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Famous Bruise Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Lawrence, D. H.
...r the boy 
To leap down at our gate. 

He has passed us by; but is it 
Relief that starts in my breast?
Or a deeper bruise of knowing that still 
She has no rest....Read more of this...



by Bosselaar, Laure-Anne
...sack at his feet. He combs the earth 

 with his fingers, picks up pebbles around 
tiny heads of sorrel. Clouds bruise in, clog the sky, 

 the first fat drops pock-mark the dust. 
The man wipes his hands on his chest, 

 opens the sack, pulls out top halves 
of broken bottles, and plants them, firmly, 

 over each head of sorrel — tilting the necks
toward the rain. His back is drenched, so am I,

 his careful gestures clench my throat, 
wrench a hunger out of...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...ught in vain for any place of rest:
'Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest.
I, only I, must wander wearily,
And bruise my feet, and drink wine salt with tears.'...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 Baudelaire, Charles
...Always be drunk.
That's it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time's horrid fardel
bruise your shoulders,
grinding you into the earth,
get drunk and stay that way.
On what?
On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever.
But get drunk.
And if you sometimes happen to wake up
on the porches of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness
of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind,
t...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...f Time's wide wings
Hyperion slid into the rustled air,
And Saturn gain'd with Thea that sad place
Where Cybele and the bruised Titans mourn'd.
It was a den where no insulting light
Could glimmer on their tears; where their own groans
They felt, but heard not, for the solid roar
Of thunderous waterfalls and torrents hoarse,
Pouring a constant bulk, uncertain where.
Crag jutting forth to crag, and rocks that seem'd
Ever as if just rising from a sleep,
Forehead to foreh...Read more of this...

by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...as passionate as tender, 
I feel an exultation as I know
I have not made you a complete surrender.
Here is my body; bruise it, if you will, 
And break my heart; I have that something still.

You cannot grasp it. Seize the breath of morn, 
Or bind the perfume of the rose as well.
God put it in my soul when I was born; 
It is not mine to give away, or sell, 
Or offer up on any alter shrine.
It was my art’s; and when not art’s, ‘tis mine.

For Love’s sake...Read more of this...

by Meredith, George
...an heal no less:
Like the swinging May-cloud that pelts the flowers with hailstones
Off a sunny border, she was made to bruise and bless.

Lovely are the curves of the white owl sweeping
Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star.
Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried,
Brooding o'er the gloom, spins the brown eve-jar.
Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting: 
So were it with me if forgetting could be willed.
Tell the grassy hollow that holds t...Read more of this...

by Bradstreet, Anne
...their nurture according to their 
nature. 
Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, 
fitter to bruise than polish. 
The reason why Christians are so loath to exchange this world 
for a better, is because they have more sense than faith: they see 
what they enjoy, they do but hope for that which is to come. 
Dim eyes are the concomitants of old age; and short- 
sightedness, in those that are the eyes of a Republic, foretells a 
declining State....Read more of this...

by Heaney, Seamus
...> Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year....Read more of this...

by Tessimond, A S J
...survey
Say a square inch of the ground one stands on, touch
Part of oneself or a leaf or a sound (not clutch
Or cuff or bruise but touch with finger-tip, ear-
Tip, eyetip, creeping near yet not too near);
Might take up life and lay it on one's palm
And, encircling it in closeness, warmth and calm,
Let it lie still, then stir smooth-softly, and 
Tendril by tendril unfold, there on one's hand ...

One might examine eternity's cross-section
For a second, with slightl...Read more of this...

by Rich, Adrienne
...throw back my head to take you in
and old transfusion happens again:
divine astronomy is nothing to it.

Indoors I bruise and blunder
break faith, leave ill enough
alone, a dead child born in the dark.
Night cracks up over the chimney,
pieces of time, frozen geodes
come showering down in the grate.

A man reaches behind my eyes
and finds them empty
a woman's head turns away
from my head in the mirror
children are dying my death
and eating crumbs of my life.

