Famous Shackled Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Shackled poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous shackled poems. These examples illustrate what a famous shackled poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...'d Health's vivifying breeze,
Would tempt the dire contagion of Disease ?
Or prodigal of joy, his birth-right give
In shackled slaverya wretch to live ?
Yet let Ambition hold a temp'rate sway,
When Virtue rules'tis Rapture to obey;
Man can but reign his transitory hour,
And love may bindwhen fear has lost its pow'r.
Proud may he be who nobly acts his part,
Who boasts the empire of each subject's heart,
Whose worth, exulting millions shall approve,
Whose richest treasur...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Mary Darby
...High and clear
I hear your voice
Caressing Rilke’s
Elegies, relating
Them to liberty,
Of which you had so
Little, shackled as you were
To your poetic chair.
In Leeds I listened
To your praise
Of famous men,
A famous man yourself
Your own voice drowned
By London’s roar.
5
Leeds Town Hall’s portico
Is grand and grander
It grows with money
And with prose but still
I see in the rain and
Dark the Ritz that’s
Boarded up, its exquisite
Carved fa?ade crumb...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...the tamarisks -- the parrots fly together --
As the sun is sinking slowly over Home;
And his last ray seems to mock us shackled in a lifelong tether.
That drags us back how'er so far we roam.
Hard her service, poor her payment -- she is ancient, tattered raiment --
India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind.
If a year of life be lent her, if her temple's shrine we enter,
The door is hut -- we may not look behind.
Black night behind the tamarisks -- the owls begin their...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...must be
endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly.
I said Go, and be happy
but remember (you know
well) whom you leave shackled by love
If you forget me think
of our gifts to Aphrodite
and all the loveliness that we shared
all the violet tiaras,
braided rosebuds, dill and
crocus twined around your young neck
myrrh poured on your head
and on soft mats girls with
all that they most wished for beside them
while no voices chanted
choruses without ours,
no...Read more of this...
by
Sappho,
...feath'ry chains,
And scatt'ring blisses round.
Hence, to thy native Chaoswhere
Nurs'd by thy haggard Dam, DESPAIR,
Shackled by thy numbing spell,
Mis'ry's pallid children dwell;
Where, brooding o'er thy fatal charms,
FRENZY rolls the vacant eye;
Where hopeless LOVE, with folded arms,
Drops the tear, and heaves the sigh;
Till cherish'd Passion's tyrant sway
Chills the warm pulse of Youth, with premature decay.
O, fly Thee, to some Church-yard's gloom,
Where besid...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Mary Darby
...n flight,And, from love's fetters free herself and light,Before my slow and shackled motion flies,[Pg 6]That less it lists, the more my sighs and criesWould point where passes the safe path and right,Nor aught avails to check or to excite,For Love's own nature curb and spur defies.Read more of this...
by
Petrarch, Francesco
...When SUPERSTITION rul'd the land
And Priestcraft shackled Reason,
At GODSTOW dwelt a goodly band,
Grey monks they were, and but to say
They were not always giv'n to pray,
Would have been construed Treason.
Yet some did scoff, and some believ'd
That sinners were themselves deceiv'd;
And taking Monks for more than men
They prov'd themselves, nine out of ten,
Mere dupes of these Old Fathers hoary;
But read--a...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Mary Darby
...'d shrouds my DRACO flies--
While o'er the plunging prow, the curling billows rise.
XVII.
"The topmast falls--three shackled slaves--
"Cling to the Vessel's side!
"Now lost amid the madd'ning waves--
"Now on the mast they ride--
"See ! on the forecastle my DRACO stands
"And now he waves his chain, now clasps his bleeding hands.
XVIII.
"Why, cruel WHITE-MAN! when away
"My sable Love was torn,
"Why did you let poor ZELMA stay,
On Afric's sands to mourn?
"No ! ZELMA is n...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Mary Darby
...soul sees for herself
The Natural Law, and for that century she
Imprisons herself behind the law of man;
And she is shackled with irons of oppression.
That hour was the inspiration of the Songs
Of Solomon, an that century was the blind
Power which destroyed the temple of Baalbek.
That hour was the birth of the Sermon on the
Mount, and that century wrecked the castles of
Palmyra and the Tower of Babylon.
That hour was the Hegira of Mohammed and that
Century f...Read more of this...
by
Gibran, Kahlil
...In Ocean's wide domains,
Half buried in the sands,
Lie skeletons in chains,
With shackled feet and hands.
Beyond the fall of dews,
Deeper than plummet lies,
Float ships, with all their crews,
No more to sink nor rise.
There the black Slave-ship swims,
Freighted with human forms,
Whose fettered, fleshless limbs
Are not the sport of storms.
These are the bones of Slaves;
They gleam from the abyss;
They cry, from yawning waves,
"We are t...Read more of this...
by
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
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