Famous Scorned Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Sweltering Day In Australia

by Mark Twain
 The Bombola faints in the hot Bowral tree, 
Where fierce Mullengudgery's smothering fires 
Far from the breezes of Coolgardie 
Burn ghastly and blue as the day expires; 

And Murriwillumba complaineth in song 
For the garlanded bowers of Woolloomooloo, 
And the Ballarat Fly and the lone Wollongong 
They dream of the gardens of Jamberoo; 

The wallabi sighs for the Murrubidgee,...Read more of this...

Nirvana

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...

The Gamblers

by Vachel Lindsay
 Life's a jail where men have common lot. 
Gaunt the one who has, and who has not. 
All our treasures neither less nor more, 
Bread alone comes thro' the guarded door. 
Cards are foolish in this jail, I think, 
Yet they play for shoes, for drabs and drink. 
She, my lawless, sharp-tongued gypsy maid 
Will not scorn with me...Read more of this...

Epistle to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland

by Ben Jonson
  XII. — EPISTLE TO ELIZABETH COUNTESS OF RUTLAND. That which, to boot with hell, is thought worth heaven, And for it, life, conscience, yea souls are given, Toils, by grave custom, up and down the court, To every squire, or groom, that will report Well or ill, only all the following year, Just to the weight their this day's presents...Read more of this...

The Child and the Mariner

by William Henry Davies
 A dear old couple my grandparents were, 
And kind to all dumb things; they saw in Heaven 
The lamb that Jesus petted when a child; 
Their faith was never draped by Doubt: to them 
Death was a rainbow in Eternity, 
That promised everlasting brightness soon. 
An old seafaring man was he; a rough 
Old man, but kind; and hairy,...Read more of this...

Prelude

by Robert William Service
 Alas! upon some starry height,
The Gods of Excellence to please,
This hand of mine will never smite
The Harp of High Serenities.
Mere minstrel of the street am I,
To whom a careless coin you fling;
But who, beneath the bitter sky,
Blue-lipped, yet insolent of eye,
Can shrill a song of Spring;
A song of merry mansard days,
The cheery chimney-tops among;
Of rolics and of roundelays
When we...Read more of this...

The Broncho That Would Not Be Broken

by Vachel Lindsay
 A little colt — broncho, loaned to the farm
To be broken in time without fury or harm,
Yet black crows flew past you, shouting alarm,
Calling "Beware," with lugubrious singing...
The butterflies there in the bush were romancing,
The smell of the grass caught your soul in a trance,
So why be a-fearing the spurs and the traces,
O broncho that would not be broken...Read more of this...

Musketaquid

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
 Because I was content with these poor fields,
Low open meads, slender and sluggish streams,
And found a home in haunts which others scorned,
The partial wood-gods overpaid my love,
And granted me the freedom of their state,
And in their secret senate have prevailed
With the dear dangerous lords that rule our life,
Made moon and planets parties to their bond,
And pitying through my solitary...Read more of this...

The Blue-Flag In The Bog

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 God had called us, and we came;
Our loved Earth to ashes left;
Heaven was a neighbor's house,
Open to us, bereft.

Gay the lights of Heaven showed,
And 'twas God who walked ahead;
Yet I wept along the road,
Wanting my own house instead.

Wept unseen, unheeded cried,
"All you things my eyes have kissed,
Fare you well! We meet no more,
Lovely, lovely tattered mist!

Weary wings that rise...Read more of this...

Love And Madness

by Thomas Campbell
 Hark ! from the battlements of yonder tower
The solemn bell has tolled the midnight hour !
Roused from drear visions of distempered sleep,
Poor Broderick wakes—in solitude to weep !

"Cease, Memory; cease (the friendless mourner cried)
To probe the bosom too severely tried !
Oh ! ever cease, my pensive thoughts, to stray
Through tie bright fields of Fortune's better day,
When youthful Hope, the...Read more of this...

The Colored Soldiers

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
If the muse were mine to tempt it
And my feeble voice were strong,
If my tongue were trained to measures,
I would sing a stirring song.
I would sing a song heroic
Of those noble sons of Ham,
Of the gallant colored soldiers
Who fought for Uncle Sam!
In the early days you scorned them,
And with many a flip and flout
Said "These battles are the white man's,
And...Read more of this...

The Scissors-Grinder

by Vachel Lindsay
 The old man had his box and wheel
For grinding knives and shears.
No doubt his bell in village streets
Was joy to children's ears.
And I bethought me of my youth
When such men came around,
And times I asked them in, quite sure
The scissors should be ground.
The old man turned and spoke to me,
His face at last in view.
And then I thought those...Read more of this...

