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Famous Lack Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...epilogue: 
Your thoughts, 
dreaming on a softened brain, 
like an over-fed lackey on a greasy settee, 
with my heart's bloody tatters I'll mock again; 
impudent and caustic, I'll jeer to superfluity. 

Of Grandfatherly gentleness I'm devoid, 
there's not a single grey hair in my soul! 
Thundering the world with the might of my voice, 
I go by -- handsome, 
twenty-two-year-old. 

Gentle ones! 
You lay your love on a violi...Read more of this...
by Mayakovsky, Vladimir



...annel, would they hinder
the course of sea-farers. Light came from the east,
the bright beacon of God, and the ocean slackened
until I could see the headlands, those windy walls.
The course of events often spares the undoomed earl,
when his courage avails. (ll. 559-73)

“However, it happened to me that I slew
with my sword nine sea monsters.
Never have I learned under the vault of heaven
of a more difficult contest in the night,
nor in the sea-streams a man harder ...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,
...eir was afterward born,
a son in his halls, whom heaven sent
to favor the folk, feeling their woe
that erst they had lacked an earl for leader
so long a while; the Lord endowed him,
the Wielder of Wonder, with world’s renown.
Famed was this Beowulf: {0a} far flew the boast of him,
son of Scyld, in the Scandian lands.
So becomes it a youth to quit him well
with his father’s friends, by fee and gift,
that to aid him, aged, in after days,
come warriors willing, should...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,
...forest shown, 
 Its rows of battlements make triple crown; 
 At eve, its silhouette is finely traced 
 Immense and black—showing the Keep is placed 
 On rocky throne, sublime and high; east, west, 
 And north and south, at corners four, there rest 
 Four mounts; Aptar, where flourishes the pine, 
 And Toxis, where the elms grow green and fine; 
 Crobius and Bleyda, giants in their might, 
 Against the stormy winds to stand and fight, 
 And these above its diadem up...Read more of this...
by Hugo, Victor
...
I have a friend
who is turning gray,
not just her hair,
and I do not know
why this is so.


Is it a lack of vitamin E
pantothenic acid, or B-12?
Or is it from being frantic
and alone?


'How long does it take you to love someone?'
I ask her.
'A hot second,' she replies.
'And how long do you love them?'
'Oh, anywhere up to several months.'
'And how long does it take you
to get over loving them?'
'Three weeks,' she said, 'tops.'


Did I menti...Read more of this...
by Walker, Alice



...the green doublet; bitter is the wind, as though it blew

From Saturn's cave; a few thin wisps of hay
Lie on the sharp black hedges, where the wain
Dragged the sweet pillage of a summer's day
From the low meadows up the narrow lane;
Upon the half-thawed snow the bleating sheep
Press close against the hurdles, and the shivering house-dogs creep

From the shut stable to the frozen stream
And back again disconsolate, and miss
The bawling shepherds and the noisy team;
And overhea...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...ct, and of tender age. 
Years had roll'd on, and fast they speed away 
To those that wander as to those that stay; 
But lack of tidings from another clime 
Had lent a flagging wing to weary Time. 
They see, they recognise, yet almost deem 
The present dubious, or the past a dream. 

He lives, nor yet is past his manhood's prime, 
Though sear'd by toil, and something touch'd by time; 
His faults, whate'er they were, if scarce forgot, 
Might be untaught him by his varied lot; 
...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)
...er prey. 

Paint Castlemaine in colours that will hold 
(Her, not her picture, for she now grows old): 
She through her lackey's drawers, as he ran, 
Discerned love's cause and a new flame began. 
Her wonted joys thenceforth and court she shuns, 
And still within her mind the footman runs: 
His brazen calves, his brawny thighs--the face 
She slights--his feet shaped for a smoother race. 
Poring within her glass she readjusts 
Her looks, and oft-tried beauty now distrusts, 
Fe...Read more of this...
by Marvell, Andrew
...ything that goes on round me.
In other words, I know wherever I am,
Being the creature of literature I am, 
1 sball not lack for pain to keep me awake.
Kit Marlowe taught me how to say my prayers:
"Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it."
Samoa, Russia, Ireland I complain of,
No less than England, France, and Italy. 
Because I wrote my novels in New Hampshire
Is no proof that I aimed them at New Hampshire.
When I left Massachusetts years ago
Between two days, the reason why I ...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...et blue hyacinth,
That blossoms underground,
And sallow poppies, will be dear to her.
And will not Silence know
In the black shade of what obsidian steep
Stiffens the white narcissus numb with sleep?
(Seed which Demeter's daughter bore from home,
Uptorn by desperate fingers long ago,
Reluctant even as she,
Undone Persephone,
And even as she set out again to grow
In twilight, in perdition's lean and inauspicious loam).
She will love well," I said,
"The flowers of the dead;
Whe...Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna
...imple intelligence 
Behold the Forms of nature. They discern 
Unerringly the Archtypes, all the verities 
Which mortals lack or indirectly learn. 
Transparent in primordial truth, unvarying, 
Pure Earthness and right Stonehood from their clear, 
High eminence are seen; unveiled, the seminal 
Huge Principles appear.

The Tree-ness of the tree they know-the meaning of 
Arboreal life, how from earth's salty lap 
The solar beam uplifts it; all the holiness 
Enacted by leaves' fal...Read more of this...
by Lewis, C S
...shortly be with them that rest.

Man. Believe not these suggestions which proceed
From anguish of the mind and humours black, 
That mingle with thy fancy. I however
Must not omit a Fathers timely care
To prosecute the means of thy deliverance
By ransom or how else: mean while be calm,
And healing words from these thy friends admit.

Sam. O that torment should not be confin'd
To the bodies wounds and sores
With maladies innumerable
In heart, head, brest, and reins;
But must se...Read more of this...
by Milton, John
...at naught in here.
It couldn’t stir so sensitively poised
A thing as that. It couldn’t reach the lamp
To get a puff of black smoke from the flame,
Or blow a rumple in the collie’s coat.
You make a little foursquare block of air,
Quiet and light and warm, in spite of all
The illimitable dark and cold and storm,
And by so doing give these three, lamp, dog,
And book-leaf, that keep near you, their repose;
Though for all anyone can tell, repose
May be the thing you haven’t, yet y...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert
...ld and keen, 
Dead white, save where some sharp ravine 
Took shadow, or the sombre green 
Of hemlocks turned to pitchy black 
Against the whiteness at their back. 
For such a world and such a night 
Most fitting that unwarming light, 
Which only seemd where'er it fell 
To make the coldness visible. 

Shut in from all the world without, 
We sat the clean-winged hearth about, 
Content to let the north-wind roar 
In baffled rage at pane and door, 
While the red logs before us be...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...
I and this mystery, here we stand. 

Clear and sweet is my Soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my Soul. 

Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen, and receives proof in its turn. 

Showing the best, and dividing it from the worst, age vexes age; 
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am
 silent, and go bathe and admire myself. 

Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt
...the infinite seas
Becalm'd, and cannot stir her golden freight. 

6
While yet we wait for spring, and from the dry
And blackening east that so embitters March,
Well-housed must watch grey fields and meadows parch,
And driven dust and withering snowflake fly;
Already in glimpses of the tarnish'd sky
The sun is warm and beckons to the larch,
And where the covert hazels interarch
Their tassell'd twigs, fair beds of primrose lie. 
Beneath the crisp and wintry carpet hid
A million...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...with soil,
     While every gasp with sobs he drew,
     The laboring stag strained full in view.
     Two dogs of black Saint Hubert's breed,
     Unmatched for courage, breath, and speed,
     Fast on his flying traces came,
     And all but won that desperate game;
     For, scarce a spear's length from his haunch,
     Vindictive toiled the bloodhounds stanch;
     Nor nearer might the dogs attain,
     Nor farther might the quarry strain
     Thus up the marg...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...ke it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can't.
But if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of telling.
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
(And her only thirty-one.)
I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She's had five already, and nearly died of young George.) 
The chemist said it would be alright, but I've never been the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.
Well,...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...
I could not believe it. Is it so difficult
For the spirit to conceive a face, a mouth?
The letters proceed from these black keys, and these black keys proceed
From my alphabetical fingers, ordering parts,

Parts, bits, cogs, the shining multiples.
I am dying as I sit. I lose a dimension.
Trains roar in my ears, departures, departures!
The silver track of time empties into the distance,
The white sky empties of its promise, like a cup.
These are my feet, these mechanical echo...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia
...eping, hour after hour
In the dark. I might have got the better of
My clumsy fury with constraint, my fret
For things I lack all lexica and phrase-book art
To say. I might have been a faithful wife; a mother.
But that's all done with. This is Fate. God. 
Sorted. Here I am - yours, to the last breath. 
I couldn't give my heart to anyone else.
My life till now has been a theorem, to demonstrate
How right it is to love you. This love is love to death.
*
"I knew you anyway. I lov...Read more of this...
by Padel, Ruth

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry