Famous Guillotine Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Guillotine poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous guillotine poems. These examples illustrate what a famous guillotine poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...nger justified
The Curiosity
Like Mine -- for not a Foot -- nor Hand --
Nor Formula -- had she --
But like a Head -- a Guillotine
Slid carelessly away --
Did independent, Amber --
Sustain her in the sky --
Or like a Stemless Flower --
Upheld in rolling Air
By finer Gravitations --
Than bind Philosopher --
No Hunger -- had she -- nor an Inn --
Her Toilette -- to suffice --
Nor Avocation -- nor Concern
For little Mysteries
As harass us -- like Life -- and Death --
And After...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...r shoulders
and makes a little face. She must mend her pace if she
would be back
in time for dinner. Roses indeed! The guillotine
more likely.
The tiered clouds float over Malmaison, and the slate roof sparkles
in the sun.
II
Gallop! Gallop! The General
brooks no delay. Make way, good people,
and scatter out of his path, you, and your hens, and your dogs,
and your children. The General is returned from Egypt,
and is come
in a `caleche' and four to visit his new property...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...(Goya, an old man in exile, looks at his self-portrait)
A bull’s neck, still much needed,
Deserving exile or the guillotine,
‘Because you are an artist we forgave you’,
Thus his royal highness gave thanks,
My fingers itching for brush and canvas,
Floury cheeks and rouge, legs a donkey would be ashamed of,
A wife who’s been to bed with everything in Madrid.
First I was ‘untalented’, then ‘mad and deaf’
Still I painted, my pain drew me on,
My kingdom had majas ...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...
Their hearts are all whites and yellows,
There's no red in them. Red!
That's what we want. Fouche should be fed
To the guillotine, and all Paris dance the carmagnole.
That would breed jolly fine lick-bloods
To lead his armies to victory."
"Ancient history, Sergeant.
He's done."
"Say that again, Monsieur Charles, and I'll stun
You where you stand for a dung-eating Royalist."
The Sergeant gives the poker a savage twist;
He is as purple as the cooling horseshoes.
The air from t...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...Steel doors – guillotine gates –
of the doorless house closed massively.
We were locked in with loss.
Guards frisked us, marked our wrists,
then let us into the drab Rec Hall –
splotched green walls, high windows barred –
where the dispossessed awaited us.
Hands intimate with knife and pistol,
hands that had cruelly grasped and throttled
clasped ours in welcome. I se...Read more of this...
by
Hayden, Robert
...es, and half
The dear, daft time I take to nudge the sentence,
In trust and tale I have divided sense,
Slapped down the guillotine, the blood-red double
Of head and tail made witnesses to this
Murder of Eden and green genesis.
The insect certain is the plague of fables.
This story's monster has a serpent caul,
Blind in the coil scrams round the blazing outline,
Measures his own length on the garden wall
And breaks his shell in the last shocked beginning;
A crocodile before ...Read more of this...
by
Thomas, Dylan
...f Smithfield ahead,
Fat haunches and blood on their minds.
There is no mercy in the glitter of cleavers,
The butcher's guillotine that whispers: 'How's this, how's this?'
In the bowl the hare is aborted,
Its baby head out of the way, embalmed in spice,
Flayed of fur and humanity.
Let us eat it like Plato's afterbirth,
Let us eat it like Christ.
These are the people that were important ----
Their round eyes, their teeth, their grimaces
On a stick that rattles and clicks, ...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...ack down on the rock again.
The old shack had a tin roof colored reddish by years of
wear, like a hat worn under the guillotine. A corner of the
roof was loose and a hot wind blew down the river and the
loose corner clanged in the wind.
A car went by. An old couple. The car almost swerved off
the road and into the river. I guess they didn't see many
hitchhikers up there. The car went around the corner
with both of them looking back at me.
I had nothing else to do,...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
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