Famous Embarrassment Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Gardener XLIV: Reverend Sir Forgive

by Rabindranath Tagore
 Reverend sir, forgive this pair of
sinners. Spring winds to-day are 
blowing in wild eddies, driving dust
and dead leaves away, and with them 
your lessons are all lost.
Do not say, father, that life is a 
vanity.
For we have made truce with death
for once, and only for a few fragrant
hours we two have been made immortal.
Even if the king's army came...Read more of this...

Embarrassment of one another

by Emily Dickinson
 Embarrassment of one another
And God
Is Revelation's limit,
Aloud
Is nothing that is chief,
But still,
Divinity dwells under a seal....Read more of this...

The Routine Things Around The House

by Stephen Dunn
 When Mother died
I thought: now I'll have a death poem.
That was unforgivable.

Yet I've since forgiven myself
as sons are able to do
who've been loved by their mothers.

I stared into the coffin
knowing how long she'd live,
how many lifetimes there are

in the sweet revisions of memory.
It's hard to know exactly
how we ease ourselves back from sadness,

but I remembered when I was twelve,...Read more of this...

The Withdrawal

by Robert Lowell
 1
Only today and just for this minute,
when the sunslant finds its true angle,
you can see yellow and pinkish leaves spangle
our gentle, fluffy tree—
suddenly the green summer is momentary...
Autumn is my favorite season—
why does it change clothes and withdraw?

This week the house went on the market—
suddenly I woke up among strangers;
when I go into a room, it moves
with embarrassment, and...Read more of this...

Die in shame!

by John Matthew
 You hide your face in shame,
But I can see your private parts,
Have you no contrition,
To expose yourself, shamelessly, thus?

Tell me what does it feel,
To be watched while you strain?
Is that why you hang your head in shame;
Has all embarrassment left you?

I know it’s hard; you need your money,
But couldn’t you put the money —
You spend on spirits and tobacco,
To...Read more of this...

Exchanging Hats

by Elizabeth Bishop
 Unfunny uncles who insist
in trying on a lady's hat,
--oh, even if the joke falls flat,
we share your slight transvestite twist

in spite of our embarrassment.
Costume and custom are complex.
The headgear of the other sex
inspires us to experiment.

Anandrous aunts, who, at the beach
with paper plates upon your laps,
keep putting on the yachtsmen's caps
with exhibitionistic screech,

the visors hanging o'er the ear
so that...Read more of this...

Thou hast put in us an irresistible passion (which is

by Omar Khayyam
Thou hast put in us an irresistible passion [which is
equivalent to an order from Thee], and, on the other
hand, forbiddest us to give way to it. Poor human
beings are in extreme embarrassment between this order
and this prohibition, for it is as if Thou commandest me
to upset the cup but refrain from spilling the contents....Read more of this...

Autobiography

by Nazim Hikmet
 I was born in 1902
I never once went back to my birthplace
I don't like to turn back
at three I served as a pasha's grandson in Aleppo
at nineteen as a student at Moscow Communist University
at forty-nine I was back in Moscow as the Tcheka Party's guest
and I've been a poet since I was fourteen
some people know all about plants some...Read more of this...

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