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Famous Diminution Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...hty stock of knowledge,
As much as some folks at a College;
Knew Britain’s rights and constitution,
Her aggrandisement, diminution,
How fortune wrought us good from evil;
Let no man, then, despise the Devil,
As who should say, ‘I never can need him,’
Since we to scoundrels owe our freedom....Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert



...ach the poet a greater whiteness,
His devotion and conception of the divinity of Beauty
would have suffered an absolute diminution.)

The poet must be both Casanova and St. Anthony,

He must be Adonis, Nero, Hippolytus, Heathcliff, and
Phaedre,
Genghis Kahn, Genghis Cohen, and Gordon Martini
Dandy Ghandi and St. Francis,

Professor Tenure, and Dizzy the dean and Disraeli of Death.

He would have worn the horns of existence upon his head, 
He would have perceived them regardin...Read more of this...
by Schwartz, Delmore
...I knew that I had gained
And yet I knew not how
By Diminution it was not
But Discipline unto

A Rigor unrelieved
Except by the Content
Another bear its Duplicate
In other Continent....Read more of this...
by Dickinson, Emily
...her horns; 
By tincture or reflection they augment 
Their small peculiar, though from human sight 
So far remote, with diminution seen, 
First in his east the glorious lamp was seen, 
Regent of day, and all the horizon round 
Invested with bright rays, jocund to run 
His longitude through Heaven's high road; the gray 
Dawn, and the Pleiades, before him danced, 
Shedding sweet influence: Less bright the moon, 
But opposite in levelled west was set, 
His mirrour, with full fac...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...ot just, 
As to his own edicts, found contradicting,
Then give the rains to wandring thought,
Regardless of his glories diminution;
Till by thir own perplexities involv'd
They ravel more, still less resolv'd,
But never find self-satisfying solution.
As if they would confine th' interminable,
And tie him to his own prescript,
Who made our Laws to bind us, not himself,
And hath full right to exempt 
Whom so it pleases him by choice
From National obstriction, without taint
Of si...Read more of this...
by Milton, John



...o's catastrophe
Is a gust past the curb, where numb and high
The office building rises to its tyranny,
Is our anguished diminution until we die.

Whence, if ever, shall come the actuality
Of a voice speaking the mind's knowing,
The sunlight bright on the green windowshade,
And the self articulate, affectionate, and flowing,
Ease, warmth, light, the utter showing,
When in the white bed all things are made....Read more of this...
by Schwartz, Delmore

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry