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Famous Shameless Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Neruda, Pablo
...with the ocean's spray.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.

There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

So now he's gone and I buried him,
and that's all there is to it....Read more of this...



by Pope, Alexander
...zings of the Brain;
Strain out the last, dull droppings of their Sense,
And Rhyme with all the Rage of Impotence!

Such shameless Bards we have; and yet 'tis true,
There are as mad, abandon'd Criticks too.
The Bookful Blockhead, ignorantly read,
With Loads of Learned Lumber in his Head,
With his own Tongue still edifies his Ears,
And always List'ning to Himself appears.
All Books he reads, and all he reads assails,
From Dryden's Fables down to Durfey's Tales.
With...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...t has its sorry side;
I put an advert. in the evening Press:
"A lonely maiden fain would be a bride."
Oh it was shameless of me, I confess.
But I am thirty-nine and in despair,
Wanting a home and children ere too late,
And I forget I'm no more young and fair -
I'll hide my rose and run...No, no, I'll wait.

An hour has passed and I am waiting still.
I ought to feel relieved, but I'm so sad.
I would have liked to see him, just to thrill,
And...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...deep,
And so bestud with stars, that they below
Would grow inured to light, and come at last
To gaze upon the sun with shameless brows.
List, Lady; be not coy, and be not cozened
With that same vaunted name, Virginity.
Beauty is Nature's coin; must not be hoarded,
But must be current; and the good thereof
Consists in mutual and partaken bliss,
Unsavoury in the enjoyment of itself.
If you let slip time, like a neglected rose
It withers on the stalk with languished...Read more of this...

by Pushkin, Alexander
...I love you - though it makes me beat,
Though vain it seems, and melancholy -
Yet to this shameless, hapless folly
I'll be confessing at your feet.
It ill becomes me: that I'm older,
Time I should be more sensible...
And yet the frivolous disorder
Fills every jitter of my soul.
Say you'll be gone - I'm jaded, yawning;
You're back - I'm sad, I suffer through -
Yet how can I be clear, from owning,
My angel, all my care for you!
...Read more of this...



by Rossetti, Christina
...lord find me out, 
To fill my heart with care?

He lured me to his palace home - 
Woe's me for joy thereof- 
To lead a shameless shameful life, 
His plaything and his love. 
He wore me like a silken knot, 
He changed me like a glove; 
So now I moan, an unclean thing, 
Who might have been a dove.

O Lady kate, my cousin Kate, 
You grew more fair than I: 
He saw you at your father's gate, 
Chose you, and cast me by. 
He watched your steps along the lane, 
Your work...Read more of this...

by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...some hostile raid
(For where is he so high, whom war does not degrade?) .

IX.

But dark deceit and falsehood's shameless shame
They had not learned, until the white man came.
He taught them, too, the lurking devil's joy
In liquid lies, that lure but to destroy.
With wily words, as false as they were sweet, 
He spread his snares for unsuspecting feet; 
Paid truth with guile, and trampled in the dust
Their gentle childlike faith and unaffected trust.

X.Read more of this...

by Aiken, Conrad
...They ring like the hooves of time.

My heart has become as drab as a city park, 
The grass is worn with the feet of shameless lovers, 
A match is struck, there is kissing in the dark, 
The moon comes, pale with sleep.

My heart is torn with the sound of raucous voices, 
They shout from the slums, from the streets, from the crowded places, 
And tunes from the hurdy-gurdy that coldly rejoices 
Shoot arrows into my heart.


III

Dead Cleopatra lies in a crystal caske...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...such a precipitate heel,
Fledged as it were with Mercury's ankle-wing,
Whirls her to me -- ;but will she fling herself
Shameless upon me? Catch her, goatfoot! nay,
Hide, hide them, million-myrtled wilderness,

And cavern-shadowing laurels, hide! do I wish -- 
What? -- ;that the bush were leafless? or to whelm
All of them in one massacre? O ye Gods
I know you careless, yet, behold, to you
From childly wont and ancient use I call -- 
I thought I lived securely as yourselves --...Read more of this...

by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
...he death, the name be nameless;
Sterile of stars his twilight time of breath;
With fire of hell shall shame consume him shameless,
And dying, all the night darken his death.

The years are as thy garments, the world's ages
As sandals bound and loosed from thy swift feet;
Time serves before thee, as one that hath for wages
Praise or shame only, bitter words or sweet.

