Famous Shameful Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Shameful poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous shameful poems. These examples illustrate what a famous shameful poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
See also:
by
William Ernest Henley
Out of the poisonous East,
Over a continent of blight,
Like a maleficent Influence released
From the most squalid cellerage of hell,
The Wind-Fiend, the abominable--
The Hangman Wind that tortures temper and light--
Comes slouching, sullen and obscene,
Hard on the skirts of the embittered night;
And in a cloud unclean
Of excremental humours, roused to strife
By the operation of some ruinous change,
Wherever his evil mandate run...Read more of this...
by
Joyce Kilmer
(For Thomas Walsh)
I
On nights like this the huddled sheep
Are like white clouds upon the grass,
And merry herdsmen guard their sleep
And chat and watch the big stars pass.
It is a pleasant thing to lie
Upon the meadow on the hill
With kindly fellowship near by
Of sheep and men of gentle will.
I lean upon my broken crook
And dream of sheep and grass and...Read more of this...
by
Guillaume Apollinaire
ZONE
In the end you are tired of this ancient world
Shepherd oh Eiffel Tower the herd of bridges is bleating this morning
You've had enough of living in Greek and Roman antiquity
Here even the cars look antique
Only religion has stayed new religion
Has stayed simple like the hangars at Port-Aviation
You alone in Europe are not ancient...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom, and Charley,
The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?
All, all, are sleeping on the hill.
One passed in a fever,
One was burned in a mine,
One was killed in a brawl,
One died in jail,
One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife--
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on...Read more of this...
by
D. H. Lawrence
Hollow rang the house when I knocked on the door,
And I lingered on the threshold with my hand
Upraised to knock and knock once more:
Listening for the sound of her feet across the floor,
Hollow re-echoed my heart.
The low-hung lamps stretched down the road
With shadows drifting underneath,
With a music of soft, melodious feet
Quickening my hope as I...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
A step-mother drove me from home, embittering me.
A squaw-man, a flaneur and dilettante took my virtue.
For years I was his mistress -- no one knew.
I learned from him the parasite cunning
With which I moved with the bluffs, like a flea on a dog.
All the time I was nothing but "very private" with different men.
Then Daniel, the radical, had me...Read more of this...
by
Henry Van Dyke
Thou warden of the western gate, above Manhatten Bay,
The fogs of doubt that hid thy face are driven clean away:
Thine eyes at last look far and clear, thou liftest high thy hand
To spread the light of liberty world-wide for every land.
No more thou dreamest of a peace reserved alone for thee,
While friends are fighting...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
Yes, it is beautiful to enjoy good fame; it is shameful
to complain of the injustice of heaven; it is better to
become drunk with the juice of the grape, than to be
puffed up with false devotion....Read more of this...
by
Emile Verhaeren
If our hearts have burned in uplifting days with a love as bright as it was lofty, age now makes us slack and indulgent and mild before our faults.
You no longer make us greater, O youthful will, with your unsubdued ardour, and our life is coloured now with gentle calm and pale kindliness.
We are at the setting of your sun,...Read more of this...
by
Kathleen Raine
Wearing worry about money like a hair shirt
I lie down in my bed and wrestle with my angel.
My bank-manager could not sanction my continuance for another day
But life itself wakes me each morning, and love
Urges me to give although I have no money
In the bank at this moment, and ought properly
To cease to exist in a world where poverty
Is...Read more of this...
by
Czeslaw Milosz
When everything was fine
And the notion of sin had vanished
And the earth was ready
In universal peace
To consume and rejoice
Without creeds and utopias,
I, for unknown reasons,
Surrounded by the books
Of prophets and theologians,
Of philosophers, poets,
Searched for an answer,
Scowling, grimacing,
Waking up at night, muttering at dawn.
What oppressed me so much
Was a bit shameful.
Talking of it aloud
Would show neither tact nor prudence.
It might...Read more of this...
by
Sylvia Plath
Bare-handed, I hand the combs.
The man in white smiles, bare-handed,
Our cheesecloth gauntlets neat and sweet,
The throats of our wrists brave lilies.
He and I
Have a thousand clean cells between us,
Eight combs of yellow cups,
And the hive itself a teacup,
White with pink flowers on it,
With excessive love I enameled it
Thinking 'Sweetness, sweetness.'
Brood cells gray as the fossils of shells
Terrify me, they...Read more of this...
by
Wendell Berry
You will be walking some night
in the comfortable dark of your yard
and suddenly a great light will shine
round about you, and behind you
will be a wall you never saw before.
It will be clear to you suddenly
that you were about to escape,
and that you are guilty: you misread
the complex instructions, you are not
a member, you lost your card
or never had...Read more of this...
by
Robert Louis Stevenson
I HAVE left all upon the shameful field,
Honour and Hope, my God, and all but life;
Spurless, with sword reversed and dinted shield,
Degraded and disgraced, I leave the strife.
From him that hath not, shall there not be taken
E'en that he hath, when he deserts the strife?
Life left by all life's benefits forsaken,
O keep the promise, Lord, and take the life....Read more of this...
by
Joyce Kilmer
(For Alden March)
With drooping sail and pennant
That never a wind may reach,
They float in sunless waters
Beside a sunless beach.
Their mighty masts and funnels
Are white as driven snow,
And with a pallid radiance
Their ghostly bulwarks glow.
Here is a Spanish galleon
That once with gold was gay,
Here is a Roman trireme
Whose hues outshone the day.
But Tyrian dyes have faded,
And prows that once were...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Muir
All through that summer at ease we lay,
And daily from the turret wall
We watched the mowers in the hay
And the enemy half a mile away
They seemed no threat to us at all.
For what, we thought, had we to fear
With our arms and provender, load on load,
Our towering battlements, tier on tier,
And friendly allies drawing near
On every leafy summer...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
1923
Man dies too soon, beside his works half-planned.
His days are counted and reprieve is vain:
Who shall entreat with Death to stay his hand;
Or cloke the shameful nakedness of pain?
Send here the bold, the seekers of the way--
The passionless, the unshakeable of soul,
Who serve the inmost mysteries of man's clay,
And ask no more than leave to...Read more of this...
by
Anne Kingsmill Finch
NOW spent the alter'd King, in am'rous Cares,
The Hours of sacred Hymns and solemn Pray'rs:
In vain the Alter waits his slow returns,
Where unattended Incense faintly burns:
In vain the whisp'ring Priests their Fears express,
And of the Change a thousand Causes guess.
Heedless of all their Censures He retires,
And in his Palace feeds his secret...Read more of this...
by
Joyce Kilmer
When Dawn strides out to wake a dewy farm
Across green fields and yellow hills of hay
The little twittering birds laugh in his way
And poise triumphant on his shining arm.
He bears a sword of flame but not to harm
The wakened life that feels his quickening sway
And barnyard voices shrilling "It is day!"
Take by his grace a new and alien charm.
But...Read more of this...
by
Rudyard Kipling
We have another viceroy now, -- those days are dead and done
Of Delilah Aberyswith and depraved Ulysses Gunne.
Delilah Aberyswith was a lady -- not too young --
With a perfect taste in dresses and a badly-bitted tongue,
With a thirst for information, and a greater thirst for praise,
And a little house in Simla in the Prehistoric Days.
By reason of her marriage...Read more of this...
by
Erin Belieu
It bothers me: the genital smell of the bay
drifting toward me on the T stop, the train
circling the city like a dingy, year-round
Christmas display. The Puritans were right! Sin
is everywhere in Massachusetts, hell-bound
in the population. it bothers me
because it's summer now and sticky - no rain
to cool things down; heat like a wound
that will not close. Too hot, these...Read more of this...
by
Delmore Schwartz
The horns in the harbor booming, vaguely,
Fog, forgotten, yesterday, conclusion,
Nostalgic, noising dim sorrow, calling
To sleep is it? I think so, and childhood,
Not the door opened and the stair descended,
The voice answered, the choice announced, the
Trigger touched in the sharp declaration!
And when it comes, escape is small; the door
Creaks; the worms of fear spread veins; the furtive
Fugitive, looking backward, sees...Read more of this...
by
Omar Khayyam
From time to time my heart finds itself much straitened
in its cage. Shameful is it to be mixed with water
and clay. I have often thought of destroying this prison,
but my foot would come in contact with a stone and slip
on the stirrup of the Koran's law....Read more of this...
by
A E Housman
CHORUS: O suitably-attired-in-leather-boots
Head of a traveller, wherefore seeking whom
Whence by what way how purposed art thou come
To this well-nightingaled vicinity?
My object in inquiring is to know.
But if you happen to be deaf and dumb
And do not understand a word I say,
Then wave your hand, to signify as much.
ALCMAEON: I journeyed hither a Boetian road.
CHORUS: Sailing on horseback, or with...Read more of this...
by
Alexander Pope
Close by those meads, for ever crown'd with flow'rs,
Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs,
There stands a structure of majestic frame,
Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name.
Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom
Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home;
Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take--and sometimes tea.
Hither the heroes and the...Read more of this...
Dont forget to view our wonderful member Shameful poems.