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Famous Misused Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...y) .
No desperate creature who walks in the street,
Has a wickeder heart that I might have, I say,
Had you wantonly misused the treasures you woon,
-As so many men with heart riches have done.

This flame from God’s altar, this holy love flame,
That burns like sweet incense for ever for you,
Might now be a wild conflagration of shame,
Had you tortured my heart, or been base or untrue.
For angels and devils are cast in one mould,
Till love guides them upward, or do...Read more of this...



by Blake, William
...udders hell through all its regions.
A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.
A horse misused upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear.
A skylark wounded in the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
The game-cock clipped and armed for fight
Does the rising sun affright.
Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from hell a human soul.
The wild deer wandering he...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...om old or modern bard, in hall or bower.
 Bacchus, that first from out the purple grape
Crushed the sweet poison of misused wine,
After the Tuscan mariners transformed,
Coasting the Tyrrhene shore, as the winds listed,
On Circe's island fell. (Who knows not Circe,
The daughter of the Sun, whose charmed cup
Whoever tasted lost his upright shape,
And downward fell into a grovelling swine?)
This Nymph, that gazed upon his clustering locks,
With ivy berries wreathed, and ...Read more of this...

by Mueller, Lisel
...pile up like a police record;
all my friends are getting divorced.
Language, my old comrade, deserts me;
words are misused or forgotten,
consonants fight each other
between my upper and lower teeth.
I write "fiend" for "friend"
and "word" for "world",
remember comes out with an "m" missing.

I used to be able to find my way in the dark,
sure of the furniture,
but the town I lived in for years
has pulled up its streets in my absence,
disguised its buildings behind...Read more of this...

by Whitman, Walt
...vulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after
 deeds
 done; 
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt,
 desperate; 
I see the wife misused by her husband—I see the treacherous seducer of young women; 
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid—I see these
 sights on
 the earth;
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny—I see martyrs and prisoners; 
I observe a famine at s...Read more of this...



by Scannell, Vernon
...turday 
Is frightening---as fact and metaphor: 
An ordinary match intended for 
The lighting of a pipe or kitchen fire 
Misused may set a whole menagerie 
Of flame-fanged tigers roaring hungrily. 
And frightening, too, that one small boy should set 
The sky on fire and choke the stars to heat 
Such skinny limbs and such a little heart 
Which would have been content with one warm kiss 
Had there been anyone to offer this....Read more of this...

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