Famous Cringing Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Punisher

by D. H. Lawrence
 I have fetched the tears up out of the little wells,
Scooped them up with small, iron words,
Dripping over the runnels. 

The harsh, cold wind of my words drove on, and still
I watched the tears on the guilty cheek of the boys
Glitter and spill. 

Cringing Pity, and Love, white-handed, came
Hovering about the Judgment which stood in my eyes,
Whirling a flame.

....Read more of this...

An American

by Rudyard Kipling
 If the Led Striker call it a strike,
 Or the papers call it a war,
They know not much what I am like,
 Nor what he is, My Avatar.

Throuh many roads, by me possessed,
 He shambles forth in cosmic guise;
He is the Jester and the Jest,
 And he the Text himself applies.

The Celt is in his heart and hand,
 The...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXXXI

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LXXXI. Cesare, poi che 'l traditor d' Egitto. THE COUNTENANCE DOES NOT ALWAYS TRULY INDICATE THE HEART.  When Egypt's traitor Pompey's honour'd headTo Cæsar sent; then, records so relate,To shroud a gladness manifestly great,Some feigned tears the specious monarch shed:And, when misfortune her dark mantle spreadO'er Hannibal, and his...Read more of this...

The Secret People

by G K Chesterton
 Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget;
For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet.
There is many a fat farmer that drinks less cheerfully,
There is many a free French peasant who is richer and sadder than we.
There are no folk in the whole world so helpless or so wise.
There is hunger...Read more of this...

The Beasts Confession

by Jonathan Swift
 To the Priest, on Observing how most Men mistake their own Talents
When beasts could speak (the learned say, 
They still can do so ev'ry day),
It seems, they had religion then,
As much as now we find in men.
It happen'd, when a plague broke out
(Which therefore made them more devout),
The king of brutes (to make it plain,
Of quadrupeds I only mean)
By...Read more of this...

The Price of Peace

by Henry Van Dyke
 Peace without Justice is a low estate,--
A coward cringing to an iron Fate!
But Peace through Justice is the great ideal,--
We'll pay the price of war to make it real....Read more of this...

The Shroud of Color

by Countee Cullen
 "Lord, being dark," I said, "I cannot bear
The further touch of earth, the scented air;
Lord, being dark, forewilled to that despair
My color shrouds me in, I am as dirt
Beneath my brother's heel; there is a hurt
In all the simple joys which to a child
Are sweet; they are contaminate, defiled
By truths of wrongs the childish vision fails
To see; too great...Read more of this...

Munition Maker

by Robert William Service
 I am the Cannon King, behold!
I perish on a throne of gold.
With forest far and turret high,
Renowned and rajah-rich am I.
My father was, and his before,
With wealth we owe to war on war;
But let no potentate be proud . . .
There are no pockets in a shroud. 

By nature I am mild and kind,
To gentleness and ruth inclined;
And though...Read more of this...

On The Boulevard

by Robert William Service
 Oh, it's pleasant sitting here,
Seeing all the people pass;
You beside your bock of beer,
I behind my demi-tasse.
Chatting of no matter what.
You the Mummer, I the Bard;
Oh, it's jolly, is it not? --
Sitting on the Boulevard.

More amusing than a book,
If a chap has eyes to see;
For, no matter where I look,
Stories, stories jump at me.
Moving tales my pen might write;
Poems...Read more of this...

Monologue of a Mother

by D. H. Lawrence
 This is the last of all, this is the last!
I must hold my hands, and turn my face to the fire, 
I must watch my dead days fusing together in dross, 
Shape after shape, and scene after scene from my past
Fusing to one dead mass in the sinking fire
Where the ash on the dying coals grows swiftly, like heavy...Read more of this...

God

by Isaac Rosenberg
 In his malodorous brain what slugs and mire,
Lanthorned in his oblique eyes, guttering burned!
His body lodged a rat where men nursed souls.
The world flashed grape-green eyes of a foiled cat
To him. On fragments of an old shrunk power,
On shy and maimed, on women wrung awry,
He lay, a bullying hulk, to crush them more.
But when one, fearless, turned and clawed...Read more of this...

Faces

by Walt Whitman
 1
SAUNTERING the pavement, or riding the country by-road—lo! such faces! 
Faces of friendship, precision, caution, suavity, ideality; 
The spiritual, prescient face—the always welcome, common, benevolent face, 
The face of the singing of music—the grand faces of natural lawyers and judges, broad
 at
 the
 back-top; 
The faces of hunters and fishers, bulged at the brows—the shaved blanch’d faces
 of
 orthodox...Read more of this...

Psalm 50

by Isaac Watts
 The last judgment.

The Lord, the Sovereign, sends his summons forth,
Calls the south nations and awakes the north;
From east to west the sounding orders spread,
Through distant worlds and regions of the dead:
No more shall atheists mock his long delay;
His vengeance sleeps no more: behold the day!

Behold, the Judge descends, his guards are nigh;
Tempest and fire attend him down the sky:
Heav'n,...Read more of this...

Ariosto. Orlando Furioso Canto X 91-99

by Alan Seeger
 Ruggiero, to amaze the British host, 
And wake more wonder in their wondering ranks, 
The bridle of his winged courser loosed, 
And clapped his spurs into the creature's flanks; 
High in the air, even to the topmost banks 
Of crudded cloud, uprose the flying horse, 
And now above the Welsh, and now the Manx, 
And now across the sea...Read more of this...

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