Famous Captivity Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Captivity poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous captivity poems. These examples illustrate what a famous captivity poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...Jew,
And kindred Gentile shall no more contend,
Save in the holier strife of hymn and song,
To him who leads captive captivity,
Who shall collect the sons of Jacob's line,
And bring the fulness of the Gentiles in.
Thrice happy day when Gentiles are brought in
Complete and full; when with its genial beams
The day shall break on each benighted land
Which yet in darkness and in vision lies:
On Scythia and Tartary's bleak hills;
On mount Imaus, and Hyrcanian cliffs
Of...Read more of this...
by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...spoke earnestly that she dreaded
severely the army’s invasion replete with slaughter,
the terror of troops, shame and captivity.
Heaven swallowed the smoke. (ll. 3148b-55)
Then the Weather-Geats wrought
a cairn on the cliff-head—it was high and broad,
seen widely by sailors of the wave,
and built up in ten days’ time
the beacon of the battle-brave.
The flame-remnant they surrounded with a wall,
so fore-wise men would find it most honorable.
They buried in the bar...Read more of this...
by
Anonymous,
...The lion remembers the forest,
The lion in chains;
To the bird that is captive a vision
Of woodland remains.
One strains with his strength at the fetter,
In impotent rage;
One flutters in flights of a moment,
And beats at the cage.
If the lion were loosed from the fetter,
To wander again;
He would seek the wide silence and shadow
Of his jungle in vain.
...Read more of this...
by
Levy, Amy
...might as wise have lodged a Bird
For Treason—in the Pound—
Himself has but to will
And easy as a Star
Abolish his Captivity—
And laugh—No more have I—
652
A Prison gets to be a friend—
Between its Ponderous face
And Ours—a Kinsmanship express—
And in its narrow Eyes—
We come to look with gratitude
For the appointed Beam
It deal us—stated as our food—
And hungered for—the same—
We learn to know the Planks—
That answer to Our feet—
So miserable a soun...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...rd of Lyfe! that on this day
Didst make Thy triumph over death and sin;
And having harrowd hell didst bring away
Captivity thence captive us to win:
This joyous day deare Lord with joy begin; 5
And grant that we for whom thou diddest dye
Being with Thy deare blood clene washt from sin
May live for ever in felicity!
And that Thy love we weighing worthily
May likewise love Thee for the same againe; 10
And for Thy sake that all lyke deare didst buy
W...Read more of this...
by
Spenser, Edmund
...ystal pool, to see its deep,
And one's own image from the bottom peep?
Yes: now I am no longer wretched thrall,
My long captivity and moanings all
Are but a slime, a thin-pervading scum,
The which I breathe away, and thronging come
Like things of yesterday my youthful pleasures.
"I touch'd no lute, I sang not, trod no measures:
I was a lonely youth on desert shores.
My sports were lonely, 'mid continuous roars,
And craggy isles, and sea-mew's plaintive cry
Plaining discrepa...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...rime.
He hasted; and I, finding my self free,
Did, as he threatned, ere 'twere long intend
As one scap't strangely from Captivity,
Have made the Chance be painted; and go now
To hang it in Saint Peter's for a Vow....Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...n;
We both diffuse, and both ingross:
And we whose minds are so much one,
Never, yet ever are alone.
We court our own Captivity
Than Thrones more great and innocent:
`Twere banishment to be set free,
Since we wear fetters whose intent
Not Bondage is but Ornament
Divided joys are tedious found,
And griefs united easier grow:
We are our selves but by rebound,
And all our Titles shuffled so,
Both Princes, and both Subjects too.
Our Hearts are mutual Victims laid,
While the...Read more of this...
by
Philips, Katherine
...the divine contempt of a general pusillanimity.
For this happened in a season after their return from the Babylonish captivity.
For their spirits were broke and their manhood impair'd by foreign vices for exaction.
For I prophecy that the English will recover their horns the first.
For I prophecy that all the nations in the world will do the like in turn.
For I prophecy that all Englishmen will wear their beards again.
For a beard is a good step to a horn.
For ...Read more of this...
by
Smart, Christopher
...ving Fancy flies,
Till some lov'd object strikes her wand'ring eyes,
Whose silken fetters all the senses bind,
And soft captivity involves the mind.
Imagination! who can sing thy force?
Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?
Soaring through air to find the bright abode,
Th' empyreal palace of the thund'ring God,
We on thy pinions can surpass the wind,
And leave the rolling universe behind:
>From star to star the mental optics rove,
Measure the skies, and range the rea...Read more of this...
by
Wheatley, Phillis
...; 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 itself of Satan, long usurped;
Whom he shall tread at last under our feet;
Even he, who now foretold his fatal bruise;
And to the Woman thus his sentence turned.
