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Famous Complacency Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...heir lives. 
The good God in his wisdom had them so, 
That now and then a madman or a seer 
May shake them out of their complacency 
And shame them into deeds. The major file
See only what their fathers may have seen, 
Or may have said they saw when they saw nothing. 
I do not say it matters what they saw. 
Now and again to some lone soul or other 
God speaks, and there is hanging to be done,—
As once there was a burning of our bodies 
Alive, albeit our souls were sorry fuel....Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington



...self-delighting reverie,
Nor hate of what's to come, nor pity for what's gone,
Nothing but grip of claw, and the eye's complacency,
The innumerable clanging wings that have put out the moon.

I turn away and shut the door, and on the stair
Wonder how many times I could have proved my worth
In something that all others understand or share;
But O! ambitious heart, had such a proof drawn forth
A company of friends, a conscience set at ease,
It had but made us pine the more. The...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler
...“Whether all towns and all who live in them— 
So long as they be somewhere in this world 
That we in our complacency call ours— 
Are more or less the same, I leave to you. 
I should say less. Whether or not, meanwhile,
We’ve all two legs—and as for that, we haven’t— 
There were three kinds of men where I was born: 
The good, the not so good, and Tasker Norcross. 
Now there are two kinds.” 

“Meaning, as I divine,
Your friend is dead,” I ventured. 

Ferguson, 
W...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
..., on the contrary, he is weak or loyal, he bows, kisses the Sultan's respectable signature, and is bowstrung with great complacency. In 1810, several of "these presents" were exhibited in the niche of the Seraglio gate: among others, the head of the Pacha of Bagdad, a brave young man, cut off by treachery, after a desperate resistance. 

(9) Clapping of the hands calls the servants. The Turks hate a superfluous expenditure of voice, and they have no bells. 

(10) "Chibouque,"...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...ty, 
Wherefrom we gain 
A little wisdom and much pain,
Falls here too sore and there too tedious, 
Are we in anguish or complacency, 
Not looking far enough ahead 
To see by what mad couriers we are led 
Along the roads of the ridiculous,
To pity ourselves and laugh at faith 
And while we curse life bear it? 
And if we see the soul’s dead end in death, 
Are we to fear it? 
What folly is here that has not yet a name
Unless we say outright that we are liars? 
What have we seen ...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington



...sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion?—Judges, 14.


The palms of Mammon have disowned 
The gift of our complacency; 
The bells of ages have intoned 
Again their rhythmic irony; 
And from the shadow, suddenly,
’Mid echoes of decrepit rage, 
The seer of our necessity 
Confronts a Tyrian heritage. 

Equipped with unobscured intent 
He smiles with lions at the gate,
Acknowledging the compliment 
Like one familiar with his fate; 
The lions, having time to wait, 
P...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry