Famous Stains Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Dialogue

...ntrol 
 Any thought of waving. 
But when all my care and pains 
Cannot give the name of gains 
To Thy wretch so full of stains, 
What delight or hope remains? 

Saviour. What, child, is the balance thine, 
 Thine the poise and measure? 
If I say, 'Thou shalt be Mine,' 
 Finger not My treasure. 
What the gains in having thee 
Do amount to, only He 
Who for man was sold can see; 
That transferr'd th' accounts to Me. 

Man. But as I can see no merit 
 Leading to this favour, 
So...Read more of this...
by Herbert, George


Adonais

...beneath
With lightning and with music: the damp death
Quenched its caress upon his icy lips;
And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath
Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips,
It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse.

And others came... Desires and Adorations,
Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies,
Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations
Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,
And ...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

At the Fishhouses

...bright sprinkle of grass,
is an ancient wooden capstan,
cracked, with two long bleached handles
and some melancholy stains, like dried blood,
where the ironwork has rusted.
The old man accepts a Lucky Strike.
He was a friend of my grandfather.
We talk of the decline in the population
and of codfish and herring
while he waits for a herring boat to come in.
There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.
He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,
from unnumbe...Read more of this...
by Bishop, Elizabeth

Ave atque Vale (In memory of Charles Baudelaire)

...And over thine irrevocable head 
 Sheds light from the under skies. 

And one weeps with him in the ways Lethean, 
 And stains with tears her changing bosom chill; 
 That obscure Venus of the hollow hill, 
That thing transform'd which was the Cytherean, 
 With lips that lost their Grecian laugh divine 
 Long since, and face no more call'd Erycine-- 
A ghost, a bitter and luxurious god. 
 Thee also with fair flesh and singing spell 
 Did she, a sad and second prey, compel 
Int...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles

Blind Mans Buff

...nce--sure of his man;
But down he came. -- Alas, how frail
Our best of hopes, how soon they fail!
With crimson drops he stains the ground;
Confusion startles all around.
Poor piteous Dick supports his head,
And fain would cure the hurt he made.
But Kitty hasted with a key,
And down his back they straight convey
The cold relief; the blood is stay'd,
And Hodge again holds up his head.
Such are the fortunes of the game,
And those who play should stop the same
By wholesome laws; ...Read more of this...
by Blake, William


Four Quartets 4: Little Gidding

...ill done and done to others' harm
 Which once you took for exercise of virtue.
 Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains.
From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit
 Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire
 Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.'
The day was breaking. In the disfigured street
 He left me, with a kind of valediction,
 And faded on the blowing of the horn.


III

There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flou...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

Imitations of Horace: The First Epistle of the Second Book

...ourt.
Unhappy Dryden!--In all Charles's days,
Roscommon only boasts unspotted bays;
And in our own (excuse some courtly stains)
No whiter page than Addison remains.
He, from the taste obscene reclaims our youth,
And sets the passions on the side of truth,
Forms the soft bosom with the gentlest art,
And pours each human virtue in the heart.
Let Ireland tell, how wit upheld her cause,
Her trade supported, and supplied her laws;
And leave on Swift this grateful verse engrav'd,
"...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander

Intima (Intimate)

...flower, the air,And all of life, because you are life!If I bought this happiness with my anguish,Bless the weeping that stains my eyes!All the ulcers of the past laughAt the sun rising from red lips!Ah you will know, My Love,We will travel far across the flowery night;There what is human frightens, there you can hear it,See it, feel it, life without end.We go further into night, we goWhere in me not an echo reverberates,Like a nocturnal flower in the shade,I will open sweetly...Read more of this...
by Agustini, Delmira

Marginalia

...next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."...Read more of this...
by Collins, Billy

Ode to Beauty

...charms are vain! 
ILL-NATURE haunts thee with her sallow train, 
Mean JEALOUSY deceives thy list'ning ear, 
And SLANDER stains thy cheek with many a bitter tear. 

In calm retirement form'd to dwell, 
NATURE, thy handmaid fair and kind, 
For thee, a beauteous garland twin'd; 
The vale-nurs'd Lily's downcast bell 
Thy modest mien display'd, 
The snow-drop, April's meekest child, 
With myrtle blossoms undefil'd, 
Thy mild and spotless mind pourtray'd; 
Dear blushing maid, of co...Read more of this...
by Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Resurrection

...All the old scars of wanton wars are vanished;
And what blue bruises grappling Sense had left
And sad remains of redder stains are banished,
And the dim blotch of heart-committed theft.

