Famous Disguised Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Disguised poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous disguised poems. These examples illustrate what a famous disguised poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
William Topaz McGonagall
'Twas in the year of 1900, and on the 5th of June,
Lord Roberts entered Pretoria in the afternoon;
His triumphal entry was magnificent to see,
The British Army marching behind him fearlessly.
With their beautiful banners unfurled to the breeze,
But the scene didn't the Boers please;
And they immediately made some show of fight,
But at the charge of the bayonet they were...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
‘Fall in, that awkward squad, and strike no more
Attractive attitudes! Dress by the right!
The luminous rich colours that you wore
Have changed to hueless khaki in the night.
Magic? What’s magic got to do with you?
There’s no such thing! Blood’s red, and skies are blue.’
They gasped and sweated, marching up and down.
I drilled them till...Read more of this...
by
David Lehman
The shrink says, "Everything depends
on how many stuffed animals you had
as a boy," and my mother tells me my
father was left-handed and so is my son
and they're both named Joe whose favorite
stuffed animal was a bear called Sweetheart
while I, the sole constant in this dream,
am carrying a little girl who has a gun
in her hand as I climb...Read more of this...
by
John Keats
One morn before me were three figures seen,
I With bowed necks, and joined hands, side-faced;
And one behind the other stepp'd serene,
In placid sandals, and in white robes graced;
They pass'd, like figures on a marble urn,
When shifted round to see the other side;
They came again; as when the urn once more
Is shifted round, the first seen...Read more of this...
by
Lisel Mueller
You have read War and Peace.
Now here is Sister Carrie,
not up to Tolstoy; still
it will second the real world:
predictable planes and levels,
pavement that holds you,
stairs that lift you,
ice that trips you,
nights that begin after sunset,
four lunar phases,
a finite house.
I give you Dreiser
although (or because)
I am no longer sure.
Lately I have been walking into glass doors.
Through the car windows, curbs...Read more of this...
by
Henry Lawson
Light on the towns and cities, and peace for evermore!
The Big Five met in the world's light as many had met before,
And the future of man is settled and there shall be no more war.
The lamb shall lie down with the lion, and trust with treachery;
The brave man go with the coward, and the chained...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Smart
Let us invoke a healthy heart-breaking
Towards the horrible world:
Let us say 0 poor people
How can they help being so absurd,
Misguided, abused, misled?
With unsifted saving graces jostling about
On a mucky medley of needs,
Like love-lit ****,
Year after cyclic year
The unidentifiable flying god is missed.
Emotions sit in their heads disguised as judges,
Or are twisted to look like mathematical formulae,
And only...Read more of this...
by
Denise Duhamel
I had sex with a famous poet last night
and when I rolled over and found myself beside him I shuddered
because I was married to someone else,
because I wasn't supposed to have been drinking,
because I was in fancy hotel room
I didn't recognize. I would have told you
right off this was a dream, but recently
a friend...Read more of this...
by
Frank Bidart
(John of the Cross)
In a dark night, when the light
burning was the burning of love (fortuitous
night, fated, free,--)
as I stole from my dark house, dark
house that was silent, grave, sleeping,--
by the staircase that was secret, hidden,
safe: disguised by darkness (fortuitous
night, fated, free,--)
by darkness and by cunning, dark
house that...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
A tale that the poet Rückert told
To German children, in days of old;
Disguised in a random, rollicking rhyme
Like a merry mummer of ancient time,
And sent, in its English dress, to please
The little folk of the Christmas trees.
A little fir grew in the midst of the wood
Contented and happy, as young trees should.
His body was straight and...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
By love are blest the gods on high,
Frail man becomes a deity
When love to him is given;
'Tis love that makes the heavens shine
With hues more radiant, more divine,
And turns dull earth to heaven!
In Pyrrha's rear (so poets sang
In ages past and gone),
The world from rocky fragments sprang--
Mankind from lifeless stone.
Their soul was but a thing of night,
Like stone and...Read more of this...
by
Russell Edson
There was once a man who disguised himself as a
housefly and went about the neighborhood depositing
flyspecks.
Well, he has to do something hasn't he? said someone to
someone else.
Of course, said someone else back to someone.
Then what's all the fuss? said someone to someone else.
Who's fussing? I'm just saying that if he doesn't get...Read more of this...
by
John Clare
These tiny loiterers on the barley's beard,
And happy units of a numerous herd
Of playfellows, the laughing Summer brings,
Mocking the sunshine on their glittering wings,
How merrily they creep, and run, and fly!
No kin they bear to labour's drudgery,
Smoothing the velvet of the pale hedge-rose;
And where they fly for dinner no one knows—
The dew-drops feed them not—they love the shine
Of noon,...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
O trees of life, oh, what when winter comes?
We are not of one mind. Are not like birds
in unison migrating. And overtaken,
overdue, we thrust ourselves into the wind
and fall to earth into indifferent ponds.
Blossoming and withering we comprehend as one.
And somewhere lions roam, quite unaware,
in their magnificence, of any weaknesss.
But we, while wholly concentrating on one thing,
already feel the...Read more of this...
by
Joyce Kilmer
(For Cecil Chesterton)
At the foot of the Cross on Calvary
Three soldiers sat and diced,
And one of them was the Devil
And he won the Robe of Christ.
When the Devil comes in his proper form
To the chamber where I dwell,
I know him and make the Sign of the Cross
Which drives him back to Hell.
And when he comes like a friendly man
And...Read more of this...
by
Katherine Mansfield
Now I am a plant, a weed,
Bending and swinging
On a rocky ledge;
And now I am a long brown grass
Fluttering like flame;
I am a reed;
An old shell singing
For ever the same;
A drift of sedge;
A white, white stone;
A bone;
Until I pass
Into sand again,
And spin and blow
To and fro, to and fro,
On the edge of the sea
In the fading light--
For the light...Read more of this...
by
Alexander Pope
When wise Ulysses, from his native coast
Long kept by wars, and long by tempests toss'd,
Arrived at last, poor, old, disguised, alone,
To all his friends, and ev'n his Queen unknown,
Changed as he was, with age, and toils, and cares,
Furrow'd his rev'rend face, and white his hairs,
In his own palace forc'd to ask his bread,...Read more of this...
by
Michael Ondaatje
If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
And leave the yellow bark dust
On your pillow.
Your breasts and shoulders would reek
You could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.
Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to you hair
or the...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
Every angel is terrifying. And yet alas
I invoked you almost deadly birds of the soul
knowing about you. Where are the days of Tobias
when one of you veiling his radiance stood at the front door
slightly disguised for the journey no longer appalling;
(a young man like the one who curiously peeked through the window).
But if the archangel now perilous from...Read more of this...
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Chameleons feed on light and air:
Poets' food is love and fame:
If in this wide world of care
Poets could but find the same
With as little toil as they,
Would they ever change their hue
As the light chameleons do,
Suiting it to every ray
Twenty times a day?
Poets are on this cold earth,
As chameleons...Read more of this...
by
Czeslaw Milosz
You whom I could not save
Listen to me.
Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another.
I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words.
I speak to you with silence like a cloud or a tree.
What strengthened me, for you was lethal.
You mixed up farewell to an epoch with the beginning of a new one,
Inspiration...Read more of this...
by
Marianne Moore
Dürer would have seen a reason for living
in a town like this, with eight stranded whales
to look at; with the sweet sea air coming into your house
on a fine day, from water etched
with waves as formal as the scales
on a fish.
One by one in two's and three's, the seagulls keep
flying back and forth over the town...Read more of this...
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