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Famous Pretended Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Lehman, David
...d out they are Jews themselves.
It happened at the time of the Spanish Inquisition.
To escape persecution, they pretended to convert to Christianity.
They came to this country and settled in the Southwest.
At some point oral tradition failed the family, and their
 secret faith died.
No one would ever have known if not for the bones that turned up
 on the dig.
A disaster. How could it have happened to them?
They are in a state of panic--at first.Read more of this...



by Sexton, Anne
...nd savor. 
A reason to worry, 
Rose, when you fix an old death like that, 
and outliving the impact, to find you've pretended. 
We bank over Boston. I am safe. I put on my hat. 
I am almost someone going home. The story has ended....Read more of this...

by Dryden, John
...r>
With grief they view'd such powerful engines bent,
To batter down the lawful government.
A numerous faction with pretended frights,
In Sanhedrins to plume the regal rights.
The true successor from the court remov'd:
The plot, by hireling witnesses, improv'd.
These ills they saw, and as their duty bound,
They show'd the king the danger of the wound:
That no concessions from the throne would please;
But lenitives fomented the disease:
That Absalom, ambitious of t...Read more of this...

by Tebb, Barry
...ry seat was filled and next to me Margaret was intent

On “The Little Rascals”. So I put my arm around her and

She pretended not to notice. The walk home together

Was long and delirious, pushing Margaret on the swings

In East End Park higher and higher, the chain links

Rattling, blood drumming in her ears, her hair falling

over her forehead, the colour rising in her cheeks.



The avenues through the trees were Versailles and

Windsor Great Park, the earth mo...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...owly sheds,
With smoky rafters, than in tapestry halls
And courts of princes, where it first was named,
And yet is most pretended. In a place
Less warranted than this, or less secure,
I cannot be, that I should fear to change it.
Eye me, blest Providence, and square my trial
To my proportioned strength! Shepherd, lead on.

The TWO BROTHERS.

 ELD. BRO. Unmuffle, ye faint stars; and thou, fair moon,
That wont'st to love the traveller's benison,
Stoop th...Read more of this...



by Service, Robert William
...hed at us bravely to scare us away.
Then my companion, a crazy young devil
(After, he told me he'd done it for fun)
Pretended to tremble, and raised his arm level,
And ere I could check him he blazed with his gun.

Headless she lay, from her neck the blood spouted,
And dappled her plumage, the poor, pretty thing!
Ten little chicks - oh, I know for I counted,
Came out and they tried to creep under her wing.
Sickened I said: "Here's an end to my killing;
I swear, ne...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...d not kill,
though kill was tangled into her beginning.

They locked her in a football
but she merely curled up
and pretended it was a warm doll's house.
They pushed insects in to bite her off
and she let them crawl into her eyes
pretending they were a puppet show.

Later, later,
grown fully, as they say,
they gave her a ring,
and she wore it like a root
ans said to herself,
"To be not loved is the human condition,"
and lay like a stature in her bed.

Then onc...Read more of this...

by Hugo, Victor
...out these subtle plans of ours, 
 We have become as gypsies near this doll, 
 You as her page—I dotard to control— 
 Pretended gallants changed to lovers now. 
 So, brother, this being fact for us to know 
 Sooner or later, 'gainst our best intent 
 About her we should quarrel. Evident 
 Is it our compact would be broken through. 
 There is one only thing for us to do, 
 And that is, kill her." 
 
 "Logic very clear," 
 Said musing Joss, "but what of blood shed he...Read more of this...

by Dryden, John
...descried it, 
There is no joy beside it, 
But she that once has tried it 
Will never love again. 

The passion you pretended 
Was only to obtain, 
But once the charm is ended, 
The charmer you disdain. 
Your love by ours we measure 
Till we have lost our treasure, 
But dying is a pleasure 
When living is a pain....Read more of this...

by Walcott, Derek
...
ghost-king of rivers. Well, even ghosts must rest.
If he knew he was lost he was not lost.
It was when you pretended that you were a fool.
He banked and leaned tiredly on the pole.
If I'm a character called Koenig, then I
shall dominate my future like a fiction
in which there is a real river and real sky,
so I'm not really tired, and should push on.

