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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Apostrophe To Man

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 (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,
Pray, pull long...Read more of this...

Apollonius Of Tyana In Rhodes

by Constantine P Cavafy
 Apollonius was talking about
proper education and conduct with a young
man who was building a luxurious
house in Rhodes. "As for me" said the Tyanian
at last, "when I enter a temple
however small it may be, I very much prefer
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...Read more of this...

I know not at all whether He who created me belongs

by Omar Khayyam
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...Read more of this...

Looking Across the Fields and Watching the Birds Fly

by Wallace Stevens
Among the more irritating minor ideas 
Of Mr. Homburg during his visits home 
To Concord, at the edge of things, was this: 
To think away the grass, the trees, the clouds, 
Not to transform them into other things, 
Is only what the sun does every day, 

Until we say to ourselves that there may be 
A pensive nature, a mechanical...Read more of this...

The Faerie Queene: Book I Canto I

by Edmund Spenser
Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,
As time her taught in lowly Shepheards weeds,
Am now enforst a far unfitter taske,
For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,
And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds;
Whose prayses having slept in silence long,
Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds
To blazon broad emongst her learned throng:
Fierce warres and faithful loves shall...Read more of this...

Meditation on a Bone

by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
 A piece of bone, found at Trondhjem in 1901, with the 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,...Read more of this...

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