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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133. The Brigs of Ayr

...ulptures drest
With order, symmetry, or taste unblest;
Forms like some bedlam Statuary’s dream,
The craz’d creations of misguided whim;
Forms might be worshipp’d on the bended knee,
And still the second dread command be free;
Their likeness is not found on earth, in air, or sea!
Mansions that would disgrace the building taste
Of any mason reptile, bird or beast:
Fit only for a doited monkish race,
Or frosty maids forsworn the dear embrace,
Or cuifs of later times, wha held th...Read more of this...
by Burns, Robert


A Satyre Against Mankind

...sense, behind,
Pathless and dangerous wand'ring ways it takes,
Through Error's fenny bogs and thorny brakes;
Whilst the misguided follower climbs with pain
Mountains of whimsey's, heaped in his own brain;
Stumbling from thought to thought, falls headlong down,
Into Doubt's boundless sea where, like to drown,
Books bear him up awhile, and make him try
To swim with bladders of Philosophy;
In hopes still to o'ertake the escaping light;
The vapour dances, in his dancing sight,
Ti...Read more of this...
by Wilmot, John

Love In A Mist

...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 or sad, as the cloud or the sun subsided,...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles

O Poor People

...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 a scarce god-given scientist notices
His trembling lip melting th...Read more of this...
by Smart, Elizabeth

Samson Agonistes

...in forgiveness of thee, Samson,
Afford me place to shew what recompence 
Towards thee I intend for what I have misdone,
Misguided: only what remains past cure
Bear not too sensibly, nor still insist
To afflict thy self in vain: though sight be lost,
Life yet hath many solaces, enjoy'd
Where other senses want not their delights
At home in leisure and domestic ease,
Exempt from many a care and chance to which
Eye-sight exposes daily men abroad.
I to the Lords will intercede, no...Read more of this...
by Milton, John


Satyr

...behind; 
Pathless and dang'rous wandring ways it takes, 
Through errors Fenny -- Boggs, and Thorny Brakes; 
Whilst the misguided follower, climbs with pain, 
Mountains of Whimseys, heap'd in his own Brain: 
Stumbling from thought to thought, falls headlong down, 
Into doubts boundless Sea, where like to drown, 
Books bear him up awhile, and make him try, 
To swim with Bladders of Philosophy; 
In hopes still t'oretake th'escaping light, 
The Vapour dances in his dazling sight...Read more of this...
by Wilmot, John

The Ballad of Cockatoo Dock

...
And straightway went and fetched him back. 

And with a sympathetic tear 
He'd say, "How dare you interfere, 
You most misguided engineer? 

"Your sordid manners please amend -- 
No man can possibly offend 
Who has a Member for a friend. 

"With euchre, or a friendly rub, 
And whisky, from the nearest 'pub', 
We'll make the dockyard like a club. 

"Heave ho, my hearties, play away, 
We'll do no weary work today. 
What odds -- the public has to pay! 

"And if the public shoul...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton

The Emigrants: Book I

...ly means
To us, his reasoning Creatures, whom He bids
Acknowledge and revere his awful hand,
Nothing but good: Yet Man, misguided Man,
Mars the fair work that he was bid enjoy,
And makes himself the evil he deplores.
How often, when my weary soul recoils
From proud oppression, and from legal crimes
(For such are in this Land, where the vain boast
Of equal Law is mockery, while the cost
Of seeking for redress is sure to plunge
Th' already injur'd to more certain ruin
And the w...Read more of this...
by Turner Smith, Charlotte

The Lady of the Lake

...as my blade
     That knighthood on thy shoulder laid;
     For that good deed permit me then
     A word with these misguided men.—
     XXVIII,

     'Hear, gentle friends, ere yet for me
     Ye break the bands of fealty.
     My life, my honour, and my cause,
     I tender free to Scotland's laws.
     Are these so weak as must require
     'Fine aid of your misguided ire?
     Or if I suffer causeless wrong,
     Is then my selfish rage so strong,
     My s...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Man Who Could Write

...ndian paper -- made his seniors squirm,
Quated office scandals, wrote the tactless truth --
Was there ever known a more misguided youth?

When the Rag he wrote for praised his plucky game,
Boanerges Blitzen felt that this was Fame;
When the men he wrote of shook their heads and swore,
Boanerges Blitzen only wrote the more:

Posed as Young Ithuriel, resolute and grim,
Till he found promotion didn't come to him;
Till he found that reprimands weekly were his lot,
And his many Di...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

The Pleasures of Melancholy

...reeking from the deadly draught:
Or Jaffier kneel for one forgiving look.
Nor seldom let the Moor on Desdemone
Pour the misguided threats of jealous rage.
By soft degrees the manly torrent steals
From my swollen eyes; and at a brother's woe
My big heart melts in sympathizing tears.

What are the splendours of the gaudy court,
Its tinsel trappings, and its pageant pomps?
To me far happier seems the banish'd lord,
Amid Siberia's unrejoicing wilds
Who pines all lonesome, in the ...Read more of this...
by Warton, Thomas

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