Famous Dull Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Charmides

...ghs, the bossy hills of
snow.

Those who have never known a lover's sin
Let them not read my ditty, it will be
To their dull ears so musicless and thin
That they will have no joy of it, but ye
To whose wan cheeks now creeps the lingering smile,
Ye who have learned who Eros is, - O listen yet awhile.

A little space he let his greedy eyes
Rest on the burnished image, till mere sight
Half swooned for surfeit of such luxuries,
And then his lips in hungering delight
Fed on her li...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar


Desiderata

...urrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; i...Read more of this...
by Ehrmann, Max

Humanitad

...frightened hare, a little speck;
And a stray seamew with its fretful cry
Flits like a sudden drift of snow against the dull grey sky.

Full winter: and the lusty goodman brings
His load of faggots from the chilly byre,
And stamps his feet upon the hearth, and flings
The sappy billets on the waning fire,
And laughs to see the sudden lightening scare
His children at their play, and yet, - the spring is in the air;

Already the slim crocus stirs the snow,
And soon yon blanched ...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Hyperion

...and edgeways; like a dismal cirque
Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor,
When the chill rain begins at shut of eve,
In dull November, and their chancel vault,
The Heaven itself, is blinded throughout night.
Each one kept shroud, nor to his neighbour gave
Or word, or look, or action of despair.
Creus was one; his ponderous iron mace
Lay by him, and a shatter'd rib of rock
Told of his rage, ere he thus sank and pined.
Iapetus another; in his grasp,
A serpent's plashy neck; its...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Lara

...nite, secure, 
To all for whom that cross hath made it sure! 

XX. 

But gasping heaved the breath that Lara drew, 
And dull the film along his dim eye grew; 
His limbs stretch'd fluttering, and his head droop'd o'er 
The weak yet still untiring knee that bore: 
He press'd the hand he held upon his heart — 
It beats no more, but Kaled will not part 
With the cold grasp, but feels, and feels in vain, 
For that faint throb which answers not again. 
"It beats!" — Away, thou drea...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)


Love

...nbsp; I cannot work thee any woe."   A fire was once within my brain;  And in my head a dull, dull pain;  And fiendish faces one, two, three,  Hung at my breasts, and pulled at me.  But then there came a sight of joy;  It came at once to do me good;  I waked, and saw my little boy,  My little boy of flesh and blood;  Oh joy for me that sight to see!  For he was here...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

Ode to a Nightingale

...MY heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, 
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, 5 
But being too happy in thine happiness, 
That thou, light-wing¨¨d Dryad of the trees, 
In some melodious plot 
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, 
Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 10 

O for a draught of vintage! that hath...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Ravenna

...rs within kings' houses are,
And all the petty miseries which mar
Man's nobler nature with the sense of wrong.
Yet this dull world is grateful for thy song;
Our nations do thee homage, - even she,
That cruel queen of vine-clad Tuscany,
Who bound with crown of thorns thy living brow,
Hath decked thine empty tomb with laurels now,
And begs in vain the ashes of her son.

O mightiest exile! all thy grief is done:
Thy soul walks now beside thy Beatrice;
Ravenna guards thine ashes:...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Song of Myself

...the surgeon’s knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw,
Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long, dull,
 tapering groan; 
These so—these irretrievable. 

37
O Christ! This is mastering me! 
In at the conquer’d doors they crowd. I am possess’d. 

I embody all presences outlaw’d or suffering;
See myself in prison shaped like another man, 
And feel the dull unintermitted pain. 

For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep wat...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

The Ballad of the White Horse

...And I know there are gods behind the gods,
Gods that are best unsung.

"And a man grows ugly for women,
And a man grows dull with ale,
Well if he find in his soul at last
Fury, that does not fail.

"The wrath of the gods behind the gods
Who would rend all gods and men,
Well if the old man's heart hath still
Wheels sped of rage and roaring will,
Like cataracts to break down and kill,
Well for the old man then--

"While there is one tall shrine to shake,
Or one live man to rend...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K

The City In the Sea

...stir is in the air!
The wave- there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside 
In slightly sinking the dull tide-
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow-
The hours are breathing faint and low-
And when amid no earthly moans 
Down down that town shall settle hence 
Hell rising from a thousand thrones 
Shall do it reverence....Read more of this...
by Poe, Edgar Allan

The Lady of the Lake

...he peace renewed
     Smoulders in Roderick's breast the feud:
     Beware!—But hark! what sounds are these?
     My dull ears catch no faltering breeze
     No weeping birch nor aspens wake,
     Nor breath is dimpling in the lake;
     Still is the canna's hoary beard,
     Yet, by my minstrel faith, I heard—
     And hark again! some pipe of war
     Sends the hold pibroch from afar.'
     XVI.

     Far up the lengthened lake were spied
     Four darkening sp...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Lesson

...d worms do
Not convince me against
The challenge. The years
And cold defeat live deep in
Lines along my face.
They dull my eyes, yet
I keep on dying,
Because I love to live....Read more of this...
by Angelou, Maya

The Most Beautiful Woman In Town

...d her
body. Her spirit was either very high or very low. There was no in between for Cass. Some
said she was crazy. The dull ones said that. The dull ones would never understand Cass. To
the men she was simply a sex machine and they didn't care whether she was crazy or not.
And Cass danced and flirted, kissed the men, but except for an instance or two, when it
came time to make it with Cass, Cass had somehow slipped away, eluded the men. 
Her sisters accused her of misusing h...Read more of this...
by Bukowski, Charles

The Tables Turned

...eshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your Teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless—
Spontaneous wisdom breathe...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

The Three Voices

...teach,
And now and then he did beseech 

She would abate her dulcet tone,
Because the talk was all her own,
And he was dull as any drone. 

She urged "No cheese is made of chalk":
And ceaseless flowed her dreary talk,
Tuned to the footfall of a walk. 

Her voice was very full and rich,
And, when at length she asked him "Which?"
It mounted to its highest pitch. 

He a bewildered answer gave,
Drowned in the sullen moaning wave,
Lost in the echoes of the cave. 

He answered her...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

The Vision of Judgment

...as his own, seeing that it cannot, by any species of stupidity, natural or acquired, be worse. The gross flattery, the dull impudence, the renegado intolerance, and impious cant, of the poem by the author if 'Wat Tyler,' are something so stupendous as to form the sublime of himself — containing the quintessence of his own attributes. 

So much for his poem — a word on his preface. In this preface it has pleased the magnanimous Laureate to draw the picture of a supposed 'Sata...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Waste Land

...IAL OF THE DEAD
 April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, e...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

The White Cliffs

...ce comes, will die for France 
Logically as they lived. But Englishmen 
Will serve day after day, obey the law, 
And do dull tasks that keep a nation strong. 
Once I remember in London how I saw 
Pale shabby people standing in a long 
Line in the twilight and the misty rain 
To pay their tax. I then saw England plain. 

XXII 
Johnnie and I were married. England then 
Had been a week at war, and all the men 
Wore uniform, as English people can, 
Unconscious of it. Percy, the b...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer

Three Women

...rieks. It is not happy.
'This is where you will come when you are ready.'
The night lights are flat red moons. They are dull with blood.
I am not ready for anything to happen.
I should have murdered this, that murders me.

FIRST VOICE:
There is no miracle more cruel than this.
I am dragged by the horses, the iron hooves.
I last. I last it out. I accomplish a work.
Dark tunnel, through which hurtle the visitations,
The visitations, the manifestations, the startled faces.
I am ...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

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