Famous Murder Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Murder poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous murder poems. These examples illustrate what a famous murder poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Lehman, David
...he center of attention, but
this was incredible:
To talk his way into being the chief suspect in the most
flamboyant murder case in years!
And he was innocent!
He could prove it!
And what a book he would write when they free him from this prison:
A novel, obliquely autobiographical, set in Vienna in the twilight
of the Hapsburg Empire, in the year that his mother was born....Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...ster me beyond the brink
Of recollection! make my watchful care
Close up its bloodshot eyes, nor see despair!
Do gently murder half my soul, and I
Shall feel the other half so utterly!--
I'm giddy at that cheek so fair and smooth;
O let it blush so ever! let it soothe
My madness! let it mantle rosy-warm
With the tinge of love, panting in safe alarm.--
This cannot be thy hand, and yet it is;
And this is sure thine other softling--this
Thine own fair bosom, and I am so near...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...ung,
The battle-axe across the back was flung.
Under the arm a trusty dagger rests,
Each spiked knee-piece its murderous power attests.
Feet press the stirrups—hands on bridle shown
Proclaim all ready, with the visors down,
And yet they stir not, nor is audible
A sound to make the sight less terrible.
Each monstrous horse a frontal horn doth bear,
If e'er the Prince of Darkness herdsman were,
These cattle black were his by surest right,
Lik...Read more of this...
by
Wilde, Oscar
...ks within
Its sombre house, alone with God and memories of sin.
Still what avails it that she sought her cave
That murderous mother of red harlotries?
At Munich on the marble architrave
The Grecian boys die smiling, but the seas
Which wash AEgina fret in loneliness
Not mirroring their beauty; so our lives grow colourless
For lack of our ideals, if one star
Flame torch-like in the heavens the unjust
Swift daylight kills it, and no trump of war
Can wake to passionate voic...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...ut of blood, nor shred of mantle torn;
Nor fall nor struggle hath defaced the grass,
Which still retains a mark where murder was;
Nor dabbling fingers left to tell the tale,
The bitter print of each convulsive nail,
When agonised hands that cease to guard,
Wound in that pang the smoothness of the sward.
Some such had been, if here a life was reft,
But these were not; and doubting hope is left;
And strange suspicion, whispering Lara's name,
Now daily mutters o'er...Read more of this...
by
Shakur, Tupac
...Life through my bloodshot eyes
would scare a square 2 death
poverty,murder,violence
and never a moment 2 rest
Fun and games are few
but treasured like gold 2 me
cuz I realize that I must return
2 my spot in poverty
But mock my words when I say
my heart will not exist
unless my destiny comes through
and puts an end 2 all of this ...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...it, when they took thee
As a League-breaker and deliver'd bound
Into our hands: for hadst thou not committed
Notorious murder on those thirty men
At Askalon, who never did thee harm,
Then like a Robber stripdst them of thir robes?
The Philistines, when thou hadst broke the league,
Went up with armed powers thee only seeking,
To others did no violence nor spoil.
Sam: Among the Daughters of the Philistines
I chose a Wife, which argu'd me no foe;
And in your City held my ...Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...darkness and the ignorance,
The pride, the lust, the squalid sloth,
Which nurtured Treason's monstrous growth,
Made murder pastime, and the hell
Of prison-torture possible;
The cruel lie of caste refute,
Old forms remould, and substitute
For Slavery's lash the freeman's will,
For blind routine, wise-handed skill;
A school-house plant on every hill,
Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence
The quick wires of intelligence;
Till North and South together brought
Sha...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...he race, leans by the fence, blowing,
cover’d with sweat;
The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck—the murderous
buckshot and the bullets;
All these I feel, or am.
I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs,
Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen;
I clutch the rails of the fence, my gore dribs, thinn’d with the ooze of my
skin;
I fall on the weeds and stones;
The riders spur their unwilling horses, ha...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...st not what in our Divan
Can wealth procure for worse than man —
Abdallah's honours were obtain'd
By him a brother's murder stain'd;
'Tis true, the purchase nearly drain'd
His ill got treasure, soon replaced.