Albert Einstein To Archibald Macleish

by Delmore Schwartz
 I should have been a plumber fixing drains.
And mending pure white bathtubs for the great Diogenes
(who scorned all lies, all liars, and all tyrannies),

And then, perhaps, he would bestow on me -- majesty!
(O modesty aside, forgive my fallen pride, O hidden
 majesty,
The lamp, the lantern, the lucid light he sought for 

 All too often -- sick humanity!)...Read more of this...

The Mysterious Cat

by Vachel Lindsay
 A chant for a children's pantomime dance, suggested by a picture painted by George Mather Richards.


I saw a proud, mysterious cat,
I saw a proud, mysterious cat
Too proud to catch a mouse or rat—
Mew, mew, mew.

But catnip she would eat, and purr,
But catnip she would eat, and purr.
And goldfish she did much prefer—
Mew, mew, mew.

I saw a cat—'twas but a...Read more of this...

The Rat

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 As often as he let himself be seen 
We pitied him, or scorned him, or deplored 
The inscrutable profusion of the Lord 
Who shaped as one of us a thing so mean— 
Who made him human when he might have been
A rat, and so been wholly in accord 
With any other creature we abhorred 
As always useless and not...Read more of this...

To Television

by Robert Pinsky
 Not a "window on the world"
But as we call you,
A box a tube

Terrarium of dreams and wonders.
Coffer of shades, ordained
Cotillion of phosphors
Or liquid crystal

Homey miracle, tub
Of acquiescence, vein of defiance.
Your patron in the pantheon would be Hermes

Raster dance,
Quick one, little thief, escort
Of the dying and comfort of the sick,

In a blue glow my father and little sister sat
Snuggled in...Read more of this...

In The Vaulted Way

by Thomas Hardy
 In the vaulted way, where the passage turned 
To the shadowy corner that none could see,
You paused for our parting, - plaintively:
Though overnight had come words that burned 
My fond frail happiness out of me.

And then I kissed you, - despite my thought
That our spell must end when reflection came
On what you had deemed me, whose one long aim...Read more of this...

Sonnet 17: Who will believe my verse in time to come

by William Shakespeare
 Who will believe my verse in time to come
If it were filled with your most high deserts?
Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts:
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say, "This poet lies,
Such heavenly...Read more of this...

We Meet at the Judgment and I Fear It Not

by Vachel Lindsay
 Though better men may fear that trumpet's warning,
I meet you, lady, on the Judgment morning,
With golden hope my spirit still adorning.


Our God who made you all so fair and sweet
Is three times gentle, and before his feet
Rejoicing I shall say:—"The girl you gave
Was my first Heaven, an angel bent to save.
Oh, God, her maker, if my ingrate breath
Is worth...Read more of this...

The Wild Common

by D. H. Lawrence
 The quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping, 
Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame; 
Above them, exultant, the peewits are sweeping: 
They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadness their screamings proclaim.

Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lie 
Low-rounded on the mournful grass they have bitten down to the quick. 
Are they asleep? -- Are they alive? --...Read more of this...

The House Of Dust: Part 03: 10: Letter

by Conrad Aiken
 From time to time, lifting his eyes, he sees
The soft blue starlight through the one small window,
The moon above black trees, and clouds, and Venus,—
And turns to write . . . The clock, behind ticks softly.

It is so long, indeed, since I have written,—
Two years, almost, your last is turning yellow,—
That these first words I write seem cold and...Read more of this...

Miniver Cheevy

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.


Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.


Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam's neighbors.


Miniver mourned the...Read more of this...

Shot? So Quick So Clean an Ending?

by A E Housman
 Shot? so quick, so clean an ending? 
Oh that was right, lad, that was brave: 
Yours was not an ill for mending, 
'Twas best to take it to the grave. 

Oh you had forethought, you could reason, 
And saw your road and where it led, 
And early wise and brave in season 
Put the pistol to your head. 

Oh...Read more of this...

Mike

by Robert William Service
 My lead dog Mike was like a bear;
I reckon he was grizzly bred,
For when he reared up in the air
Ho over-topped me by a head.
He'd cuff me with his hefty paws,
Jest like a puppy actin' cute,
And I would swear: by Gosh! he was
The world's most mighty malemute.

But oh the grub that dog could eat!
Yet he was never belly-tight;
It almost...Read more of this...

The Two Sayings

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
 Two savings of the Holy Scriptures beat
Like pulses in the Church's brow and breast;
And by them we find rest in our unrest
And, heart deep in salt-tears, do yet entreat
God's fellowship as if on heavenly seat.
The first is JESUS WEPT,--whereon is prest
Full many a sobbing face that drops its best
And sweetest waters on the record sweet:
And one is where the...Read more of this...

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