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Famous In Opposition Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...There are who lord it o'er their fellow-men
With most prevailing tinsel: who unpen
Their baaing vanities, to browse away
The comfortable green and juicy hay
From human pastures; or, O torturing fact!
Who, through an idiot blink, will see unpack'd
Fire-branded foxes to sear up and singe
Our gold and ripe-ear'd hopes. With not one tinge
Of sanctuary splendou...Read more of this...
by Keats, John



...Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm;
And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands;
Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf
In cluster; then a moulder'd church; and higher
A long street climbs to one tall-tower'd mill;
And high in heaven behind it a gray down
With Danish barrows; and a hazelwood,
By autumn nutters haunted, flourishes
Green in a cupl...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...I

Now that we're almost settled in our house
I'll name the friends that cannot sup with us
Beside a fire of turf in th' ancient tower,
And having talked to some late hour
Climb up the narrow winding stair to bed:
Discoverers of forgotten truth
Or mere companions of my youth,
All, all are in my thoughts to-night being dead.

 II

Always we'd have the new f...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler
...He's gone. She can't believe it, can't go on. She's going to give up painting. So she paints Her final canvas, total-turn-off
Black. One long
Obsidian goodbye. A charcoal-burner's Smirnoff, The mirror of Loch Ness Reflecting the monster back to its own eye.
But something's wrong. Those mad Black-body particles don't sing Her story of despair, the steel and...Read more of this...
by Padel, Ruth
...When Yankies, skill'd in martial rule,
First put the British troops to school;
Instructed them in warlike trade,
And new manoeuvres of parade,
The true war-dance of Yankee reels,
And manual exercise of heels;
Made them give up, like saints complete,
The arm of flesh, and trust the feet,
And work, like Christians undissembling,
Salvation out, by fear and tr...Read more of this...
by Trumbull, John



...Now Night came down, and rose full soon
That patroness of rogues, the Moon;
Beneath whose kind protecting ray,
Wolves, brute and human, prowl for prey.
The honest world all snored in chorus,
While owls and ghosts and thieves and Tories,
Whom erst the mid-day sun had awed,
Crept from their lurking holes abroad.


On cautious hinges, slow and stiller,
Wide o...Read more of this...
by Trumbull, John
...bursting forth 
Afresh, with conscious terrors vex me round, 
That rest or intermission none I find. 
Before mine eyes in opposition sits 
Grim Death, my son and foe, who set them on, 
And me, his parent, would full soon devour 
For want of other prey, but that he knows 
His end with mine involved, and knows that I 
Should prove a bitter morsel, and his bane, 
Whenever that shall be: so Fate pronounced. 
But thou, O father, I forewarn thee, shun 
His deadly arrow; neither va...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...All night the dreadless Angel, unpursued, 
Through Heaven's wide champain held his way; till Morn, 
Waked by the circling Hours, with rosy hand 
Unbarred the gates of light. There is a cave 
Within the mount of God, fast by his throne, 
Where light and darkness in perpetual round 
Lodge and dislodge by turns, which makes through Heaven 
Grateful vicissitud...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...Undoubtedly he will relent, and turn 
From his displeasure; in whose look serene, 
When angry most he seemed and most severe, 
What else but favour, grace, and mercy, shone? 
So spake our father penitent; nor Eve 
Felt less remorse: they, forthwith to the place 
Repairing where he judged them, prostrate fell 
Before him reverent; and both confessed 
Humbly...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...Perplexed and troubled at his bad success
The Tempter stood, nor had what to reply,
Discovered in his fraud, thrown from his hope
So oft, and the persuasive rhetoric
That sleeked his tongue, and won so much on Eve,
So little here, nay lost. But Eve was Eve;
This far his over-match, who, self-deceived
And rash, beforehand had no better weighed
The strength ...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...So spake the Son of God; and Satan stood
A while as mute, confounded what to say,
What to reply, confuted and convinced
Of his weak arguing and fallacious drift;
At length, collecting all his serpent wiles,
With soothing words renewed, him thus accosts:—
 "I see thou know'st what is of use to know,
What best to say canst say, to do canst do;
Thy actions to...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...Of that sort of Dramatic Poem which is call'd Tragedy.


TRAGEDY, as it was antiently compos'd, hath been ever held the
gravest, moralest, and most profitable of all other Poems:
therefore said by Aristotle to be of power by raising pity and fear,
or terror, to purge the mind of those and such like passions, that is
to temper and reduce them to just measur...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...o the strain, 
You hear the humble muse complain, 
Or wreathe your frowning brow. 

Tho' poor Pitholeon's feeble line, 
In opposition to the nine, 
Still violates your name; 
Tho' tales of passion meanly told, 
As dull as Cumberland, as cold, 
Strive to confess a flame. 

Yet, when that bloom and dancing fire, 
In silver'd rev'rence shall expire, 
Aged, wrinkled, and defaced; 
To keep one lover's flame alive, 
Requires the genius of a Clive, 
With Walpole's mental taste. 

Th...Read more of this...
by Chatterton, Thomas
...My love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and high:
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility. 

Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing. 

And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And alwa...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew
...The Argument.


Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep

Once meek, and in a perilous path,
The just man kept his course along 
The vale of death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow.
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.

Then the perilous path was planted:
And a river, and a spring
On every cliff and tom...Read more of this...
by Blake, William
...Morn in the wake of the morning star 
Came furrowing all the orient into gold. 
We rose, and each by other drest with care 
Descended to the court that lay three parts 
In shadow, but the Muses' heads were touched 
Above the darkness from their native East. 

There while we stood beside the fount, and watched 
Or seemed to watch the dancing bubble, approac...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...Now, scarce three paces measured from the mound, 
We stumbled on a stationary voice, 
And 'Stand, who goes?' 'Two from the palace' I. 
'The second two: they wait,' he said, 'pass on; 
His Highness wakes:' and one, that clashed in arms, 
By glimmering lanes and walls of canvas led 
Threading the soldier-city, till we heard 
The drowsy folds of our great ens...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...sp had left the giant world so weak
That every pigmy kicked it as it lay--
And much I grieved to think how power & will
In opposition rule our mortal day--
And why God made irreconcilable
Good & the means of good; and for despair
I half disdained mine eye's desire to fill
With the spent vision of the times that were
And scarce have ceased to be . . . "Dost thou behold,"
Said then my guide, "those spoilers spoiled, Voltaire,
"Frederic, & Kant, Catherine, & Leopold,
Chained hoa...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...BY 
QUEVEDO REDIVIVUS 


SUGGESTED BY THE COMPOSITION SO ENTITLED BY THE AUTHOR OF 'WAT TYLER' 

'A Daniel come to judgment! yes a Daniel!
I thank thee, Jew for teaching me that word.' 

PREFACE 

It hath been wisely said, that 'One fool makes many;' and it hath been poetically observed —

'That fools rush in where angels fear to tread.' - Pope 

If Mr. So...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...Oh, "rorty" was a mid-Victorian word
Which meant "fine, splendid, jolly,"
And often to me it has reoccurred
In moments melancholy.
For instance, children, I think it rorty
To be with people over forty. 

I can't say which, come eventide,
More tedious I find;
Competing with the juvenile stride,
Or meeting the juvenile mind.
So I think it rorty, yes, and nif...Read more of this...
by Nash, Ogden

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry