Famous Estranged Poems by Famous Poets

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

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After Long Silence

...Speech after long silence; it is right,
All other lovers being estranged or dead,
Unfriendly lamplight hid under its shade,
The curtains drawn upon unfriendly night,
That we descant and yet again descant
Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song:
Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young
We loved each other and were ignorant....Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler


All Souls Night

...ght at last.

And I call up MacGregor from the grave,
For in my first hard springtime we were friends.
Although of late estranged.
I thought him half a lunatic, half knave,
And told him so, but friendship never ends;
And what if mind seem changed,
And it seem changed with the mind,
When thoughts rise up unbid
On generous things that he did
And I grow half contented to be blind!

He had much industry at setting out,
Much boisterous courage, before loneliness
Had driven him cra...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler

America America!

...am burdened with the truck and chimera, hope,
 acquired in the sweating sick-excited passage 
 in steerage, strange and estranged
Hence I must descry and describe the kingdom of emotion.

For I am a poet of the kindergarten (in the city)
 and the cemetery (in the city)
And rapture and ragtime and also the secret city in the
 heart and mind
This is the song of the natural city self in the 20th century.

It is true but only partly true that a city is a "tyranny of
 numbers"
(Th...Read more of this...
by Schwartz, Delmore

Astrophel and Stella

...hy, alas, and are you he?
Be not yet those fancies changed?
Deare, when you find change in me,
Though from me you be estranged,
Let my chaunge to ruin be.

Well, in absence this will dy;
Leaue to see, and leaue to wonder.
Absence sure will helpe, if I
Can learne how my selfe to sunder
From what in my hart doth ly.

But time will these thoughts remoue;
Time doth work what no man knoweth.
Time doth as the subiect proue;
With time still the affection groweth
In t...Read more of this...
by Sidney, Sir Philip

Beowulf (Modern English)

...iumphant weaponry,
from every sword-edge. Yet his life-leaving
must be miserable on this day in this world,
and that estranged spirit must ferry forth
into the keeping of fiends. (ll. 791-808)

Then he discovered, he who had previously
perpetrated much offense, much affliction to the hearts
of mankind—guilty against God, he discovered
that his body-home did not wish to endure,
that the mindful kinsman of Hygelac kept him
by the hand. Each was hateful to the other
...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,


Beowulf (Old English)

...se
of that far-off fight when the floods o’erwhelmed,
raging waves, the race of giants
(fearful their fate!), a folk estranged
from God Eternal: whence guerdon due
in that waste of waters the Wielder paid them.
So on the guard of shining gold
in runic staves it was rightly said
for whom the serpent-traced sword was wrought,
best of blades, in bygone days,
and the hilt well wound. -- The wise-one spake,
son of Healfdene; silent were all: --
“Lo, so may he say who s...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Bride of Abydos The

...ou appearest! 
My Selim, thou art sadly changed: 
This morn I saw thee gentlest, dearest: 
But now thou'rt from thyself estranged. 
My love thou surely knew'st before, 
It ne'er was less, nor can be more. 
To see thee, hear thee, near thee stay, 
And hate the night, I know not why, 
Save that we meet not but by day; 
With thee to live, with thee to die, 
I dare not to my hope deny: 
Thy cheek, thine eyes, thy lips to kiss, 
Like this — and this — no more than this; 
For, Alla...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Changed

...anged, or am I changed?
Ah! the oaks are fresh and green,
But the friends with whom I ranged
Through their thickets are estranged
By the years that intervene.

Bright as ever flows the sea,
Bright as ever shines the sun,
But alas! they seem to me
Not the sun that used to be,
Not the tides that used to run....Read more of this...
by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Frances

...art, and brain.

And we might meet­time may have changed him;
Chance may reveal the mystery,
The secret influence which estranged him;
Love may restore him yet to me. 

False thought­false hope­in scorn be banished ! 
I am not loved­nor loved have been; 
Recall not, then, the dreams scarce vanished, 
Traitors ! mislead me not again !

To words like yours I bid defiance, 
'Tis such my mental wreck have made; 
Of God alone, and self-reliance, 
I ask for solace­hope for aid.

Mo...Read more of this...
by Bronte, Charlotte

from the Ansty Experience

...sacred there

poem probes the poet's once-intention
but each time said budges its truth
afresh (leaving the poet's self
estranged from the once-intending man)
and six ears in the room have tuned
objectives sifting the coloured strands
the words have hidden from the poet
asking what world has come to light

people measured by their heartbeats
language can't flout that come-and-go
to touch the heartbeat in a poem
calls for the brain's surrender
a warm diffusion of the mind
a li...Read more of this...
by Gregory, Rg

Julia Miller

...ty,
And I was nervous and heavy with the child
Whose birth I dreaded.
I thought over the last letter written me
By that estranged young soul
Whose betrayal of me I had concealed
By marrying the old man.
Then I took morphine and sat down to read.
Across the blackness that came over my eyes
I see the flickering light of these words even now:
"And Jesus said unto him, Verily
I say unto thee, To-day thou shalt
Be with me in paradise."...Read more of this...
by Masters, Edgar Lee

Love And Madness

...bosom scorned its dearest vow !
Sad, though I wept the friend, the lover changed,
Still thy cold look was scornful and estranged,
Till from thy pity, love, and shelter thrown,
I wandered hopeless, friendless, and alone !

Oh ! righteous Heaven ! 't was then my tortured soul
First gave to wrath unlimited control !
Adieu the silent look ! the streaming eye !
The murmured plaint ! the deep heart-heaving sigh !
Long-slumbering Vengeance wakes to better deeds ;
He shrieks, he fal...Read more of this...
by Campbell, Thomas

Nothing Stays Put

..., are
disposed on the sidewalks; alstroemerias, freesias
fattened a bit in translation from overseas; gladioli
likewise estranged from their piercing ancestral crimson;
as well as, less altered from the original blue cornflower
of the roadsides and railway embankments of Europe, these
bachelor's buttons. But it isn't the railway embankments
their featherweight wheels of cobalt remind me of, it's

a row of them among prim colonnades of cosmos,
snapdragon, nasturtium, bloodsilk...Read more of this...
by Clampitt, Amy

Paradise Lost: Book 09

...l Appetite, who from beneath 
Usurping over sovran Reason claimed 
Superiour sway: From thus distempered breast, 
Adam, estranged in look and altered style, 
Speech intermitted thus to Eve renewed. 
Would thou hadst hearkened to my words, and staid 
With me, as I besought thee, when that strange 
Desire of wandering, this unhappy morn, 
I know not whence possessed thee; we had then 
Remained still happy; not, as now, despoiled 
Of all our good; shamed, naked, miserable! 
Let ...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

The Bride of Abydos

...ou appearest! 
My Selim, thou art sadly changed: 
This morn I saw thee gentlest, dearest: 
But now thou'rt from thyself estranged. 
My love thou surely knew'st before, 
It ne'er was less, nor can be more. 
To see thee, hear thee, near thee stay, 
And hate the night, I know not why, 
Save that we meet not but by day; 
With thee to live, with thee to die, 
I dare not to my hope deny: 
Thy cheek, thine eyes, thy lips to kiss, 
Like this — and this — no more than this; 
For, Alla...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Bridge of Sighs

...y, motherly 
Feelings had changed: 
Love, by harsh evidence, 
Thrown from its eminence; 
Even God's providence 
Seeming estranged. 

Where the lamps quiver 
So far in the river, 
With many a light 
From window and casement, 
From garret to basement, 
She stood, with amazement, 
Houseless by night. 

The bleak wind of March 
Made her tremble and shiver; 
But not the dark arch, 
Or the black flowing river: 
Mad from life's history, 
Glad to death's mystery, 
Swift to be hurl'd—...Read more of this...
by Hood, Thomas

The Lady of the Lake

...h,
     Of confident, undoubting truth;
     Again his soul he interchanged
     With friends whose hearts were long estranged.
     They come, in dim procession led,
     The cold, the faithless, and the dead;
     As warm each hand, each brow as gay,
     As if they parted yesterday.
     And doubt distracts him at the view,—
     O were his senses false or true?
     Dreamed he of death or broken vow,
     Or is it all a vision now?
     XXXIV.

     At lengt...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Phases Of The Moon

...on's full those creatures of the
 full
Are met on the waste hills by countrymen
Who shudder and hurry by: body and soul
Estranged amid the strangeness of themselves,
Caught up in contemplation, the mind's eye
Fixed upon images that once were thought;
For separate, perfect, and immovable
Images can break the solitude
Of lovely, satisfied, indifferent eyes.

 And thereupon with aged, high-pitched voice
 Aherne laughed, thinking of the man within,
 His sleepless candle and lahor...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler

The White Cliffs

...he barriers of reason—and we love. 

XIII 
And still I did not see my life was changed, 
Utterly different—by this love estranged 
For ever and ever from my native land; 
That I was now of that unhappy band 
Who lose the old, and cannot gain the new 
However loving and however true 
To their new duties. I could never be 
An English woman, there was that in me 
Puritan, stubborn that would not agree 
To English standards, though I did not see
The truth, because I thought them,...Read more of this...
by Miller, Alice Duer

The Widening Spell Of Leaves

...ssurance
Of persisting for a few more days, or returning
The year after, & the year after that, & every
Year following--estranged from us by now--& clear,
So clear not one in a thousand trembled; hushed
And always coming back--steadfast, orderly,
Taciturn, oblivious--until the end of Time....Read more of this...
by Levis, Larry

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