Famous Poison Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Poison poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous poison poems. These examples illustrate what a famous poison poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
D. H. Lawrence
A faint, sickening scent of irises
Persists all morning. Here in a jar on the table
A fine proud spike of purple irises
Rising above the class-room litter, makes me unable
To see the class’s lifted and bended faces
Save in a broken pattern, amid purple and gold and sable.
I can smell the gorgeous bog-end, in its breathless
Dazzle of may-blobs, when...Read more of this...
by
Dylan Thomas
Ears in the turrets hear
Hands grumble on the door,
Eyes in the gables see
The fingers at the locks.
Shall I unbolt or stay
Alone till the day I die
Unseen by stranger-eyes
In this white house?
Hands, hold you poison or grapes?
Beyond this island bound
By a thin sea of flesh
And a bone coast,
The land lies out of sound
And the hills out of mind.
No birds or...Read more of this...
by
Allen Ginsberg
Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
Noplace to **** but sand channel ruts
Millions of fathers in rain
Millions of mothers in pain
Millions of brothers in woe
Millions of sisters nowhere to go
One Million aunts are dying for bread
One Million uncles lamenting the dead
Grandfather millions homeless and sad
Grandmother millions silently mad
Millions of daughters walk...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
A story, a story!
(Let it go. Let it come.)
I was stamped out like a Plymouth fender
into this world.
First came the crib
with its glacial bars.
Then dolls
and the devotion to their plactic mouths.
Then there was school,
the little straight rows of chairs,
blotting my name over and over,
but undersea all the time,
a stranger whose elbows wouldn't work.
Then there was life
with its cruel houses
and...Read more of this...
by
George Meredith
He felt the wild beast in him betweenwhiles
So masterfully rude, that he would grieve
To see the helpless delicate thing receive
His guardianship through certain dark defiles.
Had he not teeth to rend, and hunger too?
But still he spared her. Once: 'Have you no fear ?'
He said: 'twas dusk; she in his grasp; none near.
She...Read more of this...
by
William Shakespeare
Like as, to make our appetites more keen,
With eager compounds we our palate urge,
As, to prevent our maladies unseen,
We sicken to shun sickness when we purge,
Even so, being tuff of your ne'er-cloying sweetness,
To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding
And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness
To be diseased ere that there was true needing.
Thus policy in love,...Read more of this...
by
Allen Ginsberg
I
What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there
a new thing under the Sun?
At last inquisitive Whitman a modern epic, detonative,
Scientific theme
First penned unmindful by Doctor Seaborg with poison-
ous hand, named for Death's planet through the
sea beyond Uranus
whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared Lord of
Hades, Sire of avenging Furies, billionaire Hell-
...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET CXIX. Questa umil fera, un cor di tigre o d' orsa. HE PRAYS HER EITHER TO WELCOME OR DISMISS HIM AT ONCE. Fiercer than tiger, savager than bear,In human guise an angel form appears,Who between fear and hope, from smiles to tearsSo tortures me that doubt becomes despair.Ere long if...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
An unconverted state; or, Converting grace.
[Great King of glory and of grace,
We own, with humble shame,
How vile is our degen'rate race,
And our first father's name.]
From Adam flows our tainted blood,
The poison reigns within;
Makes us averse to all that's good,
And willing slaves to sin.
[Daily we break thy holy laws,
And then reject thy grace;
Engaged in the old serpent's cause,
Against our Maker's...Read more of this...
by
Marriott Edgar
Richard the First, Coeur-de-Lion,
Is a name that we speak of with pride,
Though he only lived six months in England
From his birth to the day that he died.
He spent all his time fighting battles,
Dressed up in most rigid attire,
For he had his suits made by the Blacksmith,
And his underwear knitted of wire.
He married...Read more of this...
by
Sir Philip Sidney
In nature apt to like when I did see
Beauties, which were of many carats fine,
My boiling sprites did thither soon incline,
And, Love, I thought that I was full of thee:
But finding not those restless flames in me,
Which others said did make their souls to pine,
I thought those babes of some pin's hurt did...Read more of this...
by
Peter Huchel
For Michael Hamburger
Barn owl
daughter of snow,
subject to the night wind,
yet taking root
with her talons
in the rotten scab of walls,
beak face
with round eyes,
heart-rigid mask
of feathers a white fire
that touches neither time nor space.
Coldly the wind blows
against the old homestead,
in the yard pale folk,
sledges, baggage, lamps covered with snow,
in the pots death,
in the pitchers poison,
the last will nailed to a post.
