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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Cocoon For A Skeleton

...thes: 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...
by Tessimond, A S J


Poem (Faithful to your commands o consciousness)

...ur 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 to the peak or dune-like moon of no return

So that everything is or seems to have become nothing, or of no genuine import...Read more of this...
by Schwartz, Delmore

Prelude To "the Songs Of Twilight."

...n! 
 
 Creed, hope, anticipation and despair, 
 Are but a mingling, as of day and night; 
 The globe, surrounded by deceptive air, 
 Is all enveloped in the same half-light. 
 
 And voice is deadened by the evening breeze, 
 The shepherd's song, or maiden's in her bower, 
 Mix with the rustling of the neighboring trees, 
 Within whose foliage is lulled the power. 
 
 Yet all unites! The winding path that leads 
 Thro' fields where verdure meets the trav'ller's ey...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor

Story

...stened to my wife's story on the phone
I knew I'd take it from her, tell it
every which way until it had an order
and a deceptive period at the end. That's what
I always do in the face of helplessness,
make some arrangements if I can.

Praise the odd, serendipitous world.
Nothing I'd be inclined to think of
would have stopped that dog.
Only the facts saved her....Read more of this...
by Dunn, Stephen

The Artists

...ng she hovers here
Around her darling, near the senses' land,
And on his prison-walls so drear
Elysium paints with fond deceptive hand.

While soft humanity still lay at rest,
Within her tender arms extended,
No flame was stirred by bigots' murderous zest,
No guiltless blood on high ascended.
The heart that she in gentle fetters binds,
Views duty's slavish escort scornfully;
Her path of light, though fairer far it winds,
Sinks in the sun-track of morality.
Those who in her ch...Read more of this...
by Schiller, Friedrich von


The God Abandons Antony

...oing 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 yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who were given this...Read more of this...
by Cavafy, Constantine P

The Snakes of September

...uld have thought them gone, 
in a torpor of blood 
slipped to the nether world 
before the sickle frost.
Not so. In the deceptive balm
of noon, as if defiant of the curse 
that spoiled another garden,
these two appear on show
through a narrow slit
in the dense green brocade 
of a north-country spruce,
dangling head-down, entwined
in a brazen love-knot.
I put out my hand and stroke
the fine, dry grit of their skins. 
After all,
we are partners in this land, 
co-signers of a co...Read more of this...
by Kunitz, Stanley

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