Famous Limbo Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Child of Europe

...
But through them against whom they are used.

Fashion your weapon from ambiguous words.
Consign clear words to lexical limbo.

Judge no words before the clerks have checked
In their card index by whom they were spoken.

The voice of passion is better than the voice of reason.
The passionless cannot change history.

6
Love no country: countries soon disappear
Love no city: cities are soon rubble.

Throw away keepsakes, or from your desk
A choking, poisonous fume will exude.

...Read more of this...
by Milosz, Czeslaw


Garden Francies

...ot the oaf
Over a jolly chapter of Rabelais.

V.

Now, this morning, betwixt the moss
And gum that locked our friend in limbo,
A spider had spun his web across,
And sat in the midst with arms akimbo:
So, I took pity, for learning's sake,
And, _de profundis, accentibus ltis,
Cantate!_ quoth I, as I got a rake;
And up I fished his delectable treatise.

VI.

Here you have it, dry in the sun,
With all the binding all of a blister,
And great blue spots where the ink has run,
And r...Read more of this...
by Browning, Robert

Helen all Alone

...elen came to me, she did,
 Helen all alone!

 Side by side (because our fate
 Damned us ere our birth)
 We stole out of Limbo Gate
 Looking for the Earth.
 Hand in pulling hand amid
 Fear no dreams have known,
 Helen ran with me, she did,
 Helen all alone!

 When the Horror passing speech
 Hunted us along,
 Each laid hold on each, and each
 Found the other strong.
 In the teeth of Things forbid
 And Reason overthrown,
 Helen stood by me, she did,
 Helen all alone!

 When, at ...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

Ikon: The Harrowing of Hell

...Down through the tomb's inward arch
He has shouldered out into Limbo
to gather them, dazed, from dreamless slumber:
the merciful dead, the prophets,
the innocents just His own age and those
unnumbered others waiting here
unaware, in an endless void He is ending
now, stooping to tug at their hands,
to pull them from their sarcophagi,
dazzled, almost unwilling. Didmas,
neighbor in death, Golgotha dust
still streaked on th...Read more of this...
by Levertov, Denise

Inferno (Italian)

...me vivemo in disio».

 Gran duol mi prese al cor quando lo 'ntesi,

per? che gente di molto valore

conobbi che 'n quel limbo eran sospesi.

 «Dimmi, maestro mio, dimmi, segnore»,

comincia' io per voler esser certo

di quella fede che vince ogne errore:

 «uscicci mai alcuno, o per suo merto

o per altrui, che poi fosse beato?».

E quei che 'ntese il mio parlar coverto,

 rispuose: «Io era nuovo in questo stato,

quando ci vidi venire un possente,

con segno di vittoria coro...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante


Letter to My Lover After Seven Years

...someday die.

You gave me seven years
during which the cells of my body
died & were reborn.

Now we have died
into the limbo of lost loves,
that wreckage of memories
tarnishing with time,
that litany of losses
which grows longer with the years,
as more of our friends
descend underground
& the list of our loved dead
outstrips the list of the living.

Knowing as we do
our certain doom,
knowing as we do
the rarity of the gifts we gave
& received,
can we redeem
our love from the...Read more of this...
by Jong, Erica

Limbo

...as a minnow with hooks
Tearing her open.

She waded in under
The sign of the cross.
He was hauled in with the fish.
Now limbo will be

A cold glitter of souls
Through some far briny zone.
Even Christ's palms, unhealed,
Smart and cannot fish there....Read more of this...
by Heaney, Seamus

Men Of The High North

...you disown it?
 Can you forget it, its glory and its goad?
Where is the hardship, where is the pain of it?
 Lost in the limbo of things you've forgot;
Only remain the guerdon and gain of it;
 Zest of the foray, and God, how you fought!

You who have made good, you foreign faring;
 You money magic to far lands has whirled;
Can you forget those days of vast daring,
 There with your soul on the Top o' the World?
Nights when no peril could keep you awake on
 Spruce boughs you spr...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Paradise Lost: Book 03

...s, pardons, bulls, 
The sport of winds: All these, upwhirled aloft, 
Fly o'er the backside of the world far off 
Into a Limbo large and broad, since called 
The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown 
Long after; now unpeopled, and untrod. 
All this dark globe the Fiend found as he passed, 
And long he wandered, till at last a gleam 
Of dawning light turned thither-ward in haste 
His travelled steps: far distant he descries 
Ascending by degrees magnificent 
Up to the wall of Heav...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Staying Overnight with Abbot Zan (Abbot of Dayun Temple in the capital, exiled to this place)

...reat court's chrysanthemums, And frost has felled half the pond's lotuses. Banished, you don't renounce your nature, In limbo, you don't depart from Chan. Now we've met, we can spend all night together, The Gansu moon shines round upon us....Read more of this...
by Fu, Du

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