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Famous Bleed Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Raleigh, Sir Walter
...queen attended; in whose stead
   Oblivion laid him down on Laura's hearse:
   Hereat the hardest stones were seen to bleed,
And groans of buried ghosts the heavens did pierce:
   Where Homer's spright did tremble all for grief,
   And cursed the access of that celestial thief!...Read more of this...



by Dryden, John
...
He gives, and let him give my right away:
But why should he his own, and yours betray?
He, only he can make the nation bleed,
And he alone from my revenge is freed.
Take then my tears (with that he wip'd his eyes)
'Tis all the aid my present pow'r supplies:
No court-informer can these arms accuse;
These arms may sons against their fathers use;
And, 'tis my wish, the next successor's reign
May make no other Israelite complain.

Youth, beauty, graceful action, seldom f...Read more of this...

by Sidney, Sir Philip
...write. 
II 

Not at the first sight, nor with a dribbed shot,
Loue gaue the wound, which, while I breathe, will bleede;
But knowne worth did in tract of time proceed,
Till by degrees, it had full conquest got.
I saw and lik'd; I lik'd but loued not;
I lou'd, but straight did not what Loue decreed:
At length, to Loues decrees I, forc'd, agreed,
Yet with repining at so partiall lot.
Now, euen that footstep of lost libertie
Is gone; and now, like slaue-bo...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...; 
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know: 
Or who could suffer Being here below? 
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, 
Had he thy Reason, would he skip and play? 
Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow'ry food, 
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood. 
Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv'n, 
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n; 
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, 
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall, 
Atoms or systems into ruin hu...Read more of this...

by Milligan, Spike
...There must be a wound! 
No one can be this hurt 
and not bleed. 

How could she injure me so? 
No marks 
No bruise 

Worse! 
People say 'My, you're looking well' 
.....God help me! 
She's mummified me - 
ALIVE!...Read more of this...



by Campbell, Thomas
...silence sways;
While, though the battle flash is faster driven,--
Unaw'd, with eye unstartled by the blaze,
He for his bleeding country prays to Heaven,--
Prays that the men of blood themselves may be forgiven.

Short time is now for gratulating speech:
And yet, beloved Gertrude, ere began
Thy country's flight, yon distant towers to reach,
Looks not on thee the rudest partisan
With brow relax'd to love? And murmurs ran,
As round and round their willing ranks they drew,
F...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...fe; 
As if to search how far the wound he gave 
Had sent its victim onward to his grave. 

V. 

They raised the bleeding Otho, and the Leech 
Forbade all present question, sign, and speech; 
The others met within a neighbouring hall, 
And he, incensed and heedless of them all, 
The cause and conqueror in this sudden fray, 
In haughty silence slowly strode away; 
He back'd his steed, his homeward path he took, 
Nor cast on Otho's tower a single look. 

VI. 

Bu...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...metal and breathless.

O love, O celibate.
Nobody but me
Walks the waist high wet.
The irreplaceable
Golds bleed and deepen, the mouths of Thermopylae....Read more of this...

by Campbell, Thomas
...rt, inspired to prove
Friendship refined, the calm delight of Love,
Feels all its tender strings with anguish torn,
And bleeds at perjured Pride's inhuman scorn.

Say, then, did pitying Heaven condemn the deed,
When Vengeance bade thee, faithless lover! bleed ?
Long had I watched thy dark foreboding brow,
What time thy bosom scorned its dearest vow !
Sad, though I wept the friend, the lover changed,
Still thy cold look was scornful and estranged,
Till from thy pity, love,...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...after dread Pultowa's day,
When fortune left the royal Swede - 
Around a slaughtered army lay,
No more to combat and to bleed.
The power and glory of the war,
Faithless as their vain votaries, men,
Had passed to the triumphant Czar,
And Moscow’s walls were safe again -
Until a day more dark and drear,
And a more memorable year,
Should give to slaughter and to shame
A mightier host and haughtier name;
A greater wreck, a deeper fall,
A shock to one - a thunderbolt to all.Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...us with thee in prayer in my sore need. 
O lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! 
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! 
A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd 55 
One too like thee¡ªtameless, and swift, and proud. 

