Famous Culprit Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Before

...
Leaving right and wrong to settle the embroilment,
Heaven with snaky hell, in torture and entoilment?

III.

Who's the culprit of them? How must he conceive
God---the queen he caps to, laughing in his sleeve,
`` 'Tis but decent to profess oneself beneath her:
``Still, one must not be too much in earnest, either!''

IV.

Better sin the whole sin, sure that God observes;
Then go live his life out! Life will try his nerves,
When the sky, which noticed all, makes no disclosure,
...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert


March

...at never sleep!

All doors are flung open -- in stable and in cowbarn;
Pigeons peck at oats fallen in the snow;
And the culprit of all this and its life-begetter--
The pile of manure -- is pungent with ozone....Read more of this...
by Pasternak, Boris

MFingal - Canto III

...first did
To aid philosophy get hoisted,
And found his thoughts flow strangely clear,
Swung in a basket in mid air:
Our culprit thus, in purer sky,
With like advantage raised his eye,
And looking forth in prospect wide,
His Tory errors clearly spied,
And from his elevated station,
With bawling voice began addressing.


"Good Gentlemen and friends and kin,
For heaven's sake hear, if not for mine!
I here renounce the Pope, the Turks,
The King, the Devil and all their works;
And...Read more of this...
by Trumbull, John

Nepenthe

...spread 
Restored me to the Eden I had lost.
Never a word of cold reproof,
No sharp reproach, no glances that accuse
The culprit whom they hold aloof, --
Ah, 't is not thus that other women use
The power they have Won!
For there is none like you, belovèd, -- none 
Secure enough to do what you have done. 
Where did you learn this heavenly art, --
You sweetest and most wise of all that live, --
With silent welcome to impart
Assurance of the royal heart
That never questions where...Read more of this...
by Dyke, Henry Van

Snowbound a Winter Idyl

...Its record, mingling in a breath 
The wedding bell and dirge of death: 
Jest, anecdote, and love-lorn tale, 
The latest culprit sent to jail; 
Its hue and cry of stolen and lost, 
Its vendue sales and goods at cost, 
And traffic calling loud for gain. 
We felt the stir of hall and street, 
The pulse of life that round us beat; 
The chill embargo of the snow 
Was melted in the genial glow; 
Wide swung again our ice-locked door, 
And all the world was ours once more! 

Clasp, A...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf


Spensers Ireland

...place as kind as it is green,
the greenest place I've never seen.
Every name is a tune.
Denunciations do not affect
the culprit; nor blows, but it
is torture to him to not be spoken to.
They're natural,--
the coat, like Venus'
mantle lined with stars,
buttoned close at the neck,-the sleeves new from disuse.

If in Ireland
they play the harp backward at need,
and gather at midday the seed
of the fern, eluding
their "giants all covered with iron," might
there be fern seed for u...Read more of this...
by Moore, Marianne

Surgeons must be very careful

...Surgeons must be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the Culprit -- Life!...Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily

The Prisoner

...Upspoke the culprit at the bar,
 Conducting his own case:
'Your Lordship, I have gone to far,
 But grant me of your grace.
As I was passing by a shop
 I saw my arm go out,
And though I begged of it to stop,
 It stole beyond a doubt.

'But why should my whole body be
 Condemned to dungeon grim,
For what in fact was only the
 Transgression of a limb?
So here before the Co...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

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