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Famous Lure Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Dryden, John
...ns from the throne would please;
But lenitives fomented the disease:
That Absalom, ambitious of the crown,
Was made the lure to draw the people down:
That false Achitophel's pernicious hate,
Had turn'd the plot to ruin church and state:
The Council violent, the rabble worse:
That Shimei taught Jerusalem to curse.

With all these loads of injuries opprest,
And long revolving in his careful breast
Th'event of things; at last his patience tir'd,
Thus from his royal throne, b...Read more of this...



by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...eside and alienated home
To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands.
Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness
Has lured his fearless steps; and he has bought
With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, 
His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps
He like her shadow has pursued, where'er
The red volcano overcanopies
Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice
With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes
On black bare pointed islets ever beat
With sluggish surge, or w...Read more of this...

by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...e
They had not learned, until the white man came.
He taught them, too, the lurking devil's joy
In liquid lies, that lure but to destroy.
With wily words, as false as they were sweet, 
He spread his snares for unsuspecting feet; 
Paid truth with guile, and trampled in the dust
Their gentle childlike faith and unaffected trust.

X.

And for the sport of idle kings and knaves
Of Nature's greater noblemen, made slaves.
Alas, the hour, when the wronged Indian k...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...o his rightful joys!
His eyes are on thee bent, as thou didst poise
His fate most goddess-like. Help me, I pray,
To lure--Endymion, dear brother, say
What ails thee?" He could bear no more, and so
Bent his soul fiercely like a spiritual bow,
And twang'd it inwardly, and calmly said:
"I would have thee my only friend, sweet maid!
My only visitor! not ignorant though,
That those deceptions which for pleasure go
'Mong men, are pleasures real as real may be:
But there are hig...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...de, 
 That shaped themselves to profiles terrible. 
 
 All motionless the coursers horrible, 
 That formed a legion lured by Death to war, 
 These men and horses masked, how dread they are! 
 Absorbed in shadows of the eternal shore, 
 Among the living all their tasks are o'er. 
 Silent, they seem all mystery to brave, 
 These sphinxes whom no beacon light can save 
 Upon the threshold of the gulf so near, 
 As if they faced the great enigma here; 
 Ready with hoo...Read more of this...



by Hikmet, Nazim
...an Ocean plays
 on their thick fleshy lips:
"The fire of the Indochina sun
warms the blood
 like Malacca wine.
They lure sailors to gilded stars,
 those Indochina nights,
 those Indochina nights.

Slant-eyed yellow Bornese cabin boys
knifed in Sigapore bars
paint the iron-belted barrels blood-red.
Those Indochina nights, those Indochina nights.

A ship plunges on
to Canton,
55,000 tons.
Those Indochina nights...
As the moon swims in the heavens...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...gn book; 
His resting-place the bank that curbs the brook; 
He seem'd, like him he served, to live apart 
From all that lures the eye, and fills the heart; 
To know no brotherhood; and take from earth 
No gift beyond that bitter boon — our birth. 

XXVII. 

If aught he loved, 'twas Lara; but was shown 
His faith in reverence and in deeds alone; 
In mute attention; and his care, which guess'd 
Each wish, fulfill'd it ere the tongue express'd. 
Still there was haugh...Read more of this...

by Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...r music, and her meteors,
And, lifting man to the blue deep
Where stars their perfect courses keep,
Like wise preceptor lure his eye
To sound the science of the sky,
And carry learning to its height
Of untried power and sane delight;
The Indian cheer, the frosty skies
Breed purer wits, inventive eyes,
Eyes that frame cities where none be,
And hands that stablish what these see:
And, by the moral of his place,
Hint summits of heroic grace;
Man in these crags a fastness find
To...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...read an eerie road across the moor
Where shadows weave upon their ghostly looms,
And winds sing an old lyric that might lure
Sad queens from ancient tombs.

I am a sister to the loveliness
Of cool far hill and long-remembered shore,
Finding in it a sweet forgetfulness
Of all that hurt before.

The world of day, its bitterness and cark,
No longer have the power to make me weep;
I welcome this communion of the dark
As toilers welcome sleep....Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ess; thrice the equinoctial line 
He circled; four times crossed the car of night 
From pole to pole, traversing each colure; 
On the eighth returned; and, on the coast averse 
From entrance or Cherubick watch, by stealth 
Found unsuspected way. There was a place, 
Now not, though sin, not time, first wrought the change, 
Where Tigris, at the foot of Paradise, 
Into a gulf shot under ground, till part 
Rose up a fountain by the tree of life: 
In with the river sunk, and w...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...hildhood spent in a town

like Lordsburg, New Mexico, or Winchester, Virginia.

