Famous Betray Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Sonnet CLI

by William Shakespeare
 Love is too young to know what conscience is;
Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?
Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,
Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove:
For, thou betraying me, I do betray
My nobler part to my gross body's treason;
My soul doth tell my body that he may
Triumph in love; flesh stays no father reason;
But,...Read more of this...

Landscapes

by John Burnside
 Behind faces and gestures 
We remain mute 
And spoken words heavy 
With what we ignore or keep silent 
Betray us 

I dare not speak for mankind 
I know so little of myself 

But the Landscape 

I see as a reflection 
Is also a lie stealing into 
My words I speak without remorse 
Of this image of myself 
And mankind...Read more of this...

Summons To Love

by William Drummond
 Phoebus, arise!
And paint the sable skies
With azure, white, and red:
Rouse Memnon's mother from her Tithon's bed
That she may thy career with roses spread:
The nightingales thy coming each-where sing:
Make an eternal spring!
Give life to this dark world which lieth dead;
Spread forth thy golden hair
In larger locks than thou wast wont before,
And emperor-like decore
With diadem of pearl thy temples fair:
Chase hence...Read more of this...

To Person Guilty

by Ben Jonson
***. ? TO PERSON GUILTY.    GUILTY, be wise ; and though thou know'st the crimes  Be thine, I tax, yet do not own my rhymes ; 'Twere madness in thee, to betray thy fame,  And person to the world; ere I thy name....Read more of this...

Eyrie

by Robert William Service
 The little pink house is high on the hill
And my heart is not what it used to be;
It will kick up a fuss I know, but still
I must toil up that twisty trail to see
What that empty old house can mean to me.

For a Poet lived there for donkey's years,
A Poet of parts and founded fame.
He took to the...Read more of this...

The Fortune-Teller a Gypsy Tale

by Mary Darby Robinson
 LUBIN and KATE, as gossips tell,
Were Lovers many a day;
LUBIN the damsel lov'd so well,
That folks pretend to say
The silly, simple, doting Lad,
Was little less than loving mad:
A malady not known of late--
Among the little-loving Great!

KATE liked the youth; but woman-kind
Are sometimes giv'n to range.
And oft, the giddy Sex, we find,
(They know not why)
When most they promise, soonest change,
And...Read more of this...

I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee

by Howard Nemerov
 I tell you that I see her still
At the dark entrance of the hall.
One gas lamp burning near her shoulder 
Shone also from her other side
Where hung the long inaccurate glass
Whose pictures were as troubled water.
An immense shadow had its hand
Between us on the floor, and seemed 
To hump the knuckles nervously, 
A giant crab readying to walk, 
Or...Read more of this...

A Satyre Against Mankind

by John Wilmot
 Were I - who to my cost already am
One of those strange, prodigious creatures, man -
A spirit free to choose for my own share
What sort of flesh and blood I pleased to wear,
I'd be a dog, a monkey, or a bear,
Or anything but that vain animal,
Who is so proud of being rational.

His senses are too gross; and he'll contrive
A...Read more of this...

Hanchen the Maid of the Mill

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Near the village of Udorf, on the banks of the Rhine,
There lived a miller and his family, once on a time;
And there yet stands the mill in a state of decay,
And concerning the miller and his family, attend to my lay. 

The miller and his family went to Church one Sunday morn,
Leaving behind their darling child, the youngest born,
In...Read more of this...

Sonnet to Ingratitude

by Mary Darby Robinson
 He that's ungrateful, has no guilt but one;
All other crimes may pass for virtues in him.
- YOUNG. 


I COULD have borne affliction's sharpest thorn;
The sting of malice­poverty's deep wound;
The sneers of vulgar pride, the idiot's scorn;
Neglected Love, false Friendship's treach'rous sound; 

I could, with patient smile, extract the dart 
Base calumny had planted in my heart; 
The fangs of...Read more of this...

415. Song—The last time I cam o'er the Moor

by Robert Burns
 THE LAST time I came o’er the moor,
 And left Maria’s dwelling,
What throes, what tortures passing cure,
 Were in my bosom swelling:
Condemn’d to see my rival’s reign,
 While I in secret languish;
To feel a fire in every vein,
 Yet dare not speak my anguish.


Love’s veriest wretch, despairing, I
 Fain, fain, my crime would cover;
Th’ unweeting groan, the bursting sigh,
...Read more of this...

Sonnet XCVI

by William Shakespeare
 Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness;
Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport;
Both grace and faults are loved of more and less;
Thou makest faults graces that to thee resort.
As on the finger of a throned queen
The basest jewel will be well esteem'd,
So are those errors that in thee are seen
To truths translated and for true things...Read more of this...

What mystery pervades a well!

by Emily Dickinson
 What mystery pervades a well!
That water lives so far --
A neighbor from another world
Residing in a jar

Whose limit none have ever seen,
But just his lid of glass --
Like looking every time you please
In an abyss's face!

