Famous Infected Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Ring Out Your Bells

by Sir Philip Sidney
 Ring out your bells, let mourning shows be spread;
For Love is dead--
All love is dead, infected
With plague of deep disdain;
Worth, as nought worth, rejected,
And Faith fair scorn doth gain.
From so ungrateful fancy,
From such a female franzy,
From them that use men thus,
Good Lord, deliver us!

Weep, neighbours, weep; do you not hear it said
That Love is dead?
His death-bed, peacock's folly;
His winding-sheet...Read more of this...

Prelude to an Evening

by John Crowe Ransom
 Do not enforce the tired wolf
Dragging his infected wound homeward
To sit tonight with the warm children
Naming the pretty kings of France.

The images of the invaded mind
Being as the monsters in the dreams
Of your most brief enchanted headful,
Suppose a miracle of confusion:

That dreamed and undreamt become each other
And mix the night and day of your mind;
And it does not matter...Read more of this...

To The Genius Of Africa

by Robert Southey
 O thou who from the mountain's height
Roll'st down thy clouds with all their weight
Of waters to old Niles majestic tide;
Or o'er the dark sepulchral plain
Recallest thy Palmyra's ancient pride,
Amid whose desolated domes
Secure the savage chacal roams,
Where from the fragments of the hallow'd fane
The Arabs rear their miserable homes!

Hear Genius hear thy children's cry!
Not always should'st thou love to brood
Stern...Read more of this...

new age

by Rg Gregory
 (i)
how new the world is
trying to find
nerve in an old rind

(ii)
the bread is crumbled
for birds to swallow
rolled into droppings
flowers from the hair
of noseless statues
tyrants of parks
where men have cowered
too long and mistaken
unmanned by he dark

(iii)
when we awaken
(how have we fallen)
machines are broken
wires lie strangled
by the messages they nursed
lathes are swinging
from trees in derision
pipes burst and scalded
houses contorted
(what went on...Read more of this...

The Star

by Ann Taylor
 1 Whatever 'tis, whose beauty here below
2 Attracts thee thus and makes thee stream and flow,
3 And wind and curl, and wink and smile,
4 Shifting thy gate and guile;

5 Though thy close commerce nought at all imbars
6 My present search, for eagles eye not stars,
7 And still the lesser by the best
8 And highest good is blest;

9 Yet, seeing...Read more of this...

Granville Calhoun

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I wanted to be County Judge
One more term, so as to round out a service
Of thirty years.
But my friends left me and joined my enemies,
And they elected a new man.
Then a spirit of revenge seized me,
And I infected my four sons with it,
And I brooded upon retaliation,
Until the great physician, Nature,
Smote me through with paralysis
To give my soul and...Read more of this...

Ode to Envy

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Deep in th' abyss where frantic horror bides, 
In thickest mists of vapours fell,
Where wily Serpents hissing glare
And the dark Demon of Revenge resides,
At midnight's murky hour
Thy origin began: 
Rapacious MALICE was thy sire;
Thy Dam the sullen witch, Despair;
Thy Nurse, insatiate Ire. 
The FATES conspir'd their ills to twine,
About thy heart's infected shrine;
They gave thee each disastrous spell,
Each desolating...Read more of this...

To the Muse of Poetry

by Mary Darby Robinson
 EXULT MY MUSE! exult to see 
Each envious, waspish, jealous thing, 
Around its harmless venom fling, 
And dart its powerless fangs at THEE! 
Ne'er shalt THOU bend thy radiant wing, 
To sweep the dark revengeful string; 
Or meanly stoop, to steal a ray, 
E'en from RINALDO'S glorious lay, 
Tho' his transcendent Verse should twine 
About thy heart, each bliss...Read more of this...

Wisteria

by Philip Levine
 The first purple wisteria 
I recall from boyhood hung 
on a wire outside the windows 
of the breakfast room next door 
at the home of Steve Pisaris. 
I loved his tall, skinny daughter, 
or so I thought, and I would wait 
beside the back door, prostrate, 
begging to be taken in. Perhaps 
it was only the flowers of spring...Read more of this...

306. Election Ballad at close of Contest for representing the Dumfries Burghs 1790

by Robert Burns
 FINTRY, my stay in wordly strife,
Friend o’ my muse, friend o’ my life,
 Are ye as idle’s I am?
Come then, wi’ uncouth kintra fleg,
O’er Pegasus I’ll fling my leg,
 And ye shall see me try him.


But where shall I go rin a ride,
That I may splatter nane beside?
 I wad na be uncivil:
In manhood’s various paths and ways
There’s aye...Read more of this...

The Fall of Rome

by Wystan Hugh (W H) Auden
The piers are pummelled by the waves;In a lonely field the rainLashes an abandoned train;Outlaws fill the mountain caves. Fantastic grow the evening gowns;Agents of the Fisc pursueAbsconding tax-defaulters throughThe sewers of provincial towns. Private rites of magic sendThe temple prostitutes to sleep;All the literati keepAn imaginary friend. Cerebrotonic Cato mayExtol the Ancient Disciplines,But the muscle-bound MarinesMutiny for food and...Read more of this...

Hymn 57

by Isaac Watts
 Original sin.

Rom. 5:12, etc.; Psa. 51:5; Job 14:4. 

Backward with humble shame we look
On our original;
How is our nature dashed and broke
In our first father's fall!

To all that's good averse and blind,
But prone to all that's ill
What dreadful darkness veils our mind!
How obstinate our will!

[Conceived in sin, O wretched state!
Before we draw our breath
The first young pulse begins to...Read more of this...

Hymn 98

by Isaac Watts
 Christ our wisdom, righteousness, etc.

1 Cor. 1:30. 

How heavy is the night
That hangs upon our eyes,
Till Christ with his reviving light
Over our souls arise!

Our guilty spirits dread
To meet the wrath of Heav'n;
But, in his righteousness arrayed,
We see our sins forgiv'n.

Unholy and impure
Are all our thoughts and ways;
His hands infected nature cure
With sanctifying grace.

The powers of hell agree
To hold our...Read more of this...

To Think of Time

by Walt Whitman
 1
TO think of time—of all that retrospection! 
To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward! 

Have you guess’d you yourself would not continue? 
Have you dreaded these earth-beetles? 
Have you fear’d the future would be nothing to you?

Is to-day nothing? Is the beginningless past nothing? 
If the future is nothing, they are just as surely nothing. 

To think...Read more of this...

At The Executed Murderers Grave

by James Wright
 for J.L.D.

Why should we do this? What good is it to us? Above all,
how can we do such a thing? How can it possibly be done?

 --Freud

1.
My name is James A. Wright, and I was born
Twenty-five miles from this infected grave,
In Martins Ferry, Ohio, where one slave
To Hazel-Atlas Glass became my father.
He tried to teach me kindness. I return
Only...Read more of this...

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