Famous Suspicious Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Comus

...illusion,
And give it false presentments, lest the place
And my quaint habits breed astonishment,
And put the damsel to suspicious flight;
Which must not be, for that's against my course.
I, under fair pretence of friendly ends,
And well-placed words of glozing courtesy,
Baited with reasons not unplausible,
Wind me into the easy-hearted man,
And hug him into snares. When once her eye
Hath met the virtue of this magic dust,
I shall appear some harmless villager
Whom thrift kee...Read more of this...
by Milton, John


Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

...you alone the dark patches fall, 
The dark threw patches down upon me also; 
The best I had done seem’d to me blank and suspicious;
My great thoughts, as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre? would not people
 laugh
 at
 me? 

It is not you alone who know what it is to be evil; 
I am he who knew what it was to be evil; 
I too knitted the old knot of contrariety, 
Blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d,
Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot

...fraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserv'd to blame, or to commend,
A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend;
Dreading ev'n fools, by flatterers besieg'd,
And so obliging, that he ne'er oblig'd;
Like Cato, give his little senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause;
While wits and templars ev'ry sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise.
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?

What...Read more of this...
by Pope, Alexander

George Trimble

...pictured to me my destruction
If I did not prove my morality to the people.
Well, she ruined me:
For the radicals grew suspicious of me,
And the conservatives were never sure of me --
And here I lie, unwept of all....Read more of this...
by Masters, Edgar Lee

He Digesteth Harde Yron

...s legs
their only weapon of defense.
He is swifter than a horse; he has a foot hard
as a hoof; the leopard

is not more suspicious.How
could he, prized for plumes and eggs and young
used even as a riding-beast, respect men
hiding actor-like in ostrich skins, with the right hand
making the neck move as if alive
and from a bag the left hand strewing grain, that ostriches

might be decoyed and killed!Yes, this is he
whose plume was anciently
the plume of justice; he
whose comic ...Read more of this...
by Moore, Marianne


I. The Witch of Coös

...uls, but when I asked him
How could that be -” I thought the dead were souls-”
He broke my trance. Don-™t that make you suspicious
That there-™s something the dead are keeping back?
Yes, there-™s something the dead are keeping back.

SON: You wouldn-™t want to tell him what we have
Up attic, mother?

MOTHER: Bones -” a skeleton.
SON: But the headboard of mother-™s bed is pushed
Against the- attic door: the door is nailed.
It-™s harmless. Mother hears it in the night
Halting ...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

Museum Piece

...The good gray guardians of art
Patrol the halls on spongy shoes,
Impartially protective, though
Perhaps suspicious of Toulouse.

Here dozes one against the wall,
Disposed upon a funeral chair.
A Degas dancer pirouettes
Upon the parting of his hair.

See how she spins! The grace is there,
But strain as well is plain to see.
Degas loved the two together:
Beauty joined to energy.

Edgar Degas purchased once
A fine El Greco, which he kept
Against the wall beside h...Read more of this...
by Wilbur, Richard

Noon Walk On The Asylum Lawn

...The summer sun ray
shifts through a suspicious tree.
though I walk through the valley of the shadow
It sucks the air
and looks around for me.

The grass speaks.
I hear green chanting all day.
I will fear no evil, fear no evil
The blades extend
and reach my way.

The sky breaks.
It sags and breathes upon my face.
In the presence of mine enemies, mine enemies
The world is full of enemies.
There ...Read more of this...
by Sexton, Anne

Paradise Lost: Book 04

...not theirs, it seems; 
One fatal tree there stands, of knowledge called, 
Forbidden them to taste: Knowledge forbidden 
Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord 
Envy them that? Can it be sin to know? 
Can it be death? And do they only stand 
By ignorance? Is that their happy state, 
The proof of their obedience and their faith? 
O fair foundation laid whereon to build 
Their ruin! hence I will excite their minds 
With more desire to know, and to reject 
Envious commands...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Paradise Lost: Book 09

...om 
To enter, and his dark suggestions hide 
From sharpest sight: for, in the wily snake 
Whatever sleights, none would suspicious mark, 
As from his wit and native subtlety 
Proceeding; which, in other beasts observed, 
Doubt might beget of diabolick power 
Active within, beyond the sense of brute. 
Thus he resolved, but first from inward grief 
His bursting passion into plaints thus poured. 
More justly, seat worthier of Gods, as built 
With second thoughts, reforming what ...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Paradise Regained: The Fourth Book

...h purpose there
His horrid lusts in private to enjoy;
Committing to a wicked favourite
All public cares, and yet of him suspicious;
Hated of all, and hating. With what ease,
Endued with regal virtues as thou art,
Appearing, and beginning noble deeds,
Might'st thou expel this monster from his throne, 
Now made a sty, and, in his place ascending,
A victor-people free from servile yoke!
And with my help thou may'st; to me the power
Is given, and by that right I give it thee.
Aim...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Paradise Regained: The Second Book

...home returned, in Nazareth
Hath been our dwelling many years; his life 
Private, unactive, calm, contemplative,
Little suspicious to any king. But now,
Full grown to man, acknowledged, as I hear,
By John the Baptist, and in public shewn,
Son owned from Heaven by his Father's voice,
I looked for some great change. To honour? no;
But trouble, as old Simeon plain foretold,
That to the fall and rising he should be
Of many in Israel, and to a sign
Spoken against—that through my v...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

Restless Leg Syndrome

...eturned to our units 
and assumed our poses.
A little bit of time passed, not much, 
and then John's leg started acting suspicious. 
It looked like it wanted to kick the replica 
of the White House we keep on hand 
just for situations such as this.
And then, sure enough, it did....Read more of this...
by Taylor, Edward

Restless Leg Syndrome

...eturned to our units 
and assumed our poses.
A little bit of time passed, not much, 
and then John's leg started acting suspicious. 
It looked like it wanted to kick the replica 
of the White House we keep on hand 
just for situations such as this.
And then, sure enough, it did....Read more of this...
by Tate, James

Run to Death

...sy' written clear upon her face;
Gazing round her with her wide eyes dark, and shadow-fringed, and wild,
With the cowed suspicious glances of a persecuted race.
Then they all, with unasked question, in each other's faces peer,
For a common thought has struck them, one their lips dare scarcely say,--
Till Lord Gaston cries, impatient, 'Why regret the stately deer
When such sport as yonder offers? quick ! unleash the dogs--away!'
Then they breath'd a shout of cheering, grey-hai...Read more of this...
by Levy, Amy

The Egg and the Machine

...o where he made out vague
But certain signs of buried turtle's egg;
And probing with one finger not too rough,
He found suspicious sand, and sure enough,
The pocket of a little turtle mine.
If there was one egg in it there were nine,
Torpedo-like, with shell of gritty leather
All packed in sand to wait the trump together.
'You'd better not disturb any more,'
He told the distance, 'I am armed for war.
The next machine that has the power to pass
Will get this plasm in it goggle...Read more of this...
by Frost, Robert

The Marriage Of Geraint

...y she thought to tell Geraint, 
But could not out of bashful delicacy; 
While he that watched her sadden, was the more 
Suspicious that her nature had a taint. 

At last, it chanced that on a summer morn 
(They sleeping each by either) the new sun 
Beat through the blindless casement of the room, 
And heated the strong warrior in his dreams; 
Who, moving, cast the coverlet aside, 
And bared the knotted column of his throat, 
The massive square of his heroic breast, 
And arms ...Read more of this...
by Tennyson, Alfred Lord

The unquiet city

...lants one of us has a budgie
and I have three fish the details
are unimportant God does not come here often
we would be suspicious if he
did without an identity card
we collect each others' mail
remind each other of garbage
days and are frightened
of the louts from the skating rink
but in the night I leave
my curtains open and air
my pendant tremulous breasts...Read more of this...
by Mansell, Chris

The Vanity of Human Wishes (excerpts)

...ns, with anxious heart and crippled hands,
286 His bonds of debt, and mortgages of lands;
287 Or views his coffers with suspicious eyes,
288 Unlocks his gold, and counts it till he dies.

289 But grant, the virtues of a temp'rate prime
290 Bless with an age exempt from scorn or crime;
291 An age that melts in unperceiv'd decay,
292 And glides in modest innocence away;
293 Whose peaceful day Benevolence endears,
294 Whose night congratulating Conscience cheers;
295 The gen'ral...Read more of this...
by Johnson, Samuel

Whoever You are Holding Me now in Hand

...ifferent. 

Who is he that would become my follower?
Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections? 

The way is suspicious—the result uncertain, perhaps destructive; 
You would have to give up all else—I alone would expect to be your God, sole and
 exclusive, 
Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting, 
The whole past theory of your life, and all conformity to the lives around you, would have
 to
 be
 abandon’d;
Therefore release me now, before troubling y...Read more of this...
by Whitman, Walt

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