The grass does not appear afraid,
I often wonder he
Can stand so close and look so bold
At what is awe to me.

Related somehow they may...Read more of this...

Cruisers

by Rudyard Kipling
 As our mother the Frigate, bepainted and fine,
Made play for her bully the Ship of the Line;
So we, her bold daughters by iron and fire,
Accost and decoy to our masters' desire.

Now, pray you, consider what toils we endure,
Night-walking wet sea-lanes, a guard and a lure;
Since half of our trade is that same pretty sort
As mettlesome wenches do practise in...Read more of this...

390. Song—A Health to them that's awa

by Robert Burns
 HERE’S a health to them that’s awa,
 Here’s a health to them that’s awa;
And wha winna wish gude luck to our cause,
 May never gude luck be their fa’!
 It’s gude to be merry and wise,
 It’s gude to be honest and true;
It’s gude to support Caledonia’s cause,
 And bide by the buff and the blue.


 Here’s a health...Read more of this...

The Mistletoe (A Christmas Tale)

by Mary Darby Robinson
 A farmer's wife, both young and gay,
And fresh as op'ning buds of May;
Had taken to herself, a Spouse,
And plighted many solemn vows,
That she a faithful mate would prove,
In meekness, duty, and in love!
That she, despising joy and wealth,
Would be, in sickness and in health,
His only comfort and his Friend--
But, mark the sequel,--and attend!

This Farmer, as the tale is told--
Was...Read more of this...

To Tirzah

by William Blake
 Whate'er is Born of Mortal Birth,
Must be consumed with the Earth
To rise from Generation free:
Then what have I to do with thee?

The Sexes sprung from Shame & Pride
Blowd in the morn; in evening died
But Mercy changed Death into Sleep;
The Sexes rose to work & weep.

Thou Mother of my Mortal part.
With cruelty didst mould my Heart.
And with false self-deceiving tears.
Didst...Read more of this...

The Body grows without --

by Emily Dickinson
 The Body grows without --
The more convenient way --
That if the Spirit -- like to hide
Its Temple stands, alway,

Ajar -- secure -- inviting --
It never did betray
The Soul that asked its shelter
In solemn honesty...Read more of this...

392. Song—Poortith cauld and restless love

by Robert Burns
 O POORTITH cauld, and restless love,
 Ye wrack my peace between ye;
Yet poortith a’ I could forgive,
 An ’twere na for my Jeanie.


Chorus.—O why should Fate sic pleasure have,
 Life’s dearest bands untwining?
Or why sae sweet a flower as love
 Depend on Fortune’s shining?


The warld’s wealth, when I think on,
 It’s pride and a’ the lave o’t;
O fie on...Read more of this...

Mac Flecknoe

by John Dryden
 All human things are subject to decay,
And, when Fate summons, monarchs must obey:
This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young
Was call'd to empire, and had govern'd long:
In prose and verse, was own'd, without dispute
Through all the realms of Non-sense, absolute.
This aged prince now flourishing in peace,
And blest with issue of a large increase,
Worn out with business, did at length debate
To...Read more of this...

The Disquieting Muses

by Sylvia Plath
 Mother, mother, what ill-bred aunt
Or what disfigured and unsightly
Cousin did you so unwisely keep
Unasked to my christening, that she
Sent these ladies in her stead
With heads like darning-eggs to nod
And nod and nod at foot and head
And at the left side of my crib?

Mother, who made to order stories
Of Mixie Blackshort the heroic bear,
Mother, whose witches always, always
Got baked into...Read more of this...

Sonnet CL

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CL. Se 'l dolce sguardo di costei m' ancide. HE IS CONTINUALLY IN FEAR OF DISPLEASING HER.  If thus the dear glance of my lady slay,On her sweet sprightly speech if dangers wait,If o'er me Love usurp a power so great,Oft as she speaks, or when her sun-smiles play;Alas! what...Read more of this...

The Simple Truth

by Philip Levine
 I bought a dollar and a half's worth of small red potatoes,
took them home, boiled them in their jackets
and ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt.
Then I walked through the dried fields 
on the edge of town. In middle June the light
hung on in the dark furrows at my feet,
and in the mountain oaks overhead the...Read more of this...

Affliction

by George Herbert
 When thou didst entice to thee my heart, 
I thought the service brave: 
So many joys I writ down for my part, 
Besides what I might have
Out of my stock of natural delights, 
Augmented with thy gracious benefits.

I looked on thy furniture so fine, 
And made it fine to me: 
Thy glorious household-stuff did me entwine, 
And 'tice me...Read more of this...

To His Mistress Objecting To Him Neither Toying Nor Talking

by Robert Herrick
 You say I love not, 'cause I do not play
 Still with your curls, and kiss the time away.
 You blame me, too, because I can't devise
 Some sport to please those babies in your eyes;—
By love's religion, I must here confess it,
 The most I love, when I the least express it.
 Small griefs find tongues; full casks...Read more of this...

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