Famous Penal Poems by Famous Poets

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...afterward everything spouts up in the explosion.
Agape, he observes the clouds and what is hanging in them:
globes, penal codes, dead cats floating on their backs, locomotives.
They turn in the skeins of white clouds like trash in a puddle.
While below on the earth a banner, the color of a romantic rose,
flutters,
and a long row of military trains crawls on the weed-covered tracks....Read more of this...

...ts;
What himself confessed, records;
Sentences him in his words,
The form is his own corporal form,
And his thought the penal worm.

Yet shine for ever virgin minds,
Loved by stars and purest winds,
Which, o'er passion throned sedate,
Have not hazarded their state,
Disconcert the searching spy,
Rendering to a curious eye
The durance of a granite ledge
To those who gaze from the sea's edge.
It is there for benefit,
It is there for purging light,
There for purifying sto...Read more of this...

...arless, tearless, perfect, pure, 
To all with equal bounty given, 
In all, unfeigned, unfailing, sure ? 

Will he, from penal sufferings free, 
Released from shroud and wormy clod, 
All calm and glorious, rise and see 
Creation's Sire­Existence' God ?

Then, glancing back on Time's brief woes, 
Will he behold them, fading, fly; 
Swept from Eternity's repose, 
Like sullying cloud, from pure blue sky ?

If so­endure, my weary frame; 
And when thy anguish strikes too deep, 
And ...Read more of this...

...thereal sky, 
With hideous ruin and combustion, down 
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell 
In adamantine chains and penal fire, 
Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms. 
 Nine times the space that measures day and night 
To mortal men, he, with his horrid crew, 
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf, 
Confounded, though immortal. But his doom 
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought 
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain 
Torments him: round he throws...Read more of this...

...ge 
of peasant consciousness
in a car park. 

Poverty's a crime,
and capital punishment
par for the course,
in this penal code. 

A plausible cliffhanger 
can't cure the paralyzed, 
prevent cancer, 
or prepare California 
for Perry Como, 
that peerless crooner. 

Pitcher and catcher confer.
O cornet player, play 
"Pomp and Circumstance" 
please, in the partly cloudy 
cool Pacific....Read more of this...

...canst avoid, selfpreservation bids;
Or th' execution leave to high disposal,
And let another hand, not thine, exact
Thy penal forfeit from thy self; perhaps
God will relent, and quit thee all his debt;
Who evermore approves and more accepts 
(Best pleas'd with humble and filial submission)
Him who imploring mercy sues for life,
Then who selfrigorous chooses death as due;
Which argues overjust, and self-displeas'd
For self-offence, more then for God offended.
Reject not th...Read more of this...

...that mandates keep:
Yea, all that's lovable, below, above,
That let me love by heart, by heart, because
(Free from the penal pressure of the laws)
I find it fair.

"The tears I weep by day and bitter night,
Opinion! for thy sole salt vintage fall.
-- As morn by morn I rise with fresh delight,
Time through my casement cheerily doth call
`Nature is new, 'tis birthday every day,
Come feast with me, let no man say me nay,
Whate'er befall.'

"So fare I forth to feast:...Read more of this...

...Good Father John O'Hart
In penal days rode out
To a Shoneen who had free lands
And his own snipe and trout.

In trust took he John's lands;
Sleiveens were all his race;
And he gave them as dowers to his daughters.
And they married beyond their place.

But Father John went up,
And Father John went down;
And he wore small holes in his Shoes,
And he wore large holes in his go...Read more of this...

...Now he's kicked about like a rotten old parsnip.
And from Green street he'll be sent by order of His Worship
To the penal jail of Mountjoy
 (Chorus) To the jail of Mountjoy!
 Jail him and joy.

He was fafafather of all schemes for to bother us
Slow coaches and immaculate contraceptives for the populace,
Mare's milk for the sick, seven dry Sundays a week,
Openair love and religion's reform,
 (Chorus) And religious reform,
 Hideous in form.

Arrah, why, says you, co...Read more of this...

...fference or ingratitude of the people, or by any unfaithfulness, 
Or the show of the tushes of power, soldiers, cannon, penal statutes.

Revolt! and still revolt! revolt! 
What we believe in waits latent forever through all the continents, and all the islands
 and
 archipelagos of the sea; 
What we believe in invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is
 positive
 and composed, knows no discouragement, 
Waiting patiently, waiting its time. 

(Not s...Read more of this...

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