Famous Deceptive Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Prelude To "the Songs Of Twilight."

by Victor Hugo
 ("De quel non te nommer?") 
 
 {PRELUDE, a, Oct. 20, 1835.} 


 How shall I note thee, line of troubled years, 
 Which mark existence in our little span? 
 One constant twilight in the heaven appears— 
 One constant twilight in the mind of man! 
 
 Creed, hope, anticipation and despair, 
 Are but a mingling,...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...

Poem (Faithful to your commands o consciousness)

by Delmore Schwartz
 Poem Faithful to your commands, o consciousness, o 

Beating wings, I studied

the roses and the muses of reality,

the deceptions and the deceptive elation of the redness of the growing morning,

and all the greened and thomed variety of the vines of error, which begin by promising

Everything and more than everything, and then suddenly,

At the height of noon seem to rise...Read more of this...

Story

by Stephen Dunn
 A woman's taking her late-afternoon walk
on Chestnut where no sidewalk exists
and houses with gravel driveways
sit back among the pines. Only the house
with the vicious dog is close to the road.
An electric fence keeps him in check.
When she comes to that house, the woman
always crosses to the other side.

I'm the woman's husband. It's a problem
loving your protagonist too much.
Soon the...Read more of this...

Cocoon For A Skeleton

by A S J Tessimond
 Clothes: to compose
The furtive, lone
Pillar of bone
To some repose.

To let hands shirk
Utterance behind
A pocket's blind
Deceptive smirk.

To mask, belie
The undue haste
Of breast for breast
Or thigh for thigh.

To screen, conserve
The pose, when death
Half strips the sheath
And leaves the nerve.

To edit, glose
Lyric desire
And slake its fire
In polished prose....Read more of this...

The Snakes of September

by Stanley Kunitz
 All summer I heard them 
rustling in the shrubbery, 
outracing me from tier 
to tier in my garden,
a whisper among the viburnums, 
a signal flashed from the hedgerow,
a shadow pulsing 
in the barberry thicket.
Now that the nights are chill 
and the annuals spent,
I should have thought them gone, 
in a torpor of blood 
slipped to the nether world 
before...Read more of this...

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