Thy sorrow I will greatly multiply
By thy conception; children thou shalt bring
In sorrow forth; and to thy husband's will
Thine shall submit...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...a scorn and prey
To that proud city, whose high walls thou sawest
Left in confusion; Babylon thence called.
There in captivity he lets them dwell
The space of seventy years; then brings them back,
Remembering mercy, and his covenant sworn
To David, stablished as the days of Heaven.
Returned from Babylon by leave of kings
Their lords, whom God disposed, the house of God
They first re-edify; and for a while
In mean estate live moderate; till, grown
In wealth and mult...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...rney, built by Ninus old,
Of that first golden monarchy the seat,
And seat of Salmanassar, whose success
Israel in long captivity still mourns;
There Babylon, the wonder of all tongues,
As ancient, but rebuilt by him who twice
Judah and all thy father David's house
Led captive, and Jerusalem laid waste,
Till Cyrus set them free; Persepolis,
His city, there thou seest, and Bactra there;
Ecbatana her structure vast there shews,
And Hecatompylos her hunderd gates;
There Susa by...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...burial
From worst of other evils, pains and wrongs,
But made hereby obnoxious more
To all the miseries of life,
Life in captivity
Among inhuman foes.
But who are these? for with joint pace I hear
The tread of many feet stearing this way;
Perhaps my enemies who come to stare
At my affliction, and perhaps to insult,
Thir daily practice to afflict me more.
Chor: This, this is he; softly a while,
Let us not break in upon him;
O change beyond report, thought, or belief!
See how ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...t summer's seashell collection
In a plastic bag on a shelf in the mud room
With last summer's sand. The cycle of sexual captivity
Beginning in romance and ending in adultery
Was now in the late middle phases, the way America
Had gone from barbarism to amnesia without
A period of high decadence, which meant something,
But what? A raft on the rapids? The violinist
At the gate? Oh, absolute is the law of biology.
For the *********** seminar, what should she wear?...Read more of this...
by
Lehman, David
...Poor restless dove, I pity thee;
And when I hear thy plaintive moan,
I mourn for thy captivity,
And in thy woes forget mine own.
To see thee stand prepared to fly,
And flap those useless wings of thine,
And gaze into the distant sky,
Would melt a harder heart than mine.
In vain-in vain! Thou canst not rise:
Thy prison roof confines thee there;
Its slender wires delude thine eyes,
And quench thy longings with despair.
Oh, thou we...Read more of this...
by
Bronte, Anne
...!
No! it shall live again, and shine
In bliss unknown to beams of thine,
By Him recalled to breath,
Who captive led captivity.
Who robbed the grave of Victory,--
And took the sting from Death!
"Go, Sun, while Mercy holds me up
On Nature's awful waste
To drink this last and bitter cup
Of grief that man shall taste--
Go, tell the night that hides thy face,
Thou saw'st the last of Adam's race,
On Earth's sepulchral clod,
The darkening universe defy
To quench his ...Read more of this...
by
Campbell, Thomas
...'d on ev'ry hand,
Finds that no Ill does Neuter by him stand,
Inexorable Death, Lean Poverty,
Pale Sickness, ever sad Captivity.
Can I, alas, the sev'ral Parties name,
Which, muster'd up, the Dreadful Army frame?
And sometimes in One Body all Unite,
Sometimes again do separately fight:
While sure Success on either Way does waite,
Either a Swift, or else a Ling'ring Fate.
But why 'gainst thee, O Death! should I inveigh,
That to our Quiet art the only way?
And yet I ...Read more of this...
by
Killigrew, Anne
...he second ship turned towards the east,
Over the sea, the quaking sea,
And the wind hunted it like a beast
To anchor in captivity.
The third ship drove towards the north,
Over the sea, the darkening sea,
But no breath of wind came forth,
And the decks shone frostily.
The northern sky rose high and black
Over the proud unfruitful sea,
East and west the ships came back
Happily or unhappily:
But the third went wide and far
Into an unforgiving sea
Under a fire-spilling star,
A...Read more of this...
by
Larkin, Philip
...rought me back to feel and think.
I know not if it late were free,
Or broke its cage to perch on mine,
But knowing well captivity.
Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine!
Or if it were, in winged guise,
A visitant from Paradise;
For - Heaven forgive that thought; the while
Which made me both to weep and smile -
I sometimes deem'd that it might be
My brother's soul come down to me;
But then at last away it flew,
And then 'twas mortal well I knew,
For he would never thus have f...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
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