Famous Neglected Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Our Son

by Barry Tebb
 Quarter to three: I wake again at the hour of his birth

Thirty years ago and now he paces corridors of dark

In nightmares of self-condemnation where random thoughts

Besiege his fevered imagination – England’s 

Imminent destruction, his own, the world’s…

Sixty to eighty cigarettes a day, unavailing depot injections,

Failed abscondings, failed everything: Eton and Balliol

Hold no sway on ward one, nor even...Read more of this...

The World

by Katherine Philips
 Wee falsely think it due unto our friends,
That we should grieve for their too early ends:
He that surveys the world with serious eys,
And stripps Her from her grosse and weak disguise,
Shall find 'tis injury to mourn their fate;
He only dy's untimely who dy's Late.
For if 'twere told to children in the womb,
To what a stage of mischief they must...Read more of this...

The Captive Dove

by Anne Bronte
 Poor restless dove, I pity thee;
And when I hear thy plaintive moan,
I mourn for thy captivity,
And in thy woes forget mine own. 
To see thee stand prepared to fly,
And flap those useless wings of thine,
And gaze into the distant sky,
Would melt a harder heart than mine. 

In vain ­ in vain! Thou canst not rise:
Thy prison roof confines thee...Read more of this...

To Violets

by Robert Herrick
 Welcome, maids of honour,
You do bring
In the Spring;
And wait upon her.

She has virgins many,
Fresh and fair;
Yet you are
More sweet than any.

You're the maiden posies;
And so graced,
To be placed
'Fore damask roses.

--Yet, though thus respected,
By and by
Ye do lie,
Poor girls, neglected....Read more of this...

Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (Part I)

by Ezra Pound
 "Vocat aestus in umbram" 
Nemesianus Es. IV. 

E. P. Ode pour l'élection de son sépulchre 

For three years, out of key with his time,
He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start --

No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on...Read more of this...

Angel Or Demon

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
 You call me an angel of love and of light,
A being of goodness and heavenly fire,
Sent out from God’s kingdom to guide you aright,
In paths where your spirits may mount and aspire.
You say that I glow like a star on its course,
Like a ray from the alter, a spark from the source.

Now list to my answer; let all the...Read more of this...

From 'LES VILLAGES ILLUSOIRES' RAIN

by Emile Verhaeren
Long as unending threads, the long-drawn rain
Interminably, with its nails of grey,
Athwart the dull grey day,
Rakes the green window-pane—
So infinitely, endlessly, the rain,
The long, long rain.
The rain.

Since yesternight it keeps unravelling
Down from the frayed and flaccid rags that cling
About the sullen sky.
The low black sky;
Since yesternight, so slowly, patiently.
Unravelling its threads upon the roads.
Upon the roads and lanes, with even...Read more of this...

Sonnet to Ingratitude

by Mary Darby Robinson
 He that's ungrateful, has no guilt but one;
All other crimes may pass for virtues in him.
- YOUNG. 


I COULD have borne affliction's sharpest thorn;
The sting of malice­poverty's deep wound;
The sneers of vulgar pride, the idiot's scorn;
Neglected Love, false Friendship's treach'rous sound; 

I could, with patient smile, extract the dart 
Base calumny had planted in my heart; 
The fangs of...Read more of this...

An ODE

by Anne Killigrew
 ARise my Dove, from mid'st of Pots arise, 
 Thy sully'd Habitation leave, 
 To Dust no longer cleave, 
Unworthy they of Heaven that will not view the Skies. 
[Page 83]

 Thy native Beauty re-assume, 
 Prune each neglected Plume, 
 Till more than Silver white, 
 Then burnisht Gold more bright, 
Thus ever ready stand to take thy...Read more of this...

249. Sappho Redivivus: A Fragment

by Robert Burns
 BY all I lov’d, neglected and forgot,
No friendly face e’er lights my squalid cot;
Shunn’d, hated, wrong’d, unpitied, unredrest,
The mock’d quotation of the scorner’s jest!
Ev’n the poor súpport of my wretched life,
Snatched by the violence of legal strife.
Oft grateful for my very daily bread
To those my family’s once large bounty fed;
A welcome inmate at their homely fare,
My griefs, my woes,...Read more of this...

To Canaris, The Greek Patriot

by Victor Hugo
 ("Canaris! nous t'avons oublié.") 
 
 {VIII., October, 1832.} 


 O Canaris! O Canaris! the poet's song 
 Has blameful left untold thy deeds too long! 
 But when the tragic actor's part is done, 
 When clamor ceases, and the fights are won, 
 When heroes realize what Fate decreed, 
 When chieftains mark no more which thousands...Read more of this...

It Is Later Than You Think

by Robert William Service
 Lone amid the cafe's cheer,
Sad of heart am I to-night;
Dolefully I drink my beer,
But no single line I write.
There's the wretched rent to pay,
Yet I glower at pen and ink:
Oh, inspire me, Muse, I pray,
It is later than you think!

Hello! there's a pregnant phrase.
Bravo! let me write it down;
Hold it with a hopeful gaze,
Gauge it with a fretful frown;
Tune...Read more of this...

