Famous Lawless Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Lawless poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous lawless poems. These examples illustrate what a famous lawless poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Walt Whitman
THEE for my recitative!
Thee in the driving storm, even as now—the snow—the winter-day declining;
Thee in thy panoply, thy measured dual throbbing, and thy beat convulsive;
Thy black cylindric body, golden brass, and silvery steel;
Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides;
Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar—now tapering in the distance;
Thy...Read more of this...
by
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Now Time's Andromeda on this rock rude,
With not her either beauty's equal or
Her injury's, looks off by both horns of shore,
Her flower, her piece of being, doomed dragon's food.
Time past she has been attempted and pursued
By many blows and banes; but now hears roar
A wilder beast from West than all were, more
Rife in her wrongs, more lawless, and...Read more of this...
by
John Donne
As the sweet sweat of roses in a still,
As that which from chafed musk-cats' pores doth trill,
As the almighty balm of th' early East,
Such are the sweat drops of my mistress' breast,
And on her brow her skin such lustre sets,
They seem no sweat drops, but pearl coronets.
Rank sweaty froth thy Mistress's brow defiles,
Like spermatic issue of ripe menstruous boils,
Or...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
in the wares before you spread,
Types of all things may be read.
'NEATH the shadow
Of these bushes,
On the meadow
Where the cooling water gushes.
Phoebus gave me, when a boy,
All life's fullness to enjoy.
So, in silence, as the God
Bade them with his sov'reign nod,
Sacred Muses train'd my days
To his praise.--
With the bright and silv'ry flood
Of Parnassus stirr'd my blood,
And the seal so...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
This ballad appears to refer to one of the exploits of the notorious
Paul Jones, the American pirate. It is founded on fact.
. . . At the close of a winter day,
Their anchors down, by London town, the Three Great Captains lay;
And one was Admiral of the North from Solway Firth to Skye,
And one was Lord of the Wessex...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I strolled up old Bonanza, where I staked in ninety-eight,
A-purpose to revisit the old claim.
I kept thinking mighty sadly of the funny ways of Fate,
And the lads who once were with me in the game.
Poor boys, they're down-and-outers, and there's scarcely one to-day
Can show a dozen colors in his poke;
And me, I'm still prospecting, old and battered, gaunt and...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
O regret! that life should be passed in pure loss! How
lawless all our eating and how defiled our bodies! I
have the blame, O God! of not having done what Thou
hast commanded. What will come to me for having done
what Thou hast not commanded?...Read more of this...
by
Rainer Maria Rilke
Dedication
These to His Memory--since he held them dear,
Perchance as finding there unconsciously
Some image of himself--I dedicate,
I dedicate, I consecrate with tears--
These Idylls.
And indeed He seems to me
Scarce other than my king's ideal knight,
`Who reverenced his conscience as his king;
Whose glory was, redressing human wrong;
Who spake no slander, no, nor...Read more of this...
by
Stanley Kunitz
I touch you in the night, whose gift was you,
My careless sprawler,
And I touch you cold, unstirring, star-bemused,
That have become the land of your self-strangeness.
What long seduction of the bone has led you
Down the imploring roads I cannot take
Into the arms of ghosts I never knew,
Leaving my manhood on a rumpled field
To guard you where you lie so deep
In...Read more of this...
by
Phillis Wheatley
HAIL, happy day, when, smiling like the morn,
Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn:
The northern clime beneath her genial ray,
Dartmouth, congratulates thy blissful sway:
Elate with hope her race no longer mourns,
Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns,
While in thine hand with pleasure we behold
The silken reins, and Freedom's charms unfold.
Long lost to realms beneath the northern skies
She shines supreme, while...Read more of this...
by
William Blake
When silver snow decks Susan's clothes,
And jewel hangs at th' shepherd's nose,
The blushing bank is all my care,
With hearth so red, and walls so fair;
`Heap the sea-coal, come, heap it higher,
The oaken log lay on the fire.'
The well-wash'd stools, a circling row,
With lad and lass, how fair the show!
The merry can of nut-brown ale,
The laughing jest, the love-sick tale,
Till,...Read more of this...
by
G K Chesterton
Impetuously I sprang from bed,
Long before lunch was up,
That I might drain the dizzy dew
From the day's first golden cup.
In swift devouring ecstasy
Each toil in turn was done;
I had done lying on the lawn
Three minutes after one.
For me, as Mr. Wordsworth says,
The duties shine like stars;
I formed my uncle's character,
Decreasing his cigars.
But could my kind engross me? No!
Stern Art-what...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
NATIVE moments! when you come upon me—Ah you are here now!
Give me now libidinous joys only!
Give me the drench of my passions! Give me life coarse and rank!
To-day, I go consort with nature’s darlings—to-night too;
I am for those who believe in loose delights—I share the midnight orgies of young men;
I dance with the dancers, and...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Wreathe in a garland the corn's golden ear!
With it, the Cyane [31] blue intertwine
Rapture must render each glance bright and clear,
For the great queen is approaching her shrine,--
She who compels lawless passions to cease,
Who to link man with his fellow has come,
And into firm habitations of peace
Changed the rude tents' ever-wandering home.
Shyly in the mountain-cleft
Was the Troglodyte concealed;
And the...Read more of this...
by
William Cowper
Too many, Lord, abuse Thy grace
In this licentious day,
And while they boast they see Thy face,
They turn their own away.
Thy book displays a gracious light
That can the blind restore;
But these are dazzled by the sight,
And blinded still the more.
The pardon such presume upon,
They do not beg but steal;
And when they plead it at Thy throne,
Oh! where's the Spirit's seal?
Was...Read more of this...
by
John Clare
Far spread the moorey ground a level scene
Bespread with rush and one eternal green
That never felt the rage of blundering plough
Though centurys wreathed spring's blossoms on its brow
Still meeting plains that stretched them far away
In uncheckt shadows of green brown, and grey
Unbounded freedom ruled the wandering scene
Nor fence of ownership crept in between
To hide the prospect of the following...Read more of this...
by
Leonard Cohen
The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.
Ring the bells that...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
FROM pent-up, aching rivers;
From that of myself, without which I were nothing;
From what I am determin’d to make illustrious, even if I stand sole among men;
From my own voice resonant—singing the phallus,
Singing the song of procreation,
Singing the need of superb children, and therein superb grown people,
Singing the muscular urge and the blending,
Singing the...Read more of this...
by
Vachel Lindsay
Life's a jail where men have common lot.
Gaunt the one who has, and who has not.
All our treasures neither less nor more,
Bread alone comes thro' the guarded door.
Cards are foolish in this jail, I think,
Yet they play for shoes, for drabs and drink.
She, my lawless, sharp-tongued gypsy maid
Will not scorn with me...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
O THOU, who in the heavens does dwell,
Who, as it pleases best Thysel’,
Sends ane to heaven an’ ten to hell,
A’ for Thy glory,
And no for ony gude or ill
They’ve done afore Thee!
I bless and praise Thy matchless might,
When thousands Thou hast left in night,
That I am here afore Thy sight,
For gifts an’ grace
A burning and a...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Moore
Drink of this cup; -- you'll find there's a spell in
Its every drop 'gainst the ills of mortality;
Talk of the cordial that sparkled for Helen;
Her cup was a fiction, but this is reality.
Would you forget the dark world we are in
Just taste of the bubble that gleams on the top of it;
But would...Read more of this...
by
Obi Nwakanma
Marrakech: the grey hairs of
Atlas, streaks of the light of years,
like truth accompanied by a bodyguard.
It is not war: the fast tumble
is no war, Nadia.
Two pendants, each of hearts, and
the silvery lock leashed unto time;
Is no war: but the travesty of distance,
And this moment, a full breast glistening
out of the moon,...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
[Pg 124] CANZONE XVI. Italia mia, benchè 'l parlar sia indarno. TO THE PRINCES OF ITALY, EXHORTING THEM TO SET HER FREE. O my own Italy! though words are vainThe mortal wounds to close,Unnumber'd, that thy beauteous bosom stain,Yet may it soothe my painTo sigh forth Tyber's woes,Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
Your troubles shrink not, though I feel them less
Here, far away, than when I tarried near;
I even smile old smiles--with listlessness--
Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere.
A thought too strange to house within my brain
Haunting its outer precincts I discern:
--That I will not show zeal again to learn
Your griefs, and, sharing them, renew my...Read more of this...
by
Carl Sandburg
NEW neighbors came to the corner house at Congress and Green streets.
The look of their clean white curtains was the same as the rim of a nun’s bonnet.
One way was an oyster pail factory, one way they made candy, one way paper boxes, strawboard cartons.
The warehouse trucks shook the dust of the ways loose and the wheels whirled dust—there...Read more of this...
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