Famous Murders Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Richard Pigott the Forger

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Richard Pigott, the forger, was a very bad man,
And to gainsay it there's nobody can,
Because for fifty years he pursued a career of deceit,
And as a forger few men with him could compete. 

For by forged letters he tried to accuse Parnell
For the Phoenix Park murders, but mark what befell.
When his conscience smote him he confessed to the fraud,
And...Read more of this...

WARS and RUMORS OF WARS

by Emanuel Xavier
 “Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars;
see that ye not be troubles;
all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet”
-Matthew 24:6

1.
I escape the horrors of war 
with a towel and a room
Offering myself 
to Palestinian and Jewish boys
as a ‘piece’ to the Middle East
when I should be concerned with the untimely deaths
of dark-skinned...Read more of this...

Love And Madness

by Thomas Campbell
 Hark ! from the battlements of yonder tower
The solemn bell has tolled the midnight hour !
Roused from drear visions of distempered sleep,
Poor Broderick wakes—in solitude to weep !

"Cease, Memory; cease (the friendless mourner cried)
To probe the bosom too severely tried !
Oh ! ever cease, my pensive thoughts, to stray
Through tie bright fields of Fortune's better day,
When youthful Hope, the...Read more of this...

For The One Who Would Take Mans Life In His Hands

by Delmore Schwartz
 Tiger Christ unsheathed his sword,
Threw it down, became a lamb.
Swift spat upon the species, but
Took two women to his heart.
Samson who was strong as death
Paid his strength to kiss a ****.
Othello that stiff warrior
Was broken by a woman's heart.
Troy burned for a sea-tax, also for
Possession of a charming whore.
What do all examples show?
What must the finished murderer know?

You cannot...Read more of this...

Europe the 72d and 73d years of These States

by Walt Whitman
 1
SUDDENLY, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves, 
Like lightning it le’pt forth, half startled at itself, 
Its feet upon the ashes and the rags—its hands tight to the throats of kings. 

O hope and faith! 
O aching close of exiled patriots’ lives!
O many a sicken’d heart! 
Turn back unto this day, and make yourselves...Read more of this...

new age

by Rg Gregory
 (i)
how new the world is
trying to find
nerve in an old rind

(ii)
the bread is crumbled
for birds to swallow
rolled into droppings
flowers from the hair
of noseless statues
tyrants of parks
where men have cowered
too long and mistaken
unmanned by he dark

(iii)
when we awaken
(how have we fallen)
machines are broken
wires lie strangled
by the messages they nursed
lathes are swinging
from trees in derision
pipes burst and scalded
houses contorted
(what went on...Read more of this...

Houses chapter IX

by Kahlil Gibran
 A mason came forth and said, "Speak to us of Houses." 

And he answered and said: 

Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness ere you build a house within the city walls. 

For even as you have home-comings in your twilight, so has the wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone. 

Your house is your larger...Read more of this...

The Earth

by George William Russell
 God loafs around heaven,
without a shape
but He would like to smoke His cigar
or bite His fingernails
and so forth.

God owns heaven
but He craves the earth,
the earth with its little sleepy caves,
its bird resting at the kitchen window,
even its murders lined up like broken chairs,
even its writers digging into their souls
with jackhammers,
even its hucksters selling their animals
for gold,
even its babies sniffing...Read more of this...

The Rape of the Lock: Canto 5

by Alexander Pope
 She said: the pitying audience melt in tears, 
But Fate and Jove had stopp'd the Baron's ears.
In vain Thalestris with reproach assails,
For who can move when fair Belinda fails?
Not half so fix'd the Trojan could remain,
While Anna begg'd and Dido rag'd in vain.
Then grave Clarissa graceful wav'd her fan;
Silence ensu'd, and thus the nymph began.
"Say, why are beauties prais'd...Read more of this...

251. Impromptu Lines to Captain Riddell

by Robert Burns
 YOUR News and Review, sir.
 I’ve read through and through, sir,
With little admiring or blaming;
 The Papers are barren
 Of home-news or foreign,
No murders or rapes worth the naming.


