Get Your Premium Membership

Famous Stain Poems by Famous Poets

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

See also:

by Brackenridge, Hugh Henry
...lucifuge, whose ways were dark, 
Ere this in shades of paganism hid, 
Did vent their poison, and malignant breath, 
To stain the splendour of the light divine, 
Which pierc'd their cells and brought their deeds to view 
Num'rous combin'd of ev'ry tongue and tribe, 
Made battle proud, and impious war brought on, 
Against the chosen sanctified by light. 
Riches and pow'r leagu'd in their train were seen, 
Sword, famine, flames and death before them prey'd. 
Those faith...Read more of this...



by Whitman, Walt
...ravas to all impulses sending sane children to the next age! 
But damn that which spends itself, with no thought of the stain, pains, dismay, feebleness
 it
 is bequeathing.

9
I listened to the Phantom by Ontario’s shore, 
I heard the voice arising, demanding bards; 
By them, all native and grand—by them alone can The States be fused into the compact
 organism of a Nation. 

To hold men together by paper and seal, or by compulsion, is no account; 
That only holds men...Read more of this...

by Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...
A hideous squaw pursues them with her hate; 
Her knife descends with sickening force and sound; 
Their bloody entrails stain the snow-clad ground.
She shouts with glee, then yells with rage and falls
Dead by her victims' side, pierced by avenging balls.



XVIII.
Now war runs riot, carnage reigns supreme.
All thoughts of mercy fade from Custer's scheme.
Inhuman methods for inhuman foes, 
Who feed on horrors and exult in woes.
To conquer and subdue alo...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...urged him to prepare against to-day; 
The word I pledge for his I pledge again, 
Or will myself redeem his knighthood's stain." 

He ceased — and Lara answer'd, "I am here 
To lend at thy demand a listening ear, 
To tales of evil from a stranger's tongue, 
Whose words already might my heart have wrung, 
But that I deem'd him scarcely less than mad, 
Or, at the worst, a foe ignobly bad. 
I know him not — but me it seems he knew 
In lands where — but I must not trifle t...Read more of this...

by Hughes, Langston
...in,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines,...Read more of this...



by Wordsworth, William
...wild, her head is bare,  The sun has burnt her coal-black hair,  Her eye-brows have a rusty stain,  And she came far from over the main.  She has a baby on her arm,  Or else she were alone;  And underneath the hay-stack warm,  And on the green-wood stone,  She talked and sung the woods among;  And it was in the English tongue.   "S...Read more of this...

by Keats, John
...the warm South! 15 
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, 
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, 
And purple-stain¨¨d mouth; 
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, 
And with thee fade away into the forest dim: 20 

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget 
What thou among the leaves hast never known, 
The weariness, the fever, and the fret 
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; 
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, 25 
Where ...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ht, yet our great Enemy, 
All incorruptible, would on his throne 
Sit unpolluted, and th' ethereal mould, 
Incapable of stain, would soon expel 
Her mischief, and purge off the baser fire, 
Victorious. Thus repulsed, our final hope 
Is flat despair: we must exasperate 
Th' Almighty Victor to spend all his rage; 
And that must end us; that must be our cure-- 
To be no more. Sad cure! for who would lose, 
Though full of pain, this intellectual being, 
Those thoughts tha...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...em further woe or shame; 
Yet, parched with scalding thirst and hunger fierce, 
Though to delude them sent, could not abstain; 
But on they rolled in heaps, and, up the trees 
Climbing, sat thicker than the snaky locks 
That curled Megaera: greedily they plucked 
The fruitage fair to sight, like that which grew 
Near that bituminous lake where Sodom flamed; 
This more delusive, not the touch, but taste 
Deceived; they, fondly thinking to allay 
Their appetite with gust, inste...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...d and watched the crimson sunset glow
From the lone chapel on thy marshy plain:
The sky was as a shield that caught the stain
Of blood and battle from the dying sun,
And in the west the circling clouds had spun
A royal robe, which some great God might wear,
While into ocean-seas of purple air
Sank the gold galley of the Lord of Light.

Yet here the gentle stillness of the night
Brings back the swelling tide of memory,
And wakes again my passionate love for thee:
Now is th...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ast vain reasonings down,
Though Reason here aver
That moral verdit quits her of unclean :
Unchaste was subsequent, her stain not his.
But see here comes thy reverend Sire
With careful step, Locks white as doune,
Old Manoah: advise
Forthwith how thou oughtst to receive him.

Sam: Ay me, another inward grief awak't, 
With mention of that name renews th' assault.

Man: Brethren and men of Dan, for such ye seem,
Though in this uncouth place; if old respect,
As I supp...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...w the day,
Thy youthful heart watched over silently,
And from thy tender bosom turned away
Each thought that might have stained its purity;
That kind one ne'er forget who, as in sport,
Thy youth to noble aspirations trained,
And who to thee in easy riddles taught
The secret how each virtue might be gained;
Who, to receive him back more perfect still,
E'en into strangers' arms her favorite gave--
Oh, may'st thou never with degenerate will,
Humble thyself to be her abject slave...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...what in our Divan 
Can wealth procure for worse than man — 
Abdallah's honours were obtain'd 
By him a brother's murder stain'd; 
'Tis true, the purchase nearly drain'd 
His ill got treasure, soon replaced. 
Wouldst question whence? Survey the waste, 
And ask the squalid peasant how 
His gains repay his broiling brow! — 
Why me the stern usurper spared, 
Why thus with me the palace shared, 
I know not. Shame, regret, remorse, 
And little fear from infant's force; 
Bes...Read more of this...

by Masefield, John
...eped in petty vice 
That they're less excellent than lice, 
That touching one of them will dirt you, 
Dirt you with the stain of mean 
Cheating trade and going between, 
Pinching, starving, scraping, hoarding 
To see if Sue, the prentice lean, 
Dares to touch the margarine. 
Fawning, cringing, oiling boots, 
Raging in the crowd's pursuits, 
Flinging stones at all the Stephens, 
Standing firm with all the evens 
Making hell for all the odd, 
All the lonely ones of God, 
Th...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...st of late strive with the pains
Of one who spends his strength to rule his nerve,
--Even as a painter breathlessly who stains
His scarcely moving hand lest it should swerve--
Behold me, now that I have cast my chains,
Master of the art which for thy sake I serve.


2
For thou art mine: and now I am ashamed
To have uséd means to win so pure acquist,
And of my trembling fear that might have misst
Thro' very care the gold at which I aim'd;
And am as happy but to hear thee n...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...Foxglove and nightshade, side by side,
     Emblems of punishment and pride,
     Grouped their dark hues with every stain
     The weather-beaten crags retain.
     With boughs that quaked at every breath,
     Gray birch and aspen wept beneath;
     Aloft, the ash and warrior oak
     Cast anchor in the rifted rock;
     And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung
     His shattered trunk, and frequent flung,
     Where seemed the cliffs to meet on high,
     His boughs...Read more of this...

by Pope, Alexander
...he Fates have wrapt in Night.
Whether the Nymph shall break Diana's Law,
Or some frail China Jar receive a Flaw,
Or stain her Honour, or her new Brocade,
Forget her Pray'rs, or miss a Masquerade,
Or lose her Heart, or Necklace, at a Ball;
Or whether Heav'n has doom'd that Shock must fall. 
Haste then ye Spirits! to your Charge repair;
The flutt'ring Fan be Zephyretta's Care;
The Drops to thee, Brillante, we consign;
And Momentilla, let the Watch be thine;
Do thou, Cri...Read more of this...

by Herbert, George
...et my Disciples sleep: I cannot gain
One hour of watching; but their drowsy brain
Comforts not me, and doth my doctrine stain: 
Was ever grief like mine? 

Arise, arise, they come. Look how they run.
Alas! what haste they make to be undone! 
How with their lanterns do they seek the sun! 
Was ever grief like mine? 

With clubs and staves they seek me, as a thief, 
Who am the way of truth, the true relief; 
Most true to those, who are my greatest grief: 
Was ever grief ...Read more of this...

by Thomson, James
...th Fogs bedim'd, portends a beauteous Day.

NOW, giddy Youth, whom headlong Passions fire,
Rouse the wild Game, and stain the guiltless Grove, 
With Violence, and Death; yet call it Sport,
To scatter Ruin thro' the Realms of Love,
And Peace, that thinks no Ill: But These, the Muse,
Whose Charity, unlimited, extends
As wide as Nature works, disdains to sing, 
Returning to her nobler Theme in view --

FOR, see! where Winter comes, himself, confest,
Striding the gloomy Blast...Read more of this...

by Lowell, Amy
....
Just for a moment he must have dozed.
He looked again, and saw it plain.
The silhouette made a blue-black stain
On the opposite wall, and it never wavered
Even when the candle quavered
Under his panting breath. What made
That beautiful, dreadful thing, that shade
Of something so lovely, so exquisite,
Cast from a substance which the sight
Had not been tutored to perceive?
Paul brushed his eyes across his sleeve.
Clear-cut, the Shadow on the wall
Gleamed b...Read more of this...

Dont forget to view our wonderful member Stain poems.


Book: Shattered Sighs