Famous Scar Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Scar poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous scar poems. These examples illustrate what a famous scar poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
Sylvia Plath
With white frost gone
And all green dreams not worth much,
After a lean day's work
Time comes round for that foul ****:
Mere bruit of her takes our street
Until every man,
Red, pale or dark,
Veers to her slouch.
Mark, I cry, that mouth
Made to do violence on,
That seamed face
Askew with blotch, dint, scar
Struck by each dour year.
Walks there not some such one man
As can...Read more of this...
by
Lisa Zaran
At one end of the couch
you sit, mute as a pillow
tossed onto the upholstery.
I watch you sometimes
when you don't know I'm watching
and I see you. Who you are.
You are a self made man.
Hard suffering. You are grey
stone and damp earth.
A long scar on a pale sky.
The television is tuned to CNN.
The world's tragedies flicker
across your face like some
foreign film.
You...Read more of this...
by
Sara Teasdale
How many million Aprils came
Before I ever knew
How white a cherry bough could be,
A bed of squills, how blue!
And many a dancing April
When life is done with me,
Will lift the blue flame of the flower
And the white flame of the tree.
Oh burn me with your beauty, then,
Oh hurt me, tree and flower,
Lest in the...Read more of this...
by
Michael Ondaatje
If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
And leave the yellow bark dust
On your pillow.
Your breasts and shoulders would reek
You could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.
Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbour to you hair
or the...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
The healed Heart shows its shallow scar
With confidential moan --
Not mended by Mortality
Are Fabrics truly torn --
To go its convalescent way
So shameless is to see
More genuine were Perfidy
Than such Fidelity....Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
So take my vows and scatter them to sea;
Who swears the sweetest is no more than human.
And say no kinder words than these of me:
"Ever she longed for peace, but was a woman!
And thus they are, whose silly female dust
Needs little enough to clutter it and bind it,
Who meet a slanted gaze, and ever must
Go build themselves a soul...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Aunt Imogen was coming, and therefore
The children—Jane, Sylvester, and Young George—
Were eyes and ears; for there was only one
Aunt Imogen to them in the whole world,
And she was in it only for four weeks
In fifty-two. But those great bites of time
Made all September a Queen’s Festival;
And they would strive, informally, to make
The...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
Have at you, you Devils!
My back's to this tree,
For you're nothing so nice
That the hind-side of me
Would escape your assault.
Come on now, all three!
Here's a dandified gentleman,
Rapier at point,
And a wrist which whirls round
Like a circular joint.
A spatter of blood, man!
That's just to anoint
And make supple your limbs.
'Tis a pity the silk
Of your waistcoat is stained.
Why! Your heart's full...Read more of this...
by
Emily Dickinson
Each Scar I'll keep for Him
Instead I'll say of Gem
In His long Absence worn
A Costlier one
But every Tear I bore
Were He to count them o'er
His own would fall so more
I'll mis sum them....Read more of this...
by
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Art thou indeed among these,
Thou of the tyrannous crew,
The kingdoms fed upon blood,
O queen from of old of the seas,
England, art thou of them too
That drink of the poisonous flood,
That hide under poisonous trees?
Nay, thy name from of old,
Mother, was pure, or we dreamed
Purer we held thee than this,
Purer fain would we hold;
So goodly a glory it seemed,
A fame...Read more of this...
by
W S Merwin
For Galway Kinnell
The rust a little pile of western color lies
At the end of its travels
Our instrument no longer.
Those who believe
In death have their worship cut out for them.
As for myself we
Continue
An old
Scar of light our trumpet
Pilgrims with thorns
To the eye of the cold
Under flags made by the blind
In one fist
Their letter that vanishes
If the hand...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Hardy
I
In days when men had joy of war,
A God of Battles sped each mortal jar;
The peoples pledged him heart and hand,
From Israel's land to isles afar.
II
His crimson form, with clang and chime,
Flashed on each murk and murderous meeting-time,
And kings invoked, for rape and raid,
His...Read more of this...
by
Alfred Lord Tennyson
THE splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from...Read more of this...
by
Hilda Doolittle
O Hymen king.
