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Famous Detestable Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Cavafy, Constantine P
...er
to see a statue of ivory and gold
than a clay and vulgar one in a large temple".--

The "clay" and "vulgar"; the detestable:
that already some people (without enough training)
it deceives knavishly. The clay and vulgar....Read more of this...



by St Vincent Millay, Edna
...(On reflecting that the world 
 is ready to go to war again)

Detestable race, continue to expunge yourself, die out.
Breed faster, crowd, encroach, sing hymns, build 
 bombing airplanes;
Make speeches, unveil statues, issue bonds, parade;
Convert again into explosives the bewildered ammonia 
and the distracted cellulose;
Convert again into putrescent matter drawing flies
The hopeful bodies of the young; exhort,
Pr...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...ard, so too--too high:
Only I pray, as fairest boon, to die,
Or be deliver'd from this cumbrous flesh,
From this gross, detestable, filthy mesh,
And merely given to the cold bleak air.
Have mercy, Goddess! Circe, feel my prayer!"

 That curst magician's name fell icy numb
Upon my wild conjecturing: truth had come
Naked and sabre-like against my heart.
I saw a fury whetting a death-dart;
And my slain spirit, overwrought with fright,
Fainted away in that dark lair of ni...Read more of this...

by Browning, Robert
...urself: 
You don't like what you only like too much, 
You do like what, if given you at your word, 
You find abundantly detestable. 
For me, I think I speak as I was taught; 
I always see the garden and God there 
A-making man's wife: and, my lesson learned, 
The value and significance of flesh, 
I can't unlearn ten minutes afterwards. 
You understand me: I'm a beast, I know. 
But see, now--why, I see as certainly 
As that the morning-star's about to shine, 
What ...Read more of this...

by Khayyam, Omar
...I know not at all whether He who created me belongs
to a delicious Paradise or a detestable Hell. [But I do
know] that a cup of wine, a charming girl and a zither
at the edge of a green field are three things which I enjoy
at present, and that you will find them in the promise
that is made you of a future Paradise.
302...Read more of this...



by Stevens, Wallace
...the sun does every day, 

Until we say to ourselves that there may be 
A pensive nature, a mechanical 
And slightly detestable operandum, free 

From man's ghost, larger and yet a little like, 
Without his literature and without his gods . . . 
No doubt we live beyond ourselves in air, 

In an element that does not do for us, 
so well, that which we do for ourselves, too big, 
A thing not planned for imagery or belief, 

Not one of the masculine myth...Read more of this...

by Hope, Alec Derwent (A D)
...e following runic inscription (about A.D. 1050) cut on it: I loved her as a maiden; I will not trouble Erlend's detestable wife; better she should be a widow. 

Words scored upon a bone, 
Scratched in despair or rage -- 
Nine hundred years have gone; 
Now, in another age, 
They burn with passion on 
A scholar's tranquil page.

The scholar takes his pen 
And turns the bone about, 
And writes those words again. 
Once more they seethe and shout 
And through a...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...met, thou call'st 
Me father, and that phantasm call'st my son. 
I know thee not, nor ever saw till now 
Sight more detestable than him and thee." 
 T' whom thus the Portress of Hell-gate replied:-- 
"Hast thou forgot me, then; and do I seem 
Now in thine eye so foul?--once deemed so fair 
In Heaven, when at th' assembly, and in sight 
Of all the Seraphim with thee combined 
In bold conspiracy against Heaven's King, 
All on a sudden miserable pain 
Surprised thee, dim...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...arth: but you--she's yet a colt-- 
Take, break her: strongly groomed and straitly curbed 
She might not rank with those detestable 
That let the bantling scald at home, and brawl 
Their rights and wrongs like potherbs in the street. 
They say she's comely; there's the fairer chance: 
~I~ like her none the less for rating at her! 
Besides, the woman wed is not as we, 
But suffers change of frame. A lusty brace 
Of twins may weed her of her folly. Boy, 
The bearing ...Read more of this...

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