Famous Loathing Poems by Famous Poets

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

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The Glove

by Robert Browning
 (PETER RONSARD _loquitur_.)

``Heigho!'' yawned one day King Francis,
``Distance all value enhances!
``When a man's busy, why, leisure
``Strikes him as wonderful pleasure:
`` 'Faith, and at leisure once is he?
``Straightway he wants to be busy.
``Here we've got peace; and aghast I'm
``Caught thinking war the true pastime.
``Is there a reason in metre?
``Give us your speech, master Peter!''
I who, if mortal dare say so,
Ne'er...Read more of this...

Remembrance

by Alexander Pushkin
 When the loud day for men who sow and reap
Grows still, and on the silence of the town
The unsubstantial veils of night and sleep,
The meed of the day's labour, settle down,
Then for me in the stillness of the night
The wasting, watchful hours drag on their course,
And in the idle darkness comes the bite
Of all the burning serpents of remorse;
Dreams...Read more of this...

Song To Be Sung by the Father of Infant Female Children

by Ogden Nash
 My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky;
Contrariwise, my blood runs cold
When little boys go by.
For little boys as little boys,
No special hate I carry,
But now and then they grow to men,
And when they do, they marry.
No matter how they tarry,
Eventually they marry.
And, swine among the pearls,
They marry little girls.

Oh, somewhere, somewhere, an infant plays,
With parents...Read more of this...

Sonnet XCIII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XCIII. Pien di quella ineffabile dolcezza. WHEREVER HE IS, HE SEES ONLY LAURA.  O'erflowing with the sweets ineffable,Which from that lovely face my fond eyes drew,What time they seal'd, for very rapture, grew.On meaner beauty never more to dwell,Whom most I love I left: my mind so wellIts part,...Read more of this...

Harry Wilmans

by Edgar Lee Masters
 I was just turned twenty-one,
And Henry Phipps, the Sunday-school superintendent,
Made a speech in Bindle's Opera House.
"The honor of the flag must be upheld," he said,
"Whether it be assailed by a barbarous tribe of Tagalogs
Or the greatest power in Europe."
And we cheered and cheered the speech and the flag he waved
As he spoke.
And I went to the war in spite...Read more of this...

Counter-Attack

by Siegfried Sassoon
 We’d gained our first objective hours before 
While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes, 
Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke. 
Things seemed all right at first. We held their line, 
With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed, 
And clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench. 
The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs 
High-booted, sprawled...Read more of this...

Melancholy -- To Laura

by Friedrich von Schiller
 Laura! a sunrise seems to break
Where'er thy happy looks may glow.
Joy sheds its roses o'er thy cheek,
Thy tears themselves do but bespeak
The rapture whence they flow;
Blest youth to whom those tears are given--
The tears that change his earth to heaven;
His best reward those melting eyes--
For him new suns are in the skies!

Thy soul--a crystal river passing,
Silver-clear, and sunbeam-glassing,
Mays into...Read more of this...

uganda cry

by Rg Gregory
 i have lost touch over the years
with the hot africa inside me

illness and all - i spread to root
in the red earth siphoned the sun

loved the black inflections of my eyes
cut callow cords and found new forms

felt free to fashion and freely raised
orchards of feelings where the groves

were rife with desiccated pens
but all the time my ears insistent to

the...Read more of this...

The Poet as Hero

by Siegfried Sassoon
 You've heard me, scornful, harsh, and discontented, 
Mocking and loathing War: you've asked me why 
Of my old, silly sweetness I've repented-- 
My ecstasies changed to an ugly cry. 

You are aware that once I sought the Grail, 
Riding in armour bright, serene and strong; 
And it was told that through my infant wail 
There rose immortal semblances of...Read more of this...

Daffy Duck In Hollywood

by John Ashbery
 Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
Of Rumford's Baking Powder, a celluloid earring, Speedy
Gonzales, the latest from Helen Topping Miller's fertile
Escritoire, a sheaf of suggestive pix on greige, deckle-edged
Stock--to come clattering through the rainbow trellis
Where Pistachio Avenue...Read more of this...

I Love The Naked Ages Long Ago

by Charles Baudelaire
 I love the naked ages long ago 
When statues were gilded by Apollo, 
When men and women of agility 
Could play without lies and anxiety, 
And the sky lovingly caressed their spines, 
As it exercised its noble machine. 
Fertile Cybele, mother of nature, then, 
Would not place on her daughters a burden, 
But, she-wolf sharing her heart with the...Read more of this...