Make me thy lyre, ev'n as the forest is: 
What if my leaves are falling like its own! 
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, 60 
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, 
My spirit! be...Read more of this...

by Collins, Billy
...but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed....Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...long divisible; and from the gash 
A stream of necturous humour issuing flowed 
Sanguine, such as celestial Spirits may bleed, 
And all his armour stained, ere while so bright. 
Forthwith on all sides to his aid was run 
By Angels many and strong, who interposed 
Defence, while others bore him on their shields 
Back to his chariot, where it stood retired 
From off the files of war: There they him laid 
Gnashing for anguish, and despite, and shame, 
To find himself not mat...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...
The mammoth, lumbering statuary of sorrow,
Indissoluble enough to riddle the guts
Of a whale with holes and holes, and bleed him white
Into salt seas. Hercules had a simple time,
Rinsing those stables: a baby's tears would do it.
But who'd volunteer to gulp the Laocoon,
The Dying Gaul and those innumerable pietas
Festering on the dim walls of Europe's chapels,
Museums and sepulchers? You.
 You
Who borrowed feathers for your feet, not lead,
Not nails, and a mirror...Read more of this...

by Thomas, Dylan
...ith all the living, prays,
Who knows the rocketing wind will blow
 The bones out of the hills,
And the scythed boulders bleed, and the last
 Rage shattered waters kick
Masts and fishes to the still quick starts,
 Faithlessly unto Him

 Who is the light of old
And air shaped Heaven where souls grow wild
 As horses in the foam:
Oh, let me midlife mourn by the shrined
 And druid herons' vows
The voyage to ruin I must run,
 Dawn ships clouted aground,
Yet, though I cry with tumbl...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...Brigade:
And shaven head and feet of lead
Make a merry masquerade.

We tore the tarry rope to shreds
With blunt and bleeding nails;
We rubbed the doors, and scrubbed the floors,
And cleaned the shining rails:
And, rank by rank, we soaped the plank,
And clattered with the pails.

We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
We turned the dusty drill:
We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
And sweated on the mill:
But in the heart of every man
Terror was lying still....Read more of this...

by Seeger, Alan
...espite in his need
More than the drowning swimmer clutches at a reed---

That coming one whose feet in other days
Shall bleed like mine for ever having, more
Than any purpose, felt the need to praise
And seek the angelic image to adore,
In love with Love, its wonderful, sweet ways
Counting what most makes life worth living for,
That so some relic may be his to see
How I loved these things too and they were dear to me.

I sometimes think a conscious happiness
Mantles throu...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...
And leave his sons a hope, a fame,
They too will rather die than shame:
For Freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding Sire to Son,
Though baffled oft is ever won.
Bear witness, Greece, thy living page!
Attest it many a deathless age!
While Kings, in dusty darkness hid,
Have left a namesless pyramid,
Thy Heroes, though the general doom
Hath swept the column from their tomb,
A mightier monument command,
The mountains of thy native land!
There points thy Muse to s...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...s not this an high folly?
Who may not be a fool, if but he love?
Behold, for Godde's sake that sits above,
See how they bleed! be they not well array'd?
Thus hath their lord, the god of love, them paid
Their wages and their fees for their service;
And yet they weene for to be full wise,
That serve love, for aught that may befall.
But this is yet the beste game* of all, *joke
That she, for whom they have this jealousy,
Can them therefor as muchel thank as me.
She wot n...Read more of this...

by Piercy, Marge
...this society you stormed 
to be used, screamed 
no louder than any other breaking voice. 
The waste of a good man 
bleeds the future that's come 
in Chicago, in flat America, 
where the poor still bleed from the teeth, 
housed in sewers and filing cabinets, 
where prophets may spit into the wind 
till anger sleets their eyes shut, 
where this house that dances the seasons 
and the braid of all living 
and the joy of a man making his new good thing 
is strange, irrelevant...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs