Famous Obscure Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Obscure poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous obscure poems. These examples illustrate what a famous obscure poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Lewis Carroll
"How shall I be a poet?
How shall I write in rhyme?
You told me once the very wish
Partook of the sublime:
Then tell me how. Don't put me off
With your 'another time'."
The old man smiled to see him,
To hear his sudden sally;
He liked the lad to speak his mind
Enthusiastically,
And thought, "There's no hum-drum in him,
Nor any shilly-shally."
"And would you be a...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
IS there for honest Poverty
That hings his head, an’ a’ that;
The coward slave-we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a’ that!
For a’ that, an’ a’ that.
Our toils obscure an’ a’ that,
The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
The Man’s the gowd for a’ that.
What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey, an’ a...Read more of this...
by
Joyce Kilmer
(For Alden March)
With drooping sail and pennant
That never a wind may reach,
They float in sunless waters
Beside a sunless beach.
Their mighty masts and funnels
Are white as driven snow,
And with a pallid radiance
Their ghostly bulwarks glow.
Here is a Spanish galleon
That once with gold was gay,
Here is a Roman trireme
Whose hues outshone the day.
But Tyrian dyes have faded,
And prows that once were...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Warton
Where Venta's Norman castle still uprears
Its rafter'd hall, that o'er the grassy foss,
And scatter'd flinty fragments clad in moss,
On yonder steep in naked state appears;
High hung remains, the pride of war-like years,
Old Arthur's board: on the capacious round
Some British pen has sketch'd the names renown'd,
In marks obscure, of his immortal peers.
Though join'd by magic skill, with many a rhyme,
The...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Charle! ô mon fils!")
{March, 1871.}
Charles, Charles, my son! hast thou, then, quitted me?
Must all fade, naught endure?
Hast vanished in that radiance, clear for thee,
But still for us obscure?
My sunset lingers, boy, thy morn declines!
Sweet mutual love we've known;
For man, alas! plans,...Read more of this...
by
Wallace Stevens
Sister and mother and diviner love,
And of the sisterhood of the living dead
Most near, most clear, and of the clearest bloom,
And of the fragrant mothers the most dear
And queen, and of diviner love the day
And flame and summer and sweet fire, no thread
Of cloudy silver sprinkles in your gown
Its venom of renown, and on your head
No crown is simpler...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
IN Tarbolton, ye ken, there are proper young men,
And proper young lasses and a’, man;
But ken ye the Ronalds that live in the Bennals,
They carry the gree frae them a’, man.
Their father’s laird, and weel he can spare’t,
Braid money to tocher them a’, man;
To proper young men, he’ll clink in the hand
Gowd guineas a hunder...Read more of this...
by
Denise Levertov
This is the year the old ones,
the old great ones
leave us alone on the road.
The road leads to the sea.
We have the words in our pockets,
obscure directions. The old ones
have taken away the light of their presence,
we see it moving away over a hill
off to one side.
They are not dying,
they are withdrawn
into a painful privacy
learning to live without words.
E....Read more of this...
by
Billy Collins
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
Do you remember
How night after night swept level and low
Overhead, at home, and had not one star,
Nor one narrow gate for the moon to go
Forth to her field of November.
And you remember,
How towards the north a red blot on the sky
Burns like a blotch of anxiety
Over the forges,...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
Long ago the Gladiators,
When the call to combat came,
Marching past the massed spectators,
Hailed the Emp'ror with acclaim!
Voices ringing with the fury
Of the strife so soon to be,
Cried, "O Caesar, morituri
salutamus te!"
Nowadays the massed spectators
See the unaccustomed sight --
Legislative gladiators
Marching to their last great fight;
Young and old, obscure...Read more of this...
by
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Love much. Earth has enough of bitter in it.
Cast sweets into its cup whene’er you can.
No heart so hard, but love at last may win it.
Love is the great primæval cause of man.
All hate is foreign to the first great plan.
Love much. Your heart will be led out to slaughter,
On altars built of envy and deciet.
Love on, love...Read more of this...
by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Aye, but she?
Your other sister and my other soul
Grave Silence, lovelier
Than the three loveliest maidens, what of her?