Young Blood

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 "But, sir," I said, "they tell me the man is like to die!" The Canon shook his head indulgently. "Young blood, Cousin," he boomed. "Young blood! Youth will be served!" 
-- D'Hermonville's Fabliaux. 


He woke up with a sick taste in his mouth 
And lay there heavily, while dancing motes 
Whirled through his brain in endless, rippling streams, 
And...Read more of this...

Sonnet XLIII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XLIII. Quel rosignuol che sì soave piagne. THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE REMINDS HIM OF HIS UNHAPPY LOT.  Yon nightingale, whose bursts of thrilling tone,Pour'd in soft sorrow from her tuneful throat,Haply her mate or infant brood bemoan,Filling the fields and skies with pity's note;Here lingering till the long long...Read more of this...

To The Dead

by Frank Bidart
 What I hope (when I hope) is that we'll
see each other again,--

. . . and again reach the VEIN

in which we loved each other . .
It existed. It existed.

There is a NIGHT within the NIGHT,--

. . . for, like the detectives (the Ritz Brothers)
in The Gorilla,

once we'd been battered by the gorilla

we searched the walls, the intricately carved
impenetrable paneling

for...Read more of this...

Sonnet XIV: Alas Have I Not

by Sir Philip Sidney
 Alas, have I not pain enough, my friend, 
Upon whose breast a fiercer gripe doth tire, 
Than did on him who first stole down the fire, 
While Love on me doth all his quiver spend, 

But with your rhubarb words you must contend, 
To grieve me worse, in saying that desire 
Doth plunge my well-form'd soul even in the...Read more of this...

Miniver Cheevy

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.


Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.


Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam's neighbors.


Miniver mourned the...Read more of this...

Behold from the land of the farther suns

by Stephen Crane
 Behold, from the land of the farther suns
I returned.
And I was in a reptile-swarming place,
Peopled, otherwise, with grimaces,
Shrouded above in black impenetrableness.
I shrank, loathing,
Sick with it.
And I said to him,
"What is this?"
He made answer slowly,
"Spirit, this is a world;
This was your home."...Read more of this...

J--K. Huysmans

by Amy Lowell
 A flickering glimmer through a window-pane,
A dim red glare through mud bespattered glass,
Cleaving a path between blown walls of sleet
Across uneven pavements sunk in slime
To scatter and then quench itself in mist.
And struggling, slipping, often rudely hurled
Against the jutting angle of a wall,
And cursed, and reeled against, and flung aside
By drunken brawlers as they shuffled past,
A man was groping...Read more of this...

Villon

by Siegfried Sassoon
THEY threw me from the gates: my matted hair
Was dank with dungeon wetness; my spent frame
O¡¯erlaid with marish agues: everywhere
Tortured by leaping pangs of frost and flame 
So hideous was I that even Lazarus there 5
In noisome rags arrayed and leprous shame 
Beside me set had seemed full sweet and fair 
And looked on me with loathing.

But one came
Who laid...Read more of this...

London Bridge

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 “Do I hear them? Yes, I hear the children singing—and what of it? 
Have you come with eyes afire to find me now and ask me that? 
If I were not their father and if you were not their mother, 
We might believe they made a noise…. What are you—driving at!” 

“Well, be glad that you can hear them,...Read more of this...

The Redeemer

by Siegfried Sassoon
 Darkness: the rain sluiced down; the mire was deep; 
It was past twelve on a mid-winter night, 
When peaceful folk in beds lay snug asleep; 
There, with much work to do before the light, 
We lugged our clay-sucked boots as best we might 
Along the trench; sometimes a bullet sang, 
And droning shells burst with a hollow bang; 
We...Read more of this...

The Bridge of Sighs

by Thomas Hood
 One more Unfortunate, 
Weary of breath, 
Rashly importunate, 
Gone to her death! 

Take her up tenderly, 
Lift her with care; 
Fashion'd so slenderly 
Young, and so fair! 

Look at her garments 
Clinging like cerements; 
Whilst the wave constantly 
Drips from her clothing; 
Take her up instantly, 
Loving, not loathing. 

Touch her not scornfully; 
Think of her mournfully, 
Gently and...Read more of this...

Portrait Of A Machine

by Louis Untermeyer
What nudity is beautiful as this
Obedient monster purring at its toil;
These naked iron muscles dripping oil
And the sure-fingered rods that never miss.
This long and shining flank of metal is
Magic that greasy labor cannot spoil;
While this vast engine that could rend the soil
Conceals its fury with a gentle hiss.

It does not vent its loathing, does not turn
Upon its makers with destroying...Read more of this...

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