Famous Cunning Poems by Famous Poets

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

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War Song

by John Davidson
 In anguish we uplift 
A new unhallowed song: 
The race is to the swift; 
The battle to the strong. 

Of old it was ordained 
That we, in packs like curs, 
Some thirty million trained 
And licensed murderers, 

In crime should live and act, 
If cunning folk say sooth 
Who flay the naked fact 
And carve the heart of truth....Read more of this...

All overgrown by cunning moss

by Emily Dickinson
 All overgrown by cunning moss,
All interspersed with weed,
The little cage of "Currer Bell"
In quiet "Haworth" laid.

Gathered from many wanderings --
Gethsemane can tell
Thro' what transporting anguish
She reached the Asphodel!

Soft falls the sounds of Eden
Upon her puzzled ear --
Oh what an afternoon for Heaven,
When "Bronte" entered there!...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXLVIII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXLVIII. Amor fra l' orbe una leggiadra rete. HE COMPARES HIMSELF TO A BIRD CAUGHT IN A NET.  Love 'mid the grass beneath a laurel green—The plant divine which long my flame has fed,Whose shade for me less bright than sad is seen—A cunning net of gold and pearls had spread:Read more of this...

242. The Poet's Progress

by Robert Burns
 THOU, Nature, partial Nature, I arraign;
Of thy caprice maternal I complain.
 The peopled fold thy kindly care have found,
The hornèd bull, tremendous, spurns the ground;
The lordly lion has enough and more,
The forest trembles at his very roar;
Thou giv’st the ass his hide, the snail his shell,
The puny wasp, victorious, guards his cell.
Thy minions, kings defend, controul devour,
In all th’...Read more of this...

Perch-Fishing

by Edmund Blunden
On the far hill the cloud of thunder grew
And sunlight blurred below; but sultry blue
Burned yet on the valley water where it hoards
Behind the miller's elmen floodgate boards,
And there the wasps, that lodge them ill-concealed
In the vole's empty house, still drove afield
To plunder touchwood from old crippled trees
And build their young ones their hutched nurseries;
Still creaked the grasshoppers' rasping unison
Nor...Read more of this...

The three tailors

by Eugene Field
 I shall tell you in rhyme how, once on a time,
Three tailors tramped up to the inn Ingleheim,
On the Rhine, lovely Rhine;
They were broke, but the worst of it all, they were curst
With that malady common to tailors--a thirst
For wine, lots of wine.

"Sweet host," quoth the three, "we're hard up as can be,
Yet skilled in the practice of cunning...Read more of this...

The True Encounter

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 "Wolf!" cried my cunning heart
At every sheep it spied,
And roused the countryside.

"Wolf! Wolf!"—and up would start
Good neighbours, bringing spade
And pitchfork to my aid.

At length my cry was known:
Therein lay my release.
I met the wolf alone
And was devoured in peace....Read more of this...

The Satin Dress

by Dorothy Parker
 Needle, needle, dip and dart,
Thrusting up and down,
Where's the man could ease a heart
Like a satin gown?

See the stitches curve and crawl
Round the cunning seams-
Patterns thin and sweet and small
As a lady's dreams.

Wantons go in bright brocade;
Brides in organdie;
Gingham's for the plighted maid;
Satin's for the free!

Wool's to line a miser's chest;
Crepe's to calm the old;
Velvet hides an empty breast
Satin's...Read more of this...

The bow-leg boy

by Eugene Field
 Who should come up the road one day
But the doctor-man in his two-wheel shay!
And he whoaed his horse and he cried "Ahoy!
I have brought you folks a bow-leg boy!
Such a cute little boy!
Such a funny little boy!
Such a dear little bow-leg boy!"

He took out his box and he opened it wide,
And there was the bow-leg boy inside!
And when they...Read more of this...

At The Executed Murderers Grave

by James Wright
 for J.L.D.

Why should we do this? What good is it to us? Above all,
how can we do such a thing? How can it possibly be done?

 --Freud

1.
My name is James A. Wright, and I was born
Twenty-five miles from this infected grave,
In Martins Ferry, Ohio, where one slave
To Hazel-Atlas Glass became my father.
He tried to teach me kindness. I return
Only...Read more of this...

Constancy In Change

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 COULD this early bliss but rest

Constant for one single hour!
But e'en now the humid West

Scatters many a vernal shower.
Should the verdure give me joy?

'Tis to it I owe the shade;
Soon will storms its bloom destroy,

Soon will Autumn bid it fade.

Eagerly thy portion seize,

If thou wouldst possess the fruit!
Fast begin to ripen these,

And the rest already shoot.
With each heavy storm...Read more of this...

I breathed enough to take the Trick

by Emily Dickinson
 I breathed enough to take the Trick --
And now, removed from Air --
I simulate the Breath, so well --
That One, to be quite sure --

The Lungs are stirless -- must descend
Among the Cunning Cells --
And touch the Pantomine -- Himself,
How numb, the Bellows feels!...Read more of this...

