Famous Smallpox Poems by Famous Poets

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

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EPISTLE II: TO A LADY (Of the Characters of Women)

...he obeys; 
Let Fops or Fortune fly which way they will; 
Disdains all loss of Tickets, or Codille; 
Spleen, Vapours, or Smallpox, above them all, 
And Mistress of herself, though China fall. 

And yet, believe me, good as well as ill, 
Woman's at best a Contradiction still. 
Heav'n, when it strives to polish all it can 
Its last best work, but forms a softer Man; 
Picks from each sex, to make the Favorite blest, 
Your love of Pleasure, our desire of Rest: 
Blends, in exceptio...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander


Rhapsody on a Windy Night

...ks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smooths the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and eau de Cologne,
She is alone
With all the old nocturnal smells
That cross and cross across her brain.”
The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices,
Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And c...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

The Mercy

...rhaps ignored 
by all the powers that swept the waves of darkness 
before she woke, that kept "The Mercy" afloat 
while smallpox raged among the passengers 
and crew until the dead were buried at sea 
with strange prayers in a tongue she could not fathom.
"The Mercy," I read on the yellowing pages of a book 
I located in a windowless room of the library 
on 42nd Street, sat thirty-one days 
offshore in quarantine before the passengers
disembarked. There a story ends. Other sh...Read more of this...
by Levine, Philip

The Rape of the Lock: Canto 5

...front-box grace:
'Behold the first in virtue, as in face!'
Oh! if to dance all night, and dress all day,
Charm'd the smallpox, or chas'd old age away;
Who would not scorn what housewife's cares produce,
Or who would learn one earthly thing of use?
To patch, nay ogle, might become a saint,
Nor could it sure be such a sin to paint.
But since, alas! frail beauty must decay,
Curl'd or uncurl'd, since locks will turn to grey,
Since painted, or not painted, all shall fade...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander

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