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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Magdalen

by Amy Levy
 All things I can endure, save one. 
The bare, blank room where is no sun;
The parcelled hours; the pallet hard;
The dreary faces here within;
The outer women's cold regard;
The Pastor's iterated "sin";--
These things could I endure, and count
No overstrain'd, unjust amount;
No undue payment for such bliss--
Yea, all things bear, save only this:
That you, who knew what thing would be,
Have wrought...Read more of this...

The Boy-king's Prayer

by Victor Hugo
 ("Le cheval galopait toujours.") 
 
 {Bk. XV. ii. 10.} 


 The good steed flew o'er river and o'er plain, 
 Till far away,—no need of spur or rein. 
 The child, half rapture, half solicitude, 
 Looks back anon, in fear to be pursued; 
 Shakes lest some raging brother of his sire 
 Leap from those rocks...Read more of this...

At the Window

by D. H. Lawrence
 The pine-trees bend to listen to the autumn wind as it mutters 
Something which sets the black poplars ashake with hysterical laughter; 
While slowly the house of day is closing its eastern shutters. 

Further down the valley the clustered tombstones recede, 
Winding about their dimness the mist’s grey cerements, after
The street lamps in the darkness have suddenly started to...Read more of this...

Enemy Conscript

by Robert William Service
 What are we fighting for,
We fellows who go to war?
fighting for Freedom's sake!
(You give me the belly-ache.)
Freedom to starve or slave!
Freedom! aye, in the grave.
Fighting for "hearth and home,"
Who haven't an inch of loam?
Hearth? Why even a byre
Can only be ours for hire.
Dying for future peace?
Killing that killing cease?
To hell with such tripe, I say.
"Sufficient unto the day."

It isn't...Read more of this...

Hymn of Pan

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
FROM the forests and highlands 
We come we come; 
From the river-girt islands  
Where loud waves are dumb  
Listening to my sweet pipings. 5 
The wind in the reeds and the rushes  
The bees on the bells of thyme  
The birds on the myrtle bushes  
The cicale above in the lime  
And the lizards...Read more of this...

Letter In November

by Sylvia Plath
 Love, the world
Suddenly turns, turns color. The streetlight
Splits through the rat's tail
Pods of the laburnum at nine in the morning.
It is the Arctic,

This little black
Circle, with its tawn silk grasses - babies hair.
There is a green in the air,
Soft, delectable.
It cushions me lovingly.

I am flushed and warm.
I think I may be enormous,
I am so stupidly happy,
My Wellingtons
Squelching and squelching...Read more of this...

the wounded angel

by Rg Gregory
 (from a painting by hugo simberg)

those who bear the wounded angel
are they honoured or destroyed
far beyond their comprehension
are the warfares of the void

angels have a sheen to lift them
well above the bloody battles
human beings give their hurts to
divines don't need such tittle-tattles

yet this angel has been wounded
here on earth its presence is
two young boys (the stretcher bearers)
are flung immensely...Read more of this...

The Captives Dream

by Anne Bronte
 Methought I saw him but I knew him not;
He was so changed from what he used to be,
There was no redness on his woe-worn cheek,
No sunny smile upon his ashy lips,
His hollow wandering eyes looked wild and fierce,
And grief was printed on his marble brow,
And O I thought he clasped his wasted hands,
And raised his haggard eyes to Heaven,...Read more of this...

A Vision upon the Fairy Queen

by Sir Walter Raleigh
Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay,
   Within that temple where the vestal flame
   Was wont to burn; and, passing by that way,
   To see that buried dust of living fame,
Whose tomb fair Love, and fairer Virtue kept:
   All suddenly I saw the Fairy Queen;
   At whose approach the...Read more of this...

My Cross

by Robert William Service
 I wrote a poem to the moon
But no one noticed it;
Although I hoped that late or soon
Someone would praise a bit
Its purity and grace forlone,
Its beauty tulip-cool...
But as my poem died still-born,
I felt a fool.

I wrote a verse of vulgar trend
Spiced with an oath or two;
I tacked a snapper at the end
And called it Dan McGrew.
I spouted it to...Read more of this...

The Tortoise in Eternity

by Elinor Wylie
 Within my house of patterned horn 
I sleep in such a bed 
As men may keep before they're born 
And after when they're dead.

Sticks and stones may break their bones, 
And words may make them bleed; 
There is not one of them who owns 
An armour to his need.

Tougher than hide or lozenged bark, 
Snow-storm and thunder proof, 
And...Read more of this...

You and I

by Roger McGough
 I explain quietly. You
hear me shouting. You
try a new tack. I
feel old wounds reopen.

You see both sides. I
see your blinkers. I
am placatory. You
sense a new selfishness.

I am a dove. You
recognize the hawk. You
offer an olive branch. I
feel the thorns.

You bleed. I
see crocodile tears. I
withdraw. You
reel from the impact....Read more of this...

Lewin and Gynneth

by Mary Darby Robinson
 "WHEN will my troubled soul have rest?"
The beauteous LEWIN cried;
As thro' the murky shade of night
With frantic step she hied. 

