Famous Deceived Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Veteran Sirens

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 The ghost of Ninon would be sorry now 
To laugh at them, were she to see them here, 
So brave and so alert for learning how 
To fence with reason for another year. 

Age offers a far comelier diadem
Than theirs; but anguish has no eye for grace, 
When time’s malicious mercy cautions them 
To think a while of number...Read more of this...

Four Quartets 2: East Coker

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 I

In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and...Read more of this...

The Explanation

by Rudyard Kipling
 Love and Death once ceased their strife
At the Tavern of Man's Life.
Called for wine, and threw -- alas! --
Each his quiver on the grass.
When the bout was o'er they found
Mingled arrows strewed the ground.
Hastily they gathered then
Each the loves and lives of men.
Ah, the fateful dawn deceived!
Mingled arrows each one sheaved;
Death's dread armoury was stored
With the shafts he most...Read more of this...

Sonnets xv

by William Shakespeare
 TO me, fair friend, you never can be old; 
For as you were when first your eye I eyed, 
Such seems your beauty still. Three Winters cold 
Have from the forests shook three Summers' pride; 
Three beauteous springs to yellow Autumn turn'd 
In process of the seasons have I seen, 
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd, 
Since...Read more of this...

The God Abandons Antony

by Constantine P Cavafy
 When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don't mourn your luck that's failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive -- don't mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don't fool yourself, don't say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don't degrade...Read more of this...

Malay Song

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   When first I loved, I gave my very soul
   Utterly unreserved to Love's control,
   But Love deceived me, wrenched my youth away
   And made the gold of life for ever grey.
   Long I lived lonely, yet I tried in vain
   With any other Joy to stifle pain;
...Read more of this...

Leffingwell

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 I—THE LURE

No, no,—forget your Cricket and your Ant, 
For I shall never set my name to theirs 
That now bespeak the very sons and heirs 
Incarnate of Queen Gossip and King Cant. 
The case of Leffingwell is mixed, I grant,
And futile Seems the burden that he bears; 
But are we sounding his forlorn affairs 
Who brand him parasite and...Read more of this...

The Trap

by Vachel Lindsay
 She was taught desire in the street, 
Not at the angels' feet. 
By the good no word was said 
Of the worth of the bridal bed. 
The secret was learned from the vile, 
Not from her mother's smile. 
Home spoke not. And the girl 
Was caught in the public whirl. 
Do you say "She gave consent: 
Life drunk, she...Read more of this...

Lights Out

by Edward Thomas
 I have come to the borders of sleep, 
The unfathomable deep 
Forest where all must lose 
Their way, however straight, 
Or winding, soon or late; 
They cannot choose.

Many a road and track 
That, since the dawn's first crack, 
Up to the forest brink, 
Deceived the travellers, 
Suddenly now blurs, 
And in they sink.

Here love ends, 
Despair, ambition ends, 
All...Read more of this...

Cornflowers

by Victor Hugo
 ("Tandis que l'étoile inodore.") 
 
 {XXXII.} 


 While bright but scentless azure stars 
 Be-gem the golden corn, 
 And spangle with their skyey tint 
 The furrows not yet shorn; 
 While still the pure white tufts of May 
 Ape each a snowy ball,— 
 Away, ye merry maids, and haste 
 To gather ere they...Read more of this...

Hanchen the Maid of the Mill

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Near the village of Udorf, on the banks of the Rhine,
There lived a miller and his family, once on a time;
And there yet stands the mill in a state of decay,
And concerning the miller and his family, attend to my lay. 

The miller and his family went to Church one Sunday morn,
Leaving behind their darling child, the youngest born,
In...Read more of this...

Sonnet LXI

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LXI. Io non fu' d' amar voi lassato unquanco. UNLESS LAURA RELENT, HE IS RESOLVED TO ABANDON HER.  Yet was I never of your love aggrieved,Nor never shall while that my life doth last:But of hating myself, that date is past;And tears continual sore have me wearied:I will not yet...Read more of this...

The Land Of Fable

by Victor Hugo
 ("L'Orient! qu'y voyez-vous, poëtes?") 
 
 {PRELUDE, b.} 


 Now, vot'ries of the Muses, turn your eyes, 
 Unto the East, and say what there appears! 
 "Alas!" the voice of Poesy replies, 
 "Mystic's that light between the hemispheres!" 
 
 "Yes, dread's the mystic light in yonder heaven— 
 Dull is the gleam behind the distant hill;...Read more of this...