Clio, not you,
Not you, Calliope,
Nor all your wanton line,
Not Beauty's perfect self shall comfort me
For Silence once departed,
For her the cool-tongued, her the tranquil-hearted,
Whom evermore I follow wistfully,
Wandering Heaven and Earth and Hell and the four seasons through;
Thalia, not you,
Not you, Melpomene,
Not...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Soul within sense, immeasurable, obscure,
Insepulchred and deathless, through the dense
Deep elements may scarce be felt as pure
Soul within sense.
From depth and height by measurers left immense,
Through sound and shape and colour, comes the unsure
Vague utterance, fitful with supreme suspense.
All that may pass, and all that must endure,
Song speaks not, painting shews not: more intense
And keen than these, art wakes...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
POOR little child, my pretty boy,
Why did the hunter mark thee out?
Wert thou betrayed by thine own joy?
Singled through childhood’s merry shout?
And who on such a gentle thing
Let slip the Hound that none may bar,
That shall o’ertake the swiftest wing
And tear the heavens down star by star?
And borne away unto the night,
What comfort in the vasty hall?
Can That which...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
I bought a run a while ago,
On country rough and ridgy,
Where wallaroos and wombats grow --
The Upper Murrumbidgee.
The grass is rather scant, it's true,
But this a fair exchange is,
The sheep can see a lovely view
By climbing up the ranges.
And She-oak Flat's the station's name,
I'm not surprised at that, sirs:
The...Read more of this...
by
William Cowper
Thus heav'nward all things tend. For all were once
Perfect, and all must be at length restor'd.
So God has greatly purpos'd; who would else
In his dishonour'd works himself endure
Dishonour, and be wrong'd without redress.
Haste then, and wheel away a shatter'd world,
Ye slow-revolving seasons! We would see
(A sight to which our eyes are strangers yet)
A world that does not dread and...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I am a stout materialist;
With abstract terms I can't agree,
And so I've made a little list
Of words that don't make sense to me.
To fool my reason I refuse,
For honest thinking is my goal;
And that is why I rarely use
Vague words like Soul.
In terms of matter I am sure
This world of our can be defined;
And so with theories obscure
I...Read more of this...
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,
Close by the street of this fair seaport town,
Silent beside the never-silent waves,
At rest in all this moving up and down!
The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep
Wave their broad curtains in the southwind's breath,
While underneath these leafy tents they keep
The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.
And these sepulchral stones,...Read more of this...
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...
by
Donald Justice
Papier-mache body; blue-and-black cotton jersey cover. Metal stand.
Instructions included.
-- Sears, Roebuck Catalogue
O my coy darling, still
You wear for me the scent
Of those long afternoons we spent,
The two of us together,
Safe in the attic from the jealous eyes
Of household spies
And the remote buffooneries of the weather;
So high,
Our sole remaining neighbor was the sky,
Which, often enough, at dusk,
Leaning its cloudy shoulders...Read more of this...
by
Katherine Philips
If honor to an ancient name be due,
Or riches challenge it for one that's new,
The British language claims in either sense
Both for its age, and for its opulence.
But all great things must be from us removed,
To be with higher reverence beloved.
So landskips which in prospects distant lie,
With greater wonder draw the pleasèd eye.
Is not great Troy to one dark ruin...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
STR. 1
I laid my laurel-leaf
At the white feet of grief,
Seeing how with covered face and plumeless wings,
With unreverted head
Veiled, as who mourns his dead,
Lay Freedom couched between the thrones of kings,
A wearied lion without lair,
And bleeding from base wounds, and vexed with alien air.
STR. 2
Who was it, who, put poison to thy mouth,
Who lulled with craft or chant thy...Read more of this...
by
Oscar Wilde
Eagle of Austerlitz! where were thy wings
When far away upon a barbarous strand,
In fight unequal, by an obscure hand,
Fell the last scion of thy brood of Kings!
Poor boy! thou shalt not flaunt thy cloak of red,
Or ride in state through Paris in the van
Of thy returning legions, but instead
Thy mother France, free and republican,
Shall on thy dead and crownless...Read more of this...
by
Emily Brontë
Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?
Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover
That noble heart for ever, ever more?
Cold in...Read more of this...
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