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Famous Faithless Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Burns, Robert
...los’d the winter day,
The curless quat their roarin play,
And hunger’d maukin taen her way,
 To kail-yards green,
While faithless snaws ilk step betray
 Whare she has been.


The thresher’s weary flingin-tree,
The lee-lang day had tired me;
And when the day had clos’d his e’e,
 Far i’ the west,
Ben i’ the spence, right pensivelie,
 I gaed to rest.


There, lanely by the ingle-cheek,
I sat and ey’d the spewing reek,
That fill’d, wi’ hoast-provoking smeek,
 The auld cla...Read more of this...



by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...nkled his quivering lips.
For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly
Its precious charge, and silent death exposed,
Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure,
With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.

Startled by his own thoughts, he looked around.
There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight
Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind.
A little shallop floating near the shore
Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze. 
It had been long abandone...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...man Emp'ror and the Polish King. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE TWO NEIGHBORS. 
 
 The difference this betwixt the evil pair, 
 Faithless to God—for laws without a care— 
 One was the claw, the other one the will 
 Controlling. Yet to mass they both went still, 
 And on the rosary told their beads each day. 
 But none the less the world believed that they 
 Unto the powers of hell their souls had sold. 
 Even in whispers men each other told 
 The details of the pact which they...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...der; 
But the daughter of Nokomis, 
Hiawatha's gentle mother,
In her anguish died deserted 
By the West-Wind, false and faithless, 
By the heartless Mudjekeewis.
For her daughter long and loudly 
Wailed and wept the sad Nokomis; 
"Oh that I were dead!" she murmured, 
"Oh that I were dead, as thou art! 
No more work, and no more weeping, 
Wahonowin! Wahonowin!"
By the shores of Gitche Gumee, 
By the shining Big-Sea-Water, 
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, 
Daughter of the Moon...Read more of this...

by Bryant, William Cullen
...dless wretch he wronged.
Then from the writhing bosom thou dost pluck
The guilty secret; lips, for ages sealed,
Are faithless to the dreadful trust at length,
And give it up; the felon's latest breath
Absolves the innocent man who bears his crime;
The slanderer, horror smitten, and in tears,
Recalls the deadly obloquy he forged
To work his brother's ruin. Thou dost make
Thy penitent victim utter to the air
The dark conspiracy that strikes at life,

And aims to whelm t...Read more of this...



by Alighieri, Dante
...downward through the murky air 
 Came those sad spirits, that not deep Hell's despair 
 Could sunder, parting from the faithless band 
 That Dido led, and with one voice, as though 
 One soul controlled them, spake, 

 "O Animate! 
 Who comest through the black malignant air, 
 Benign among us who this exile bear 
 For earth ensanguined, if the King of All 
 Heard those who from the outer darkness call 
 Entreat him would we for thy peace, that thou 
 Hast pitied us condemne...Read more of this...

by Campbell, Thomas
...leeds at perjured Pride's inhuman scorn.

Say, then, did pitying Heaven condemn the deed,
When Vengeance bade thee, faithless lover! bleed ?
Long had I watched thy dark foreboding brow,
What time thy 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
F...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...t the royal Swede - 
Around a slaughtered army lay,
No more to combat and to bleed.
The power and glory of the war,
Faithless as their vain votaries, men,
Had passed to the triumphant Czar,
And Moscow’s walls were safe again -
Until a day more dark and drear,
And a more memorable year,
Should give to slaughter and to shame
A mightier host and haughtier name;
A greater wreck, a deeper fall,
A shock to one - a thunderbolt to all.

II

Such was the hazard Of the die;
The...Read more of this...

by Jackson, Helen Hunt
...sauntered through the air 
I tracked and followed, and he led me where 
My truant bees and stolen honey lay. 
Twice faithless bees! They had sought out to eat 
Rank, bitter herbs. The honey was not sweet....Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; 
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish; 
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more
 faithless?) 
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever
 renew’d; 
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the r...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...n to his glozing lies, 
And easily transgress the sole command, 
Sole pledge of his obedience: So will fall 
He and his faithless progeny: Whose fault? 
Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of me 
All he could have; I made him just and right, 
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. 
Such I created all the ethereal Powers 
And Spirits, both them who stood, and them who fail'd; 
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell. 
Not free, what proof could they have ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...amenting learn, 
When who can uncreate thee thou shalt know. 
So spake the Seraph Abdiel, faithful found 
Among the faithless, faithful only he; 
Among innumerable false, unmoved, 
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified, 
His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal; 
Nor number, nor example, with him wrought 
To swerve from truth, or change his constant mind, 
Though single. From amidst them forth he passed, 
Long way through hostile scorn, which he sustained 
Superiour, nor of...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ough that trance my soul had well
The impress of thy being kept;
And if I waked or if I slept, 
No doubt, though memory faithless be,
Thy image ever dwelt on me;
And thus, O Lionel, like thee
Is our sweet child. 'T is sure most strange
I knew not of so great a change
As that which gave him birth, who now
Is all the solace of my woe.

That Lionel great wealth had left
By will to me, and that of all
The ready lies of law bereft 
My child and me,--might well befall.
...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ly, who have profan'd
The mystery of God giv'n me under pledge
Of vow, and have betray'd it to a woman,
A Canaanite, my faithless enemy. 
This well I knew, nor was at all surpris'd,
But warn'd by oft experience: did not she
Of Timna first betray me, and reveal
The secret wrested from me in her highth
Of Nuptial Love profest, carrying it strait
To them who had corrupted her, my Spies,
And Rivals? In this other was there found
More Faith? who also in her prime of love,
Spou...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...how dark the backward stream!  A little moment past, so smiling!  And still, perhaps, with faithless gleam,  Some other loiterer beguiling.   Such views the youthful bard allure,  But, heedless of the following gloom,  He deems their colours shall endure  'Till peace go with him to the tomb.  —And let him nurse his fond deceit,  And what if he ...Read more of this...

by Turner Smith, Charlotte
...sorrows, for calamities
(And every day brings its own sad proportion)
For doubts, diseases, abject dread of Death,
And faithless friends, and fame and fortune lost;
Fancied or real wants; and wounded pride,
That views the day star, but to curse his beams.
Yet He, whose Spirit into being call'd
This wond'rous World of Waters; He who bids
The wild wind lift them till they dash the clouds,
And speaks to them in thunder; or whose breath,
Low murmuring, o'er the gently heavin...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...was flown her master’s rage
In likeness of a Georgian page,
And far beyond the Moslem’s power
Had wronged him with the faithless Giaour.
Somewhat of this had Hassan deemed;
But still so fond, so fair she seemed,
Too well he trusted to the slave
Whose treachery deserved a grave:
And on that eve had gone to mosque,
And thence to feast in his kiosk.
Such is the tale his Nubians tell,
Who did not watch their charge too well;
But others say, that on that night,
By pale Ph...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...And claim his tears for homage of his peace. 

9
Thus to thy beauty doth my fond heart look,
That late dismay'd her faithless faith forbore;
And wins again her love lost in the lore
Of schools and script of many a learned book:
For thou what ruthless death untimely took
Shalt now in better brotherhood restore,
And save my batter'd ship that far from shore
High on the dismal deep in tempest shook. 

So in despite of sorrow lately learn'd
I still hold true to truth sinc...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...hanged
     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 length, with Ellen in a grove
     He seemed to walk and speak of love;
  ...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...

"Torn from my Mother's aching breast,
"My Tyrant sought my love--
"But, in the Grave shall ZELMA rest,
"E'er she will faithless prove--
"No DRACO!--Thy companion I will be
"To that celestial realm, where Negros shall be free!


XIII. 

"The Tyrant WHITE MAN taught my mind--
"The letter'd page to trace;--
"He taught me in the Soul to find
"No tint, as in the face:
"He bade my Reason, blossom like the tree--
"But fond affection gave, the ripen'd fruits to thee.


XIV....Read more of this...

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