Famous Bloodless Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Boston Ballad 1854

...oston town. 

A fog follows—antiques of the same come limping, 
Some appear wooden-legged, and some appear bandaged and bloodless.

Why this is indeed a show! It has called the dead out of the earth! 
The old grave-yards of the hills have hurried to see! 
Phantoms! phantoms countless by flank and rear! 
Cock’d hats of mothy mould! crutches made of mist! 
Arms in slings! old men leaning on young men’s shoulders!

What troubles you, Yankee phantoms? What is all this chattering ...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt


A Lovers Complaint

...s and rubies red as blood;
Figuring that they their passions likewise lent me
Of grief and blushes, aptly understood
In bloodless white and the encrimson'd mood;
Effects of terror and dear modesty,
Encamp'd in hearts, but fighting outwardly.

''And, lo, behold these talents of their hair,
With twisted metal amorously impleach'd,
I have received from many a several fair,
Their kind acceptance weepingly beseech'd,
With the annexions of fair gems enrich'd,
And deep-brain'd sonne...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William

Al Claro De Luna (In The Light Of The Moon)

...osas,Y hasta las almas más negras toman clarores inciertos!              EnglishThe moon is pallid and sad, the moon is bloodless and cold.I imagine the half-moon as a profile of the dead…And beyond the reknowned and praised pallorOf Arab pearls, I prefer the rose in recent bud.In a corner of this land with the colors of earth,I adore this pale moon, I adore this death mask!And at the altar of the night, like a flower inflamed,Inebriated by strange perfumes, my soul resigns.I...Read more of this...
by Agustini, Delmira

Alastor: or the Spirit of Solitude

...g
In lonesome vales, making the wild his home,
Until the doves and squirrels would partake 
From his innocuous band his bloodless food,
Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks,
And the wild antelope, that starts whene'er
The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend
Her timid steps, to gaze upon a form
More graceful than her own.

His wandering step,
Obedient to high thoughts, has visited
The awful ruins of the days of old:
Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste
Where stoo...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Charmides

...d
The Gorgon's head its leaden eyeballs rolled,
And writhed its snaky horrors through the shield,
And gaped aghast with bloodless lips and cold
In passion impotent, while with blind gaze
The blinking owl between the feet hooted in shrill amaze.

The lonely fisher as he trimmed his lamp
Far out at sea off Sunium, or cast
The net for tunnies, heard a brazen tramp
Of horses smite the waves, and a wild blast
Divide the folded curtains of the night,
And knelt upon the little poop,...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar


Custer

...l tale.



XXXVII.
Not so, calm Custer. Sick of gory strife, 
He hopes for rescue with no loss of life; 
And plans that bloodless battle of the plains 
Where reasoning mind outwits mere savage brains.
The sullen soldiers follow where he leads; 
No gun is emptied, and no foeman bleeds.
Fierce for the fight and eager for the fray
They look upon their Chief in undisguised dismay.



XXXVIII.
He hears the murmur of their discontent, 
But sneers can never change a strong mind's be...Read more of this...
by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler

Drinking Song

...d thyrses,
Wild from Naxian groves, or Zante's
Vineyards, sing delirious verses.

Thus he won, through all the nations,
Bloodless victories, and the farmer
Bore, as trophies and oblations,
Vines for banners, ploughs for armor.

Judged by no o'erzealous rigor,
Much this mystic throng expresses:
Bacchus was the type of vigor,
And Silenus of excesses.

These are ancient ethnic revels,
Of a faith long since forsaken;
Now the Satyrs, changed to devils,
Frighten mortals wine-o'erta...Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Go Down Death

...to me.

And Death didn't say a word,
But he loosed the reins on his pale, white horse,
And he clamped the spurs to his bloodless sides,
And out and down he rode,
Through heaven's pearly gates,
Past suns and moons and stars;
on Death rode,
Leaving the lightning's flash behind;
Straight down he came.

While we were watching round her bed,
She turned her eyes and looked away,
She saw what we couldn't see;
She saw Old Death.She saw Old Death
Coming like a falling star.
But Death...Read more of this...
by Johnson, James Weldon

Lines Written Among The Euganean Hills

...l wreak him little woe
Whether such there be or no:
Senseless is the breast, and cold,
Which relenting love would fold;
Bloodless are the veins and chill
Which the pulse of pain did fill;
Every little living nerve
That from bitter words did swerve
Round the tortured lips and brow,
Are like sapless leaflets now
Frozen upon December's bough.

