Famous Neglect Poems by Famous Poets

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

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In Neglect

by Robert Frost
 They leave us so to the way we took,
As two in whom them were proved mistaken,
That we sit sometimes in the wayside nook,
With michievous, vagrant, seraphic look,
And try if we cannot feel forsaken....Read more of this...

Sailing To Byzantium

by William Butler Yeats
 I

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

 II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon...Read more of this...

In Memory of Sigmund Freud

by Wystan Hugh (W H) Auden
When there are so many we shall have to mourn,when grief has been made so public, and exposedto the critique of a whole epochthe frailty of our conscience and anguish, of whom shall we speak? For every day they dieamong us, those who were doing us some good,who knew it was never enough buthoped to improve a little by living....Read more of this...

Macavity: The Mystery Cat

by T S (Thomas Stearns) Eliot
 Macavity's a Mystery Cat: he's called the Hidden Paw--
For he's the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime--Macavity's not there!

Macavity, Macavity, there's no on like Macavity,
He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir...Read more of this...

An Evening With John Heath-stubbs

by Barry Tebb
 Alone in Sutton with Fynbos my orange cat

A long weekend of wind and rain drowning

The tumultuous flurry of mid-February blossom

A surfeit of letters to work through, a mountain

Of files to sort, some irritation at the thought

Of travelling to Kentish Town alone when

My mind was flooded with the mellifluous voice

Of Heath-Stubbs on tape reading ‘The Divided Ways’

In memory of Sidney...Read more of this...

Sonnet 112: Your love and pity doth th impression fill

by William Shakespeare
 Your love and pity doth th' impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'ergreen my bad, my good allow?
You are my all the world, and I must strive
To know my shames and praises from your tongue;
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
That my steeled sense or...Read more of this...

The Disturber

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Oh, what shall I do? I am wholly upset;
I am sure I 'll be jailed for a lunatic yet.
I 'll be out of a job—it's the thing to expect
When I 'm letting my duty go by with neglect.
You may judge the extent and degree of my plight
When I 'm thinking all day and a-dreaming all night,
And a-trying my hand at...Read more of this...

Forgotten Master

by Robert William Service
 As you gaze beyond the bay
With such wanness in your eyes,
You who have out-stayed your day,
Seeing other stars arise,
Slender though your lifehold be,
Still you dream beside the sea.

We, alas! may live too long,
Know the best part of us die;
Echo of your even-song
Hushes down the darkling sky . . .
But your greatness would be less
If you cherished bitterness.

I am sure...Read more of this...

Two Wishes XI

by Kahlil Gibran
 In the silence of the night Death descended from God toward the earth. He hovered above a city and pierced the dwellings with his eyes. He say the spirits floating on wings of dreams, and the people who were surrendered to the Slumber. 

When the moon fell below the horizon and the city became black, Death walked silently among...Read more of this...

The peter-bird

by Eugene Field
 Out of the woods by the creek cometh a calling for Peter,
And from the orchard a voice echoes and echoes it over;
Down in the pasture the sheep hear that strange crying for Peter,
Over the meadows that call is aye and forever repeated.
So let me tell you the tale, when, where, and how it all happened,
And, when the story is...Read more of this...

Enoch Dunlap

by Edgar Lee Masters
 How many times, during the twenty years
I was your leader, friends of Spoon River,
Did you neglect the convention and caucus,
And leave the burden on my hands
Of guarding and saving the people's cause? --
Sometimes because you were ill;
Or your grandmother was ill;
Or you drank too much and fell asleep;
Or else you said: "He is our leader,
All will be well; he...Read more of this...

The Shepherds Tree

by John Clare
 Huge elm, with rifted trunk all notched and scarred,
Like to a warrior's destiny! I love
To stretch me often on thy shadowed sward,
And hear the laugh of summer leaves above;
Or on thy buttressed roots to sit, and lean
In careless attitude, and there reflect
On times and deeds and darings that have been—
Old castaways, now swallowed in neglect,—
While thou art towering in...Read more of this...

A Forest Hymn

by William Cullen Bryant
THE GROVES were God's first temples. Ere man learned 
To hew the shaft and lay the architrave  
And spread the roof above them¡ªere he framed 
The lofty vault to gather and roll back 
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood 5 
Amidst the cool and silence he knelt down  
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks 
And...Read more of this...

February

by Thomas Chatterton
 Begin, my muse, the imitative lay, 
Aonian doxies sound the thrumming string; 
Attempt no number of the plaintive Gay, 
Let me like midnight cats, or Collins sing. 
If in the trammels of the doleful line 
The bounding hail, or drilling rain descend; 
Come, brooding Melancholy, pow'r divine, 
And ev'ry unform'd mass of words amend. 