The...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
'Twas in the bleary middle of the hard-boiled Arctic night,
I was lonesome as a loon, so if you can,
Imagine my emotions of amazement and delight
When I bumped into that Missionary Man.
He was lying lost and dying in the moon's unholy leer,
And frozen from his toes to finger-tips'
The famished wolf-pack ringed him; but he didn't seem to fear,
As he pressed...Read more of this...
by
Michael Drayton
As in some countries far remote from hence
The wretched creature destined to die,
Having the judgement due to his offence,
By surgeons begg'd, their art on him to try,
Which, on the living, work without remorse,
First make incision on each mastering vein,
Then staunch the bleeding, then trasnpierce the corse,
And with their balms recure the wounds...Read more of this...
by
Emma Lazarus
I
A dream of interlinking hands, of feet
Tireless to spin the unseen, fairy woof
Of the entangling waltz. Bright eyebeams meet,
Gay laughter echoes from the vaulted roof.
Warm perfumes rise; the soft unflickering glow
Of branching lights sets off the changeful charms
Of glancing gems, rich stuffs, the dazzling snow
Of necks unkerchieft, and bare, clinging arms.
Hark...Read more of this...
by
Robert Burns
FORLORN, my Love, no comfort near,
Far, far from thee, I wander here;
Far, far from thee, the fate severe,
At which I most repine, Love.
Chorus.—O wert thou, Love, but near me!
But near, near, near me,
How kindly thou wouldst cheer me,
And mingle sighs with mine, Love.
Around me scowls a wintry sky,
Blasting each bud of hope and joy;
And shelter, shade, nor...Read more of this...
by
Anne Sexton
Consider
a girl who keeps slipping off,
arms limp as old carrots,
into the hypnotist's trance,
into a spirit world
speaking with the gift of tongues.
She is stuck in the time machine,
suddenly two years old sucking her thumb,
as inward as a snail,
learning to talk again.
She's on a voyage.
She is swimming further and further back,
up like a salmon,
struggling into her mother's pocketbook.
Little doll child,
come here...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
I had a bitter enemy,
His heart to hate he gave,
And when I died he swore that he
Would dance upon my grave;
That he would leap and laugh because
A livid corpse was I,
And that's the reason why I was
In no great haste to die.
And then - such is the quirk of fate,
One day with joy I read,
Despite his vitalizing hate
My...Read more of this...
by
William Blake
I saw a chapel all of gold
That none did dare to enter in,
And many weeping stood without,
Weeping, mourning, worshipping.
I saw a serpent rise between
The white pillars of the door,
And he forc'd and forc'd and forc'd,
Down the golden hinges tore.
And along the pavement sweet,
Set with pearls and rubies bright,
All his slimy length he drew
Till upon the altar white
Vomiting his...Read more of this...
by
Hermann Hesse
My Pillow gazes upon me at night
Empty as a gravestone;
I never thought it would be so bitter
To be alone,
Not to lie down asleep in your hair.
I lie alone in a silent house,
The hanging lamp darkened,
And gently stretch out my hands
To gather in yours,
And softly press my warm mouth
Toward you, and kiss myself, exhausted and weak-
Then suddenly I'm awake
And all...Read more of this...
by
Friedrich von Schiller
Laura! a sunrise seems to break
Where'er thy happy looks may glow.
Joy sheds its roses o'er thy cheek,
Thy tears themselves do but bespeak
The rapture whence they flow;
Blest youth to whom those tears are given--
The tears that change his earth to heaven;
His best reward those melting eyes--
For him new suns are in the skies!
Thy soul--a crystal river passing,
Silver-clear, and sunbeam-glassing,
Mays into...Read more of this...
by
Nick Flynn
Bees may be trusted, always,
to discover the best, nay, the only
human, solution. Let me cite
an instance; an event, that,
though occurring in nature, is still
in itself wholly abnormal. I refer
to the manner in which the bees
will dispose of a mouse
or a slug
that may happen to...Read more of this...
by
Alec Derwent (A D) Hope
I sing of the decline of Henry Clay
Who loved a white girl of uncommon size.
Although a small man in a little way,
He had in him some seed of enterprise.
Each day he caught the seven-thirty train
To work, watered his garden after tea,
Took an umbrella if it looked like rain A
nd was remarkably like...Read more of this...
by
William Blake
I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I waterd it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And...Read more of this...
by
Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
Just at the time when Jasmins bloom, most sweetly in the summer weather,
Lost in the scented Jungle gloom, one sultry night we spent together
We, Love and Night, together blent, a Trinity of tranced content.
Yet, while your lips were wholly mine, to kiss, to drink from, to caress,
...Read more of this...
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