O still vast vision of transfigured features
Unvisited by secret crimes or dooms,
Remain, remain amid these water-creatures,
Stand, shine among yon water-lily blooms.

For eighteen centuries ripple down the river,
And windy times the stalks of empires wave,
-- Let the winds come from the moor...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney

Street Cries

...d mutineers are bold!

"The dewdrop morn may fall from off the petal of the sky,
But all the deck is wet with blood and stains the crystal red.
A pilot, GOD, a pilot! for the helm is left awry,
And the best sailors in the ship lie there among the dead!"

____
Prattville, Alabama, 1868.



III. How Love Looked for Hell.


"To heal his heart of long-time pain
One day Prince Love for to travel was fain
With Ministers Mind and Sense.
`Now what to thee most strange may be?'
Quoth ...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney

The Bridge of Sighs

...nstantly, 
Loving, not loathing. 

Touch her not scornfully; 
Think of her mournfully, 
Gently and humanly; 
Not of the stains of her, 
All that remains of her 
Now is pure womanly. 

Make no deep scrutiny 
Into her mutiny 
Rash and undutiful: 
Past all dishonour, 
Death has left on her 
Only the beautiful. 

Still, for all slips of hers, 
One of Eve's family— 
Wipe those poor lips of hers 
Oozing so clammily. 

Loop up her tresses 
Escaped from the comb, 
Her fair auburn tre...Read more of this...
by Hood, Thomas

The Eve Of St. Agnes

...ag'ries
 Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
 And diamonded with panes of quaint device,
 Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,
 As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings;
 And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries,
 And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,
A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings.

 Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
 And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast,
 As down she knelt for heaven's grace and...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

The Growth of Love

...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 named...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour

The Haunted House

...ung like a spy on human guilt and error,
Suddenly turned, and up its slender thread
Ran with a nimble terror.

The very stains and fractures on the wall,
Assuming features solemn and terrific,
Hinted some tragedy of that old hall,
Locked up in hieroglyphic.

Some tale that might, perchance, have solved the doubt,
Wherefore, among those flags so dull and livid,
The banner of the bloody hand shone out
So ominously vivid.

Some key to that inscrutable appeal
Which made the very ...Read more of this...
by Hood, Thomas

The Jacquerie A Fragment

...t O, I am too utter sorrowful
To urge large accusation now.
Nathless,
My work to-day, is still more grievous. Hear!
The stains that war hath wrought upon the land
Show but as faint white flecks, if seen o' the side
Of those blood-covered images that stalk
Through yon cold chambers of the future, as
The prophet-mood, now stealing on my soul,
Reveals them, marching, marching, marching. See!
There go the kings of France, in piteous file.
The deadly diamonds shining in their crow...Read more of this...
by Lanier, Sidney

The Wanderings of Oisin: Book I

...n that forgetfulness
Of dreamy foam a staff of wood
From some dead warrior's broken lance:
I tutned it in my hands; the stains
Of war were on it, and I wept,
Remembering how the Fenians stept
Along the blood-bedabbled plains,
Equal to good or grievous chance:
Thereon young Niamh softly came
And caught my hands, but spake no word
Save only many times my name,
In murmurs, like a frighted bird.
We passed by woods, and lawns of clover,
And found the horse and bridled him,
For we ...Read more of this...
by Yeats, William Butler

Three Women

...conceives
Its end and runs toward it, arms held out in love.
It is a love of death that sickens everything.
A dead sun stains the newsprint. It is red.
I lose life after life. The dark earth drinks them.

She is the vampire of us all. So she supports us,
Fattens us, is kind. Her mouth is red.
I know her. I know her intimately--
Old winter-face, old barren one, old time bomb.
Men have used her meanly. She will eat them.
Eat them, eat them, eat them in the end.
The sun is down...Read more of this...
by Plath, Sylvia

V

...know
she'd gone to join my grandad up in Heaven.

My dad who came each week to bring fresh flowers
came home with clay stains on his trouser knees.
Since my parents' deaths I've spent 2 hours
made up of odd 10 minutes such as these.

Flying visits once or twice a year,
And though I'm horrified just who's to blame
that I find instead of flowers cans of beer
and more than one grave sprayed with some skin's name?

Where there were flower urns and troughs of water
And mesh recep...Read more of this...
by Harrison, Tony

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