Famous Broke Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Broke poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous broke poems. These examples illustrate what a famous broke poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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..."Aug." 10, 1911.
Full moon to-night; and six and twenty years
Since my full moon first broke from angel spheres!
A year of infinite love unwearying ---
No circling seasons, but perennial spring!
A year of triumph trampling through defeat,
The first made holy and the last made sweet
By this same love; a year of wealth and woe,
Joy, poverty, health, sickness --- all one glow
In the pure light that filled our firmament
Of supreme silence and unba...Read more of this...
by
Crowley, Aleister
...ch over the wave-cliffs,
saw bright bosses borne down the gangway,
gear for an army ready for deployment.
The desire broke him, in his mind-thoughts to know
what men these were. Then he turned himself toward the shore,
riding his horse, the thane of Hrothgar, shaking forcefully,
strong spear-wood in his hand,
inquiring with carefully-chosen words: (ll. 229-36)
“Who are you, armor-bearing men,
bolstered in your byrnies, who come
leading this steep ship over the sea...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here—
And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down—
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing—then—
288
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you—Nobody—Too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise—you know!
How dreary—to be—Somebody!
How public—like a Frog—
To tell one's name—the livelong June—
To an admiring Bog!
303
The Soul s...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...s lips, the worthy notary entered.
III
Bent like a laboring oar, that toils in the surf of the ocean,
Bent, but not broken, by age was the form of the notary public;
Shocks of yellow hair, like the silken floss of the maize, hung
Over his shoulders; his forehead was high; and glasses with horn bows
Sat astride on his nose, with a look of wisdom supernal.
Father of twenty children was he, and more than a hundred
Children's children rode on his knee, and heard his great wat...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...d room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were vi...Read more of this...
by
Ginsberg, Allen
...ose halting thus,
And answered, "If thy coward-born thoughts be clear,
And all thy once intent, infirmed of fear,
Broken, then art thou as scared beasts that shy
From shadows, surely that they know not why
Nor wherefore. . . Hearken, to confound thy fear,
The things which first I heard, and brought me here.
One came where, in the Outer Place, I dwell,
Suspense from hope of Heaven or fear of Hell,
Radiant in light that native round her clung,
And cast her e...Read more of this...
by
Alighieri, Dante
...ment of his mind's disease.
Was it a dream? was his the voice that spoke
Those strange wild accents; his the cry that broke
Their slumber? his the oppress'd o'er-labour'd heart
That ceased to beat, the look that made them start?
Could he who thus had suffer'd, so forget
When such as saw that suffering shudder yet?
Or did that silence prove his memory fix'd
Too deep for words, indelible, unmix'd
In that corroding secresy which gnaws
The heart to shew the effect, but ...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...'
`So sweet, I lay,' said he,
`And mused upon it, drifting up the stream
In fancy, till I slept again, and pieced
The broken vision; for I dream'd that still
The motion of the great deep bore me on,
And that the woman walk'd upon the brink:
I wonder'd at her strength, and ask'd her of it:
"It came," she said, "by working in the mines:"
O then to ask her of my shares, I thought;
And ask'd; but not a word; she shook her head.
And then the motion of the current ceased,
And the...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...d night upon the Pope:
And Alfred, hiding in deep grass,
Hardened his heart with hope.
A sea-folk blinder than the sea
Broke all about his land,
But Alfred up against them bare
And gripped the ground and grasped the air,
Staggered, and strove to stand.
He bent them back with spear and spade,
With desperate dyke and wall,
With foemen leaning on his shield
And roaring on him when he reeled;
And no help came at all.
He broke them with a broken sword
A little towards the sea,
...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
..."Had we never loved so kindly,
Had we never loved so blindly,
Never met or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted." — Burns
TO
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD HOLLAND,
THIS TALE IS INSCRIBED,
WITH EVERY SENTIMENT OF REGARD AND RESPECT,
BY HIS GRATEFULLY OBLIGED AND SINCERE FRIEND,
BYRON.
THE BRIDE OF ABYDOS
_________
CANTO THE FIRST.
I.