Wouldst question whence? Survey the waste,
And ask the squalid peasant how
His gains repay his broiling brow! —
Why me the stern usurper spared,
Why thus with me the palace shared,
I know not. Shame, regret, remorse,
And little fear from infant's forc...Read more of this...
by
Masefield, John
...
And how we needed extra cops
With all them Welsh come picking hops:
With drunken Welsh in all our sheds
We might be murdered in our beds.
By all accounts, both men and wives
Had had the scare up of their lives.
I ate and drank and gathered strength,
And stretched along the bench full length,
Or crossed to window seat to pat
Black Silas Jones's little cat.
At four I called, "You devil's own,
The second trumpet shall be blown.
The second trump, the ...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...hile like a sea the storming army came, And Fire from hell reared his gigantic shape, And Murder, by the ghastly gleam, and Rape Seized their joint prey, the mother and the child! But from these crazing thoughts my brain, escape! —For weeks the balmy air breathed soft and mild, And on the gliding vessel Heaven and Ocean smiled. Some mighty gulph of separation past,...Read more of this...
by
Donne, John
...met,
And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that, self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
Curel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thy self nor me the weaker now;
'Tis true; then learn how false, fears...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...
And the man they called "Hi!" replied, with a sigh,
"I informed you the day we embarked.
"You may charge me with murder--or want of sense--
(We are all of us weak at times):
But the slightest approach to a false pretence
Was never among my crimes!
"I said it in Hebrew--I said it in Dutch--
I said it in German and Greek:
But I wholly forgot (and it vexes me much)
That English is what you speak!"
"'Tis a pitiful tale," said the Bellman, whose face
Had grown longer...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...n many a guise
Well better than they can themselves devise?
Some man desireth for to have richess,
That cause is of his murder or great sickness.
And some man would out of his prison fain,
That in his house is of his meinie* slain. *servants
Infinite harmes be in this mattere.
We wot never what thing we pray for here.
We fare as he that drunk is as a mouse.
A drunken man wot well he hath an house,
But he wot not which is the right way thither,
And to ...Read more of this...
by
Blake, William
...ing.
Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without
Improvement, are roads of Genius.
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires
Where man is not nature is barren.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be
believ'd.
Enough! or Too much
PLATE 11
The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or
Geniuses calling them by the names and adorning them with the
properties of woods, rivers, ...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...nd mine, speaking a tongue
Where words are symbols, signs and symptoms, pointers
To a buried past, clues to an untold murder.
Those nightmares came to haunt us and teach us and take us
To that room in Stainmore Place, your mother’s ghost
At Banquo’s feast, the guest that never could
Be laid to rest.
III
One stifling July day thirty years on we returned to Honley
Where the hamlet snagged on the hillside, fattened now and hollow
And grown grey with money and...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
....
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:—
We murder to dissect.
Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.
...Read more of this...
by
Bukowski, Charles
...ep in sleep and
almost nothing can awaken it.
when activated it's best at brutality,
selfishness, unjust judgments, murder.
what can we do with it, this Humanity?
nothing.
avoid the thing as much as possible.
treat it as you would anything poisonous, vicious
and mindless.
but be careful. it has enacted laws to protect
itself from you.
it can kill you without cause.
and to escape it you must be subtle.
few escape.
it's up to you to f...Read more of this...
by
Akhmatova, Anna
...ed the quiet road,
Cry flew, ringing silverly..
Closing my face, I was praying to God
Before first battle to murder me.
From mind the shades of songs and passions
Disappeared like load from misuse.
To her -- descended -- the Almighty ordered
To be the fearful book of menacing news.
* IV *
x x x
Before the spring arrives there are such days:
Under the thick snow cover rests the lawn,
The dry-and-jolly trees are making noise,
...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Murder poems.