...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...rees 
Against thee are gone forth without recall; 
That golden scepter, which thou didst reject, 
Is now an iron rod to bruise and break 
Thy disobedience. Well thou didst advise; 
Yet not for thy advice or threats I fly 
These wicked tents devoted, lest the wrath 
Impendent, raging into sudden flame, 
Distinguish not: For soon expect to feel 
His thunder on thy head, devouring fire. 
Then who created thee lamenting learn, 
When who can uncreate thee thou shalt know.<...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...e days of thy life. 
Between thee and the woman I will put 
Enmity, and between thine and her seed; 
Her seed shall bruise thy head, thou bruise his heel. 
So spake this oracle, then verified 
When Jesus, Son of Mary, second Eve, 
Saw Satan fall, like lightning, down from Heaven, 
Prince of the air; then, rising from his grave 
Spoiled Principalities and Powers, triumphed 
In open show; and, with ascension bright, 
Captivity led captive through the air, 
The realm its...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ew 
That I was heard with favour; peace returned 
Home to my breast, and to my memory 
His promise, that thy seed shall bruise our foe; 
Which, then not minded in dismay, yet now 
Assures me that the bitterness of death 
Is past, and we shall live. Whence hail to thee, 
Eve rightly called, mother of all mankind, 
Mother of all things living, since by thee 
Man is to live; and all things live for Man. 
To whom thus Eve with sad demeanour meek. 
Ill-worthy I such ti...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...der, that all nations of the earth 
Shall in his seed be blessed: By that seed 
Is meant thy great Deliverer, who shall bruise 
The Serpent's head; whereof to thee anon 
Plainlier shall be revealed. This patriarch blest, 
Whom faithful Abraham due time shall call, 
A son, and of his son a grand-child, leaves; 
Like him in faith, in wisdom, and renown: 
The grandchild, with twelve sons increased, departs 
From Canaan to a land hereafter called 
Egypt, divided by the river ...Read more of this...

by Atwood, Margaret
...things:
the smell of spilled oil a faint
sickness lingering in the garages,
a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise,
a plastic hose poised in a vicious
coil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows


give momentary access to
the landscape behind or under
the future cracks in the plaster


when the houses, capsized, will slide
obliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciers
that right now nobody notices.


That is where the City Planners
with the insane f...Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...nd chance?
What latter light of what new hope shall guide
Out of the snares of hell thy feet, O France?
What heel shall bruise these heads that hiss and glide,
What wind blow out these fen-born fires that dance
Before thee to thy death?
No light, no life, no breath,
From thy dead eyes and lips shall take the trance,
Till on that deadliest crime
Reddening the feet of time
Who treads through blood and passes, time shall glance
Pardon, and Italy forgive,
And Rome arise up whom t...Read more of this...

by Hardy, Thomas
...d murderous meeting-time, 
 And kings invoked, for rape and raid, 
 His fearsome aid in rune and rhyme. 

III 

 On bruise and blood-hole, scar and seam, 
On blade and bolt, he flung his fulgid beam: 
 His haloes rayed the very gore, 
 And corpses wore his glory-gleam. 

IV 

 Often an early King or Queen, 
And storied hero onward, knew his sheen; 
 'Twas glimpsed by Wolfe, by Ney anon, 
 And Nelson on his blue demesne. 

V 

 But new light spread. That god's ...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...hands and childish will, 
 Without a thought of bad intent, 
 Of cruelty quite innocent. 
 You wound their feet, and bruise their wings, 
 And make them suffer those ill things 
 That children's play to young birds brings. 
 
 But mine! no matter what you do, 
 My poetry is all in you; 
 You are my inspiration bright 
 That gives my verse its purest light. 
 Children whose life is made of hope, 
 Whose joy, within its mystic scope, 
 Owes all to ignorance of ill,...Read more of this...

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