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Famous Disbelief Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Plath, Sylvia
...wetting her shins.

Still, latter-day sages,
Smiling at this behavior, subjugating their enemies
Neatly, nicely, by disbelief or bridges,
Never grip, as the grandsires did, that devil who chuckles
From grain of the marrow and the river-bed grains....Read more of this...



by Sexton, Anne
...love another is something
like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.

Special person,
if I were you I'd pay no attention
to admonitions from me,
made somewhat out of your words
and somewhat out of mine.
A collaboration.
I do not believe a word I have said,
except some, except I think of you like a young tree
with pasted-on leaves and know you'll root
and the real green thing will come.

Let go. ...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...ve another is something 
like prayer and can’t be planned, you just fall 
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief. 

Special person, 
if I were you I’d pay no attention 
to admonitions from me, 
made somewhat out of your words 
and somewhat out of mine. 
A collaboration. 
I do not believe a word I have said, 
except some, except I think of you like a young tree 
with pasted-on leaves and know you’ll root 
and the real green thing will come. 

L...Read more of this...

by Dunn, Stephen
...hat our children would think of him like Lincoln 
or Thomas Jefferson. 
Soon it became clear to us: you can't teach disbelief 
to a child, 

only wonderful stories, and we hadn't a story 
nearly as good. 
On parents' night there were the Arts & Crafts 
all spread out 

like appetizers. Then we took our seats 
in the church 
and the children sang a song about the Ark, 
and Hallelujah 

and one in which they had to jump up and down 
for Jesus. 
I can't remember ...Read more of this...

by Larkin, Philip
...her will go on
In games in riddles seemingly at random;
But superstition like belief must die 
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass weedy pavement brambles butress sky.

A shape less recognisable each week 
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last the very last to seek
This place for whta it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber randy for antique 
Or Christmas-addict counting on a whif...Read more of this...



by Rumi, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad
...es back; neither you are that,
by my soul, nor I am that, by your soul. Disbeliever, do not conceal disbelief in your soul, for I will recite
the secret of your destiny, by your soul.
Out of love of Sham-e Tabrizi,
through wakefulness or nightrising,
like a spinning mote I am distraught, by your soul. - Rumi From: “Mystical Poems of Rumi 2? A. J. Arberry The University of Chicago Press, 1991   
by Scannell, Vernon
...id: grey suit, cream shirt, blue tie, 
That you were fairly tall, red-faced, 
Stout, middle-aged, and going bald.' 
Disbelief cried once and sat 
Bolt upright, then it fell back dead. 
'Stout middle-aged and going bald.' 
The slender ghost with golden hair 
Watched him go into the cold 
Dark outside, heard his slow tread 
Fade towards wife, armchair, and bed....Read more of this...

by Bowers, Edgar
...her’s longtime neighbor,
Whose children my mother taught in Cradle Roll,
Heard Mort’s examination, he broke in
As if in disbelief on the bank’s attorneys:
“Gentlemen, must we continue this charade?”
Finally, past the compost heap, the garden,
Tomatoes and sweet corn for succotash,
Okra for frying, Kentucky Wonders, limas,
Cucumbers, squashes, leeks heaped round with soil,
Lavender, dill, parsley, and rosemary,
Tithonia and zinnias between the rows;
The greenhouse by the rock ...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
..., honorable days
when we acknowledged the stuff
was a drug. Three of us passed
the bottle around, each tasting
with disbelief. People paid
for this? People had to have
it, the way we had to have
the women we never got near.
(Actually they were girls, but
never mind, the important fact
was their impenetrability. )
Leo, the third foolish partner,
suggested my brother should have
swiped Canadian whiskey or brandy,
but Eddie defended his choice
on the grounds of t...Read more of this...

by Harrison, Tony
...lear away her things and look alone 
as though his still raw love were such a crime.

He couldn't risk my blight of disbelief
though sure that very soon he'd hear her key
scrape in the rusted lock and end his grief.
He knew she'd just popped out to get the tea.

I believe life ends with death, and that is all.
You haven't both gone shopping; just the same,
in my new black leather phone book there's your name 
and the disconnected number I still call....Read more of this...

by Laurence Dunbar, Paul
...ting in His ancient seat?
The billows swirl above my trembling limbs,
And almost chill my anxious heart to doubt
And disbelief, long conquered and defied.
But tho' the music of my hopeful hymns
Is drowned by curses of the raging rout,
No voice yet bids th' opposing waves divide!
...Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...the blown flower
Youth talked with joy and grief an hour,
With footless joy and wingless grief
And twin-born faith and disbelief
Who share the seasons to devour;
And long ere these made up their sheaf
Felt the winds round him shake and shower
The rose-red and the blood-red leaf,
Delight whose germ grew never grain,
And passion dyed in its own pain.

Then he stood up, and trod to dust
Fear and desire, mistrust and trust,
And dreams of bitter sleep and sweet,
And bound for...Read more of this...

by Schwartz, Delmore
...htest sentiment
Of doubt about the astonishing and sustaining manna
Of chance and choice to throw a shadow's element
Of disbelief in truth -- Love is not love
Nor is the love of love its truth in consciousness
If it can be made hesitant by any crow or dove or 
 seeming angel or demon from above or from below
Or made more than it is knows itself to be by the authority
 of any ministry of love.

O no -- it is the choice of chances and the chancing of 
 all choice -- the win...Read more of this...

by Williams, C K
...hough I might rather not, why my roofers stay so clear 
to me and why the rest, 
the terror of that time, the reflexive disbelief and distancing, all we should 
hold on to, dims so.
I remember the president in his absurd protective booties, looking 
absolutely unafraid, the fool.
I remember a woman on the front page glaring across the misty Sus-
quehanna at those looming stacks.
But, more vividly, the men, silvered with glitter from the shingles, cling-
ing like s...Read more of this...

by Turner Smith, Charlotte
...n Empire, and whose politics
Were not beyond the grasp of his vast mind,
Is, in a Land once hostile, still prophan'd
By disbelief, and rites un-orthodox,
The object of compassion--At his side,
Lighter of heart than these, but heavier far
Than he was wont, another victim comes,
An Abbé--who with less contracted brow
Still smiles and flatters, and still talks of Hope;
Which, sanguine as he is, he does not feel,
And so he cheats the sad and weighty pressure
Of evils present;----...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...by't. 
My blood did leap, my flesh did revel, 
Saul Kane was tokened to the devil. 

From '61 to'71 
I lived in disbelief of Heaven. 
I drunk, I fought, I poached, I whored, 
I did despite unto the Lord. 
I cursed, 'would make a man look pale, 
And nineteen times I went to gaol 

Now, friends, observe and look upon me, 
Mark how the Lord took pity on me. 
By Dead Man's Thorn, while setting wires, 
Who should come up but Billy Myers, 
A friend of mine, who ...Read more of this...

by Akhmatova, Anna
...an open door,
Upon the sight of every accidental letter,
You will remember: "Here has she herself
Come to assist my disbelief unfettered."



x x x

Did not scold me, did not praise me,
Like friends and like enemies.
Only left his soul to me
And then said, "Now keep in peace."

And one thing worries me so:
If this moment he will die,
God's archangel will come to me
For his soul from the sky.

How then will I hide her so,
How to hide it f...Read more of this...

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