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Famous Fouled Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Masefield, John
...and a fact to be deplored, 
But we chased the goodly merchant-men and laid their ships aboard. 

Then the dead men fouled the scuppers and the wounded filled the chains, 
And the paint-work all was spatter dashed with other peoples brains, 
She was boarded, she was looted, she was scuttled till she sank. 
And the pale survivors left us by the medium of the plank. 

O! then it was (while standing by the taffrail on the poop) 
We could hear the drowning folk lament...Read more of this...



by Moore, Marianne
...Berra to Cape Canaveral;
he could handle any missile.
He is no feather."Strike! . . . Strike two!"
Fouled back.A blur.
It's gone.You would infer
that the bat had eyes.
He put the wood to that one.
Praised, Skowron says, "Thanks, Mel.
I think I helped a little bit."
All business, each, and modesty.
Blanchard, Richardson, Kubek, Boyer.
In that galaxy of nine, say which
won the pennant?Each.It was he.

Those two ma...Read more of this...

by Rich, Adrienne
...ls
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear....Read more of this...

by Berryman, John
...himself a dare & then did it,
the thing was quite unplanned,

riots for Henry the unstructured dead,
his older playmate fouled, reaching for him
and never will he be free
from the older boy who died by the cottonwood
& now is to be planted, wise & slim,
as part of Henry's history.

Christ waits. That boy was good beyond his years,
he served at Mass like Henry, he never did 
one extreme thing wrong
but tender his cold hand, latent with Henry's fears
to Henry's shocking...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...
Thou Sorrow-height
We climb by night,
Thou hast no hell-deep chasm save Disgrace.
To stoop, will fling us down its fouled space:
Stand proud! The Dawn will meet us, face to face,
For down steep hills the Dawn loves best to race!...Read more of this...



by Kipling, Rudyard
...n' left 'im -- 'e was almost tore in two --
But he tried to follow after as a well-trained 'orse should do;
'E went an' fouled the limber, an' the Driver's Brother squeals:
"Pull up, pull up for Snarleyow -- 'is head's between 'is 'eels!"

The Driver 'umped 'is shoulder, for the wheels was goin' round,
An' there ain't no "Stop, conductor!" when a batt'ry's changin' ground;
Sez 'e: "I broke the beggar in, an' very sad I feels,
But I couldn't pull up, not for you -- your 'ead b...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...the woman's door to ruin; 
The door to wandering up and down, 
A painted whore with half a crown. 
The bright mind fouled, the beauty gay 
All eaten out and fallen away, 
By drunken days and weary tramps 
From pub to pub by city lamps 
Till men despise the game they started 
Till health and beauty are departed, 
and in a slum the reeking hag 
Mumbles a crust with toothy jag, 
Or gets the river's help to end 
The life too wrecked for man to mend. 
We spat and smoked a...Read more of this...

by Benet, Stephen Vincent
...ey! Come along and help!' 
And all the crowd dug madly at the earth, 
Scratching and clawing at the streaming mud, 
And fouled each other and themselves. And still 
Shelley stood up. His eyes were like a flame 
Set in some white, still room; for all his face 
Was white, a whiteness like no human color, 
But white and dreadful as consuming fire. 
His hands shook now and then, like slender cords 
Which bear too heavy weights. He did not speak. 
So I saw Shel...Read more of this...

by Jarrell, Randall
...arison...
One clear, repeated, lapping gurgle, like a spoon

Or a glass breathing, is the brook,
The wood's fouled midnight water. If I walk into the wood

As far as I can walk, I come to my own door,
The door of the House in the Wood. It opens silently:

On the bed is something covered, something humped
Asleep there, awake there--but what? I do not know.

I look, I lie there, and yet I do not know.
How far out my great echoing clumsy limbs

Stretc...Read more of this...

by Swift, Jonathan
...ith paste,
Some with pomatum, paints and slops,
And ointments good for scabby chops.
Hard by a filthy basin stands,
Fouled with the scouring of her hands;
The basin takes whatever comes,
The scrapings of her teeth and gums,
A nasty compound of all hues,
For here she spits, and here she spews.
But oh! it turned poor Strephon's bowels,
When he beheld and smelt the towels,
Begummed, besmattered, and beslimed
With dirt, and sweat, and ear-wax grimed.
No object Strepho...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
..., I have washed--the world 
Is flesh and shadow--I have had my day. 
The dirty nurse, Experience, in her kind 
Hath fouled me--an I wallowed, then I washed-- 
I have had my day and my philosophies-- 
And thank the Lord I am King Arthur's fool. 
Swine, say ye? swine, goats, asses, rams and geese 
Trooped round a Paynim harper once, who thrummed 
On such a wire as musically as thou 
Some such fine song--but never a king's fool.' 

And Tristram, `Then were swine, goa...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...e fetched. He used 
the tiny bottle of whisky to straighten 
out his eyes and the toilet paper to clean 
his pants, fouled in the fall, and he did 
both with seven teenage boys looking on 
in wonder and fear. At last the blood 
slowed and caked above his ear, and he 
never once touched the wound. Instead, 
in a voice no one could hear, he spoke 
to himself, probably in French, and smoked 
sitting back against a pallet, his legs 
thrust out on the damp cement floor...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Robert
...stroke
Of the greased wash exploding on a shoal-bell
In the old mouth of the Atlantic. It's well;
Atlantic, you are fouled with the blue sailors,
sea-monsters, upward angel, downward fish:
Unmarried and corroding, spare of flesh
Mart once of supercilious, wing'd clippers,
Atlantic, where your bell-trap guts its spoil
You could cut the brackish winds with a knife
Here in Nantucket, and cast up the time
When the Lord God formed man from the sea's slime
And breathed into his...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...the virgins, from their arms, 
 O Caliph, fiercely torn, bewailed their young years' blight; 
 With stabs and kisses fouled, all their yet quivering charms, 
 At our fleet coursers' heels were dragged in mocking flight. 
 
 Lo! where the city lies mantled in pall of death; 
 Lo! where thy mighty hand hath passed, all things must bend! 
 Priests prayed, the sword estopped blaspheming breath, 
 Vainly their cheating book for shield did they extend. 
 
 Some infants y...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...that night above the clinging mists,
Far up the hill, Bisesa's passing in.

She set her hand upon the carven door,
Fouled by a myriad bats, and black with time,
Whereon is graved the Glory of Taman
In letters older than the Ao-Safai;
And twice she turned aside and twice she wept,
Cast down upon the threshold, clamouring
For him she loved -- the Man of Sixty Spears,
And for her father, -- and the black bull Tor,
Hers and her pride. Yea, twice she turned away
Before th...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...a serving maid
Each time I visit home;
They do not dream I ply a trade
As old as Greece or Rome;
For if they found I'd fouled their name
And was not white as snow,
I'm sure that they would die of shame . . .
Please, God, they'll never know.

I clean the paint from off my face,
In sober black I dress;
Of coquetry I leave no trace
To give them vague distress;
And though it causes me a pang
To play such sorry tricks,
About my neck I meekly hang
A silver crufix.<...Read more of this...

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