Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Outlawed Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...m He suffereth long,
Shall I answer wrong with wrong,
Scoffing with the scoffer?

'Happier I, with loss of all,
Hunted, outlawed, held in thrall,
With few friends to greet me,
Than when reeve and squire were seen,
Riding our from Aberdeen,
With bared heads to meet me.

'When each goodwife, o'er and o'er,
Blessed me as I passed her door;
And the snooded daughter,
Through her casement glancing down,
Smiled on him who bore renown
From red fields of slaughter.

'Hard to feel the ...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf



...reary waters,
cold sea-courses, since Cain cut down
with edge of the sword his only brother,
his father’s offspring: outlawed he fled,
marked with murder, from men’s delights
warded the wilds. -- There woke from him
such fate-sent ghosts as Grendel, who,
war-wolf horrid, at Heorot found
a warrior watching and waiting the fray,
with whom the grisly one grappled amain.
But the man remembered his mighty power,
the glorious gift that God had sent him,
in his Maker’s m...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,
...m.

"The blizzard passed and the dawn broke, knife-edged and crystal clear;
 The sky was a blue-domed iceberg, sunshine outlawed away;
Ever by snowslide and ice-rip haunted and hovered the Fear;
 Ever the Wild malignant poised and panted to slay.

The lead-dog freezes in harness--cut him out of the team!
 The lung of the wheel-dog's bleeding--shoot him and let him lie!
On and on with the others--lash them until they scream!
 "Pull for your lives, you devils! On! To halt is to...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William
...es the evening air,
And angry faces surge like waves around the speakers there.
"What are our sins that we should be an outlawed class?" they say,
"Shall we stand by while mates are seized and dragged like lags away?
Shall insult be on insult heaped? Shall we let these things go?"
And with a roar of voices comes the diggers' answer--"No!"
The day has vanished from the scene, but not the air of night
Can cool the blood that, ebbing back, leaves brows in anger white.
Lo, from t...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry
...;
True friends will wish me dead;
And I shall cause the bitterest tears
That you have ever shed. 

The dark deeds of my outlawed race
Will then like virtues shine;
And men will pardon their disgrace,
Beside the guilt of mine. 

For, who forgives the accursed crime
Of dastard treachery?
Rebellion, in its chosen time,
May Freedom's champion be; 

Revenge may stain a righteous sword,
It may be just to slay;
But, traitor, traitor, from that word
All true breasts shrink away! 

Oh...Read more of this...
by Brontë, Emily



...r
 As an honor badge eight centuries at least,
And then have the Prohibitionists inform you
 That a butler is a sort of outlawed beast?...Read more of this...
by Butler, Ellis Parker
...o be Love’s heraldry? What were it worth 
To live and to find out that life were life
But for an unrequited incubus 
Of outlawed shame that would not be thrown down 
Till she had thrown down fear and overcome 
The woman that was yet so much of her 
That she might yet go mad? What were it worth
To live, to linger, and to be condemned 
In her submission to a common thought 
That clogged itself and made of its first faith 
Its last impediment? What augured it, 
Now in this quick...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...
Many fair young wives in Buckland prayed beside their lonely beds 
For the absent ones who knew not where to lay their outlawed heads. 

But a whisper went through Buckland, to the rebels only known, 
That the man across the border had a chance to hold his own. 
There were men that came in darkness, quiet, grim and travel-worn, 
And, by twos, and threes, the young men stole away to join Kinghorn. 

Slipping powder-horns and muskets from beneath the floors and thatch, 
There ...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry
...the dirk he drew,
     Courtiers give place before the stride
     Of the undaunted homicide;
     And since, though outlawed, hath his hand
     Full sternly kept his mountain land.

     Who else dared give—ah! woe the day,
     That I such hated truth should say!—
     The Douglas, like a stricken deer,
     Disowned by every noble peer,
     Even the rude refuge we have here?
     Alas, this wild marauding
     Chief Alone might hazard our relief,
     And no...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter
...die! 
"My sweet young daughter sitting there, 
So innocent and plump! 
You don't suppose that she would care 
To wed an outlawed man who'd dare 
To lead the thirteenth trump! 

"If you had drawn their leading spade 
It meant a certain win! 
But no! By Pembroke's mighty shade 
The thirteenth trump you went and played 
And let their diamonds in! 

"My girl, return at my command 
His presents in a lump! 
Return his ring! For, understand, 
No man is fit to hold your hand 
Who lea...Read more of this...
by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...e till the end of time. 
The living death in the lonely bush, the greed of the selfish town, 
And even the creed of the outlawed push is chivalry -- upside down. 
'Twill be while ever our blood is hot, while ever the world goes wrong, 
The nations rise in a war, to rot in a peace that lasts too long. 
And southern nation and southern state, aroused from their dream of ease, 
Must sign in the Book of Eternal Fate their stormy histories....Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry
.... 
And I will face the world's disgrace, 
And, till his mother's dead, 
My foolish child shall find a place 
To lay his outlawed head.' 

. . . . . 

With a sad heart Trooper Campbell 
Rode back from Blackman's Run, 
Nor noticed aught about him 
Till thirteen miles were done; 
When, close beside a cutting, 
He heard the click of locks, 
And saw the rifle muzzles 
Were on him from the rocks. 

But suddenly a youth rode out, 
And, close by Campbell's side: 
`Don't fire! don't f...Read more of this...
by Lawson, Henry
...d curse at the locks and the combination numbers.
For the teeth of the rats are barred and the tongues of the moths are outlawed and the sun and the air of wind is not wanted.

They open a box where a sheet of paper shivers, in a dusty corner shivers with the dry inkdrops of the Dead, the signed names.
Here the ink testifies, here we find the say-so, here we learn the layout, now we know where the cities and farms belong.
Dead white men and dead red men tested each other with...Read more of this...
by Sandburg, Carl

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Outlawed poems.


Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry