Famous Scoundrel Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Scoundrel poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous scoundrel poems. These examples illustrate what a famous scoundrel poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Hugo, Victor
...ars,
Beneath your exploits terrible and wars,
You, Sigismond, have but a monster been,
And, Ladisläus, you are scoundrel seen.
Oh, degradation of the sceptre's might
And swords—when Justice has a hand like night,
Foul and polluted; and before this thing,
This hydra, do the Temple's hinges swing—
The throne becomes the haunt of all things base
Oh, age of infamy and foul disgrace!
Oh, starry heavens looking on the shame,
No brow but reddens with...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...ast; nothing of them left but these
Pierced relics, underneath the olive trees,
Show where the gin was sprung—the scoundrel-trap
Which brought those hero-lads their foul mishap.
See how they fell in swathes—like barley-ears!
Their crime? to claim Rome and her glories theirs;
To fight for Right and Honor;—foolish names!
Come—Mothers of the soil! Italian dames!
Turn the dead over!—try your battle luck!
(Bearded or smooth, to her that gave him suck
...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...him down the street, and far away,
Among the honest shoulders of the crowd,
Read rascal in the motions of his back,
And scoundrel in the supple-sliding knee.'
`Was he so bound, poor soul?' said the good wife;
`So are we all: but do not call him, love,
Before you prove him, rogue, and proved, forgive.
His gain is loss; for he that wrongs his friend
Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about
A silent court of justice in his breast,
Himself the judge and jury, and himse...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...,
Ere out on the shrieking shoulder
Of a hill-high surge she drives.
Meet her! Meet her and hold her!
Pull for your scoundrel lives!
The thunder below and clamor
The harm that they mean to do!
There goes Thor's own Hammer
Cracking the dark in two!
Close! But the blow has missed her,
Here comes the wind of the blow!
Row or the squall'Il twist her
Broadside on to it!--Row!
Heark'ee, Thor of the Thunder!
We are not here for a jest--
For wager, warfare, or plunder,
Or to p...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...
"I am an editor, bold and free.
Behind the great impersonal 'We'
I hold the power of the Mystic Three.
What scoundrel ever would dare to hint
That anything crooked appears in print!
Perhaps an actor is all the rage,
He struts his hour on the mimic stage,
With skill he interprets all the scenes --
And yet next morning I give him beans.
I slate his show from the floats to flies,
Because the beggar won't advertise.
And sometimes columns of print appea...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...ed as they were in the good old time,
And -- shades of Hennessy! -- what I found was a wowser selling "lime!"
And the scoundrel said as he stopped to put on his lime-washed boots a rub,
"The Local Option voted it shut, it ain't no longer a pub!"
'Twas then I rose to my greatest heights in dignified retreat
(The greatest men in the world's great fights are those who are great in defeat).
I shall think with pride till the day I die of my confidence sublime,
For I lo...Read more of this...
by
Swift, Jonathan
...ged smocks:
And radiant Iris in the pox.
These are the goddesses enrolled
In Curll's collection, new and old,
Whose scoundrel fathers would not know 'em,
If they should meet them in a poem.
True poets can depress and raise,
Are lords of infamy and praise;
They are not scurrilous in satire,
Nor will in panegyric flatter.
Unjustly poets we asperse;
Truth shines the brighter clad in verse,
And all the fictions they pursue
Do but insinuate what is true.
Now, shoul...Read more of this...
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