Know ye the land where cypress and myrtle
Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime,
Where the ...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...ride, but run,
1.18 And in his hand an hour-glass new begun,
1.19 In dangers every moment of a fall,
1.20 And when 'tis broke, then ends his life and all.
1.21 But if he held till it have run its last,
1.22 Then may he live till threescore years or past.
1.23 Next, youth came up in gorgeous attire
1.24 (As that fond age, doth most of all desire),
1.25 His Suit of Crimson, and his Scarf of Green.
1.26 In's countenance, his pride quickly was seen.
1.27 Garland of Roses, Pinks, ...Read more of this...
by
Bradstreet, Anne
...all men's hearts became
Clean for a season, surely he had thought
That now the Holy Grail would come again;
But sin broke out. Ah, Christ, that it would come,
And heal the world of all their wickedness!
"O Father!" asked the maiden, "might it come
To me by prayer and fasting?" "Nay," said he,
"I know not, for thy heart is pure as snow."
And so she prayed and fasted, till the sun
Shone, and the wind blew, through her, and I thought
She might have risen and floated w...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...complete: it included a Boots--
A maker of Bonnets and Hoods--
A Barrister, brought to arrange their disputes--
And a Broker, to value their goods.
A Billiard-marker, whose skill was immense,
Might perhaps have won more than his share--
But a Banker, engaged at enormous expense,
Had the whole of their cash in his care.
There was also a Beaver, that paced on the deck,
Or would sit making lace in the bow:
And had often (the Bellman said) saved them from wreck,
Though no...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...w?
Love is a greater lawe, by my pan,
Than may be giv'n to any earthly man:
Therefore positive law, and such decree,
Is broke alway for love in each degree
A man must needes love, maugre his head.
He may not flee it, though he should be dead,
*All be she* maid, or widow, or else wife. *whether she be*
And eke it is not likely all thy life
To standen in her grace, no more than I
For well thou wost thyselfe verily,
That thou and I be damned to prison
Perpetual, us gaineth no ra...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...d fragrance round his head;
Not Ellen's spell had lulled to rest
The fever of his troubled breast.
In broken dreams the image rose
Of varied perils, pains, and woes:
His steed now flounders in the brake,
Now sinks his barge upon the lake;
Now leader of a broken host,
His standard falls, his honor's lost.
Then,—from my couch may heavenly might
Chase that worst phantom of the night!—
Again returned the scenes of...Read more of this...
by
Scott, Sir Walter
...hes & exposes hypocrites, till he imagines that all
are religious. & himself the single [PL 22] One on earth that ever
broke a net.
Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new
truth: Now hear another: he has written all the old falshoods.
And now hear the reason. He conversed with Angels who are
all religious, & conversed not with Devils who all hate religion,
for he was incapable thro' his conceited notions.
Thus Swedenborgs writings are a recapitulation of al...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...me like a sleepless hound,
"With crimson-dashed and eager jaws,
Me, still in ignorance of the cause,
Unknowing what I broke of laws?"
The whisper to his ear did seem
Like echoed flow of silent stream,
Or shadow of forgotten dream,
The whisper trembling in the wind:
"Her fate with thine was intertwined,"
So spake it in his inner mind:
"Each orbed on each a baleful star:
Each proved the other's blight and bar:
Each unto each were best, most far:
"Yea, each to each was...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...-the fierce splendour
Fell from her as she moved under the mass
"Of the deep cavern, & with palms so tender
Their tread broke not the mirror of its billow,
Glided along the river, and did bend her
"Head under the dark boughs, till like a willow
Her fair hair swept the bosom of the stream
That whispered with delight to be their pillow.--
"As one enamoured is upborne in dream
O'er lily-paven lakes mid silver mist
To wondrous music, so this shape might seem
"Partly to tread the ...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...
Excepting to wind up the sun and moon,
Or curb a runaway young star or two,
Or wild colt of a comet, which too soon
Broke out of bounds o'er th' ethereal blue,
Splitting some planet with its playful tail,
As boats are sometimes by a wanton whale.
III
The guardian seraphs had retired on high,
Finding their charges past all care below;
Terrestrial business fill'd nought in the sky
Save the recording angel's black bureau;
Who found, indeed, the facts to multiply
W...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...wake before meeting her."
And the janitor at the red gate
Shouted at you, "Where to, alack!"
The ice crackled and broke,
Underfoot, water went black.
"This is the lake, and inside
There's an island," thus thought you.
And then suddenly from the dark
Appeared a fire hot-blue.
Awakening, you did moan
In harsh light of a nasty day,
And then at once you called
For me loudly by my name.
White House
Sun is frosty. In parade
Soldiers march with all th...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
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