Thou sayest "Well done," and all a century kindles;
Again thou sayest "Depart from sight of me,"
And a...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...So many greybeards I behold,
Distinguished in affairs of state,
 In culture counted with the Great,
Have tummies with a shameless bulge,
 And so I think I'll still indulge
In eats I like without a qualm,
 And damn my diaphragm!'...Read more of this...

by Levine, Philip
...of ammonia 
in the land of my fellows. 
"Open house!" my openings 
sing: pores, nose, anus let go 
their charges, a shameless flow 

into the outer world; 
and the ceiling, equipped with 
intelligence, surveys my 
produce. The doctor is thrilled 
by my display, for he is half 
the slave of necessity; 

I, enormous in my need, 
justify his sciences. 
"We have alternatives," he 
says, "Removal..." (And my blood 
whitens as on their dull trays 
the tubes ...Read more of this...

by Olds, Sharon
...our hours of screaming, not a
minute more, four, those quatrains of
icy yell, then the cold tap water
to get me over my shameless hunger,
what was it like to be there when that
hunger was driven into my structure at such
heat it alloyed that iron? Where have I
been while this person is leading my life
with her patience, will and order? In the garden;
on the bee and under the bee; in the
crown gathering cumulus and
flensing it from the boughs, weeping a
rehearsal for the rotti...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...he sees,
 But not a sign or sound of bees.
 Worms of the riper grave unhid
 By any kindly coffin-lid,
 Obscene and shameless to the light,
 Seethe in insatiate appetite,
 Through putrid offal, while--above
 The hissing blow-fly seeks his love,
 Whose offspring, supping where they supt,
 Consume corruption twice corrupt....Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...?
Or by some envious hidden foe?
That Helios only can explain,
Whose rays illume all things below.

Perchance, with shameless step and proud,
He threads e'en now the Grecian crowd--
Whilst vengeance follows in pursuit,
Gloats over his transgression's fruit.
The very gods perchance he braves
Upon the threshold of their fane,--
Joins boldly in the human waves
That haste yon theatre to gain.

For there the Grecian tribes appear,
Fast pouring in from far and near;
On ...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...e help of lover's hand. 
O cruel jest--he cries, as some one flings
The sparkling drops in sport or shew of ire--
O shameless, O contempt of holy things.
But never of their wanton play they tire,
As not athirst they sit beside the springs,
While he must quench in death his lost desire. 

44
The image of thy love, rising on dark
And desperate days over my sullen sea,
Wakens again fresh hope and peace in me,
Gleaming above upon my groaning bark.
Whate'er my sorr...Read more of this...

by Lanier, Sidney
...
And Hate strung flowers on his spiked belt,
And glum Revenge in silver lilies pranked him,
And Lust put violets on his shameless front,
And all minced forth o' the street like holiday folk
That sally off afield on Summer morns.
-- Once certain hounds that knew of many a chase,
And bare great wounds of antler and of tusk
That they had ta'en to give a lord some sport,
-- Good hounds, that would have died to give lords sport --
Were so bewrayed and kicked by these same lord...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...th the fragments of the grave, 
Or in the dark dissolving human heart, 
And holy secrets of this microcosm, 
Dabbling a shameless hand with shameful jest, 
Encarnalize their spirits: yet we know 
Knowledge is knowledge, and this matter hangs: 
Howbeit ourself, foreseeing casualty, 
Nor willing men should come among us, learnt, 
For many weary moons before we came, 
This craft of healing. Were you sick, ourself 
Would tend upon you. To your question now, 
Which touches...Read more of this...

by Du Bois, W. E. B.
...filth:
All the dirt of London,
All the scum of New York;
Valiant spoilers of women
And conquerers of unarmed men;
Shameless breeders of bastards,
Drunk with the greed of gold,
Baiting their blood-stained hooks
With cant for the souls of the simple;
Bearing the white man's burden
Of liquor and lust and lies!
Unthankful we wince in the East,
Unthankful we wail from the westward,
Unthankfully thankful, we curse,
In the unworn wastes of the wild:
I hate them, Oh!
...Read more of this...

by Crowley, Aleister
...Cross and rosy core; 
Brake the thunder-tool of Thor; 
Meek and holy acolyte 
Of the priestly hells of spite,
Sleek and shameless catamite 
Of the beasts that prowl the night! 

Like a star that streams from heaven 
Through the virgin airs light-riven, 
From the lift there shot and fell 
An admirable miracle. 
Carved minute and clean, a key 
Of purest lapis-lazuli 
More blue than the blind sky that aches 
(Wreathed with the stars, her torturing snakes), 
For the dead god'...Read more of this...

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