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Famous Lie In Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Sexton, Anne
...ent well
except for the fear --
the fear of sleep.

Briar Rose
was an insomniac...
She could not nap
or lie in sleep
without the court chemist
mixing her some knock-out drops
and never in the prince's presence.
If if is to come, she said,
sleep must take me unawares
while I am laughing or dancing
so that I do not know that brutal place
where I lie down with cattle prods,
the hole in my cheek open.
Further, I must not dream
for when I do I see the table...Read more of this...



by Rich, Adrienne
...


7.

It was an old theme even for me:
Language cannot do everything- 

chalk it on the walls where the dead poets
lie in their mausoleums 

If at the will of the poet the poem
could turn into a thing 

a granite flank laid bare, a lifted head
alight with dew 

If it could simply look you in the face
with naked eyeballs, not letting you turn 

till you, and I who long to make this thing,
were finally clarified together in its stare 


8.

No. Let me have this dus...Read more of this...

by Milosz, Czeslaw
...to fulfill the prediction.

4
Grow your tree of falsehood from a single grain of truth.
Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality.

Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself
So the weary travelers may find repose in the lie.

After the Day of the Lie gather in select circles
Shaking with laughter when our real deeds are mentioned.

Dispensing flattery called: perspicacious thinking.
Dispensing flattery called: a great talent....Read more of this...

by Piercy, Marge
...zure sipping from a puddle on the blacktop. 

Cobalt as the midnight sky 
when day has gone without a trace 
and we lie in each other's arms 
eyes shut and fingers open 
and all the colors of the world 
pass through our bodies like strings of fire....Read more of this...

by Keats, John
..., gulph'd it down,
And left me tossing safely. But the crown
Of all my life was utmost quietude:
More did I love to lie in cavern rude,
Keeping in wait whole days for Neptune's voice,
And if it came at last, hark, and rejoice!
There blush'd no summer eve but I would steer
My skiff along green shelving coasts, to hear
The shepherd's pipe come clear from aery steep,
Mingled with ceaseless bleatings of his sheep:
And never was a day of summer shine,
But I beheld its birth up...Read more of this...



by Pope, Alexander
...t's praise,
That, if he pleas'd, he pleas'd by manly ways;
That flatt'ry, even to kings, he held a shame,
And thought a lie in verse or prose the same:
That not in fancy's maze he wander'd long,
But stoop'd to truth, and moraliz'd his song:
That not for fame, but virtue's better end,
He stood the furious foe, the timid friend,
The damning critic, half-approving wit,
The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit;
Laugh'd at the loss of friends he never had,
The dull, the proud, the wi...Read more of this...

by Rich, Adrienne
...nd you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images j...Read more of this...

by Ayres, Pam
...ties, caps and decay,
The murder of fillin’s,
Injections and drillin’s,
I’d have thrown all me sherbet away.

So I lie in the old dentist’s chair,
And I gaze up his nose in despair,
And his drill it do whine
In these molars of mine.
‘Two amalgam,’ he’ll say, ‘for in there.’

How I laughed at my mother’s false teeth,
As they foamed in the waters beneath.
But now comes the reckonin’
It’s methey are beckonin’
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.

Taken from the...Read more of this...

by Silverstein, Shel
...opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can't do a handstand--
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said--
I'm just not the same since there's rain in my head....Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...oubtful whether God be Lord,
Or Dagon. But for thee what shall be done?
Thou must not in the mean while here forgot
Lie in this miserable loathsom plight 
Neglected. I already have made way
To some Philistian Lords, with whom to treat
About thy ransom: well they may by this
Have satisfi'd thir utmost of revenge
By pains and slaveries, worse then death inflicted
On thee, who now no more canst do them harm.

Sam: Spare that proposal, Father, spare the trouble
Of tha...Read more of this...

by Auden, Wystan Hugh (W H)
...can reach the deaf,Who can speak for the dumb? All I have is a voiceTo undo the folded lie,The romantic lie in the brainOf the sensual man-in-the-streetAnd the lie of AuthorityWhose buildings grope the sky:There is no such thing as the StateAnd no one exists alone;Hunger allows no choiceTo the citizen or the police;We must love one another or die. Defenceless under the nightOur world in stupor lies;Yet, dotted everyw...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...see the sparkles of starshine on the icy and pallid earth. 

A shroud I see, and I am the shroud—I wrap a body, and lie in the coffin, 
It is dark here under ground—it is not evil or pain here—it is blank here, for
 reasons. 

It seems to me that everything in the light and air ought to be happy, 
Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.

10
I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer, swimming naked through the eddies of the sea, 
His b...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...the distant click of their picks and shovels; 
They have clear’d the beams away—they tenderly lift me forth.

I lie in the night air in my red shirt—the pervading hush is for my sake; 
Painless after all I lie, exhausted but not so unhappy; 
White and beautiful are the faces around me—the heads are bared of their
 fire-caps; 
The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches. 

Distant and dead resuscitate;
They show as the dial or move as the hands of...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...t men,
And outcasts always mourn


V


I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.

But this I know, that every Law
That men have made for Man,
Since first Man took his brother's life,
And the sad world began,
But straws the wheat and saves the chaff
With a most evil fan.

This too I know - and wise it were
If each could know the s...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...sted over with seed pearls,
Oblong and slim, for wearing at the neck,
Or hidden in the bosom; their joined curls
Should lie in it. And further to bedeck
His love, Heinrich had picked a whiff, a fleck,
The merest puff of a thin, linked chain
To hang it from. Lotta could not refrain
From weeping as they sauntered down the street.
She did not want the locket, yet she did.
To have him love her she found very sweet,
But it is hard to keep love always hid.
Then ...Read more of this...

by Bradstreet, Anne
...snorting Horse, the Trumpet, Drum I like,
3.16 The glist'ring Sword, and well advanced Pike.
3.17 I cannot lie in trench before a Town,
3.18 Nor wait til good advice our hopes do crown.
3.19 I scorn the heavy Corslet, Musket-proof;
3.20 I fly to catch the Bullet that's aloof.
3.21 Though thus in field, at home, to all most kind,
3.22 So affable that I do suit each mind,
3.23 I can insinuate into the breast
3.24 And by my mirth ...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...stments down,
And, lapping, smack their heated chaps for more,
And ply their daggers for it, till the kings
All die and lie in a crooked sprawl of death,
Ungainly, foul, and stiff as any heap
Of villeins rotting on a battle-field.
'Tis true, that when these things have come to pass
Then never a king shall rule again in France,
For every villein shall be king in France:
And who hath lordship in him, whether born
In hedge or silken bed, shall be a lord:
And queens shall be ...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...my brother sworn
To farther me, as I have told beforn.
For which thou art y-bounden as a knight
To helpe me, if it lie in thy might,
Or elles art thou false, I dare well sayn,"

This Arcita full proudly spake again:
"Thou shalt," quoth he, "be rather* false than I, *sooner
And thou art false, I tell thee utterly;
For par amour I lov'd her first ere thou.
What wilt thou say? *thou wist it not right now* *even now thou
Whether she be a woman or goddess. knowest not...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...artes. All thought becomes an image and the soul
Becomes a body: that body and that soul
Too perfect at the full to lie in a cradle,
Too lonely for the traffic of the world:
Body and soul cast out and cast away
Beyond the visible world.

Aherne. All dreams of the soul
End in a beautiful man's or woman's body.

Robartes, Have you not always known it?

Aherne. The song will have it
That those that we have loved got their long fingers
From death, and wounds, ...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
...passion, chilled,
Lay in his heart like some dead thing killed
At the moment of birth. Then, deadly sick,
He would lie in a swoon for hours, while thick
Phantasmagoria crowded his brain,
And his body shrieked in the clutch of pain.
The crisis passed, he would wake and smile
With a vacant joy, half-imbecile
And quite confused, not being certain
Why he was suffering; a curtain
Fallen over the tortured mind beguiled
His sorrow. Like a little child
He would play with...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs