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Famous Spurned Poems by Famous Poets

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

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by Lazarus, Emma
...weep when Spain cast forth with flaming sword, 
The children of the prophets of the Lord, 
Prince, priest, and people, spurned by zealot hate. 
Hounded from sea to sea, from state to state, 
The West refused them, and the East abhorred. 
No anchorage the known world could afford, 
Close-locked was every port, barred every gate. 
Then smiling, thou unveil'dst, O two-faced year, 
A virgin world where doors of sunset part, 
Saying, "Ho, all who weary, enter here! 
T...Read More



by Masefield, John
...ache and burn, 
And worship, unavailingly, 
The woman whom I used to spurn, 
And shake to see another have 
The love I spurned, the love she gave. 

And I shall know, in angry words, 
In gibes, and mocks, and many a tear, 
A carrion flock of homing-birds, 
The gibes and scorns I uttered here. 
The brave word that I failed to speak 
Will brand me dastard on the cheek. 

And as I wander on the roads 
I shall be helped and healed and blessed; 
Dear words shall cheer...Read More

by Browning, Robert
...
Oh, such a life as he resolved to live,
When he had learned it,
When he had gathered all books had to give!
Sooner, he spurned it.
Image the whole, then execute the parts---
Fancy the fabric
Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz,
Ere mortar dab brick!

(Here's the town-gate reached: there's the market-place
Gaping before us.)
Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace
(Hearten our chorus!)
That before living he'd learn how to live---
No end to learning...Read More

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven.
The spirit of sweet human love has sent
A vision to the sleep of him who spurned
Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues
Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade;
He overleaps the bounds. Alas! alas!
Were limbs and breath and being intertwined
Thus treacherously? Lost, lost, forever lost
In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep, 
That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of death
Conduct to thy mysterious paradise,
O ...Read More

by Browning, Robert
...ached this shrub ere she turned,
As back with that murmur the wicket swung;
For she laid the poor snail, my chance foot spurned,
To feed and forget it the leaves among.

II.

Down this side ofthe gravel-walk
She went while her rope's edge brushed the box:
And here she paused in her gracious talk
To point me a moth on the milk-white phlox.
Roses, ranged in valiant row,
I will never think that she passed you by!
She loves you noble roses, I know;
But yonder, see, wh...Read More



by Hood, Thomas
...ed and rolled,
Heavy to get and light to hold,
Hoarded, bartered, bought and sold,
Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled,
Spurned by young, but hung by old
To the verge of a church yard mold;
Price of many a crime untold.
Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Good or bad a thousand fold!
How widely it agencies vary,
To save - to ruin - to curse - to bless -
As even its minted coins express :
Now stamped with the image of Queen Bess,
And now of a bloody Mary....Read More

by Dickinson, Emily
...radise -- is found!

Her teasing Purples -- Afternoons --
The credulous -- decoy --
Enamored -- of the Conjuror --
That spurned us -- Yesterday!...Read More

by Dickinson, Emily
...Light
I had not power to tell --

The Bees -- became as Butterflies --
The Butterflies -- as Swans --
Approached -- and spurned the narrow Grass --
And just the meanest Tunes

That Nature murmured to herself
To keep herself in Cheer --
I took for Giants -- practising
Titanic Opera --

The Days -- to Mighty Metres stept --
The Homeliest -- adorned
As if unto a Jubilee
'Twere suddenly confirmed --

I could not have defined the change --
Conversion of the Mind
Like Sanctifying i...Read More

by Levy, Amy
...."
Straight I fell to and sorrowed
For the pitiful past life.

Right wronged, and knowledge wasted;
Wise labour spurned for ease;
The sloth and the sin and the failure;
Did I grow sad for these?

They had made me sad so often;
Not now they made me sad;
My heart was full of sorrow
For joy it never had....Read More

by Tagore, Rabindranath
...at I longed for in vain 
and things that I got 
---let them pass. 
Let me but truly possess 
the things that I ever spurned 
and overlooked....Read More

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...to it well, Virginians! In calmness we have borne,
In answer to our faith and trust, your insult and your scorn;
You've spurned our kindest counsels; you've hunted for our lives;
And shaken round our hearths and homes your manacles and gyves!

We wage no war, we lift no arm, we fling no torch within
The fire-damps of the quaking mine beneath your soil of sin;
We leave ye with your bondmen, to wrestle, while ye can,
With the strong upward tendencies and God-like soul of man!

...Read More

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...child;
And when we came to the prison door,
And I prayed to share his dungeon floor
With prayers which rarely have been spurned, 
And when men drove me forth, and I
Stared with blank frenzy on the sky,--
A farewell look of love he turned,
Half calming me; then gazed awhile,
As if through that black and massy pile,
And through the crowd around him there,
And through the dense and murky air,
And the thronged streets, he did espy
What poets know and prophesy;
And said, with voic...Read More

by Owen, Wilfred
...th whom their love is done.
O larger shone that smile against the sun, --
Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.

So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together
Over an open stretch of herb and heather
Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned
With fury against them; and soft sudden cups
Opened in thousands for their blood; and the green slopes
Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space.

Of them who running on that last high place
Leapt to...Read More

by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
...cry
That rang from town to town, from street to street:
At every gate the accursed Mordecai
Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet.

Pride and humiliation hand in hand
Walked with them through the world where'er they went;
Trampled and beaten were they as the sand,
And yet unshaken as the continent.

For in the background figures vague and vast
Of patriarchs and of prophets rose sublime,
And all the great traditions of the Past
They saw reflected in the...Read More

by Scott, Sir Walter
...lue
     On the bold cliffs of Benvenue.
     Fresh vigor with the hope returned,
     With flying foot the heath he spurned,
     Held westward with unwearied race,
     And left behind the panting chase.
     VI.

     'T were long to tell what steeds gave o'er,
     As swept the hunt through Cambusmore;
     What reins were tightened in despair,
     When rose Benledi's ridge in air;
     Who flagged upon Bochastle's heath,
     Who shunned to stem the flooded...Read More

by Chaucer, Geoffrey
...nd mouth all broke
They wallow, as do two pigs in a poke.
And up they go, and down again anon,
Till that the miller spurned* on a stone, *stumbled
And down he backward fell upon his wife,
That wiste nothing of this nice strife:
For she was fall'n asleep a little wight* *while
With John the clerk, that waked had all night:
And with the fall out of her sleep she braid*. *woke
"Help, holy cross of Bromeholm,"  she said;
"In manus tuas!  Lord, to thee I call.
...Read More

by Cullen, Countee
...d's white tooth.
"Oh, I will match you yet," I cried, "to truth."

Right glad I was to stoop to what I once had spurned.
Glad even unto tears; I laughed aloud; I turned
Upon my back, and though the tears for joy would run,
My sight was clear; I looked and saw the rising sun....Read More

by Lindsay, Vachel
...ashing themselves, and scattering foam,
Killing our huntsmen, hurrying home.
The chiefs of the mammoths our mastery spurned,
And eastward restlessly fumed and burned.
The peacocks squalled out the news of their drilling
And told how they trampled, maneuvered, and turned.
Ten thousand man-hating tigers
Whirling down from the north, like a flood!
Ten thousand mammoths oncoming
From the south as avengers of blood!
Our child-queen was mourning, her magic was dead,
The...Read More

by Stevens, Wallace
...d wear
A band entwining, set with fatal stones.
Unreal, give back to us what once you gave:
The imagination that we spurned and crave....Read More

by Whittier, John Greenleaf
...reedman's song, 
The crash of Slavery's broken locks! 

"We saw from new, uprising States 
The treason-nursing mischief spurned, 
As, crowding Freedom's ample gates, 
The long-estranged and lost returned. 

"O'er dusky faces, seamed and old, 
And hands horn-hard with unpaid toil, 
With hope in every rustling fold, 
We saw your star-dropt flag uncoil. 

"And struggling up through sounds accursed, 
A grateful murmur clomb the air; 
A whisper scarcely heard at first, 
It...Read More

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