Famous Killing Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Killing poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous killing poems. These examples illustrate what a famous killing poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Plath, Sylvia
..., no scream at the end.
I do not think you credit me with this discretion.
If you only knew how the veils were killing my days.
To you they are only transparencies, clear air.
But my god, the clouds are like cotton.
Armies of them. They are carbon monoxide.
Sweetly, sweetly I breathe in,
Filling my veins with invisibles, with the million
Probable motes that tick the years off my life.
You are silver-suited for the occasion. O adding mac...Read more of this...
by
Gibran, Kahlil
...re the followers of Deity, and since people will not kill them, they deride them, saying, "Ridicule is more bitter than killing."
Jerusalem could not kill The Nazarene, nor Athens Socrates; they are living yet and shall live eternally. Ridicule cannot triumph over the followers of Deity. They live and grow forever.
Part Three
Thou art my brother because you are a human, and we both are sons of one Holy Spirit; we are equal and made of the same earth.Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...dying lamp, a falling shower,
A breaking billow; -even whilst we speak
Is it not broken? On the withering flower
The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek
The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.
His head was bound with pansies overblown,
And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue;
And a light spear topped with a cypress cone,
Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew
Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew,
Vibrated, as the ever-b...Read more of this...
by
Poe, Edgar Allan
...the reason (as all men know
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the b...Read more of this...
by
Sidney, Sir Philip
...
With choisest words, thy words with reasons rare,
Thy reasons firmly set on Vertues feet,
Labour to kill in me this killing care:
O thinke I then, what paradise of ioy
It is, so faire a vertue to enioy!
LXIX
O ioy to high for my low stile to show!
O blisse fit for a nobler seat then me!
Enuie, put out thine eyes, least thou do see
What oceans of delight in me do flowe!
My friend, that oft saw through all maskes my wo,
Come, come, and let me powre my selfe on ...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...at night, fancy figures and jets;
Beef on the butcher’s stall, the slaughter-house of the butcher, the butcher in his
killing-clothes,
The pens of live pork, the killing-hammer, the hog-hook, the scalder’s tub, gutting,
the
cutter’s cleaver, the packer’s maul, and the plenteous winter-work of
pork-packing;
Flour-works, grinding of wheat, rye, maize, rice—the barrels and the half and quarter
barrels,
the loaded barges, the high piles on wharves and levees;
The men, a...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...- oh, I know for I counted,
Came out and they tried to creep under her wing.
Sickened I said: "Here's an end to my killing;
I swear, nevermore bird or beast will I slay;
Starving I may be, but no more blood-spilling . . ."
That oath I have kept, and I keep it to-day....Read more of this...
by
Hikmet, Nazim
...
The clock of Notre Dame
strikes midnight.
Midnight
midnight.
Who knows at this very moment
which drunk is killing his wife?
Who know at this very moment
which ghost
is haunting the halls
of a castle?
Who knows at this very moment
which thief
is surmounting
the most unsurmountable wall?
Midnight... Midnight...
Who knows at this very moment...
I know very well that in every novel
this is the darkest hour.
Midnight
...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...ving his argosies,
Long anchored and as long unladen,
Over the foam for the golden chances.
“If men were not for killing so carelessly,
And women were for wiser endurances,”
He said, “we might have yet a world here
Fitter for Truth to be seen abroad in;
“If Truth were not so strange in her nakedness,
And we were less forbidden to look at it,
We might not have to look.” He stared then
Down at the sand where the tide threw forward
Its cold, unconquered lines...Read more of this...
by
Raine, Kathleen
...
and our days shall be short
in the land we have sown
with the Dragon’s teeth
where our armies arise
fully armed on our killing-fields
with land-mines and missiles,
tanks and artillery,
gas-masks and body-bags,
our air-craft rain down
fire and destruction,
our space-craft broadcast
lies and corruption,
our elected parliaments
parrot their rhetoric
of peace and democracy
while the truth we deny
returns in our dreams
of Armageddon,
the death-wish, the arms-trade,
hatred and sla...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...ktail glass
to make sure I haven't gotten hold of
something more precious than
Life itself.
my cheap green beer is killing
me. he shows heart (hurrah) and
gives me a little pill that stops my
gagging.
but nothing decent to
drink.
he'd bought a small 6 pack
for my arrival but that was gone in an
hour and 15
minutes.
