Famous Misguided Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Satyre Against Mankind

by John Wilmot
 Were I - who to my cost already am
One of those strange, prodigious creatures, man -
A spirit free to choose for my own share
What sort of flesh and blood I pleased to wear,
I'd be a dog, a monkey, or a bear,
Or anything but that vain animal,
Who is so proud of being rational.

His senses are too gross; and he'll contrive
A...Read more of this...

Mohenjodaro Reviisited

by Omer Tarin
I. You are not dead

Why do they call you 
Mohen-jo-daro,
“ Mounds-of-the-Dead”?
You are not dead!
You have never been dead
Or buried
Or cremated
By the scorching banks of the Sindhu;

Historians have conspired against you

A thousand and one tales 
Have besmirched your name
Misguided fools have imagined 
Your obituary to be true;
Sentimental fools have sung elegies
By their own graves
Garlanded their own biers,
Cursed the stars and howled...Read more of this...

The Ballad of Cockatoo Dock

by Andrew Barton Paterson
 Of all the docks upon the blue 
There was no dockyard, old or new, 
To touch the dock at Cockatoo. 

Of all the ministerial clan 
There was no nicer, worthier man 
Than Admiral O'Sullivan. 

Of course, we mean E. W. 
O'Sullivan, the hero who 
Controlled the dock at Cockatoo. 

To workmen he explained his views -- 
"You need not...Read more of this...

O Poor People

by Elizabeth Smart
 Let us invoke a healthy heart-breaking
Towards the horrible world:
Let us say 0 poor people
How can they help being so absurd,
Misguided, abused, misled?

With unsifted saving graces jostling about 
On a mucky medley of needs,
Like love-lit ****, 
Year after cyclic year
The unidentifiable flying god is missed.

Emotions sit in their heads disguised as judges,
Or are twisted to look like mathematical formulae,
And only...Read more of this...

The Man Who Could Write

by Rudyard Kipling
 Boanerges Blitzen, servant of the Queen,
Is a dismal failure -- is a Might-have-been.
In a luckless moment he discovered men
Rise to high position through a ready pen.

Boanerges Blitzen argued therefore -- "I,
With the selfsame weapon, can attain as high."
Only he did not possess when he made the trial,
Wicked wit of C-lv-n, irony of L--l.

[Men who spar with Government need, to...Read more of this...

Love In A Mist

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Light love in a mist, by the midsummer moon misguided,
Scarce seen in the twilight garden if gloom insist,
Seems vainly to seek for a star whose gleam has derided
Light love in a mist.

All day in the sun, when the breezes do all they list,
His soft blue raiment of cloudlike blossom abided
Unrent and unwithered of winds and of rays that kissed.

Blithe-hearted...Read more of this...

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