On the beach of a northern sea
Which tempests shake eternally,
As once the wretch there lay to sleep,
Lies a solitary heap,
One white sku...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Mazeppa

...
A thousand horse - and none to ride!
With flowing tail, and flying mane,
Wide nostrils never stretched by pain,
Mouths bloodless to the bit or rein,
And feet that iron never shod,
And flanks unscarred by spur or rod,
A thousand horse, the wild, the free,
Like waves that follow o'er the sea,
Came thickly thundering on,
As if our faint approach to meet;
The sight re-nerved my courser's feet,
A moment staggering, feebly fleet,
A moment, with a faint low neigh,
He answered, and ...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Ode To Silence

...be given me back?"
I sought her down that dolorous labyrinth,
Wherein no shaft of sunlight ever fell,
And in among the bloodless everywhere
I sought her, but the air,
Breathed many times and spent,
Was fretful with a whispering discontent,
And questioning me, importuning me to tell
Some slightest tidings of the light of day they know no more,
Plucking my sleeve, the eager shades were with me where I went.
I paused at every grievous door,
And harked a moment, holding up my ha...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

The Ballad of the White Horse

...," cried Marcus,
"Stand like a Roman wall!
Eldred the Good is fallen--
Are you too good to fall?

"When we were wan and bloodless
He gave you ale enow;
The pirates deal with him as dung,
God! are you bloodless now?"

"Grip, Wulf and Gorlias, grip the ash!
Slaves, and I make you free!
Stamp, Hildred hard in English land,
Stand Gurth, stand Gorlias, Gawen stand!
Hold, Halfgar, with the other hand,
Halmer, hold up on knee!

"The lamps are dying in your homes,
The fruits upon you...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K

The Emigrants: Book I

...rous potency subdued,
Learn, that the God thou worshippest, delights
In acts of pure humanity!--May thine
Be still such bloodless laurels! nobler far
Than those acquir'd at Cressy or Poictiers,
Or of more recent growth, those well bestow'd
On him who stood on Calpe's blazing height
Amid the thunder of a warring world,
Illustrious rather from the crowds he sav'd
From flood and fire, than from the ranks who fell
Beneath his valour!--Actions such as these,
Like incense rising to...Read more of this...
by Turner Smith, Charlotte

The Lady of the Lake

...Reeled soul and sense, reeled brain and eye.
     Down came the blow! but in the heath
     The erring blade found bloodless sheath.
     The struggling foe may now unclasp
     The fainting Chief's relaxing grasp;
     Unwounded from the dreadful close,
     But breathless all, Fitz-James arose.
     XVII.

     He faltered thanks to Heaven for life,
     Redeemed, unhoped, from desperate strife;
     Next on his foe his look he cast,
     Whose every gasp app...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Marriage Of Geraint

...ver failed to draw 
The quiet night into her blood, but lay 
Contemplating her own unworthiness; 
And when the pale and bloodless east began 
To quicken to the sun, arose, and raised 
Her mother too, and hand in hand they moved 
Down to the meadow where the jousts were held, 
And waited there for Yniol and Geraint. 

And thither came the twain, and when Geraint 
Beheld her first in field, awaiting him, 
He felt, were she the prize of bodily force, 
Himself beyond the rest pus...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Progress of Spring

...the North, 
That I might mix with men, and hear their words 
On pathway'd plains; for--while my hand exults 
Within the bloodless heart of lowly flowers 
To work old laws of Love to fresh results, 
Thro' manifold effect of simple powers-- 
I too would teach the man 
Beyond the darker hour to see the bright, 
That his fresh life may close as it began, 
The still-fulfilling promise of a light 
Narrowing the bounds of night.' 

So wed thee with my soul, that I may mark 
The comi...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket

...his matted head and marble feet,
He grappled at the net
With the coiled, hurdling muscles of his thighs:
The corpse was bloodless, a botch of reds and whites,
Its open, staring eyes
Were lustreless dead-lights
Or cabin-windows on a stranded hulk
Heavy with sand. We weight the body, close
Its eyes and heave it seaward whence it came,
Where the heel-headed dogfish barks it nose
On Ahab's void and forehead; and the name
Is blocked in yellow chalk.
Sailors, who pitch this portent...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Robert

To See Him Again

...him again --
it would not matter where --
in heaven's deadwater
or inside the boiling vortex,
under serene moons or in bloodless fright!

To be with him...
every springtime and winter,
united in one anguished knot
around his bloody neck!...Read more of this...
by Mistral, Gabriela

Venus and Adonis

...rst.

This dismal cry rings sadly in her ear,
Through which it enters to surprise her heart;
Who, overcome by doubt and bloodless fear,
With cold-pale weakness numbs each feeling part:
Like soldiers, when their captain once doth yield,
They basely fly and dare not stay the field.

Thus stands she in a trembling ecstasy;
Till, cheering up her senses all dismay'd,
She tells them 'tis a causeless fantasy,
And childish error, that they are afraid;
Bids them leave quaking, bids th...Read more of this...
by Shakespeare, William

Wolf Knife

...there creatures
acutely ridiculous, so avid
to swallow their own blood. First one, and then the other collapsed, dying,
bloodless in the snow black with their own blood,
and Kantiuk retrieved
his turnoks, and hacked lean meat
from the thigh of the larger wolf, which we ate
grateful, blessing the Creator, for we were hungry....Read more of this...
by Hall, Donald

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