Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Derelict Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Hill, Geoffrey
...to
the old quarries, and flayed him. Then, leaving Ceolred, he journeyed
for hours, calm and alone, in his private derelict sandlorry named
Albion....Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...publicly, 
I give fair warning, once for all. 

I own that I have been sly, thievish, mean, a prevaricator, greedy, derelict,
And I own that I remain so yet. 

What foul thought but I think it—or have in me the stuff out of which it is thought? 
What in darkness in bed at night, alone or with a companion?...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...grace. 
And his hard smile, are with me still, 
Deplore the vision as I will; 
For whatsoever he be at, 
So droll a derelict as that
Should have at least another hat....Read more of this...

by Justice, Donald
...buried before it could be born.

4
Burchfield describes the pinched white souls of violets
Frothing the mouth of a derelict old mine
Just as an evil August night comes down,
All umber, but for one smudge of dusky carmine.
It is the sky of a peculiar sadness—
The other side perhaps of some rare gladness.

5
What is it to be happy, after all? Think
Of the first small joys. Think of how our parents
Would whistle as they packed for the long summers,
Or, busy abou...Read more of this...

by John, David St
...d understand, & even love; & so, I spent hours
Walking the back streets of Trastevere looking in the most

Forbidding & derelict shops for some element of ash
She’d never seen before. It may seem odd to you, now,
But this was the single ambition of my life. Finally.

I had to give it up; I'd failed. She knew them all. So,
To celebrate our few months together, I gave her
Before we parted one night a necklace with a huge fake

Ruby. She slipped it immedi...Read more of this...



by Service, Robert William
...I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May".
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I h...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...beards were sadly gray,
And Marie Toro's name became an echo of the past.

You know that old and withered man, that derelict of art,
Who for a paltry franc will make a crayon sketch of you?
In slouching hat and shabby cloak he looks and is the part,
A sodden old Bohemian, without a single sou.
A boon companion of the days of Rimbaud and Verlaine,
He broods and broods, and chews the cud of bitter souvenirs;
Beneath his mop of grizzled hair his cheeks are gouged with pa...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...And reports the derelict Mary Pollock still at sea.
 SHIPPING NEWS.


 I was the staunchest of our fleet
 Till the sea rose beneath our feet
Unheralded, in hatred past all measure.
 Into his pits he stamped my crew,
 Buffeted, blinded, bound and threw,
Bidding me eyeless wait upon his pleasure.

 Man made me, and my will
 Is to my maker still,
Whom now the c...Read more of this...

by Brooks, Gwendolyn
...thy?
Perhaps just not too dirty nor too dim
Nor--passionate. In truth, what they could wish
Is--something less than derelict or dull.
Not staunch enough to stab, though, gaze for gaze!
God shield them sharply from the beggar-bold!
The noxious needy ones whose battle's bald
Nonetheless for being voiceless, hits one down.
But it's all so bad! and entirely too much for them.
The stench; the urine, cabbage, and dead beans,
Dead porridges of assorted dusty grains,
...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...lashing forward,
 droned them--
Drowned my Seven Cities and their peoples in one night!

Low among the alders lie their derelict foundations,
The beams wherein they trusted and the plinths whereon they
 built--
 My rulers and their treasure and their unborn populations,
 Dead, destroyed, aborted, and defiled with mud and silt!

The Daughters of the Palace whom they cherished in my Cities,
My silver-tongued Princesses, and the promise of their May--
Their bridegrooms of the Ju...Read more of this...

by McCrae, John
...Ye have sung me your songs, ye have chanted your rimes
(I scorn your beguiling, O sea!)
Ye fondle me now, but to strike me betimes.
(A treacherous lover, the sea!)
Once I saw as I lay, half-awash in the night
A hull in the gloom -- a quick hail -- and a light
And I lurched o'er to leeward and saved her for spite
From the doom that ye meted to me.

...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Derelict poems.


Book: Reflection on the Important Things