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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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by Burns, Robert
...
 Electors and elected,
Where dogs at Court (sad sons of bitches!)
Septennially a madness touches,
 Till all the land’s infected.


All hail! Drumlanrig’s haughty Grace,
Discarded remnant of a race
 Once godlike-great in story;
Thy forbears’ virtues all contrasted,
The very name of Douglas blasted,
 Thine that inverted glory!


Hate, envy, oft the Douglas bore,
But thou hast superadded more,
 And sunk them in contempt;
Follies and crimes have stain’d the name,
But, Queens...Read more of this...



by Shakespeare, William
...would not be so lover'd?
Ay me! I fell; and yet do question make
What I should do again for such a sake.

'O, that infected moisture of his eye,
O, that false fire which in his cheek so glow'd,
O, that forced thunder from his heart did fly,
O, that sad breath his spongy lungs bestow'd,
O, all that borrow'd motion seeming owed,
Would yet again betray the fore-betray'd,
And new pervert a reconciled maid!'...Read more of this...

by Dryden, John
...standard is there in a fickle rout,
Which, flowing to the mark, runs faster out?
Nor only crowds, but Sanhedrins may be
Infected with this public lunacy:
And share the madness of rebellious times,
To murther monarchs for imagin'd crimes.
If they may give and take whene'er they please,
Not kings alone, (the godhead's images,)
But government itself at length must fall
To nature's state, where all have right to all.
Yet, grant our lords the people kings can make,
What pr...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...and exhaust your Rage!
Yet shun their Fault, who, Scandalously nice,
Will needs mistake an Author into Vice;
All seems Infected that th' Infected spy,
As all looks yellow to the Jaundic'd Eye.

LEARN then what MORALS Criticks ought to show,
For 'tis but half a Judge's Task, to Know.
'Tis not enough, Taste, Judgment, Learning, join;
In all you speak, let Truth and Candor shine:
That not alone what to your Sense is due,
All may allow; but seek your Friendship too.
...Read more of this...

by Sidney, Sir Philip
...lest:
Yet, ah, my mayd'n Muse doth blush to tell the best. 
LXXVIII 

O how the pleasant ayres of true loue be
Infected by those vapours which arise
From out that noysome gulfe, which gaping lies
Betweene the iawes of hellish Ielousie!
A monster, others harme, selfe-miserie,
Beauties plague, Vertues scourge, succour of lies;
Who his owne ioy to his owne hurt applies,
And onely cherish doth with iniurie:
Who since he hath, by Natures speciall grace,
So piercin...Read more of this...



by Wright, James
...w 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 in memory now, aloof, unhurried,
To dead Ohio, where I might lie buried,
Had I not run away before my time.
Ohio caught George Doty. Clean as lime,
His skull rots empty here. Dying's the best
Of all t...Read more of this...

by Watts, Isaac
...deadly tree?

What mortal power from things unclean
Can pure productions bring?
Who can command a vital stream
From an infected spring?]

Yet, mighty God! thy wondrous love
Can make our nature clean,
While Christ and grace prevail above
The tempter, death, and sin.

The second Adam shall restore
The ruins of the first;
Hosannah to that sovereign power
That new-creates our dust!...Read more of this...

by Watts, Isaac
...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 souls in vain;
He sets the sons of bondage free,
And breaks the cursed chain

Lord, we adore thy ways
To bring us near to God;
Thy sovereign power, thy healing grace,
And thine atoning blood....Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...am 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 pow'r,
To blast the fairest hopes of man. 

