Famous Purged Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Ballad of Death

...lips the kiss became
As fire and frankincense;
Whose hair was as gold raiment on a king,
Whose eyes were as the morning purged with flame,
Whose eyelids as sweet savour issuing thence. 

Then I beheld, and lo on the other side
My lady's likeness crowned and robed and dead.
Sweet still, but now not red,
Was the shut mouth whereby men lived and died.
And sweet, but emptied of the blood's blue shade,
The great curled eyelids that withheld her eyes.
And sweet, but like spoilt gol...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles


A Fire-Truck

...aintaining sure and
 clear,
 Thought is degraded action!

Beautiful, heavy, unweary, loud,
 obvious thing!
I stand here purged of nuance, my
 mind a blank.
All I was brooding upon has taken
 wing,
 And I have you to thank.

As you howl beyond hearing I carry you
 into my mind,
Ladders and brass and all, there to
 admire
Your phoenix-red simplicity, enshrined
 In that not extinguished fire....Read more of this...
by Wilbur, Richard

A proper trewe idyll of camelot

...Whenas ye plaisaunt Aperille shoures have washed and purged awaye
Ye poysons and ye rheums of earth to make a merrie May,
Ye shraddy boscage of ye woods ben full of birds that syng
Right merrilie a madrigal unto ye waking spring,
Ye whiles that when ye face of earth ben washed and wiped ycleane
Her peeping posies blink and stare like they had ben her een;

Then, wit ye well, ye harte of man ben turned to thoug...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene

Absalom And Achitophel

...free?)
His father could not, or he would not see.
Some warm excesses, which the Law forbore,
Were constru'd youth that purged by boiling o'er:
And Amnon's murther, by a specious name,
Was call'd a just revenge for injur'd fame.
Thus prais'd, and lov'd, the noble youth remain'd,
While David, undisturb'd, in Sion reign'd.
But life can never be sincerely blest:
Heav'n punishes the bad, and proves the best.
The Jews, a headstrong, moody, murm'ring race,
As ever tri'd th'extent a...Read more of this...
by Dryden, John

An Autumn Sunset

...
Dead to all shames, forgotten of all glories,
Shall I not wander there, a shadow's shade,
A spectre self-destroyed,
So purged of all remembrance and sucked back
Into the primal void,
That should we on that shore phantasmal meet
I should not know the coming of your feet?...Read more of this...
by Wharton, Edith


Apostroph

...sweep on! sweep on!
O Death! O you striding there! O I cannot yet! 
O heights! O infinitely too swift and dizzy yet! 
O purged lumine! you threaten me more than I can stand! 
O present! I return while yet I may to you! 
O poets to come, I depend upon you!...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

At His Grave

...af and scan the page, 
And note, with smart of loss, 
How wit to wisdom did mature, 
How duty burn’d ambition pure,
And purged away the dross. 

Youth is self-love; our manhood lends 
Its heart to pleasure, mistress, friends, 
So that when age steals nigh, 
How few find any worthier aim 
Than to protract a flickering flame, 
Whose oil hath long run dry! 

But he, unwitting youth once flown, 
With England’s greatness link’d his own, 
And, steadfast to that part, 
Held praise a...Read more of this...
by Austin, Alfred

Beowulf (Old English)

...dy battle the boon had come.
From ravage had rescued the roving stranger
Hrothgar’s hall; the hardy and wise one
had purged it anew. His night-work pleased him,
his deed and its honor. To Eastern Danes
had the valiant Geat his vaunt made good,
all their sorrow and ills assuaged,
their bale of battle borne so long,
and all the dole they erst endured
pain a-plenty. -- ’Twas proof of this,
when the hardy-in-fight a hand laid down,
arm and shoulder, -- all, indeed,
of...Read more of this...
by Anonymous,

Idylls of the King: The Last Tournament (excerpt)

...foam,
Hath lain for years at rest--and renegades,
Thieves, bandits, leavings of confusion, whom
The wholesome realm is purged of otherwhere,
Friends, thro' your manhood and your fealty,--now
Make their last head like Satan in the North.
My younger knights, new-made, in whom your flower
Waits to be solid fruit of golden deeds,
Move with me toward their quelling, which achieved,
The loneliest ways are safe from shore to shore.
But thou, Sir Lancelot, sitting in my place
Enchai...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

MFingal - Canto III

...gh perspective of the grate:
So now M'Fingal's Second-sight
Beheld all things in gloomier light;
His visual nerve, well purged with tar,
Saw all the coming scenes of war.
As his prophetic soul grew stronger,
He found he could hold in no longer.
First from the pole, as fierce he shook,
His wig from pitchy durance broke,
His mouth unglued, his feathers flutter'd,
His tarr'd skirts crack'd, and thus he utter'd.