Ceremony Upon Candlemas Eve

by Robert Herrick
 Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and misletoe;
Down with the holly, ivy, all
Wherewith ye dress'd the Christmas hall;
That so the superstitious find
No one least branch there left behind;
For look, how many leaves there be
Neglected there, maids, trust to me,
So many goblins you shall see....Read more of this...

Lines in Praise of Tommy Atkins

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Success to Tommy Atkins, he's a very brave man,
And to deny it there's few people can;
And to face his foreign foes he's never afraid,
Therefore he's not a beggar, as Rudyard Kipling has said. 

No, he's paid by our Government, and is worthy of his hire;
And from our shores in time of war he makes our foes retire,
He doesn't need...Read more of this...

Sonnet XI

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET XI. Se la mia vita dall' aspro tormento. HE HOPES THAT TIME WILL RENDER HER MORE MERCIFUL.  If o'er each bitter pang, each hidden throeSadly triumphant I my years drag on,Till even the radiance of those eyes is gone,Lady, which star-like now illume thy brow;And silver'd are those locks of...Read more of this...

Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard

by Thomas Gray
 The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder...Read more of this...

TO My Lord Colrane In Answer to his Complemental Verses sent me under the Name of CLEANOR

by Anne Killigrew
 LOng my dull Muse in heavy slumbers lay, 
Indulging Sloth, and to soft Ease gave way, 
Her Fill of Rest resolving to enjoy, 
Or fancying little worthy her employ. 
When Noble Cleanors obliging Strains
Her, the neglected Lyre to tune, constrains. 
Confus'd at first, she rais'd her drowsie Head, 
Ponder'd a while, then pleas'd, forsook her Bed. 
Survey'd each Line...Read more of this...

The Palace of Humbug

by Lewis Carroll
 Lays of Mystery,
Imagination, and Humor 

Number 1 

I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And each damp thing that creeps and crawls
Went wobble-wobble on the walls. 

Faint odours of departed cheese,
Blown on the dank, unwholesome breeze,
Awoke the never ending sneeze. 

Strange pictures decked the arras drear,
Strange characters of woe and fear,
The humbugs of the social sphere. 

One showed a vain...Read more of this...

The Door in the Dark

by Robert Frost
 In going from room to room in the dark,
I reached out blindly to save my face,
But neglected, however lightly, to lace
My fingers and close my arms in an arc.
A slim door got in past my guard,
And hit me a blow in the head so hard
I had my native simile jarred.
So people and things don't pair any more
With what they...Read more of this...

Home

by Anne Bronte
 How brightly glistening in the sun
The woodland ivy plays!
While yonder beeches from their barks
Reflect his silver rays. 
That sun surveys a lovely scene
From softly smiling skies;
And wildly through unnumbered trees
The wind of winter sighs:

Now loud, it thunders o'er my head,
And now in distance dies.
But give me back my barren hills
Where colder breezes rise;

Where scarce the scattered, stunted trees
Can yield...Read more of this...

Prosopopoia: or Mother Hubbards Tale

by Edmund Spenser
 By that he ended had his ghostly sermon,
The fox was well induc'd to be a parson,
And of the priest eftsoons gan to inquire,
How to a benefice he might aspire.
"Marry, there" (said the priest) "is art indeed:
Much good deep learning one thereout may read;
For that the ground-work is, and end of all,
How to obtain a beneficial.
First, therefore, when ye have...Read more of this...

A piteous plaint

by Eugene Field
 I cannot eat my porridge,
I weary of my play;
No longer can I sleep at night,
No longer romp by day!
Though forty pounds was once my weight,
I'm shy of thirty now;
I pine, I wither and I fade
Through love of Martha Clow.

As she rolled by this morning
I heard the nurse girl say:
"She weighs just twenty-seven pounds
And she's one year old to-day."
I threw...Read more of this...

Sonnet IV: Why When I Gaze

by Mary Darby Robinson
 Why, when I gaze on Phaon's beauteous eyes,
Why does each thought in wild disorder stray?
Why does each fainting faculty decay,
And my chill'd breast in throbbing tumults rise?
Mute, on the ground my Lyre neglected lies,
The Muse forgot, and lost the melting lay;
My down-cast looks, my faultering lips betray,
That stung by hopeless passion,--Sappho dies!
Now, on a bank of Cypress let me...Read more of this...

Upper Lambourne

by John Betjeman
 Up the ash tree climbs the ivy,
Up the ivy climbs the sun,
With a twenty-thousand pattering,
Has a valley breeze begun,
Feathery ash, neglected elder,
Shift the shade and make it run -

Shift the shade toward the nettles,
And the nettles set it free,
To streak the stained Carrara headstone,
Where, in nineteen-twenty-three,
He who trained a hundred winners,
Paid the Final Entrance Fee.

Leathery limbs of Upper Lambourne,
Leathery...Read more of this...

Waking at 3 a.m

by William Stafford
 Even in the cave of the night when you
wake and are free and lonely,
neglected by others, discarded, loved only
by what doesn't matter--even in that
big room no one can see,
you push with your eyes till forever
comes in its twisted figure eight
and lies down in your head.

You think water in the river;
you think slower than the tide in
the grain of the...Read more of this...

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