Soon as thy fatal birth was known, 
From her unhallow'd throne
With ghastly smile pale Hecate sprung; 
Thy hideous form the Sorc'ress press'd
With kindred fondness to her breast; 
Her haggard eye
Short forth a ray of transient joy, 
Whilst t...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ooth Adonis from his native rock 
Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood 
Of Thammuz yearly wounded: the love-tale 
Infected Sion's daughters with like heat, 
Whose wanton passions in the sacred proch 
Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led, 
His eye surveyed the dark idolatries 
Of alienated Judah. Next came one 
Who mourned in earnest, when the captive ark 
Maimed his brute image, head and hands lopt off, 
In his own temple, on the grunsel-edge, 
Where he fell flat an...Read more of this...

by Ransom, John Crowe
...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 your twice cr...Read more of this...

by Sidney, Sir Philip
...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 is shame;
His will, false-see...Read more of this...

by Stevens, Wallace
...ngs within his actual eye, alert 
395 To the difficulty of rebellious thought 
396 When the sky is blue. The blue infected will. 
397 It may be that the yarrow in his fields 
398 Sealed pensive purple under its concern. 
399 But day by day, now this thing and now that 
400 Confined him, while it cosseted, condoned, 
401 Little by little, as if the suzerain soil 
402 Abashed him by carouse to humble yet 
403 Attach. It seemed haphazard denouement. ...Read more of this...

by Auden, Wystan Hugh (W H)
...r> Unendowed with wealth or pity,Little birds with scarlet legs,Sitting on their speckled eggs,Eye each flu-infected city. Altogether elsewhere, vastHerds of reindeer move acrossMiles and miles of golden moss,Silently and very fast....Read more of this...

by Taylor, Ann
...2 What man may learn from thee.

13 First, I am sure, the subject so respected
14 Is well dispos'd, for bodies once infected,
15 Deprav'd, or dead, can have with thee
16 No hold, nor sympathy.

17 Next, there's in it a restless, pure desire
18 And longing for thy bright and vital fire,
19 Desire that never will be quench'd,
20 Nor can be writh'd, nor wrench'd.

21 These are the magnets which so strongly move
22 And work all night upon thy light and love,
23 As bea...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...sung, as by their strain
May well be known: their living melody
Tempers its own contagion to the vein
"Of those who are infected with it--I
Have suffered what I wrote, or viler pain!--
"And so my words were seeds of misery--
Even as the deeds of others."--"Not as theirs,"
I said--he pointed to a company
In which I recognized amid the heirs
Of Caesar's crime from him to Constantine,
The Anarchs old whose force & murderous snares
Had founded many a sceptre bearing line
And ...Read more of this...

by Southey, Robert
...!
Whelm'd in the waters he shall rest!
Hear thou the wretched mother's cries,
Avenging Power awake! arise!

By the rank infected air
That taints those dungeons of despair,
By those who there imprison'd die
Where the black herd promiscuous lie,
By the scourges blacken'd o'er
And stiff and hard with human gore,
By every groan of deep distress
By every curse of wretchedness,
By all the train of Crimes that flow
From the hopelessness of Woe,
By every drop of blood bespilt,
By Afr...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Mary Darby
...ME not, dear gentle Maid,
To poison'd bow'r or haunted glade;
Where beck'ning spectres shrieking, glare
Along the black infected air;
While bold "fantastic thunders " leap
Indignant, midst the clam'rous deep,
As envious of its louder tone,
While lightnings shoot, and mountains groan
With close pent fires, that from their base
Hurl them amidst the whelming space;
Where OCEAN'S yawning throat resounds,
And gorg'd with draughts of foamy ire,
Madly o'er-leaps its crystal bounds,
...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...ica and Asia are not nothing,
The common people of Europe are not nothing—the American aborigines are not nothing, 
The infected in the immigrant hospital are not nothing—the murderer or mean person is
 not
 nothing, 
The perpetual successions of shallow people are not nothing as they go, 
The lowest prostitute is not nothing—the mocker of religion is not nothing as he
 goes. 

9
Of and in all these things,
I have dream’d that we are not to be changed so much, nor the law...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...trate, 
begging to be taken in. Perhaps 
it was only the flowers of spring 
with their sickening perfumes 
that had infected me. When Steve 
and Sophie and the three children 
packed up and made the move west, 
I went on spring after spring, 
leaden with desire, half-asleep, 
praying to die. Now I know 
those prayers were answered. 
That boy died, the brick houses 
deepened and darkened with rain, 
age, use, and finally closed 
their eyes and dreamed the sleep...Read more of this...

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