"Ah, Mr. Constable, in vain
We strive 'gainst wind and tide and ra...Read more of this...
by Trumbull, John

Mystic Trumpeter The

...nocence and health—all joy!
Riotous, laughing bacchanals, fill’d with joy! 

War, sorrow, suffering gone—The rank earth purged—nothing but joy left! 
The ocean fill’d with joy—the atmosphere all joy! 
Joy! Joy! in freedom, worship, love! Joy in the ecstacy of life! 
Enough to merely be! Enough to breathe!
Joy! Joy! all over Joy!...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Natural Theology

...died
 And stranded after a month at sea. . . .
There is a pain in my inside.
 Why have the Gods afflicted me?
Ow! I am purged till I am a wraith!
 Wow! I am sick till I cannot see!
What is the sense of Religion and Faith :
 Look how the Gods have afflicted me!


 Pagan

How can the skin of rat or mouse hold
 Anything more than a harmless flea?. . .
The burning plague has taken my household.
 Why have my Gods afflicted me?
All my kith and kin are deceased,
 Though they were a...Read more of this...
by Kipling, Rudyard

Paradise Lost: Book 07

...wings the Spirit of God outspread, 
And vital virtue infused, and vital warmth 
Throughout the fluid mass; but downward purged 
The black tartareous cold infernal dregs, 
Adverse to life: then founded, then conglobed 
Like things to like; the rest to several place 
Disparted, and between spun out the air; 
And Earth self-balanced on her center hung. 
Let there be light, said God; and forthwith Light 
Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure, 
Sprung from the deep; and fro...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Paradise Lost: Book 11

...sights 
Michael from Adam's eyes the film removed, 
Which that false fruit that promised clearer sight 
Had bred; then purged with euphrasy and rue 
The visual nerve, for he had much to see; 
And from the well of life three drops instilled. 
So deep the power of these ingredients pierced, 
Even to the inmost seat of mental sight, 
That Adam, now enforced to close his eyes, 
Sunk down, and all his spirits became entranced; 
But him the gentle Angel by the hand 
Soon raised, a...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Paradise Lost: Book 12

...e revealed 
In glory of the Father, to dissolve 
Satan with his perverted world; then raise 
From the conflagrant mass, purged and refined, 
New Heavens, new Earth, ages of endless date, 
Founded in righteousness, and peace, and love; 
To bring forth fruits, joy and eternal bliss. 
He ended; and thus Adam last replied. 
How soon hath thy prediction, Seer blest, 
Measured this transient world, the race of time, 
Till time stand fixed! Beyond is all abyss, 
Eternity, whose end ...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

The Last Tournament

...am, 
Hath lain for years at rest--and renegades, 
Thieves, bandits, leavings of confusion, whom 
The wholesome realm is purged of otherwhere, 
Friends, through your manhood and your fealty,--now 
Make their last head like Satan in the North. 
My younger knights, new-made, in whom your flower 
Waits to be solid fruit of golden deeds, 
Move with me toward their quelling, which achieved, 
The loneliest ways are safe from shore to shore. 
But thou, Sir Lancelot, sitting in my pla...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Palace of Art

...not down my palace towers, that are
So lightly, beautifully built:
Perchance I may return with others there
When I have purged my guilt."...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The Shroud of Color

...creep or fly,
All things that live and hunger, faint and die,
Were made majestic then and magnified
By sight so clearly purged and deified.
The smallest bug that crawls was taller than
A tree, the mustard seed loomed like a man.
The earth that writhes eternally with pain
Of birth, and woe of taking back her slain,
Laid bare her teeming bosom to my sight,
And all was struggle, gasping breath, and fight.
A blind worm here dug tunnels to the light,
And there a seed, racked with ...Read more of this...
by Cullen, Countee

The Torture of Cuauhtemoc

...
A city naked, of that golden dream 
Shorn in one moment like a sunset sky. 


Deep in a chamber that no cheerful ray 
Purged of damp air, where in unbroken night 
Black scorpions nested in the sooty beams, 
Helpless and manacled they led him down -- 
Cuauhtemotzin -- and other lords beside -- 
All chieftains of the people, heroes all -- 
And stripped their feathered robes and bound them there 
On short stone settles sloping to the head, 
But where the feet projected, undern...Read more of this...
by Seeger, Alan

To My Enemy

...n in fear,
And never keenest lure might match
The subtle goading of thy sneer. 

Thine anger struck from me a fire
That purged all dull content away,
Our mortal strife to me has been
Unflagging spur from day to day. 

And thus, while all the world may laud
The gifts of love and loyalty,
I lay my meed of gratitude
Before thy feet, mine enemy!...Read more of this...
by Montgomery, Lucy Maud

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