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Famous Ignominy Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Yeats, William Butler
...
What matter if the ditches are impure?
What matter if I live it all once more?
Endure that toil of growing up;
The ignominy of boyhood; the distress
Of boyhood changing into man;
The unfinished man and his pain
Brought face to face with his own clumsiness;

The finished man among his enemies? -
How in the name of Heaven can he escape
That defiling and disfigured shape
The mirror of malicious eyes
Casts upon his eyes until at last
He thinks that shape must be his shape?
A...Read more of this...



by Yeats, William Butler
...You have lacked articulate speech
To tell Your simplest want, and known,
Wailing upon a woman's knee,
All of that worst ignominy
Of flesh and bone;

And when through all the town there ran
The servants of Your enemy,
A woman and a man,
Unless the Holy Writings lie,
Hurried through the smooth and rough
And through the fertile and waste,
protecting, till the danger past,
With human love....Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...miliated,
Me the sport of ribald Veterans, mine of ruffian violators!
See they sit, they hide their faces, miserable in ignominy!
Wherefore in me burns an anger, not by blood to be satiated.
Lo the palaces and the temple, lo the colony Camulodune!
There they ruled, and thence they wasted all the flourishing territory,
Thither at their will they haled the yellow-ringleted Britoness--
Bloodily, bloodily fall the battle-axe, unexhausted, inexorable.
Shout Icenian, Catieu...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...u went with fallen women, smoked and sang and boozed,

Loved your many children, wrote poetry

As good as Yeats but the ignominy you had to bear

Bred an immortality impossible to share.

You showed us your own peccadilloes,

Your early lust for fame, but you learned

The cost of suffering, love and talent winning through,

Your best books your last, just two, like the letters

You wrote before your life was through.



The meeting you wanted could never happen:

I di...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...and deify his power 
Who, from the terror of this arm, so late 
Doubted his empire--that were low indeed; 
That were an ignominy and shame beneath 
This downfall; since, by fate, the strength of Gods, 
And this empyreal sybstance, cannot fail; 
Since, through experience of this great event, 
In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced, 
We may with more successful hope resolve 
To wage by force or guile eternal war, 
Irreconcilable to our grand Foe, 
Who now triumphs, and i...Read more of this...



by Milton, John
...vion let them dwell. 
For strength from truth divided, and from just, 
Illaudable, nought merits but dispraise 
And ignominy; yet to glory aspires 
Vain-glorious, and through infamy seeks fame: 
Therefore eternal silence be their doom. 
And now, their mightiest quelled, the battle swerved, 
With many an inroad gored; deformed rout 
Entered, and foul disorder; all the ground 
With shivered armour strown, and on a heap 
Chariot and charioteer lay overturned, 
And fiery-...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...beneficience!
But why should man seek glory, who of his own
Hath nothing, and to whom nothing belongs
But condemnation, ignominy, and shame—
Who, for so many benefits received,
Turned recreant to God, ingrate and false,
And so of all true good himself despoiled;
Yet, sacrilegious, to himself would take 
That which to God alone of right belongs?
Yet so much bounty is in God, such grace,
That who advances his glory, not their own,
Them he himself to glory will advance."
 So...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...s— 
 He lifts his head, at that close tread, 
 The eagle of the Alps. 
 
 O shame! those men that march below— 
 O ignominy dire! 
 Are the sons of my free mountains 
 Sold for imperial hire. 
 Ah! the vilest in the dungeon! 
 Ah! the slave upon the seas— 
 Is great, is pure, is glorious, 
 Is grand compared with these, 
 Who, born amid my holy rocks, 
 In solemn places high, 
 Where the tall pines bend like rushes 
 When the storm goes sweeping by; 
 
 Yet g...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...--
And their young will
Bent to the Scaffold, or in Dungeons -- chanted --
Till God's full time --
When they let go the ignominy -- smiling --
And Shame went still --

Unto guessed Crests, my moaning fancy, leads me,
Worn fair
By Heads rejected -- in the lower country --
Of honors there --
Such spirit makes her perpetual mention,
That I -- grown bold --
Step martial -- at my Crucifixion --
As Trumpets -- rolled --

Feet, small as mine -- have marched in Revolution
Firm to the...Read more of this...

by Dickinson, Emily
...we have ceased to care
The Gift is given
For which we gave the Earth
And mortgaged Heaven
But so declined in worth
'Tis ignominy now
To look upon --...Read more of this...

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