The lights between the leaves were beautiful,
and, as in that far life, now he was grateful
for any po...Read more of this...

by Masters, Edgar Lee
...ld me the silly story
Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan
And kept in chains so he could not write me.
I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well
What he was doing, and that he met
The milliner, Mrs. Williams, now and then
When she went to the city to buy goods, as she said.
But a promise is a promise
And marriage is marriage,
And out of respect for my own character
I refused to be drawn into a divorce
By the scheme of a husband who had merely g...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...olour serpentine, may show 
Thy inward fraud; to warn all creatures from thee 
Henceforth; lest that too heavenly form, pretended 
To hellish falshood, snare them! But for thee 
I had persisted happy; had not thy pride 
And wandering vanity, when least was safe, 
Rejected my forewarning, and disdained 
Not to be trusted; longing to be seen, 
Though by the Devil himself; him overweening 
To over-reach; but, with the serpent meeting, 
Fooled and beguiled; by him thou, I by thee...Read more of this...

by Brautigan, Richard
...have.

 Z went back there half a dozen times after that first meet-

ing. An interesting thing happened. I pretended that the cat,

208, was named after their room number, though I knew that

their number was in the three hundreds. The room was on

the third floor. It was that simple.

 I always went to their room following the geography of

Hotel Trout Fishing in America, rather than its numerical

layout. I never knew what the exact number of th...Read more of this...

by Pinsky, Robert
...ry on a shoe in his store, he'd touch her calf
And ask her, "How does that feel?" I was too little
To get the point but pretended to understand.
"Desire, be steady; hope is your delight,
An orb wherein no creature can ever be sorry."

She didn't go to my bar mitzvah, either.
I can't say why: she was there, and then she wasn't.
I looked around before I mounted the steps
To chant that babble and the speech the rabbi wrote
And there she wasn't, and there was Uncl...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ht where all thy circling wiles would end;
In feign'd Religion, smooth hypocrisie.
But had thy love, still odiously pretended,
Bin, as it ought, sincere, it would have taught thee
Far other reasonings, brought forth other deeds.
I before all the daughters of my Tribe
And of my Nation chose thee from among
My enemies, lov'd thee, as too well thou knew'st,
Too well, unbosom'd all my secrets to thee,
Not out of levity, but over-powr'd 
By thy request, who could deny thee...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...d the nurses, came riding
home as if I'd been told
I could pretend
people live in places.

3.
Since then I have pretended ease,
loved with the trickeries of need, but not enough
to shed my daughterhood
or sweeten him as a man.
I drink the five o' clock martinis
and poke at this dry page like a rough
goat. Fool! I fumble my lost childhood
for a mother and lounge in sad stuff
with love to catch and catch as catch can.
And Christ still waits. I have tried...Read more of this...

by Sexton, Anne
...as simpler than I'd thought.
The day life made you well and whole
I let the witches take away my guilty soul.
I pretended I was dead
until the white men pumped the poison out,
putting me armless and washed through the rigamarole
of talking boxes and the electric bed.
I laughed to see the private iron in that hotel.
Today the yellow leaves
go *****. You ask me where they go I say today believed
in itself, or else it fell.

Today, my small child, Joyce,
...Read more of this...

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...aunted him in loud derision, 
Spake disdainfully in this wise:
"Hark you, Bear! you are a coward; 
And no Brave, as you pretended; 
Else you would not cry and whimper 
Like a miserable woman! 
Bear! you know our tribes are hostile, 
Long have been at war together; 
Now you find that we are strongest, 
You go sneaking in the forest, 
You go hiding in the mountains! 
Had you conquered me in battle 
Not a groan would I have uttered; 
But you, Bear! sit here and whimper, 
And dis...Read more of this...

by Dryden, John
...udiacious force, 
Which, though not actual, yet all eyes may see 
'Tis working, in the immediate power to be; 
For from pretended grievances they rise 
First to dislike and after to dispise; 
Then, Cyclop-like, in human flesh to deal, 
Chop up a minister at every meal; 
Perhaps not wholly to melt down the king, 
But clip his regal rights within the ring; 
From thence to asssume the power of peace and war 
And ease him by degrees of public care. 
Yet, to consult his dignit...Read more of this...

by Finch, Anne Kingsmill
...at Right away,
And Woman, arm'd with Spleen, do's servilely Obey. 

The Fool, to imitate the Wits,
Complains of thy pretended Fits,
And Dulness, born with him, wou'd lay
Upon thy accidental Sway; 
Because, sometimes, thou dost presume
Into the ablest Heads to come:
That, often, Men of Thoughts refin'd,
Impatient of unequal Sence,
Such slow Returns, where they so much dispense,
Retiring from the Croud, are to thy Shades inclin'd.
O'er me, alas! thou dost too much preva...Read more of this...

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