Hymen, O Hymen king,
what bitter thing is this?
what shaft, tearing my heart?
what scar, what light, what fire
searing my eye-balls and my eyes with flame?
nameless, O spoken name,
king, lord, speak blameless Hymen.
Why do you blind my eyes?
why do you dart and pulse
till all the dark is home,
then...Read more of this...
by
Ntozake Shange
somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff ?not my poems or a dance i gave up in the street? but somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff
like a kleptomaniac workin hard & forgettin while stealin? this is mine/this aint yr stuff/?now why don’t you put me back & let me hang out in my own self
somebody almost walked...Read more of this...
by
James Whitcomb Riley
Neglected now is the old guitar
And moldering into decay;
Fretted with many a rift and scar
That the dull dust hides away,
While the spider spins a silver star
In its silent lips to-day.
The keys hold only nerveless strings--
The sinews of brave old airs
Are pulseless now; and the scarf that clings
So closely here declares
A sad regret in its ravelings
And the faded hue it...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
She is large and matronly
And rather dirty,
A little sardonic-looking, as if domesticity had driven her to it.
Though what she does, except lay four eggs at random in the garden once a year
And put up with her husband,
I don't know.
She likes to eat.
She hurries up, striding reared on long uncanny legs
When food is going.
Oh yes, she can make haste when...Read more of this...
by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I
'But where do you go?' said the lady, while both sat under the yew,
And her eyes were alive in their depth, as the kraken beneath the sea-blue.
II
'Because I fear you,' he answered;--'because you are far too fair,
And able to strangle my soul in a mesh of your golfd-coloured hair.'
III
'Oh that,' she said, 'is no reason! Such knots are quickly...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Ah me, it is cold and chill
And the fire sobs low in the grate,
While the wind rides by on the hill,
And the logs crack sharp with hate.
And she, she is cold and sad
As ever the sinful are,
But deep in my heart I am glad
For my wound and the coming scar.
Oh, ever the wind rides by
And ever the raindrops grieve;
But a...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
My boy's come back; he's here at last;
He came home on a special train.
My longing and my ache are past,
My only son is back again.
He's home with music, flags and flowers;
With peace and joy my heart's abrim;
He got here in the morning hours
With half the town to welcome him.
To hush my grief, night after night,
How I have digged my...Read more of this...
by
Sidney Lanier
Through seas of dreams and seas of phantasies,
Through seas of solitudes and vacancies,
And through my Self, the deepest of the seas,
I strive to thee, Nirvana.
Oh long ago the billow-flow of sense,
Aroused by passion's windy vehemence,
Upbore me out of depths to heights intense,
But not to thee, Nirvana.
By waves swept on, I learned to ride the waves.
I served my masters till...Read more of this...
by
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Across the hills and down the narrow ways,
And up the valley where the free winds sweep,
The earth is folded in an ermined sleep
That mocks the melting mirth of myriad Mays.
Departed her disheartening duns and grays,
And all her crusty black is covered deep.
Dark streams are locked in Winter's donjon-keep,
And made to shine with keen, unwonted rays.
O icy mantle, and deceitful snow!
What...Read more of this...
by
Robert William Service
This is the yarn he told me
As we sat in Casey's Bar,
That Rooshun mug who scammed from the jug
In the Land of the Crimson Star;
That Soviet guy with the single eye,
And the face like a flaming scar.
Where Lenin lies the red flag flies, and the rat-grey workers wait
To tread the gloom of Lenin's Tomb,...Read more of this...
by
Louis Untermeyer
What presses about us here in the evening
As you open a window and stare at a stone-gray sky,
And the streets give back the jangle of meaningless movement
That is tired of life and almost too tired to die.
Night comes on, and even the night is wounded;
There, on its breast, it carries a curved, white scar.
What will you find out there that...Read more of this...
by
Shel Silverstein
Well, my daddy left home when I was three,
and he didn't leave much to Ma and me,
just this old guitar and a bottle of booze.
Now I don't blame him because he run and hid,
but the meanest thing that he ever did was
before he left he went and named me Sue.
Well, he must have thought it was quite a joke,
and...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Scar poems.