Famous Purging Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Sonnet XLV

by William Shakespeare
 The other two, slight air and purging fire,
Are both with thee, wherever I abide;
The first my thought, the other my desire,
These present-absent with swift motion slide.
For when these quicker elements are gone
In tender embassy of love to thee,
My life, being made of four, with two alone
Sinks down to death, oppress'd with melancholy;
Until life's composition be recured
By those swift messengers...Read more of this...

On the New Hot-House

by Ben Jonson
VII. ? ON THE NEW HOT-HOUSE.      Where lately harbor'd many a famous whore, A purging bill, now fix'd upon the door, Tells you it is a hot-house ; so it may, And still be a whore-house : they're synonyma. ...Read more of this...

The Unpardonable Sin

by Vachel Lindsay
 This is the sin against the Holy Ghost: —
To speak of bloody power as right divine,
And call on God to guard each vile chief's house,
And for such chiefs, turn men to wolves and swine:—

To go forth killing in White Mercy's name,
Making the trenches stink with spattered brains, 
Tearing the nerves and arteries apart,
Sowing with flesh the unreaped golden plains.

In...Read more of this...

Millenial Hymn to Lord Shiva

by Kathleen Raine
 Earth no longer
hymns the Creator,
the seven days of wonder,
the Garden is over —
all the stories are told,
the seven seals broken
all that begins
must have its ending,
our striving, desiring,
our living and dying,
for Time, the bringer
of abundant days
is Time the destroyer —
In the Iron Age
the Kali Yuga
To whom can we pray
at the end of an era
but the Lord Shiva,
the Liberator, the purifier?

Our...Read more of this...

Sonnet 45: The other two slight air and purging fire

by William Shakespeare
 The other two, slight air and purging fire,
Are both with thee, wherever I abide;
The first my thought, the other my desire,
These present-absent with swift motion slide.
For when these quicker elements are gone
In tender embassy of love to thee,
My life, being made of four, with two alone
Sinks down to death, oppressed with melancholy;
Until life's composition be recured
By those swift messengers...Read more of this...

Astræ

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Himself it was who wrote
His rank, and quartered his own coat.
There is no king nor sovereign state
That can fix a hero's rate;
Each to all is venerable,
Cap-a-pie invulnerable,
Until he write, where all eyes rest,
Slave or master on his breast.

I saw men go up and down
In the country and the town,
With this prayer upon their neck,
"Judgment and a judge we seek."
Not...Read more of this...

Divine Device

by Robert William Service
 Would it be loss or gain
To hapless human-kind
If we could feel no pain
Of body or of mind?
Would it be for our good
If we were calloused so,
And God in mercy should
End all our woe?

I wonder and I doubt:
It is my bright belief
We should be poor without
The gift of grief.
For suffering may be
A blessing, not a bane,
And though we sorrow we
Should...Read more of this...

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