, My friend, that there is no more you. Almost as soon were no more I, Which were, of course, absurdity! Your place is bare, you are not seen, Your grave, I'm told, is growing green; And both for you and me, you know, There's no Above and no Below. That you are dead must be inferred, And yet my thought rejects the word.

Written by Walt Whitman | Still though the One I Sing STILL, though the one I sing, (One, yet of contradictions made,) I dedicate to Nationality, I leave in him Revolt, (O latent right of insurrection! O quenchless, indispensable fire!)

Written by Francesco Petrarch | Sonnet CII SONNET CII. S' Amor non è, che dunque è quel ch' i' sento? THE CONTRADICTIONS OF LOVE. If no love is, O God, what fele I so?And if love is, what thing and which is he?If love be gode, from whence cometh my woe?If it be wicke, a wonder thinketh meWhen every torment and adversiteThat cometh of him may to me savory thinke:For aye more thurst I the more that I drinke.And if that at my owne lust I brenne,From whence cometh my wailing and my pleinte?If harme agre me whereto pleine I thenne?[Pg 131]I not nere why unwery that I feinte.O quickè deth, O surelè harme so quainte,How may I see in me such quantite,But if that I consent that so it be? Chaucer. If 'tis not love, what is it feel I then?If 'tis, how strange a thing, sweet powers above!If love be kind, why does it fatal prove?If cruel, why so pleasing is the pain?If 'tis my will to love, why weep, why plain?If not my will, tears cannot love remove.O living death! O rapturous pang!—why, love!If I consent not, canst thou o'er me reign?If I consent, 'tis wrongfully I mourn:Thus on a stormy sea my bark is borneBy adverse winds, and with rough tempest tost;Thus unenlightened, lost in error's maze,My blind opinion ever dubious strays;I'm froze by summer, scorched by winter's frost. Anon. 1777.