"When shall those eyes my GYNNETH'S face,
My GYNNETH'S form survey ?
When shall those longing eyes again
Behold the dawn of day ?" 

Cold are the dews that wet my cheek,
The night-mist damps the ground;
Appalling echoes strike mine ear,
And spectres gleam...Read more of this...

Marginalia

by Barry Tebb
 Here is a silence I had not hoped for

This side of paradise, I am an old believer

In nature’s bounty as God’s grace

To us poor mortals, fretting and fuming

At frustrated lust or the scent of fame 

Coming too late to make a difference

Blue with white vertebrae of cloud forms

Riming the spectrum of green dark of poplars

Lined like soldiers, paler the...Read more of this...

A Funeral Fantasie

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Pale, at its ghastly noon,
Pauses above the death-still wood--the moon;
The night-sprite, sighing, through the dim air stirs;
The clouds descend in rain;
Mourning, the wan stars wane,
Flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres!
Haggard as spectres--vision-like and dumb,
Dark with the pomp of death, and moving slow,
Towards that sad lair the pale procession come
Where the grave closes on the night below.

With dim, deep-sunken eye,
Crutched...Read more of this...

The Puzzled Game-Birds

by Thomas Hardy
 They are not those who used to feed us 
When we were young--they cannot be - 
These shapes that now bereave and bleed us? 
They are not those who used to feed us, - 
For would they not fair terms concede us? 
- If hearts can house such treachery 
They are not those who used to feed us 
When...Read more of this...

To Canaris, The Greek Patriot

by Victor Hugo
 ("Canaris! nous t'avons oublié.") 
 
 {VIII., October, 1832.} 


 O Canaris! O Canaris! the poet's song 
 Has blameful left untold thy deeds too long! 
 But when the tragic actor's part is done, 
 When clamor ceases, and the fights are won, 
 When heroes realize what Fate decreed, 
 When chieftains mark no more which thousands...Read more of this...

Astrophel and Stella VII: WhenNature Made her Chief Work

by Sir Philip Sidney
 When Nature made her chief work, Stella's eyes,
In colour black why wrapt she beams so bright?
Would she in beamy black, like painter wise,
Frame daintiest lustre, mix'd of shades and light?
Or did she else that sober hue devise,
In object best to knit and strength our sight;
Lest, if no veil these brave gleams did disguise,
They, sunlike, should more dazzle than delight?
Or...Read more of this...

Love And Madness

by Thomas Campbell
 Hark ! from the battlements of yonder tower
The solemn bell has tolled the midnight hour !
Roused from drear visions of distempered sleep,
Poor Broderick wakes—in solitude to weep !

"Cease, Memory; cease (the friendless mourner cried)
To probe the bosom too severely tried !
Oh ! ever cease, my pensive thoughts, to stray
Through tie bright fields of Fortune's better day,
When youthful Hope, the...Read more of this...

War Song

by John Davidson
 Remember the Glories of Brien the Brave


Remember the glories of Brien the brave, 
Though the days of the hero are o'er, 
Though lost to Mononia and cold to the grave, 
He returns to Kinkora no more. 
That star of the field, which so often hath pour'd 
Its beam on the battle, is set; 
But enough of its glory remains...Read more of this...

O soul! whose lot it is to bleed with pain,

by Omar Khayyam
O soul! whose lot it is to bleed with pain,
And daily change of fortune to sustain,
Into this body wherefore didst thou come,
Seeing thou must at last go forth again?...Read more of this...

The Under-Dogs

by Robert William Service
 What have we done, Oh Lord, that we
 Are evil starred?
How have we erred and sinned to be
 So scourged and scarred?
Lash us, Oh Lord, with scorpion whips,
 We can but run;
But harken to our piteous lips:
 What have we done?

How have we sinned to rouse your wrath,
 To earn your scorn?
Stony and steep has been our path
 Since...Read more of this...

The Cut Finger

by Ellis Parker Butler
 THE GOSSOON [Weeping]

It’s bleedin’! It’s bleedin’!

THE OULD WOMAN [Soothingly]

 An’ shure, me lad, ‘t is bleedin’;
But come, me hearty laddy buck, be brave an’ do not cry;
A lad that’s learnin’ readin’ sh’u'd be far beyant the heedin’
Av a tiny bit o’ finger cut that hurrts a bit foreby.

 ‘Ere ye come till wan an’ twinty
 Ye’ll be havin’ hurrts...Read more of this...

Music on Christmas Morning

by Anne Bronte
 Music I love -­ but never strain
Could kindle raptures so divine,
So grief assuage, so conquer pain,
And rouse this pensive heart of mine -­
As that we hear on Christmas morn,
Upon the wintry breezes borne. 
Though Darkness still her empire keep,
And hours must pass, ere morning break;
From troubled dreams, or slumbers deep,
That music kindly bids us wake:
It calls us, with an...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXVII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LXVII. Poi che mia speme è lunga a venir troppo. HE COUNSELS LOVERS TO FLEE, RATHER THAN BE CONSUMED BY THE FLAMES OF LOVE.  Since my hope's fruit yet faileth to arrive,And short the space vouchsafed me to survive,Betimes of this aware I fain would be,Swifter than light or wind from...Read more of this...

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