Famous Refractory Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Journey Of The Magi

...nd such a journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, 
 refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the 
 terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and 
 grumbling
And running away, and wanting their
 liquor and women, 
And the night-fires going out, and the 
 lack of shelters, 
And the cities hostile and the towns 
 un...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)


The Bride of Abydos

...his death, is strangled instead, and sometimes five or six, one after the other, on the same errand, by command of the refractory patient; if, on the contrary, he is weak or loyal, he bows, kisses the Sultan's respectable signature, and is bowstrung with great complacency. In 1810, several of "these presents" were exhibited in the niche of the Seraglio gate: among others, the head of the Pacha of Bagdad, a brave young man, cut off by treachery, after a desperate resistance. ...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Grave-digger

...inaccessible
Spaces afar, toward the distance there,
The golden conquest of the Impossible,
And that the limitless, refractory sky,
Sends back to him again, or it has ere
So much as touched the immobile mystery.


The grave-digger turneth it round and round—
With arms by toil so weary made,
With arms so thin, and strokes of spade—
Since what long times?—the dried-up ground.
Here, for his anguish and remorse, there throng
Pardons denied to creatures in the wrong;...Read more of this...
by Verhaeren, Emile

The Valse

...my whole frame thrills with tremulous fires.
Dance, lady, dance, for the moments are fleeting,
Pause not to place yon refractory curl;
Life is for love and the night is for sweeting;
Dreamily, joyously, circle and whirl.
Oh, how those viols are throbbing and pleading;
A prayer is scarce needed in sound of their strain.
Surely and lightly as round you are speeding,
You turn to confusion my heart and my brain.
Dance, lady, dance to the viol's soft calling,
Skip it and...Read more of this...
by Laurence Dunbar, Paul

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