Famous Outraged Poems by Famous Poets

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

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His Bill is clasped -- his Eye forsook --

by Emily Dickinson
 His Bill is clasped -- his Eye forsook --
His Feathers wilted low --
The Claws that clung, like lifeless Gloves
Indifferent hanging now --
The Joy that in his happy Throat
Was waiting to be poured
Gored through and through with Death, to be
Assassin of a Bird
Resembles to my outraged mind
The firing in Heaven,
On Angels -- squandering for you
Their Miracles of Tune --...Read more of this...

Stanzas for the Times

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 Is this the land our fathers loved, 
The freedom which they toiled to win? 
Is this the soil whereon they moved? 
Are these the graves they slumber in? 
Are we the sons by whom are borne 
The mantles which the dead have worn? 

And shall we crouch above these graves, 
With craven soul and fettered lip? 
Yoke in with...Read more of this...

Gods Skallywags

by Robert William Service
 The God of Scribes looked down and saw
The bitter band of seven,
Who had outraged his holy law
And lost their hope of Heaven:
Came Villon, petty thief and pimp,
And obscene Baudelaire,
And Byron with his letcher limp,
And Poe with starry stare.

And Wilde who lived his hell on earth,
And Burns, the baudy bard,
And Francis Thompson, from his birth
Malevolently starred. . . .
As like...Read more of this...

avalanche

by Rg Gregory
 all is still on this starless night
the mountain waits
quiescent as a cat
smoothing crag and chasm
to a white fur

then against the black sky
puffs of snow
flutter from a jutting cliff
into obscurity

a drumroll utters
from the mountain's throat
and stops
reprehended by a silence so intense
that even night
seems shallow in its presence

high up a front of snow
crumples and cascades down
plashing from rock to rock
spawning further...Read more of this...

The Eighteenth Century

by Victor Hugo
 ("O dix-huitième siècle!") 
 
 {IV. vi} 


 O Eighteenth Century! by Heaven chastised! 
 Godless thou livedst, by God thy doom was fixed. 
 Thou in one ruin sword and sceptre mixed, 
 Then outraged love, and pity's claim despised. 
 Thy life a banquet—but its board a scaffold at the close, 
 Where far from Christ's beatic...Read more of this...

Sonnet CCXXII

by Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CCXXII. In tale Stella duo begli occhi vidi. THE BEAUTY OF LAURA IS PEERLESS.  In one fair star I saw two brilliant eyes,With sweetness, modesty, so glistening o'er,That soon those graceful nests of Love beforeMy worn heart learnt all others to despise:Equall'd not her whoever won the prizeIn ages...Read more of this...

Crime and Punishment chapter XII

by Kahlil Gibran
 Then one of the judges of the city stood forth and said, "Speak to us of Crime and Punishment." 

And he answered saying: 

It is when your spirit goes wandering upon the wind, 

That you, alone and unguarded, commit a wrong unto others and therefore unto yourself. 

And for that wrong committed must you knock and wait a while...Read more of this...

Canzone VI

by Francesco Petrarch
CANZONE VI. Spirto gentil che quelle membra reggi. TO RIENZI, BESEECHING HIM TO RESTORE TO ROME HER ANCIENT LIBERTY.  Spirit heroic! who with fire divineKindlest those limbs, awhile which pilgrim holdOn earth a Chieftain, gracious, wise, and bold;Since, rightly, now the rod of state is thineRome and her wandering children to...Read more of this...

the rest home

by Rg Gregory
 professor piebald
(the oldest man in the home) was meek
at the same time ribald
he clothed his matter (so to speak)
in latin and (was it) greek
it caused no great offence
to nobody did it make sense
to make a rude joke
in languages nobody spoke

once he'd changed the word agenda
at a home's committee meeting to pudenda
this sort of thing was tolerated by the other
inmates...Read more of this...

Autumn

by Siegfried Sassoon
 October's bellowing anger breaks and cleaves 
The bronzed battalions of the stricken wood 
In whose lament I hear a voice that grieves 
For battle’s fruitless harvest, and the feud 
Of outraged men. Their lives are like the leaves
Scattered in flocks of ruin, tossed and blown 
Along the westering furnace flaring red. 
O martyred youth and manhood overthrown, 
The burden...Read more of this...

Randolph Of Roanoke

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 O Mother Earth! upon thy lap
Thy weary ones receiving,
And o'er them, silent as a dream,
Thy grassy mantle weaving,
Fold softly in thy long embrace
That heart so worn and broken,
And cool its pulse of fire beneath
Thy shadows old and oaken.

Shut out from him the bitter word
And serpent hiss of scorning;
Nor let the storms of yesterday
Disturb his quiet morning.
Breathe over him forgetfulness
Of...Read more of this...

Calvary

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Friendless and faint, with martyred steps and slow, 
Faint for the flesh, but for the spirit free, 
Stung by the mob that came to see the show, 
The Master toiled along to Calvary; 
We gibed him, as he went, with houndish glee, 
Till his dimmed eyes for us did overflow; 
We cursed his vengeless hands thrice wretchedly, -- 
And...Read more of this...

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