Famous Murky Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Indignation!

by Victor Hugo
 ("Toi qu'aimais Juvénal.") 
 
 {Nox (PRELUDE) ix., Jersey, November, 1852.} 


 Thou who loved Juvenal, and filed 
 His style so sharp to scar imperial brows, 
 And lent the lustre lightening 
 The gloom in Dante's murky verse that flows— 
 Muse Indignation! haste, and help 
 My building up before this roseate realm, 
 And its...Read more of this...

A Broadway Pageant

by Walt Whitman
 1
OVER the western sea, hither from Niphon come, 
Courteous, the swart-cheek’d two-sworded envoys, 
Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive, 
Ride to-day through Manhattan. 

Libertad!
I do not know whether others behold what I behold, 
In the procession, along with the nobles of Asia, the errand-bearers, 
Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks marching; 
But...Read more of this...

Sinfonia Eroica

by Amy Levy
 (To Sylvia.)


My Love, my Love, it was a day in June,
A mellow, drowsy, golden afternoon;
And all the eager people thronging came
To that great hall, drawn by the magic name
Of one, a high magician, who can raise
The spirits of the past and future days,
And draw the dreams from out the secret breast,
Giving them life and shape.
I, with the rest,
Sat there...Read more of this...

Sonnet CXIII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXIII. Pommi ove 'l sol occide i fiori e l' erba. HIS INVINCIBLE CONSTANCY.  Place me where herb and flower the sun has dried,Or where numb winter's grasp holds sterner sway:Place me where Phœbus sheds a temperate ray,Where first he glows, where rests at eventide.Place me in lowly state, in...Read more of this...

To a Locomotive in Winter

by Walt Whitman
 THEE for my recitative! 
Thee in the driving storm, even as now—the snow—the winter-day declining; 
Thee in thy panoply, thy measured dual throbbing, and thy beat convulsive; 
Thy black cylindric body, golden brass, and silvery steel; 
Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides;
Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar—now tapering in the distance; 
Thy...Read more of this...

The Definition of Gardening

by Edward Taylor
 Jim just loves to garden, yes he does. 
He likes nothing better than to put on 
his little overalls and his straw hat. 
He says, "Let's go get those tools, Jim." 
But then doubt begins to set in.
He says, "What is a garden, anyway?"
And thoughts about a "modernistic" garden
begin to trouble him, eat away at his resolve. 
He stands...Read more of this...

The Moon

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I
AND, like a dying lady lean and pale,

Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil, 
Out of her chamber, led by the insane 
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, 
The mood arose up in the murky east, 5 
A white and shapeless mass. 

II
Art thou pale for weariness

Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, 
Wandering companionless 
Among the...Read more of this...

How To Write The Great American Indian Novel

by Sherman Alexie
All of the Indians must have tragic features: tragic noses, eyes, and arms.
Their hands and fingers must be tragic when they reach for tragic food.

The hero must be a half-breed, half white and half Indian, preferably
from a horse culture. He should often weep alone. That is mandatory.

If the hero is an Indian woman, she is beautiful. She must be slender
and...Read more of this...

Ode to Envy

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Deep in th' abyss where frantic horror bides, 
In thickest mists of vapours fell,
Where wily Serpents hissing glare
And the dark Demon of Revenge resides,
At midnight's murky hour
Thy origin began: 
Rapacious MALICE was thy sire;
Thy Dam the sullen witch, Despair;
Thy Nurse, insatiate Ire. 
The FATES conspir'd their ills to twine,
About thy heart's infected shrine;
They gave thee each disastrous spell,
Each desolating...Read more of this...

Sestina I

by Francesco Petrarch
SESTINA I. A qualunque animale alberga in terra. NIGHT BRINGS HIM NO REST. HE IS THE PREY OF DESPAIR.  To every animal that dwells on earth,Except to those which have in hate the sun,Their time of labour is while lasts the day;But when high heaven relumes its thousand stars,This seeks his...Read more of this...

A Confession To A Friend In Trouble

by Thomas Hardy
 Your troubles shrink not, though I feel them less
 Here, far away, than when I tarried near;
I even smile old smiles--with listlessness--
 Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere.

A thought too strange to house within my brain
 Haunting its outer precincts I discern:
 --That I will not show zeal again to learn
Your griefs, and, sharing them, renew my...Read more of this...

137. Song—Farewell to the Banks of Ayr

by Robert Burns
 THE GLOOMY night is gath’ring fast,
Loud roars the wild, inconstant blast,
Yon murky cloud is foul with rain,
I see it driving o’er the plain;
The hunter now has left the moor.
The scatt’red coveys meet secure;
While here I wander, prest with care,
Along the lonely banks of Ayr.


The Autumn mourns her rip’ning corn
By early Winter’s ravage torn;
Across her placid, azure sky,
She sees the...Read more of this...

The Waning Moon

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 And like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky east,
A white and shapeless mass....Read more of this...

And like a Dying Lady Lean and Pale

by Percy Bysshe Shelley
 And like a dying lady, lean and pale, 
Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky East,
A white and shapeless mass...Read more of this...

Love Poem To My Husband Of Thirty-one Years

by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
 I watch you walk up our front path, 
the entire right side of your body, 
stiff and unbending, your leg, 
dragging on the ground, 
your arm not moving. 
Six different times you ask me 
the date of our daughter's wedding, 
seem surprised each time, 
forget who called, though you can name 
obscure desert animals, 
and every detail of events...Read more of this...

Ode to Melancholy

by Mary Darby Robinson
 SORC'RESS of the Cave profound! 
Hence, with thy pale, and meagre train, 
Nor dare my roseate bow'r profane, 
Where light-heel'd mirth despotic reigns, 
Slightly bound in feath'ry chains, 
And scatt'ring blisses round. 

Hence, to thy native Chaos­where
Nurs'd by thy haggard Dam, DESPAIR, 
Shackled by thy numbing spell, 
Mis'ry's pallid children dwell; 
Where, brooding o'er thy fatal charms, 
FRENZY rolls...Read more of this...

Henry James in the Heart of the City

by Erica Jong
 We have a small sculpture of Henry James on our terrace in New York City.

Nothing would surprise him.
The beast in the jungle was what he saw--
Edith Wharton's obfuscating older brother. . .

He fled the demons
of Manhattan
for fear they would devour
his inner ones
(the ones who wrote the books)
& silence the stifled screams
of his protagonists.

To Europe
like a wandering Jew--
WASP that he...Read more of this...

507. Song—Bonie Peg-a-Ramsay

by Robert Burns
 CAULD is the e’enin blast,
 O’ Boreas o’er the pool,
An’ dawin’ it is dreary,
 When birks are bare at Yule.


Cauld blaws the e’enin blast,
 When bitter bites the frost,
And, in the mirk and dreary drift,
 The hills and glens are lost:


Ne’er sae murky blew the night
 That drifted o’er the hill,
But bonie Peg-a-Ramsay
 Gat grist to her mill....Read more of this...

There was a Young Lady of Turkey

by Edward Lear
There was a Young Lady of Turkey,Who wept when the weather was murky;When the day turned out fine, she ceased to repine,That capricious Young Lady of Turkey. ...Read more of this...

Land Ho!

by Thomas Edward Brown
 I know ’tis but a loom of land, 
Yet is it land, and so I will rejoice, 
I know I cannot hear His voice 
Upon the shore, nor see Him stand; 
Yet is it land, ho! land. 

The land! the land! the lovely land! 
‘Far off,’ dost say? Far off—ah, bless?d home! 
Farewell! farewell! thou salt sea-foam! 
Ah, keel...Read more of this...

The Definition of Gardening

by James Tate
 Jim just loves to garden, yes he does. 
He likes nothing better than to put on 
his little overalls and his straw hat. 
He says, "Let's go get those tools, Jim." 
But then doubt begins to set in.
He says, "What is a garden, anyway?"
And thoughts about a "modernistic" garden
begin to trouble him, eat away at his resolve. 
He stands...Read more of this...

To Jessica Gone Back To The City

by Ellis Parker Butler
 Sence fair Jessica hez left us
Seems ez ef she hed bereft us,
When she went, o’ half o’ livin’;
Fer we never knowed she’d driven
Into us so much content,
Till fair Jessica hed went.
 (Knowed a feller once thet cried
 When his yaller dog hed died.)

We hain’t near ez bright an’ chirky,
An’ the sun shines blue an’ murky,
Kind o’ sadly an’ dishearted,
Like...Read more of this...

Grace Darling

by William Topaz McGonagall
 As the night was beginning to close in one rough September day
In the year of 1838, a steamer passed through the Fairway
Between the Farne Islands and the coast, on her passage northwards;
But the wind was against her, and the steamer laboured hard. 

There she laboured in the heavy sea against both wind and tide,
Whilst a dense fog enveloped her...Read more of this...

November

by William Cullen Bryant
 The landscape sleeps in mist from morn till noon;
And, if the sun looks through, 'tis with a face
Beamless and pale and round, as if the moon,
When done the journey of her nightly race,
Had found him sleeping, and supplied his place.
For days the shepherds in the fields may be,
Nor mark a patch of sky— blindfold they trace,
The plains, that seem...Read more of this...

Blight

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Give me truths;
For I am weary of the surfaces,
And die of inanition. If I knew
Only the herbs and simples of the wood,
Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain and agrimony,
Blue-vetch and trillium, hawkweed, sassafras,
Milkweeds and murky brakes, quaint pipes and sun-dew,
And rare and virtuous roots, which in these woods
Draw untold juices from the common earth,
Untold, unknown, and I could surely spell
Their fragrance, and...Read more of this...

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