Famous Injured Poems by Famous Poets

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

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201. Birthday Ode for 31st December 1787

...
And STEWART’S wrongs and yours, with tenfold weight repay.


 PERDITION, baleful child of night!
 Rise and revenge the injured right
 Of STEWART’S royal race:
 Lead on the unmuzzled hounds of hell,
 Till all the frighted echoes tell
 The blood-notes of the chase!
 Full on the quarry point their view,
 Full on the base usurping crew,
The tools of faction, and the nation’s curse!
 Hark how the cry grows on the wind;
 They leave the lagging gale behind,
 Their savage fury, piti...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert


A Letter from Artemesia in the Town to Chloe in the Country

...th searching wisdom, fatal to their ease,
They still find out why what may, should not please;
Nay, take themselves for injured when we dare
Make 'em think better of us than we are,
And if we hide our frailties from their sights,
Call us deceitful jilts and hypocrites.
They little guess, who at our arts are grieved,
The perfect joy of being well deceived;
Inquisitive as jealous cuckolds grow:
Rather than not be knowing, they will know
What, being known, creates their certain ...Read more of this...
by Wilmot, John

Alastor: or the Spirit of Solitude

...e breathes
Her first sweet kisses,--have been dear to me;
If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast
I consciously have injured, but still loved
And cherished these my kindred; then forgive
This boast, belovèd brethren, and withdraw
No portion of your wonted favor now!

Mother of this unfathomable world!
Favor my solemn song, for I have loved 
Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched 
Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,
And my heart ever gazes on the depth
Of thy deep ...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Avons Harvest

...remembered Avon—who is yet
Not quite forgotten. On the other hand, 
For saying nothing I might have with me always 
An injured and recriminating ghost 
Of a dead friend. The more I pondered it 
The more I knew there was not much to lose,
Albeit for one whose delving hitherto 
Had been a forage of his own affairs, 
The quest, however golden the reward, 
Was irksome—and as Avon suddenly 
And soon was driven to let me see, was needless.
It seemed an age ago that we were there 
...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Beowulf (Modern English)

...when he saw
at rest, war-wearied Grendel lying,
deprived of life, just as the battle at Heorot
had left him earlier, injured. The corpse burst open
after it suffered in death a hard battle-swing—
Beowulf carved off his head. (ll. 1570-90)

At once the wise carls could see that,
who were with Hrothgar looking upon the water,
that the blending of waves was all mixed,
the lake splattered with blood. Grey-bearded,
the old men conversed together about good Beowulf,
say...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,


Beowulf (Old English)

...at his own good will, and the ensign took,
brightest of beacons. -- The blade of his lord
-- its edge was iron -- had injured deep
one that guarded the golden hoard
many a year and its murder-fire
spread hot round the barrow in horror-billows
at midnight hour, till it met its doom.
Hasted the herald, the hoard so spurred him
his track to retrace; he was troubled by doubt,
high-souled hero, if haply he’d find
alive, where he left him, the lord of Weders,
weakening f...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Blight

...ps of the SAME. Our eyes
And strangers to the mystic beast and bird,
And strangers to the plant and to the mine.
The injured elements say, 'Not in us;'
And haughtily return us stare for stare.
For we invade them impiously for gain;
We devastate them unreligiously,
And coldly ask their pottage, not their love.
Therefore they shove us from them, yield to us
Only what to our griping toil is due;
But the sweet affluence of love and song,
The rich results of the divine ...Read more of this...
by Emerson, Ralph Waldo

El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X)

...t.

He conked his hair and Lindy-hopped,
zoot-suited jiver, swinging those chicks
in the hot rose and reefer glow.

His injured childhood bullied him.
He skirmished in the Upas trees
and cannibal flowers of the American Dream--

but could not hurt the enemy
powered against him there....Read more of this...
by Hayden, Robert

Last night I had a dream

...whale.
I done handcuffed lightning
And throw thunder in jail.
You know I’m bad.
just last week, I murdered a rock,
Injured a stone, Hospitalized a brick.
I’m so mean, I make medicine sick.
I’m so fast, man,
I can run through a hurricane and don't get wet.
When George Foreman meets me,
He’ll pay his debt.
I can drown the drink of water, and kill a dead tree.
Wait till you see Muhammad Ali....Read more of this...
by Ali, Muhammad

MFingal - Canto I

...wide, and kick their owners over:
So fared our 'Squire, whose reas'ning toil
Would often on himself recoil,
And so much injured more his side,
The stronger arguments he applied;
As old war-elephants, dismay'd,
Trod down the troops they came to aid,
And hurt their own side more in battle,
Than less and ordinary cattle.
Yet at Town-meetings every chief
Pinn'd faith on great M'Fingal's sleeve;
Which when he lifted, all by rote
Raised sympathetic hands to vote.


