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Famous Blotted Out Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Masters, Edgar Lee
...s and pledges heaped
With rosy hands over his brow.
And then, O night! deliberate! unlovely!
With all of our wooing blotted out by the winning,
In a chosen room in an hour that was known to all!
Next day he sat so listless, almost cold,
So strangely changed, wondering why I wept,
Till a kind of sick despair and voluptuous madness
Seized us to make the pact of death.
A stalk of the earth-sphere,
Frail as star-light;
Waiting to be drawn once again
Into creation's stream...Read more of this...



by Service, Robert William
...will be to lie alone,
His empty name cut in a stone.

Grim time the fairest fame will flout,
But though his name be blotted out,
And he forgotten with his peers,
His stone may wear a year of years.

No matter how we sow and reap
The end of all is endless sleep;
From strife a merciful release,
From life the crowning prize of Peace....Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...e plotting smear another stain
Across his tarnished honour. Smoulderings
Of sacrificial fires burst their rings
And blotted out in smoke his lost domain.
Bereft of courtiers, only with his queen,
From empty palace down to empty quay.
No challenge screamed from hostile carabine.
A single vessel waited, shadowy;
All night she ploughed her solitary way
Beneath the stars, and through a tranquil sea....Read more of this...

by Bryant, William Cullen
...reen pupilage, their lore half learned--
Ere guilt has quite o'errun the simple heart
God gave them at their birth, and blotted out
His image. Thou dost mark them, flushed with hope,
As on the threshold of their vast designs
Doubtful and loose they stand, and strik'st them down.

Alas, I little thought that the stern power
Whose fearful praise I sung, would try me thus
Before the strain was ended. It must cease--
For he is in his grave who taught my youth
The art ...Read more of this...

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...n this wonder of our days
When the cruel rod of war
Blossoms white with righteous law,
And the wrath of man is praise!

Blotted out!
All within and all about
Shall a fresher life begin;
Freer breathe the universe
As it rolls its heavy curse
On the dead and buried sin!

It is done!
In the circuit of the sun
Shall the sound thereof go forth.
It shall bid the sad rejoice,
It shall give the dumb a voice,
It shall belt with joy the earth!

Ring and swing,
Bells of joy! On morn...Read more of this...



by Lawrence, D. H.
...her arms and my neck's blood-surge could meet.
    Holding her thus, did I care
That the black night hid her from me, blotted out every speck?

I leaned me forward to find her lips,
    And claim her utterly in a kiss,
When the lightning flew across her face,
And I saw her for the flaring space
    Of a second, afraid of the clips
Of my arms, inert with dread, wilted in fear of my kiss.

A moment, like a wavering spark,
    Her face lay there before my breast,
Pa...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...nities; 
And Powers that erst in Heaven sat on thrones, 
Though on their names in Heavenly records now 
Be no memorial, blotted out and rased 
By their rebellion from the Books of Life. 
Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve 
Got them new names, till, wandering o'er the earth, 
Through God's high sufferance for the trial of man, 
By falsities and lies the greatest part 
Of mankind they corrupted to forsake 
God their Creator, and th' invisible 
Glory of him that made the...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...with scorn sublime of death.
I saw him gently kiss the Cross, and then I held by breath.
That blessed smile was blotted out; they dropped the hood of black;
They fixed the noose around his neck, the rope was hanging slack.
I heard him pray, I saw him sway, then . . . then he was not there;
A rope, a ghastly yellow rope was jerking in the air;
A jigging rope that soon was still; a hush as of the tomb,
And Hank the Finn, that man of sin, had met his righ...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...Things thought too long can be no longer thought,
For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth,
And ancient lineaments are blotted out.
Irrational streams of blood are staining earth;
Empedocles has thrown all things about;
Hector is dead and there's a light in Troy;
We that look on but laugh in tragic joy.

What matter though numb nightmare ride on top,
And blood and mire the sensitive body stain?
What matter? Heave no sigh, let no tear drop,
A-greater, a more gracious ...Read more of this...

by McGonagall, William Topaz
...ccents, the drowning people for help did cry;
But hundreds of corpses, by the flood, were swept away,
And Johnstown was blotted out like a child's toy house of clay. 

Alas! there were many pitiful scenes enacted,
And many parents, for the loss of their children, have gone distracted,
Especially those that were burned in the merciless flame,
Their dear little ones they will never see again. 

And among the sad scenes to be witnessed there,
Was a man and his wife in gr...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...ind what he had never found.
Slowly the autumn morning warmed, flocks of starlings
rose above the vacant fields and blotted out the sun.
I drove on until I found the grove of apple trees
heavy with fruit, and left the car, the motor running,
beside a sagging fence, and entered his life
on my own for maybe the first time. A crow welcomed
me home, the sun rode above, austere and silent,
the early afternoon was cloudless, perfect.
When the crow dragged itself off...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...quadrons will 
Answer to reveille. 

Onward without fear or doubt, 
Sound a bold reveille. 
'Till that shame is blotted out. 
While our Empire's bounds are wide, 
Britons all stand side by side, 
Boot and saddle, mount and ride. 
Hear the bold reveille....Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...rawling of a sparrow in the eaves,
The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,
And all that famous harmony of leaves,
Had blotted out man's image and his cry.

A girl arose that had red mournful lips
And seemed the greatness of the world in tears,
Doomed like Odysseus and the labouring ships
And proud as Priam murdered with his peers;

Arose, and on the instant clamorous eaves,
A climbing moon upon an empty sky,
And all that lamentation of the leaves,
Could but compose man'...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...y over-subtle thought
Or anything called conscience once;
And that if memory recur, the sun's
Under eclipse and the day blotted out.

 III

It is time that I wrote my will;
I choose upstanding men
That climb the streams until
The fountain leap, and at dawn
Drop their cast at the side
Of dripping stone; I declare
They shall inherit my pride,
The pride of people that were
Bound neither to Cause nor to State.
Neither to slaves that were spat on,
Nor to the tyrants that s...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...wed: with my friend 
I climbed the fo'c's'le-head to see; we saw 
The waters hurrying shoreward without end. 

Haze blotted out the river's lowest reach; 
Out of the gloom the steamers, passing by, 
Called with their sirens, hooting their sea-speech; 
Out of the dimness others made reply. 

And as we watched, there came a rush of feet 
Charging the fo'c's'le till the hatchway shook. 
Men all about us thrust their way, or beat, 
Crying, "Wanderer! Down the river! L...Read more of this...

by Jeffers, Robinson
...an letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems....Read more of this...

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Book: Reflection on the Important Things