Famous Puzzled Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Puzzled poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous puzzled poems. These examples illustrate what a famous puzzled poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...m far Durban,
A mouldering soldier lies--your countryman.
Awry and doubled up are his gray bones,
And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans
Nightly to clear Canopus: "I would know
By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law
Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified,
Was ruled to be inept, and set aside?
And what of logic or of truth appears
In tacking 'Anno Domini' to the years?
Near twenty-hundred livened thus have hied,
But tarries yet the Cause for which He died."...Read more of this...
by
Hardy, Thomas
...'s architecture, e're the arms
Of haughty Spain disturb'd the peaceful soil.
EUGENIO.
Such disquisition leads the puzzled mind
From maze to maze by queries still perplex'd.
But this we know, if from the east they came
Where science first and revelation beam'd,
Long since they've lost all memory, all trace
Of this their origin: Tradition tells
Of some great forefather beyond the lakes
Oswego, Huron, Mechigan, Champlaine
Or by the stream of Amazon which rolls
Thr...Read more of this...
by
Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...gen appeared, and there was more
Than one this time. And she was at a loss
Just how to name the meaning of it all:
It puzzled her to think that she could be
So much to any crazy thing alive—
Even to her sister’s little savages
Who knew no better than to be themselves;
But in the midst of her glad wonderment
She found herself besieged and overcome
By two tight arms and one tumultuous head,
And therewith half bewildered and half pained
By the joy she felt and by the su...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...n
Sink downward to his dusky cave again.
His litter of smooth semilucent mist,
Diversely ting'd with rose and amethyst,
Puzzled those eyes that for the centre sought;
And scarcely for one moment could be caught
His sluggish form reposing motionless.
Those two on winged steeds, with all the stress
Of vision search'd for him, as one would look
Athwart the sallows of a river nook
To catch a glance at silver throated eels,--
Or from old Skiddaw's top, when fog conceals
His rugged...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...hook his head.
XVII
And they composed a crowd of whom
Some were right good, and many nigh the best....
Thus dazed and puzzled 'twixt the gleam and gloom
Mechanically I followed with the rest....Read more of this...
by
Hardy, Thomas
...I found him in the guard-room at the Base.
From the blind darkness I had heard his crying
And blundered in. With puzzled, patient face
A sergeant watched him; it was no good trying
To stop it; for he howled and beat his chest.
And, all because his brother had gone west,
Raved at the bleeding war; his rampant grief
Moaned, shouted, sobbed, and choked, while he was kneeling
Half-naked on the floor. In my belief
Such men have lost all patriotic feeling....Read more of this...
by
Sassoon, Siegfried
...ophies, years of yearbooks,
Letters from schoolgirl chums, bracelets of hair
And the same picture: black hair in a bun,
Puzzled eyes in an oval face as young
Or old as innocence, skirt to the ground,
And, seated on the high school steps, the class,
The ones to whom she would have said, “Seigneur,
Donnez-nous la force de supporter
La peine,” as an example easy to remember,
Formal imperative, object first person plural....Read more of this...
by
Bowers, Edgar
...re there, and round
About them gay rococo flowers wound
And tossed a spray of roses to the clamp.
XIII
The Lady Eunice puzzled over these. "G. D."
the young man gravely said. "My name
Is Gervase Deane. Your servant, if you please." "Oh,
Sir, indeed I know you, for your fame
For exploits in the field has reached my ears. I did not know
you wounded and returned."
"But just come back, Madam. A silly
prick To gain me such unearned
Holiday making. And you, it appears,
Must be...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...ir land of gallant foemen."
So with a heart of gratitude
He primed his guns and cried: "Let's go men!"
The General was puzzled when
No answer came, said he: "What is it?
Why don't they give us hell?" And then
The herald paid another visit.
The Marshall wrote: "to your salute
Please pardon us for not replying;
To shatter you we cannot shoot . . .
My men are dead and I am dying."...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...mach.
He gathered himself and went out from the city, where he sat under a tree and wept bitterly. Then he lifted his puzzled eyes to heaven while hunger was eating his inside, and he said, "Oh Lord, I went to the rich man and asked for employment, but he turned me away because of my shabbiness; I knocked at the school door, but was forbidden solace because I was empty- handed; I sought any occupation that would give me bread, but all to no avail. In desperation I asked alm...Read more of this...
by
Gibran, Kahlil
...I've mickle time to grieve."
Feebly she laugheth in the languid moon,
While Porphyro upon her face doth look,
Like puzzled urchin on an aged crone
Who keepeth clos'd a wond'rous riddle-book,
As spectacled she sits in chimney nook.
But soon his eyes grew brilliant, when she told
His lady's purpose; and he scarce could brook
Tears, at the thought of those enchantments cold,
And Madeline asleep in lap of legends old.
Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose,
Flu...Read more of this...
by
Keats, John
...tains didn't seem to help my labours
As I faced the sheer main-ranges, whipping up and leading down.
March by march I puzzled through 'em, turning flanks and dodging shoulders,
Hurried on in hope of water, headed back for lack of grass;
Till I camped above the tree-line -- drifted snow and naked boulders --
Felt free air astir to windward -- knew I'd stumbled on the Pass.
'Thought to name it for the finder: but that night the Norther found me --
Froze and killed the pla...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...hin a mile, No hand to help them in distress; Old Susan lies a bed in pain, And sorely puzzled are the twain, For what she ails they cannot guess. And Betty's husband's at the wood, Where by the week he doth abide, A woodman in the distant vale; There's none to help poor Susan Gale, What must be done? what will betide? And Betty from the lane has fetch...Read more of this...
by
Wordsworth, William
...d the husbands be betrayed.
Then a silence fell on Buckland; there was peace throughout the land,
And a loyalty that puzzled all the captains in command;
There was too much Law and Order for the men who weren't blind,
And the greatest of the king's men wasn't easy in his mind.
They were hunting rebels, certes, and the troops were understood
To be searching for a stronghold like a needle in a wood;
But whene'er the king was prayed for in the meeting-houses, then
It w...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...old, what shall flatter the desolate?
Tin can, blocked fire escape and chitterling
And swaggering seeking youth and the puzzled wreckage
Of the middle passage, and urine and stale shames
And, again, the porridges of the underslung
And children children children. Heavens! That
Was a rat, surely, off there, in the shadows? Long
And long-tailed? Gray? The Ladies from the Ladies'
Betterment League agree it will be better
To achieve the outer air that rights and steadies,
To hie t...Read more of this...
by
Brooks, Gwendolyn
...other, the green
Has slid so cunningly in between
The blue and the yellow. Oh, please look down!"
Then, with a pitiful, puzzled frown,
He would get up slowly from his play
And walk round the room, feeling his way
From table to chair, from chair to door,
Stepping over the cracks in the floor,
Till reaching the table again, her face
Would bring recollection, and no solace
Could balm his hurt till unconsciousness
Stifled him and his great distress.
One morning he threw the stre...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...The more intently the ghosts gazed, the less
Could they distinguish whose the features were;
The Devil himself seem'd puzzled even to guess;
They varied like a dream — now here, now there;
And several people swore from out the press
They knew him perfectly; and one could swear
He was his father: upon which another
Was sure he was his mother's cousin's brother:
LXXVII
Another, that he was a duke, or a knight,
An orator, a lawyer, or a priest,
A nabob, a man-midwif...Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...hrough milky clouds across the sky
The ruddy moon was softly drifting,
When water drew the friar's eye...
He's looking puzzled, full of trouble,
Of fear he cannot quite explain,
He sees the waves begin to bubble
And suddenly grow calm again.
Then -- white as first snow in the highlands,
Light-footed as nocturnal shade,
There comes ashore, and sits in silence
Upon the bank, a naked maid.
She eyes the monk and brushes gently
Her hair, and water off her arms.
He shakes with fe...Read more of this...
by
Pushkin, Alexander
..., sir!" she replies.
"It is your goodness, and not my deserts,
Which makes you show this learning, wit, and parts."
He, puzzled, butes his nail, both to display
The sparkling ring, and think what next to say,
And thus breaks forth afresh: "Madam, egad!
Your luck at cards last night was very bad:
At cribbage fifty-nine, and the next show
To make the game, and yet to want those two.
God damn me, madam, I'm the son of a whore
If in my life I saw the like before!"
To peddler's st...Read more of this...
by
Wilmot, John
...age,"
though "perfectly, absolutely useless," was not to be
dismissed. A. J. Ayer, one of Oxford's ablest minds,
was puzzled. If logic cannot prove a nonsensical
conclusion, why didn't Wittgenstein abandon it,
"along with the rest of metaphysics, as not worth
serious attention, except perhaps for sociologists"?
8.
Because God does not reveal himself in this world, and
"the value of this work," Wittgenstein wrote, "is that
it shows how little is achieved when these...Read more of this...
by
Lehman, David
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