Now the rough goat withdraws...Read more of this...

Our lives are Swiss

by Emily Dickinson
 Our lives are Swiss --
So still -- so Cool --
Till some odd afternoon
The Alps neglect their Curtains
And we look farther on!

Italy stands the other side!
While like a guard between --
The solemn Alps --
The siren Alps
Forever intervene!...Read more of this...

25. My Father was a Farmer: A Ballad

by Robert Burns
 MY father was a farmer upon the Carrick border, O,
And carefully he bred me in decency and order, O;
He bade me act a manly part, though I had ne’er a farthing, O;
For without an honest manly heart, no man was worth regarding, O.


Then out into the world my course I did determine, O;
Tho’ to be rich was not my...Read more of this...

Pleasure XXIV

by Kahlil Gibran
 Then a hermit, who visited the city once a year, came forth and said, "Speak to us of Pleasure." 

And he answered, saying: 

Pleasure is a freedom song, 

But it is not freedom. 

It is the blossoming of your desires, 

But it is not their fruit. 

It is a depth calling unto a height, 

But it is not the...Read more of this...

The Married Lover

by Coventry Patmore
 Why, having won her, do I woo? 
Because her spirit's vestal grace 
Provokes me always to pursue, 
But, spirit-like, eludes embrace; 
Because her womanhood is such
That, as on court-days subjects kiss 
The Queen's hand, yet so near a touch 
Affirms no mean familiarness; 
Nay, rather marks more fair the height 
Which can with safety so neglect 
To dread, as...Read more of this...

The Platonic Lady

by John Wilmot
 I could love thee till I die,
Would'st thou love me modestly,
And ne'er press, whilst I live,
For more than willingly I would give:
Which should sufficient be to prove
I'd understand the art of love.

I hate the thing is called enjoyment:
Besides it is a dull employment,
It cuts off all that's life and fire
From that which may be termed desire;
Just like the bee...Read more of this...

Sonnets 01: We Talk Of Taxes And I Call You Friend

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 We talk of taxes, and I call you friend;
Well, such you are,—but well enough we know
How thick about us root, how rankly grow
Those subtle weeds no man has need to tend,
That flourish through neglect, and soon must send
Perfume too sweet upon us and overthrow
Our steady senses; how such matters go
We are aware, and how such matters end.
Yet shall be...Read more of this...

My Lady

by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
My Lady (Español)

    Perdite, señora, quiero
de mi silencio perdón,
si lo que ha sido atención
le hace parecer grosero.

    Y no me podrás culpar
si hasta aquí mi proceder,
por ocuparse en querer,
se ha olvidado de explicar.

    Que en mi amorosa pasión
no fue desuido, ni mengua,
quitar el uso a la lengua
por dárselo al corazón.

 ...Read more of this...

The Golden Verses of Pythagoras

by Pythagoras
1. First worship the Immortal Gods, as they are established and ordained by the Law.
2. Reverence the Oath, and next the Heroes, full of goodness and light.
3. Honour likewise the Terrestrial Daemons by rendering them the worship lawfully due to them.
4. Honour likewise your parents, and those most nearly related to you.
5. Of all the rest of mankind, make him...Read more of this...

Individuality

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 Ah yes, I love you, and with all my heart; 
Just as a weaker woman loves her own, 
Better than I love my beloved art, 
Which, until you came, reigned royally, alone, 
My king, my master. Since I saw your face
I have dethroned it, and you hold that place.

I am as weak as other women are –
Your frown can...Read more of this...

41. Epistle to John Rankine

by Robert Burns
 O ROUGH, rude, ready-witted Rankine,
The wale o’ cocks for fun an’ drinkin!
There’s mony godly folks are thinkin,
 Your dreams and tricks
Will send you, Korah-like, a-sinkin
 Straught to auld Nick’s.


Ye hae saw mony cracks an’ cants,
And in your wicked, drucken rants,
Ye mak a devil o’ the saunts,
 An’ fill them fou;
And then their failings, flaws, an’ wants,
 Are a’ seen...Read more of this...

Ad Nepotem

by Robert Louis Stevenson
 O NEPOS, twice my neigh(b)our (since at home
We're door by door, by Flora's temple dome;
And in the country, still conjoined by fate,
Behold our villas standing gate by gate),
Thou hast a daughter, dearer far than life -
Thy image and the image of thy wife.
Thy image and thy wife's, and be it so!

But why for her, { neglect the flowing }...Read more of this...

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