Let Us play Yesterday --

by Emily Dickinson
 Let Us play Yesterday --
I -- the Girl at school --
You -- and Eternity -- the
Untold Tale --

Easing my famine
At my Lexicon --
Logarithm -- had I -- for Drink --
'Twas a dry Wine --

Somewhat different -- must be --
Dreams tint the Sleep --
Cunning Reds of Morning
Make the Blind -- leap --

Still at the Egg-life --
Chafing the Shell --
When you...Read more of this...

Mrs Frances Hariss Petition

by Jonathan Swift
 To their Excellencies the Lords Justices of Ireland,
The humble petition of Frances Harris,
Who must starve and die a maid if it miscarries;
Humble sheweth, that I went to warm myself in Lady Betty's chamber, because I 
was cold;
And I had in a purse seven pounds, four shillings, and sixpence, (besides 
farthings) in money and gold;
So because I had been buying...Read more of this...

Sonnet X: Reason

by Sir Philip Sidney
 Reason, in faith thou art well serv'd, that still 
Wouldst brabbling be with sense and love in me: 
I rather wish'd thee climb the Muses' hill, 
Or reach the fruit of Nature's choicest tree, 

Or seek heav'n's course, or heav'n's inside to see: 
Why shouldst thou toil our thorny soil to till? 
Leave sense, and those which sense's objects...Read more of this...

Poem 90

by Edmund Spenser
 IN youth before I waxed old.
The blynd boy Venus baby,
For want of cunning made me bold,
In bitter byue to grope for honny.
But when he saw me stung and cry,
He tooke his wings and away did fly.
As Diane hunted on a day,
She chaunst to come where Cupid lay,
his quiuer by his head:
One of his shafts she stole away,
And one of...Read more of this...

Sonnet C

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET C. Poi che 'l cammin m' è chiuso di mercede. THOUGH FAR FROM LAURA, SOLITARY AND UNHAPPY, ENVY STILL PURSUES HIM.  Since mercy's door is closed, alas! to me,And hopeless paths my poor life separateFrom her in whom, I know not by what fate,The guerdon lay of all my constancy,My...Read more of this...

LAllegro

by John Milton
 Hence, loathed Melancholy,
............Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born
In Stygian cave forlorn
............'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights
unholy!
Find out some uncouth cell,
............Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-raven sings;
............There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks,
As ragged as thy locks,
............In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
But come, thou Goddess fair and free,
In heaven yclept Euphrosyne,
And by men heart-easing Mirth;
Whom lovely...Read more of this...

The Four Zoas (excerpt)

by William Blake
 'What is the price of Experience? do men buy it for a song? 
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children.
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy,
And in the wither'd field where the farmer plows for...Read more of this...

The wooing of the southland

by Eugene Field
 (ALASKAN BALLAD)

The Northland reared his hoary head
And spied the Southland leagues away--
"Fairest of all fair brides," he said,
"Be thou my bride, I pray!"

Whereat the Southland laughed and cried:
"I'll bide beside my native sea,
And I shall never be thy bride
Till thou com'st wooing me!"

The Northland's heart was a heart of ice,
A diamond glacier, mountain high--
Oh, love is sweet at any...Read more of this...

Worm Either Way

by D. H. Lawrence
 If you live along with all the other people 
and are just like them, and conform, and are nice 
you're just a worm -- 

and if you live with all the other people 
and you don't like them and won't be like them and won't conform 
then you're just the worm that has turned, 
in either case, a worm....Read more of this...

A Spiritual Woman

by D. H. Lawrence
 Close your eyes, my love, let me make you blind; 
 They have taught you to see 
Only a mean arithmetic on the face of things, 
A cunning algebra in the faces of men, 
 And God like geometry 
Completing his circles, and working cleverly. 

I'll kiss you over the eyes till I kiss you blind; 
 If I...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXIV

by William Shakespeare
 Mine eye hath play'd the painter and hath stell'd
Thy beauty's form in table of my heart;
My body is the frame wherein 'tis held,
And perspective it is the painter's art.
For through the painter must you see his skill,
To find where your true image pictured lies;
Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still,
That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes.
Now see...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXXXIX

by William Shakespeare
 O, call not me to justify the wrong
That thy unkindness lays upon my heart;
Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue;
Use power with power and slay me not by art.
Tell me thou lovest elsewhere, but in my sight,
Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside:
What need'st thou wound with cunning when thy might
Is more than my o'er-press'd...Read more of this...

Gilded Gold

by Francis Thompson
 Thou dost to rich attire a grace,
To let it deck itself with thee,
And teachest pomp strange cunning ways
To be thought simplicity.
But lilies, stolen from grassy mold,
No more curled state unfold
Translated to a vase of gold;
In burning throne though they keep still
Serenities unthawed and chill.
Therefore, albeit thou'rt stately so,
In statelier state thou us'dst to go.

Though jewels should phosphoric burn
Through those...Read more of this...

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