"I'll buy you barrels of beer," he had
said.
I used his phone (one of his phones)
to get deliveries of beer and
cheap whisky. the t...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...with pendant and bending arch;
They do not think whom they souse with spray.
12
The butcher-boy puts off his killing clothes, or sharpens his knife at the stall
in the market;
I loiter, enjoying his repartee, and his shuffle and break-down.
Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil;
Each has his main-sledge—they are all out—(there is a great heat in
the fire.)
From the cinder-strew’d threshold I follow their movements;
The ...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...o fires and unsatisfied
Through their excess, each passion being loth
For love's own sake to leave the other's side
Yet killing love by staying; memories
Of Oreads peeping through the leaves of silent moonlit trees,
Of lonely Ariadne on the wharf
At Naxos, when she saw the treacherous crew
Far out at sea, and waved her crimson scarf
And called false Theseus back again nor knew
That Dionysos on an amber pard
Was close behind her; memories of what Maeonia's bard
With sightles...Read more of this...
by
Donne, John
...t.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that, self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
Curel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thy self nor me the weaker now;
'Tis true; then learn how false, fears be;
Just so much honor, when thou yield'st to...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...
That, when a boar was brought to bay,
Three times, four times out of five,
With his huntspear he'd contrive
To get the killing-place transfixed,
And pin him true, both eyes betwixt?
And that's why the old Duke would rather
He lost a salt-pit than my father,
And loved to have him ever in call;
That's why my father stood in the hall
When the old Duke brought his infant out
To show the people, and while they passed
The wondrous bantling round about,
Was first to start at the ou...Read more of this...
by
Eluard, Paul
...s
Certain soon to ruin their masters
II. The women’s role
As they sing, the maids dash forward
To tidy up the killing fields
Well-powdered girls, quickly to their knees
Their hands -- reaching for the fresh air --
Are blue like never before
What a glorious day!
Look at their hands, the dead
Look at their liquid eyes
This is the toilet of transience
The final toilet of life
Stones sink and disappear
In the vast, primal waters
The final toilet of time
...Read more of this...
by
Lanier, Sidney
...another horse, and he was red.
And unto him that sat thereon was given
To take the peace of earth away, and set
Men killing one another: and they gave
To him a mighty sword."
The friar paused
And pointed round the circle of sad eyes.
"There is no face of man or woman here
But showeth print of the hard hoof of war.
Ah, yonder leaneth limbless Gris Grillon.
Friends, Gris Grillon is France.
Good France; my France,
Wilt never walk on glory's hills again?
W...Read more of this...
by
Pope, Alexander
...ear,
Cry'd Dapperwit, and sunk beside his Chair.
A mournful Glance Sir Fopling upwards cast,
Those Eyes are made so killing---was his last:
Thus on Meander's flow'ry Margin lies
Th' expiring Swan, and as he sings he dies.
When bold Sir Plume had drawn Clarissa down,
Chloe stept in, and kill'd him with a Frown;
She smil'd to see the doughty Hero slain,
But at her Smile, the Beau reviv'd again.
Now Jove suspends his golden Scales in Air,
Weighs the Mens Wits agai...Read more of this...
by
Lindsay, Vachel
...he forest the watchers could see
The tiger-cats crunching the Leaf of the Tree
Lashing themselves, and scattering foam,
Killing our huntsmen, hurrying home.
The chiefs of the mammoths our mastery spurned,
And eastward restlessly fumed and burned.
The peacocks squalled out the news of their drilling
And told how they trampled, maneuvered, and turned.
Ten thousand man-hating tigers
Whirling down from the north, like a flood!
Ten thousand mammoths oncoming
From the s...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...e'll become
That heard the story of this suffering.
I know that the gods had turned
People to objects, without killing mind,
That divine sadness lived eternally.
You're turned into my memory, I find.
x x x
The first ray -- as the blessing of the Lord --
Across the face of the beloved did creep,
Who, sleeping, went a little pale,
And then again more tightly went to sleep.
It seemed that warmth of ray of sun
Appeared to him just like a ...Read more of this...
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