Famous Misdirected Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Robert William Service
 I've tinkered at my bits of rhymes
In weary, woeful, waiting times;
In doleful hours of battle-din,
Ere yet they brought the wounded in;
Through vigils of the fateful night,
In lousy barns by candle-light;
In dug-outs, sagging and aflood,
On stretchers stiff and bleared with blood;
By ragged grove, by ruined road,
By hearths accurst where Love abode;
By broken altars, blackened shrines
I've tinkered at my bits of...Read more of this...

Ballade of a Special Edition

by Amy Levy
 He comes; I hear him up the street--
Bird of ill omen, flapping wide
The pinion of a printed sheet,
His hoarse note scares the eventide.
Of slaughter, theft, and suicide
He is the herald and the friend;
Now he vociferates with pride--
A double murder in Mile End!

A hanging to his soul is sweet;
His gloating fancy's fain to bide
Where human-freighted vessels meet,
And misdirected trains collide.
With...Read more of this...

The Mares Nest

by Rudyard Kipling
 Jane Austen Beecher Stowe de Rouse
 Was good beyond all earthly need;
But, on the other hand, her spouse
 Was very, very bad indeed.
He smoked cigars, called churches slow,
And raced -- but this she did not know.

For Belial Machiavelli kept
 The little fact a secret, and,
Though o'er his minor sins she wept,
 Jane Austen did not understand
That Lilly -- thirteen-two...Read more of this...

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