Famous No Escape Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous No Escape poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous no escape poems. These examples illustrate what a famous no escape poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Robert William Service
Tell me, Tramp, where I may go
To be free from human woe;
Say where I may hope to find
Ease of heart and peace of mind;
Is thee not some isle you know
Where I may leave Care behind?
So spoke one is sore distress,
And I answered softly: "Yes,
There's an isle so sweet and kind
So to clemency inclined,
So serene in loveliness
That the blind may...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
Within a pub that's off the Strand and handy to the bar,
With pipe in mouth and mug in hand sat Jobson of the Star.
"Come, sit ye down, ye wond'ring wight, and have a yarn," says he.
"I can't," says I, "because to-night I'm off to Tripoli;
To Tripoli and Trebizond and Timbuctoo mayhap,
Or any magic name beyond I find upon the...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Laissons le glaive à Rome.")
{Bk. III. xvi., October, 1852.}
Pray Rome put up her poniard!
And Sparta sheathe the sword;
Be none too prompt to punish,
And cast indignant word!
Bear back your spectral Brutus
From robber Bonaparte;
Time rarely will refute us
Who doom the hateful heart....Read more of this...
by
Robert Graves
August 6, 1916.—Officer previously reported died of wounds, now reported wounded: Graves, Captain R., Royal Welch Fusiliers.)
…but I was dead, an hour or more.
I woke when I’d already passed the door
That Cerberus guards, and half-way down the road
To Lethe, as an old Greek signpost showed.
Above me, on my stretcher swinging by,
I saw new stars in...Read more of this...
by
Elinor Wylie
When foxes eat the last gold grape,
And the last white antelope is killed,
I shall stop fighting and escape
Into a little house I'll build.
But first I'll shrink to fairy size,
With a whisper no one understands,
Making blind moons of all your eyes,
And muddy roads of all your hands.
And you may grope for me in vain...Read more of this...
by
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown
Of thee from the hill-top looking down;
The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The wexton, tolling his bell at noon,
Deems not that great Napoleon
Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
FROM all the rest I single out you, having a message for you:
You are to die—Let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate,
I am exact and merciless, but I love you—There is no escape for you.
Softly I lay my right hand upon you—you just feel it,
I do not argue—I bend my head close,...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXCIV. I' piansi, or canto; che 'l celeste lume. AT HER RETURN, HIS SORROWS VANISH. I wept, but now I sing; its heavenly lightThat living sun conceals not from my view,But virtuous love therein revealeth trueHis holy purposes and precious might;Whence, as his wont, such flood of sorrow springsTo...Read more of this...
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
THOU art confused, my beloved, at, seeing the thousandfold
union
Shown in this flowery troop, over the garden dispers'd;
any a name dost thou hear assign'd; one after another
Falls on thy list'ning ear, with a barbarian sound.
None resembleth another, yet all their forms have a likeness;
Therefore, a mystical law is by the chorus proclaim'd;
Yes, a sacred enigma! Oh, dearest friend, could...Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
To prevent the escape of any part of us from our embrace that is so intense as to be holy, and to let love shine clear through the body itself, we go down together to the garden of the flesh.
Your breasts are there like offerings and your two hands are stretched out to me; and nothing is of so much...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Escape is such a thankful Word
I often in the Night
Consider it unto myself
No spectacle in sight
Escape -- it is the Basket
In which the Heart is caught
When down some awful Battlement
The rest of Life is dropt --
'Tis not to sight the savior --
It is to be the saved --
And that is why I lay my Head
Upon this trusty word --...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
'Twas in the year of 1858, and on October the fourteenth day,
That a fire broke out in a warehouse, and for hours blazed away;
And the warehouse, now destroyed, was occupied by the Messrs R. Wylie, Hill & Co.,
Situated in Buchanan Street, in the City of Glasgow.
The flames burst forth about three o'clock in the afternoon,
And intimation of the...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
The lights from the parlour and kitchen shone out
Through the blinds and the windows and bars;
And high overhead and all moving about,
There were thousands of millions of stars.
There ne'er were such thousands of leaves on a tree,
Nor of people in church or the Park,
As the crowds of the stars that looked down upon...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
I see the grass shake in the sun for leagues on either hand,
I see a river loop and run about a treeless land --
An empty plain, a steely pond, a distance diamond-clear,
And low blue naked hills beyond. And what is that to fear?"
"Go softly by that river-side or, when you would depart,
You'll find its every winding tied and knotted...Read more of this...
by
Galway Kinnell
1
You scream, waking from a nightmare.
When I sleepwalk
into your room, and pick you up,
and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me
hard,
as if clinging could save us. I think
you think
I will never die, I think I exude
to you the permanence of smoke or stars,
even as
my broken arms heal themselves around you.
2
I have heard you tell
the sun, don't go...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away --
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy --
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon --
The Dusk drew earlier in --
The Morning foreign shone --
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that would be gone --
And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CIV. Pace non trovo, e non ho da far guerra. LOVE'S INCONSISTENCY. I fynde no peace and all my warre is done,I feare and hope, I bourne and freese lyke yse;I flye above the wynde, yet cannot ryse;And nought I have, yet all the worlde I season,That looseth, nor lacketh,...Read more of this...
by
Anne Kingsmill Finch
By neer resemblance see that Bird betray'd
Who takes the well wrought Arras for a shade
There hopes to pearch and with a chearfull Tune
O're-passe the scortchings of the sultry Noon.
But soon repuls'd by the obdurate scean
How swift she turns but turns alas in vain
That piece a Grove, this shews an ambient sky
Where immitated Fowl their pinnions ply
Seeming to mount in...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
I never hear the word "escape"
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation
A flying attitude!
I never hear of prisons broad
By soldiers battered down,
But I tug childish at my bars
Only to fail again!...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
MANHATTAN’S streets I saunter’d, pondering,
On time, space, reality—on such as these, and abreast with them, prudence.
2
After all, the last explanation remains to be made about prudence;
Little and large alike drop quietly aside from the prudence that suits immortality.
The Soul is of itself;
All verges to it—all has reference to what ensues;
All that a person does,...Read more of this...
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...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay - Intention To Escape From Him
I think I will learn some beautiful language, useless for commercial
Purposes, work hard at that.
I think I will learn the Latin name of every songbird, not only in
America but wherever they sing.
(Shun meditation, though; invite the controversial:
Is the world flat? Do bats eat cats?) By digging hard I might
deflect...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day's occupations,
That is known as the Children's Hour.
I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.
From my study I see in the lamplight,...Read more of this...
by
Charles Bukowski
at their best, there is gentleness in Humanity.
some understanding and, at times, acts of
courage
but all in all it is a mass, a glob that doesn't
have too much.
it is like a large animal deep 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...Read more of this...
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...
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