Famous Lacerating Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Upon Concluded Lives

by Emily Dickinson
 Upon Concluded Lives
There's nothing cooler falls --
Than Life's sweet Calculations --
The mixing Bells and Palls --

Make Lacerating Tune --
To Ears the Dying Side --
'Tis Coronal -- and Funeral --
Saluting -- in the Road --...Read more of this...

Milton: But in the Wine-presses the Human Grapes Sing not nor Dance

by William Blake
 But in the Wine-presses the human grapes sing not nor dance: 
They howl and writhe in shoals of torment, in fierce flames consuming,
In chains of iron and in dungeons circled with ceaseless fires,
In pits and dens and shades of death, in shapes of torment and woe:
The plates and screws and racks and saws and cords and fires and cisterns
The...Read more of this...

Three Songs For Mayday Morning

by Barry Tebb
 ( I )


for ‘JC’ of the TLS

Nightmare of metropolitan amalgam

Grand Hotel and myself as a guest there

Lost with my room rifled, my belongings scattered,

Purse, diary and vital list of numbers gone – 

Vague sad memories of mam n’dad

Leeds 1942 back-to-back with shared outside lav.

Hosannas of sweet May mornings

Whitsun glory of lilac blooming

Sixty years on I run and run

From death,...Read more of this...

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