The Town, our he...Read more of this...
by Trumbull, John

Paradise Lost: Book 01

...se inflict, do I repent, or change, 
Though changed in outward lustre, that fixed mind, 
And high disdain from sense of injured merit, 
That with the Mightiest raised me to contend, 
And to the fierce contentions brought along 
Innumerable force of Spirits armed, 
That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring, 
His utmost power with adverse power opposed 
In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven, 
And shook his throne. What though the field be lost? 
All is not lost--the ...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Paradise Lost: Book 05

...o have been 
Enamoured at that sight; but in those hearts 
Love unlibidinous reigned, nor jealousy 
Was understood, the injured lover's hell. 
Thus when with meats and drinks they had sufficed, 
Not burdened nature, sudden mind arose 
In Adam, not to let the occasion pass 
Given him by this great conference to know 
Of things above his world, and of their being 
Who dwell in Heaven, whose excellence he saw 
Transcend his own so far; whose radiant forms, 
Divine effulgence, wh...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Rembrandt to Rembrandt

...iate or impending on your view, 
That may be worse than you have ever painted 
For the bewildered and unhappy scorn 
Of injured Hollanders in Amsterdam
Who cannot find their fifty florins’ worth 
Of Holland face where you have hidden it 
In your new golden shadow that excites them, 
Or see that when the Lord made color and light 
He made not one thing only, or believe
That shadows are not nothing. Saskia said, 
Before she died, how they would swear at you, 
And in commiserati...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

The Broken Men

...earful leaving,
 We bade no long good-byes;
Men talked of crime and thieving,
 Men wrote of fraud and lies.
To save our injured feelings
 'T was time and time to go --
Behind was dock and Dartmoor,
 Ahead lay Callao!

The widow and the orphan
 That pray for ten per cent,
They clapped their trailers on us
 To spy the road we went.
They watched the foreign sailings
 (They scan the shipping still),
And that's your Christian people
 Returning good for ill!

God bless the thoughtf...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Lady of the Lake

...power than years before;
     For, as these ebbing veins decay,
     My frenzied visions fade away.
     A helpless injured wretch I die,
     And something tells me in thine eye
     That thou wert mine avenger born.
     Seest thou this tress?—O. still I 've worn
     This little tress of yellow hair,
     Through danger, frenzy, and despair!
     It once was bright and clear as thine,
     But blood and tears have dimmed its shine.
     I will not tell thee whe...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Latest School

...most venomous vitality.
Over Baden and Bavaria,
And Brighton and Bulgaria,
Thus violating Belgian neutrality.

And the injured Prussian may
Not unreasonably say
"Why, it cannot be so small a nationality
Since Brixton and Batavia,
Bolivia and Belgravia,
Are bursting with the Belgian neutrality."

By pure Alliteration
You may trace this curious nation,
And respect this somewhat scattered Principality;
When you see a B in Both
You may take your Bible oath
You are violating Belg...Read more of this...
by Chesterton, G K

The Medal

...ack even Scripture to confess their cause 
And plead a call to preach in spite of laws. 
But that's no news to the poor injured page, 
It has been used as ill in every age, 
And is constrained with patience all to take, 
For what defence can Greek and Hebrew make? 
Happy who can this talking trumpet seize, 
They make it speak whatever sense they please! 
'Twas framed at first our oracle to inquire; 
But since our sects in prophecy grow higher, 
The text inspires not them, but...Read more of this...
by Dryden, John

The Siege of Corinth

...us much, then, for the love of Heaven, — 
Again I say — that turban tear 
From off thy faithless brow, and swear 
Thine injured country's sons to spare, 
Or thou art lost; and never shalt see — 
Not earth — that's past — but heaven or me. 
If this thou dost accord, albeit 
A heavy doom 'tis thine to me, 
That doom shall half absolve thy sin, 
And mercy's gate may receive within; 
But pause one moment more, and take 
The curse of Him thou didst forsake; 
And look once more to ...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Tortoise Shout

...rrepressible,
I remember my first terror hearing the howl of weird, amorous cats;
I remember the scream of a terrified, injured horse, the sheet-lightning,
And running away from the sound of a woman in labour, something like an owl whooing,
And listening inwardly to the first bleat of a lamb,
The first wail of an infant,
And my mother singing to herself,
And the first tenor singing of the passionate throat of a young collier, who has long since drunk himself to death,
The fir...Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.

Wild Orphan

...hing so rare 
in his soul, 
met only in dreams 
-nostalgias 
of another life. 

A question of the soul. 
And the injured 
losing their injury 
in their innocence 
-a cock, a cross, 
an excellence of love. 

And the father grieves 
in flophouse 
complexities of memory 
a thousand miles 
away, unknowing 
of the unexpected 
youthful stranger 
bumming toward his door. 

- New York, April 13, 1952...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

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