 Our friends, the Reviewers,
 Those chippers and hewers,
Are judges of mortar and stone, sir;
 But of meet or unmeet,
 In a fabric complete,
I’ll boldly pronounce they are none, sir;


 My...Read more of this...

Solomon And The Witch

by William Butler Yeats
 And thus declared that Arab lady:
'Last night, where under the wild moon
On grassy mattress I had laid me,
Within my arms great Solomon,
I suddenly cried out in a strange tongue
Not his, not mine.'
 Who understood
Whatever has been said, sighed, sung,
Howled, miau-d, barked, brayed, belled, yelled, cried, crowed,
Thereon replied: 'A cockerel
Crew from a blossoming apple bough
Three hundred years before the Fall,
And...Read more of this...

against the ladling of doom

by Rg Gregory
 crisis has a fact to get straight
it needn't be the end of the world
beginnings too are coated with death

because we've had enough of the old's
dirty jokes doesn't mean there's no
more grass ready to push itself up

or dreams can't go on being lived
the dreamers' necks having been twisted
(visions root in mists and spread outwards)
the chrysalis has to be taken apart
for...Read more of this...

Poetical Essay

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 Extract from Poetical Essay by Percy Bysshe Shelley


Millions to fight compell'd, to fight or die
In mangled heaps on War's red altar lie . . . 
When the legal murders swell the lists of pride;
When glory's views the titled idiot guide


Lost Shelley poem found after 200 years
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2267433,00.html...Read more of this...

The Temple

by Kenneth Patchen
 To leave the earth was my wish, and no will stayed my rising.
Early, before sun had filled the roads with carts
Conveying folk to weddings and to murders;
Before men left their selves of sleep, to wander
In the dark of the world like whipped beasts.

I took no pack. I had no horse, no staff, no gun.
I got up a little way...Read more of this...

Mental Cases

by Wilfred Owen
 Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' tongues wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain, -- but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hand palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but...Read more of this...

The Witnesses

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 In Ocean's wide domains,
Half buried in the sands,
Lie skeletons in chains,
With shackled feet and hands.

Beyond the fall of dews,
Deeper than plummet lies,
Float ships, with all their crews,
No more to sink nor rise.

There the black Slave-ship swims,
Freighted with human forms,
Whose fettered, fleshless limbs
Are not the sport of storms.

These are the bones of Slaves;
They gleam from the abyss;
They cry, from yawning...Read more of this...

There is no Fatwa in this Land

by Taja Kramberger
For Taslima Nasrin, in sisterhood
There is no fatwa in this land,
what are you thinking,
this is Europe.
A place without borders and
without internal wrinkles,
without possibilities for asylum and exile.

There is no fatwa in this land –
it is divided into
thousands of small conspiracies,
tiny murders per partes,
which seem like coincidental misfortunes
and sap your blood, drop by drop.

There is no fatwa in this land,
what are...Read more of this...

Why?

by Spike Milligan
 American Detectives
Never remove their hats
When investigating murders
In other people's flats.

P.S. Chinese Tecs
Are far more dreaded!
And they always appear
Bare-headed!...Read more of this...

The Dream of Eugene Aram

by Thomas Hood
 'Twas in the prime of summer-time 
An evening calm and cool, 
And four-and-twenty happy boys 
Came bounding out of school: 
There were some that ran and some that leapt, 
Like troutlets in a pool.

Away they sped with gamesome minds, 
And souls untouched by sin; 
To a level mead they came, and there 
They drave the wickets in: 
Pleasantly shone...Read more of this...

The Bellman

by Robert Herrick
 From noise of scare-fires rest ye free,
From murders Benedicite.
From all mischances that may fright
Your pleasing slumbers in the night :
Mercy secure ye all, and keep
The goblin from ye while ye sleep.
Past one o'clock, and almost two,
My masters all, good-day to you....Read more of this...

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