Best Famous Stillborn Poems

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

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• All Famous Stillborn 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 Leonard Cohen | Bird On The Wire Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried in my way to be free. Like a worm on a hook, like a knight from some old fashioned book I have saved all my ribbons for thee. If I, if I have been unkind, I hope that you can just let it go by. If I, if I have been untrue I hope you know it was never to you. Like a baby, stillborn, like a beast with his horn I have torn everyone who reached out for me. But I swear by this song and by all that I have done wrong I will make it all up to thee. I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch, he said to me, "You must not ask for so much." And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door, she cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?" Oh like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried in my way to be free.

Written by Sylvia Plath | Stillborn These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis. They grew their toes and fingers well enough, Their little foreheads bulged with concentration. If they missed out on walking about like people It wasn't for any lack of mother-love. O I cannot explain what happened to them! They are proper in shape and number and every part. They sit so nicely in the pickling fluid! They smile and smile and smile at me. And still the lungs won't fill and the heart won't start. They are not pigs, they are not even fish, Though they have a piggy and a fishy air -- It would be better if they were alive, and that's what they were. But they are dead, and their mother near dead with distraction, And they stupidly stare and do not speak of her.

Written by Jorie Graham | San Sepolcro In this blue light I can take you there, snow having made me a world of bone seen through to. This is my house, my section of Etruscan wall, my neighbor's lemontrees, and, just below the lower church, the airplane factory. A rooster crows all day from mist outside the walls. There's milk on the air, ice on the oily lemonskins. How clean the mind is, holy grave. It is this girl by Piero della Francesca, unbuttoning her blue dress, her mantle of weather, to go into labor. Come, we can go in. It is before the birth of god. No one has risen yet to the museums, to the assembly line--bodies and wings--to the open air market. This is what the living do: go in. It's a long way. And the dress keeps opening from eternity to privacy, quickening. Inside, at the heart, is tragedy, the present moment forever stillborn, but going in, each breath is a button coming undone, something terribly nimble-fingered finding all of the stops.

Written by Rg Gregory | ducks and wisdom [from a motif by Jean Dunand (1877-1942)] seven lacqueur ducks on a silver pond their rippling held in a moveless frieze nothing now can help them swim beyond the stoned edges (invent a new-age breeze) eternity is water starved of trees their fixture is our own - for all we fidget history puts us down as one dead digit silver-ponded we can't stop being stirred to leap behind and forward in our schemes tasting the larger landscapes of each word wishing the stillborn pond break into streams to sweep us to the oceans of our dreams in our small minds the universe is waltzing..... takes pain to sauerkraut such schmaltzing the patch we're stuck in's our best endeavour (lacquered in the way our talents choose) in a phoney war we're gunned to being clever its medals leave an unrelenting bruise every win predicts elsewhere we'll lose wisdom roots deep - needs not to see beyond seven lacqueur ducks on a silver pond

Written by Robert Graves | To an Ungentle Critic The great sun sinks behind the town Through a red mist of Volnay wine.... But what’s the use of setting down That glorious blaze behind the town? You’ll only skip the page, you’ll look For newer pictures in this book; You’ve read of sunsets rich as mine. A fresh wind fills the evening air With horrid crying of night birds.... But what reads new or curious there When cold winds fly across the air? You’ll only frown; you’ll turn the page, But find no glimpse of your “New Age Of Poetry” in my worn-out words. Must winds that cut like blades of steel And sunsets swimming in Volnay, The holiest, cruellest pains I feel, Die stillborn, because old men squeal For something new: “Write something new: We’ve read this poem—that one too, And twelve more like ’em yesterday”? No, no! my chicken, I shall scrawl Just what I fancy as I strike it, Fairies and Fusiliers, and all Old broken knock-kneed thought will crawl Across my verse in the classic way. And, sir, be careful what you say; There are old-fashioned folk still like it.