A Sunset of the City

by Gwendolyn Brooks
 Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love.
My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls,
Are gone from the house.
My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite
And night is night.

It is a real chill out,
The genuine thing.
I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer
Because sun stays and birds...Read more of this...

Fragments

by Alan Seeger
 In that fair capital where Pleasure, crowned 
Amidst her myriad courtiers, riots and rules, 
I too have been a suitor. Radiant eyes 
Were my life's warmth and sunshine, outspread arms 
My gilded deep horizons. I rejoiced 
In yielding to all amorous influence 
And multiple impulsion of the flesh, 
To feel within my being surge and sway 
The force that...Read more of this...

Gods Funeral

by Thomas Hardy
 I 
I saw a slowly-stepping train --
Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar --
Following in files across a twilit plain
A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.

II 
And by contagious throbs of thought
Or latent knowledge that within me lay
And had already stirred me, I was wrought
To consciousness of sorrow even as they.

III 
The fore-borne shape, to my...Read more of this...

Sonnet XXVIII: To Such As Say

by Michael Drayton
 To such as say thy love I overprize, 
And do not stick to term my praises folly, 
Against these folks, that think themselves so wise, 
I thus oppose my Reason's forces wholly, 
Though I give more than well affords my state, 
In which expense the most suppose me vain, 
Which yields them nothing at the easiest rate, 
Yet at...Read more of this...

Autobiography

by Nazim Hikmet
 I was born in 1902
I never once went back to my birthplace
I don't like to turn back
at three I served as a pasha's grandson in Aleppo
at nineteen as a student at Moscow Communist University
at forty-nine I was back in Moscow as the Tcheka Party's guest
and I've been a poet since I was fourteen
some people know all about plants some...Read more of this...

Reaping

by Amy Lowell
 You want to know what's the matter with me, do yer?
My! ain't men blinder'n moles?
It ain't nothin' new, be sure o' that.
Why, ef you'd had eyes you'd ha' seed
Me changin' under your very nose,
Each day a little diff'rent.
But you never see nothin', you don't.
Don't touch me, Jake,
Don't you dars't to touch me,
I ain't in no humour.
That's what's come over...Read more of this...

Sonnet XCIII

by William Shakespeare
 So shall I live, supposing thou art true,
Like a deceived husband; so love's face
May still seem love to me, though alter'd new;
Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place:
For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
Therefore in that I cannot know thy change.
In many's looks the false heart's history
Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange,
But...Read more of this...

Mementos

by Charlotte Bronte
 ARRANGING long-locked drawers and shelves 
Of cabinets, shut up for years, 
What a strange task we've set ourselves ! 
How still the lonely room appears ! 
How strange this mass of ancient treasures, 
Mementos of past pains and pleasures; 
These volumes, clasped with costly stone, 
With print all faded, gilding gone; 

These fans of leaves, from Indian trees­ 
These...Read more of this...

Rhymed Distichs

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 RHYMED DISTICHS.

[The Distichs, of which these are given as a 
specimen, are about forty in number.]

WHO trusts in God,
Fears not His rod.

THIS truth may be by all believed:
Whom God deceives, is well deceived.

HOW? when? and where?--No answer comes from high;
Thou wait'st for the Because, and yet thou ask'st not Why?

IF the whole is ever to gladden thee,
That whole in...Read more of this...

And Doth Not a Meeting Like This

by Thomas Moore
 And doth not a meeting like this make amends 
For all the long years I've been wandering away -- 
To see thus around me my youth's early friends, 
As smiling and kind as in that happy day? 
Though haply o'er some of your brows, as o'er mine, 
The snow -- fall of time may be stealing -- what then?...Read more of this...

An Old Man

by Constantine P Cavafy
 At the back of the noisy café
bent over a table sits an old man;
a newspaper in front of him, without company.

And in the scorn of his miserable old age
he ponders how little he enjoyed the years
when he had strength, and the power of the word, and good looks.

He knows he has aged much; he feels it, he sees it.
And...Read more of this...

To A World-Reformer

by Friedrich von Schiller
 "I Have sacrificed all," thou sayest, "that man I might succor;
Vain the attempt; my reward was persecution and hate."
Shall I tell thee, my friend, how I to humor him manage?
Trust the proverb! I ne'er have been deceived by it yet.
Thou canst not sufficiently prize humanity's value;
Let it be coined in deed as it exists in thy breast.
E'en to the...Read more of this...

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