Famous Prison Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Prison poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous prison poems. These examples illustrate what a famous prison poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Robert William Service
Beyond the Rocking Bridge it lies, the burg of evil fame,
The huts where hive and swarm and thrive the sisterhood of shame.
Through all the night each cabin light goes out and then goes in,
A blood-red heliograph of lust, a semaphore of sin.
From Dawson Town, soft skulking down, each lewdster seeks his mate;
And glad and bad, kimono clad, the wanton...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Bishop
The great light cage has broken up in the air,
freeing, I think, about a million birds
whose wild ascending shadows will not be back,
and all the wires come falling down.
No cage, no frightening birds; the rain
is brightening now. The face is pale
that tried the puzzle of their prison
and solved it with an unexpected...Read more of this...
by
Mary Darby Robinson
Beneath an old wall, that went round an old Castle,
For many a year, with brown ivy o'erspread;
A neat little Hovel, its lowly roof raising,
Defied the wild winds that howl'd over its shed:
The turrets, that frown'd on the poor simple dwelling,
Were rock'd to and fro, when the Tempest would roar,
And the river, that down the rich valley was swelling,
Flow'd swiftly...Read more of this...
by
Walt Whitman
1
O sight of shame, and pain, and dole!
O fearful thought—a convict Soul!
RANG the refrain along the hall, the prison,
Rose to the roof, the vaults of heaven above,
Pouring in floods of melody, in tones so pensive, sweet and strong, the like whereof was
never
heard,
Reaching the far-off sentry, and the armed guards, who ceas’d...Read more of this...
by
Nazim Hikmet
If instead of being hanged by the neck
you're thrown inside
for not giving up hope
in the world, your country, your people,
if you do ten or fifteen years
apart from the time you have left,
you won't say,
"Better I had swung from the end of a rope
like a flag" --
You'll put your foot down and live.
It may...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
A Prison gets to be a friend --
Between its Ponderous face
And Ours -- a Kinsmanship express --
And in its narrow Eyes --
We come to look with gratitude
For the appointed Beam
It deal us -- stated as our food --
And hungered for -- the same --
We learn to know the Planks --
That answer to Our feet --
So miserable a sound --...Read more of this...
by
C S Lewis
By and by Man will try
To get out into the sky,
Sailing far beyond the air
From Down and Here to Up and There.
Stars and sky, sky and stars
Make us feel the prison bars.
Suppose it done. Now we ride
Closed in steel, up there, outside
Through our port-holes see the vast
Heaven-scape go rushing past.
Shall...Read more of this...
by
Francesco Petrarch
SONNET LVI. Amor con sue promesse lusingando. LOVE CHAINS ARE STILL DEAR TO HIM. By promise fair and artful flatteryMe Love contrived in prison old to snare,And gave the keys to her my foe in care,Who in self-exile dooms me still to lie.Alas! his wiles I knew not until IWas...Read more of this...
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
"Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light,
Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffus'd
A Spirit of activity and life,
That knows no term, cessation, or decay;
That fades not when the lamp of earthly life,
Extinguish'd in the dampness of the grave,
Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe
In the dim newness of its being feels
The impulses of sublunary things,
And...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
The mountains that enfold the vale
With walls of granite, steep and high,
Invite the fearless foot to scale
Their stairway toward the sky.
The restless, deep, dividing sea
That flows and foams from shore to shore,
Calls to its sunburned chivalry,
"Push out, set sail, explore!"
And all the bars at which we fret,
That seem to prison and control,
Are but the doors...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
How soft this Prison is
How sweet these sullen bars
No Despot but the King of Down
Invented this repose
Of Fate if this is All
Has he no added Realm
A Dungeon but a Kinsman is
Incarceration -- Home....Read more of this...
by
Etheridge Knight
Hard Rock/ was/ "known not to take no ****
From nobody," and he had the scars to prove it:
Split purple lips, lumbed ears, welts above
His yellow eyes, and one long scar that cut
Across his temple and plowed through a thick
Canopy of kinky hair.
The WORD/ was/ that Hard Rock wasn't a mean ******
Anymore, that the doctors had bored...Read more of this...
by
Victor Hugo
("Phoebus, n'est-il sur la terre?")
{OPERA OF "ESMERALDA," ACT IV., 1836.}
Phoebus, is there not this side the grave,
Power to save
Those who're loving? Magic balm
That will restore to me my former calm?
Is there nothing tearful eye
Can e'er dry, or hush the sigh?
I pray Heaven...Read more of this...
by
William Topaz McGonagall
'Twas in the year of 1650, and on the twenty-first of May,
The city of Edinburgh was put into a state of dismay
By the noise of drums and trumpets, which on the air arose,
That the great sound attracted the notice of Montrose.
Who enquired at the Captain of the guard the cause of it,
Then the officer told him, as he...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hood
I Saw old Autumn in the misty morn
Stand shadowless like Silence, listening
To silence, for no lonely bird would sing
Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn,
Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;—
Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright
With tangled gossamer that fell by night,
Pearling his coronet of golden corn.
Where are the songs of...Read more of this...
by
Barry Tebb
Quarter to three: I wake again at the hour of his birth
Thirty years ago and now he paces corridors of dark
In nightmares of self-condemnation where random thoughts
Besiege his fevered imagination – England’s
Imminent destruction, his own, the world’s…
Sixty to eighty cigarettes a day, unavailing depot injections,
Failed abscondings, failed everything: Eton and Balliol
Hold no sway on ward one, nor even...Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept,
Remembering thee,
That for ages of agony hast endured, and slept,
And wouldst not see.
By the waters of Babylon we stood up and sang,
Considering thee,
That a blast of deliverance in the darkness rang,
To set thee free.
And with trumpets and thunderings and with morning song
Came up the light;
And thy spirit uplifted thee to...Read more of this...
by
John Keats
What though, for showing truth to flattered state,
Kind Hunt was shut in prison, yet has he,
In his immortal spirit, been as free
As the sky-searching lark, and as elate.
Minion of grandeur! think you he did wait?
Think you he nought but prison-walls did see,
Till, so unwilling, thou unturnedst the key?
Ah, no! far happier, nobler was his fate!
In Spenser's halls he strayed,...Read more of this...
by
Richard Lovelace
When love with unconfined wings
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at the grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair,
And fettered to her eye,
The birds that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.
When flowing cups run swiftly round
With no allaying Thames,
Our careless heads with roses bound,
Our hearts with loyal flames;
When thirsty grief in wine we steep,
When healths...Read more of this...
by
William Morris
Wearily, drearily,
Half the day long,
Flap the great banners
High over the stone;
Strangely and eerily
Sounds the wind's song,
Bending the banner-poles.
While, all alone,
Watching the loophole's spark,
Lie I, with life all dark,
Feet tether'd, hands fetter'd
Fast to the stone,
The grim walls, square-letter'd
With prison'd men's groan.
Still strain the banner-poles
Through the wind's song,
Westward the banner rolls
Over my wrong....Read more of this...
by
William Strode
Though after Death, Thanks lessen into Praise,
And Worthies be not crown'd with gold, but bayes;
Shall we not thank? To praise Thee all agree;
We Debtors must out doe it, heartily.
Deserved Nobility of True Descent,
Though not so old in Thee grew Ancient:
We number not the Tree of Branched Birth,
But genealogie of Vertue, spreading forth
To many Births in value. Piety,
True Valour, Bounty,...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Christ's presence makes death easy.
Why should we start, and fear to die
What timorous worms we mortals are!
Death is the gate of endless joy,
And yet we dread to enter there.
The pains, the groans, and dying strife,
Fright our approaching souls away;
Still we shrink back again to life,
Fond of our prison and our clay.
O! if my Lord would come and meet,
My soul...Read more of this...
by
Judith Wright
The rows of cells are unroofed,
a flute for the wind's mouth,
who comes with a breath of ice
from the blue caves of the south.
O dark and fierce day:
the wind like an angry bee
hunts for the black honey
in the pits of the hollow sea.
Waves of shadow wash
the empty shell bone-bare,
and like...Read more of this...
by
William Morris
Wearily, drearily,
Half the day long,
Flap the great banners
High over the stone;
Strangely and eerily
Sounds the wind's song,
Bending the banner-poles.
While, all alone,
Watching the loophole's spark,
Lie I, with life all dark,
Feet tether'd, hands fetter'd
Fast to the stone,
The grim walls, square-letter'd
With prison'd men's groan.
Still strain the banner-poles
Through the wind's song,
Westward the banner rolls
Over my wrong....Read more of this...
by
William Blake
1.1 "What is the price of Experience? do men buy it for a song?
1.2 Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
1.3 Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children.
1.4 Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy,
1.5 And in the wither'd field...Read more of this...
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