 I saw him inventing a new spinning lure for trout fishing

in America. I saw him first of all working with his imagina-

tion, then with metal and color and hooks, trying a little of

this and a little of that, and then adding motion and then tak-

ing it away and then coming back again with a different motion,

and in the end the lure was invented.

 He called his bosses in. They...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...sed across the mead
Moonstruck with love, and this still Thames had heard
Pan plash and paddle groping for some reed
To lure from her blue cave that Naiad maid
Who for such piping listens half in joy and half afraid.

A moment more, the waking dove had cooed,
The silver daughter of the silver sea
With the fond gyves of clinging hands had wooed
Her wanton from the chase, and Dryope
Had thrust aside the branches of her oak
To see the lusty gold-haired lad rein in his snorti...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...es when she sees the lightening east.

And I will sing how sad Proserpina
Unto a grave and gloomy Lord was wed,
And lure the silver-breasted Helena
Back from the lotus meadows of the dead,
So shalt thou see that awful loveliness
For which two mighty Hosts met fearfully in war's abyss!

And then I'll pipe to thee that Grecian tale
How Cynthia loves the lad Endymion,
And hidden in a grey and misty veil
Hies to the cliffs of Latmos once the Sun
Leaps from his ocean bed in fr...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...thy heart;
     Too much, before, my selfish ear
     Was idly soothed my praise to hear.
     That fatal bait hath lured thee back,
     In deathful hour, o'er dangerous track;
     And how, O how, can I atone
     The wreck my vanity brought on!—
     One way remains—I'll tell him all—
     Yes! struggling bosom, forth it shall!
     Thou, whose light folly bears the blame,
     Buy thine own pardon with thy shame!
     But first—my father is a man
     Outlawe...Read more of this...

by Khayyam, Omar
...- He knows -- HE knows! 

LX.
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it. 

LXI.
For let Philosopher and Doctor preach
Of what they will, and what they will not -- each
Is but one Link in an eternal Chain
That none can slip, nor break, nor over-reach. 

LXII.
And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop't we live and di...Read more of this...

by Cullen, Countee
...ill pure all that I loved, and die.
There is no other way to keep secure
My wild chimeras, grave-locked against the lure
Of Truth, the small hard teeth of worms, yet less
Envenomed than the mouth of Truth, will bless
Them into dust and happy nothingness.
Lord, Thou art God; and I, Lord, what am I
But dust?With dust my place.Lord, let me die."

Across earth's warm, palpitating crust
I flung my body in embrace; I thrust
My mouth into the grass and sucked the dew...Read more of this...

by Petrarch, Francesco
...cent.The second Scipio next in line was seen,And he that seem'd the lure of Egypt's queen;With many a mighty chief I there beheld,Whose valorous hand the battle's storm repell'd.[Pg 383]Two fathers of the great Cornelian name,With their three noble sons who shared...Read more of this...

by Johnson, Samuel
...ould Reason guide thee with her brightest ray,
144 And pour on misty Doubt resistless day;
145 Should no false Kindness lure to loose delight,
146 Nor Praise relax, nor Difficulty fright;
147 Should tempting Novelty thy cell refrain,
148 And Sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain;
149 Should Beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart,
150 Nor claim the triumph of a letter'd heart;
151 Should no disease thy torpid veins invade,
152 Nor Melancholy's phantoms haunt thy shade;
153 Yet ho...Read more of this...

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...y 17
And therefore every man this tale I tell,
Win whoso may, for all is for to sell;
With empty hand men may no hawkes lure;
For winning would I all his will endure,
And make me a feigned appetite,
And yet in bacon* had I never delight: *i.e. of Dunmow 9
That made me that I ever would them chide.
For, though the Pope had sitten them beside,
I would not spare them at their owen board,
For, by my troth, I quit* them word for word *repaid
As help me very God omnipot...Read more of this...

by Montgomery, Lucy Maud
...chance had failed to do. 

I had not scaled such weary heights
But that I held thy scorn in fear,
And never keenest lure might match
The subtle goading of thy sneer. 

Thine anger struck from me a fire
That purged all dull content away,
Our mortal strife to me has been
Unflagging spur from day to day. 

And thus, while all the world may laud
The gifts of love and loyalty,
I lay my meed of gratitude
Before thy feet, mine enemy!...Read more of this...

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Book: Shattered Sighs