Famous Criminal Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Criminal poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous criminal poems. These examples illustrate what a famous criminal poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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And how she did not know. Still none of them
Could have a thought that she was living down—
Almost as if regret were criminal,
So proud it was and yet so profitless—
The penance of a dream, and that was good.
Her sister Jane—the mother of little Jane,
Sylvester, and Young George—might make herself
Believe she knew, for she—well, she was Jane.
Young George, however, did not yield himself
To nourish the false hunger of a ghost
That made no good return. He saw too muc...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...d;
If your lover, husband, wife, is welcome by day or night, I must be personally as welcome;
If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I become so for your sake;
If you remember your foolish and outlaw’d deeds, do you think I cannot remember my
own
foolish
and outlaw’d deeds?
If you carouse at the table, I carouse at the opposite side of the table;
If you meet some stranger in the streets, and love him or her—why I often meet
strangers
in the
street, and love the...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...a deadly bane."--
"O, Oread-Queen! would that thou hadst a pain
Like this of mine, then would I fearless turn
And be a criminal."--"Alas, I burn,
I shudder--gentle river, get thee hence.
Alpheus! thou enchanter! every sense
Of mine was once made perfect in these woods.
Fresh breezes, bowery lawns, and innocent floods,
Ripe fruits, and lonely couch, contentment gave;
But ever since I heedlessly did lave
In thy deceitful stream, a panting glow
Grew strong within me: wherefore ...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...Hard Rock/ was/ "known not to take no ****
From nobody," and he had the scars to prove it:
Split purple lips, lumbed ears, welts above
His yellow eyes, and one long scar that cut
Across his temple and plowed through a thick
Canopy of kinky hair.
The WORD/ was/ that Hard Rock wasn't a mean ******
Anymore, that the doctors had bored a hole in his head,
...Read more of this...
by
Knight, Etheridge
...unds run the wrinkles on thy brow.
Well may'st thou pause, and gloom, and stare,
A visible conscience: I arraign
Thee, criminal Cloud, of rare
Contempts on Mercy, Right, and Prayer, --
Of murders, arsons, thefts, -- of nameless stain.
(Yet though life's logic grow as gray
As thou, my soul's not in eclipse.)
Cold Cloud, but yesterday
Thy lightning slew a child at play,
And then a priest with prayers upon his lips
For his enemies, and then a bright
Lady that did but ope the ...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...e moment came, the hour when Otho thought
Secure at last the vengeance which he sought
His summons found the destined criminal
Begirt by thousands in his swarming hall,
Fresh from their feudal fetters newly riven,
Defying earth, and confident of heaven.
That morning he had freed the soil-bound slaves
Who dig no land for tyrants but their graves!
Such is their cry — some watchword for the fight
Must vindicate the wrong, and warp the right;
Religion — freedom — vengea...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...Macavity's a Mystery Cat: he's called the Hidden Paw--
For he's the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime--Macavity's not there!
Macavity, Macavity, there's no on like Macavity,
He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime--Ma...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...goldenness;
how bright it shows --
"of circular traditions and impostures,
committing many spoils,"
requiring all one's criminal ingenuity
to avoid!
Psychology which explains everything
explains nothing
and we are still in doubt.
Eve: beautiful woman --
I have seen her
when she was so handsome
she gave me a start,
able to write simultaneously
in three languages --
English, German and French
and talk in the meantime;
equally positive in demanding a commotion
and in stipulating...Read more of this...
by
Moore, Marianne
...positions!
Let the old propositions be postponed!
Let faces and theories be turn’d inside out! let meanings be freely criminal, as well
as
results!
Let there be no suggestion above the suggestion of drudgery!
Let none be pointed toward his destination! (Say! do you know your destination?)
Let men and women be mock’d with bodies and mock’d with Souls!
Let the love that waits in them, wait! let it die, or pass stillborn to other spheres!
Let the sympathy that waits in e...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...king summoned the girl
and locked her in a room full of straw
and told her to spin it into gold
or she would die like a criminal.
Poor grape with no one to pick.
Luscious and round and sleek.
Poor thing.
To die and never see Brooklyn.
She wept,
of course, huge aquamarine tears.
The door opened and in popped a dwarf.
He was as ugly as a wart.
Little thing, what are you? she cried.
With his tiny no-sex voice he replied:
I am a dwarf.
I have been exhibited on Bond Street
and no...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...I became a criminal when I fell in love.
Before that I was a waitress.
I didn't want to go to Chicago with you.
I wanted to marry you, I wanted
Your wife to suffer.
I wanted her life to be like a play
In which all the parts are sad parts.
Does a good person
Think this way? I deserve
Credit for my courage--
I sat in the dark on your front porch.
Everything was clea...Read more of this...
by
Gluck, Louise
...lapping
pennants of
joy!
4
I am the actor, the actress, the voter, the politician;
The emigrant and the exile, the criminal that stood in the box,
He who has been famous, and he who shall be famous after to-day,
The stammerer, the well-form’d person, the wasted or feeble person.
5
I am she who adorn’d herself and folded her hair expectantly,
My truant lover has come, and it is dark.
Double yourself and receive me, darkness!
Receive me and my lover too—he will not ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...d run
Will send us to the wall."
So he withdrew his trespass suits,
He'd one with Dutchy's boss --
In prosecutions criminal
He entered nolle pros.,
But these were neither here nor there --
They always meant a loss.
And off to Paddymelon Flat
He started double quick
Drayloads of men with lots of grog
Lest heat should make them sick,
And all the strangers came around
To see him do the trick.
And there the fire was flaming bright,
For miles and miles it spread,...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...he weak became commonplace; the throngs curried and praised.
Thus does the first touch of humanity's selfishness make criminals of the humble, and make killers of the sons of peace; thus does the early greed of humanity grow and strike back at humanity a thousand fold!...Read more of this...
by
Gibran, Kahlil
...t handless evermore?
-- Thou felon, War, I do arraign thee now
Of mayhem of the four main limbs of France!
Thou old red criminal, stand forth; I charge
-- But O, I am too utter sorrowful
To urge large accusation now.
Nathless,
My work to-day, is still more grievous. Hear!
The stains that war hath wrought upon the land
Show but as faint white flecks, if seen o' the side
Of those blood-covered images that stalk
Through yon cold chambers of the future, as
The prophet-mood, now s...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...e they crying for us,
and I feeding him white rum, while every crest
with Leviathan-lash made the Flight quail
like two criminal. Whole night, with no rest,
till red-eyed like dawn, we watch our travail
subsiding, subside, and there was no more storm.
And the noon sea get calm as Thy Kingdom come.
11 After the Storm
There's a fresh light that follows a storm
while the whole sea still havoc; in its bright wake
I saw the veiled face of Maria Concepcion
marrying the ocean, th...Read more of this...
by
Walcott, Derek
...nd lies
beauty and ugliness
courage and cowardice.
Virtue and crime weigh the same
I've seen it:
in a man who was both
criminal and virtuous.
I seek a teacher and a master
may he restore my sight hearing and speech
may he again name objects and ideas
may he separate darkness from light.
I am twenty-four
led to slaughter
I survived....Read more of this...
by
Levi, Primo
...ich event,
Forgive one who is only seven leagues
From Cæsar. When I told you I should come,
I did not see myself the criminal
You contemplate, for seeing beyond the Law
That which the Law saw not. But this, indeed,
Was good of you, and I shall not forget;
No, I shall not forget you came so far
To meet a man so dangerous. Well, farewell.
They come to tell me I am going now—
With them. I hope that we shall meet again,
But none may say what he shall find in Rome....Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...e shyly he'd sold his yawl
For a fabulous price to the constable's son—
My childhood's playmate, thought to be one
Of a criminal gang, rum-runners all,
Such clever fellows with so much money—
Even the constable found it funny,
Until one morning his son was found,
Floating dead in Long Island Sound.
Was this my country? It seemed like heaven
To get back, dull and secure, to Devon,
Loyally hiding from Lady Jean
And my English friends the horrors I'd seen.
XLVI
That year she d...Read more of this...
by
Miller, Alice Duer
...h worry on the chambers dark?
Already used to ringing high and raw,
Already judged not by the earthly law,
I, like a criminal, am being drawn along
To place of shame and execution long.
I see the glorious city, and the voice most dear,
As though there is no secret grave to fear,
Where day and night, in heat and in cold bent,
I must await the Final Judgment.
x x x
I was born not late and not early,
This time is blessed and meet,
Only God did not allow a h...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
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