Famous Thieves Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Thieves poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous thieves poems. These examples illustrate what a famous thieves poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...art largess* of plein** felicity, *liberal bestower **full
Haven and refuge of quiet and rest!
Lo! how that thieves seven chase me!
Help, Lady bright, ere that my ship to-brest!* *be broken to pieces
C.
Comfort is none, but in you, Lady dear!
For lo! my sin and my confusion,
Which ought not in thy presence to appear,
Have ta'en on me a grievous action,* *control
Of very right and des...Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...d earth, of world beloved and lover,
The nectar and ambrosia, are withheld;
And in the midst of spoils and slaves, we thieves
And pirates of the universe, shut out
Daily to a more thin and outward rind,
Turn pale and starve. Therefore, to our sick eyes,
The stunted trees look sick, the summer short,
Clouds shade the sun, which will not tan our hay,
And nothing thrives to reach its natural term;
And life, shorn of its venerable length,
Even at its greatest space ...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...een how it looked in the rain,
The fruit mixed with water in layers of leaves,
Like two kinds of jewels, a vision for thieves."...Read more of this...
by
Browning, Robert
...ok through the window's grated square:
Nothing to see! For fear of plunder,
The cross is down and the altar bare,
As if thieves don't fear thunder.
XXXVI.
We stoop and look in through the grate,
See the little porch and rustic door,
Read duly the dead builder's date;
Then cross the bridge that we crossed before,
Take the path again---but wait!
XXXVII.
Oh moment, one and infinite!
The water slips o'er stock and stone;
The West is tender, hardly bright:
How grey...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...'Sir Kitchen-knave, I have missed the only way
Where Arthur's men are set along the wood;
The wood is nigh as full of thieves as leaves:
If both be slain, I am rid of thee; but yet,
Sir Scullion, canst thou use that spit of thine?
Fight, an thou canst: I have missed the only way.'
So till the dusk that followed evensong
Rode on the two, reviler and reviled;
Then after one long slope was mounted, saw,
Bowl-shaped, through tops of many thousand pines
A gloomy-gla...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...spered him one note,
That who does cut his purse will cut his throat,
But in wise anger he their crimes forbears,
As thieves reprived for executioners;
While Hyde provoked, his foaming tusk does whet,
To prove them traitors and himself the Pett.
Painter, adieu! How well our arts agree,
Poetic picture, painted poetry;
But this great work is for our Monarch fit,
And henceforth Charles only to Charles shall sit.
His master-hand the ancients shall outdo,
Himse...Read more of this...
by
Bryant, William Cullen
...ath an ivied tree, his sheltering seat,
Of rushy flags and sedges tied in sheaves,
Or from the field a shock of stubble thieves.
There he doth dithering sit, and entertain
His eyes with marking the storm-driven leaves;
Oft spying nests where he spring eggs had ta'en,
And wishing in his heart 'twas summer-time again.
Thus wears the month along, in checker'd moods,
Sunshine and shadows, tempests loud, and calms;
One hour dies silent o'er the sleepy woods,
The next wake...Read more of this...
by
Brautigan, Richard
...Mormon
goes when they die. All Catholics, Buddhists, Moslems,
Jews, Baptists, Methodists and International Jewel Thieves.
Everybody who isn't a Mormon goes to the Spirit Slammer.
The sign said 1 1/2 miles. The path was easy to follow,
then it just stopped. We lost it near a creek. I looked all
around. I looked on both sides of the creek, but the path had
just vanished.
Could be the fact that we were still alive had something
to do w...Read more of this...
by
Herbert, George
...gly in great resorts;
In cities, theaters, gardens, parks, and courts;
At length I heard a ragged noise and mirth
Of thieves and murderers; there I him espied,
Who straight, Your suit is granted, said, and died....Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...ctive human bodies of the earth;
I see the blind, the deaf and dumb, idiots, hunchbacks, lunatics;
I see the pirates, thieves, betrayers, murderers, slave-makers of the earth;
I see the helpless infants, and the helpless old men and women.
I see male and female everywhere;
I see the serene brotherhood of philosophs;
I see the constructiveness of my race;
I see the results of the perseverance and industry of my race;
I see ranks, colors, barbarisms, civilizations—I...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...generations of slaves;
Voices of prostitutes, and of deform’d persons;
Voices of the diseas’d and despairing, and of thieves and dwarfs;
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars—and of wombs, and of the
father-stuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon;
Of the trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.
Through me forbidden voices;
Voice of sexes and lus...Read more of this...
by
Chesterton, G K
...For Colan was hung with raiment
Tattered like autumn leaves,
And his men were all as thin as saints,
And all as poor as thieves.
No bows nor slings nor bolts they bore,
But bills and pikes ill-made;
And none but Colan bore a sword,
And rusty was its blade.
And Colan's eyes with mystery
And iron laughter stirred,
And he spoke aloud, but lightly
Not labouring to be heard.
"Oh, truly we be broken hearts,
For that cause, it is said,
We light our candles to that Lor...Read more of this...
by
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...--but that ever-climbing wave,
Hurled back again so often in empty foam,
Hath lain for years at rest--and renegades,
Thieves, bandits, leavings of confusion, whom
The wholesome realm is purged of otherwhere,
Friends, through your manhood and your fealty,--now
Make their last head like Satan in the North.
My younger knights, new-made, in whom your flower
Waits to be solid fruit of golden deeds,
Move with me toward their quelling, which achieved,
The loneliest way...Read more of this...
by
Killigrew, Anne
...fering World never bestow
Upon th'Accursed Causers of such Woe,
A vengeance that may parallel their Loss,
Fix Publick Thieves and Robbers on the Cross?
Such as call Ruine, Conquest, in their Pride,
And having plagu'd Mankind, in Triumph ride.
Like that renowned Murderer who staines
In these our days Alsatias fertile Plains,
Only to fill the future Tromp of Fame,
Though greater Crimes, than Glory it proclame.
Alcides, Scourge of Thieves, return to Earth,
Whic...Read more of this...
by
Herbert, George
...that salvation, which ye now resist;
Your safety in my sickness doth subsist:
Was ever grief like mine?
Betwixt two thieves I spend my utmost breath,
As he that for some robbery suffereth.
Alas! what have I stolen from you? death:
Was ever grief like mine?
A king my title is, prefixt on high;
Yet by my subjects am condemn'd to die
A servile death in servile company;
Was ever grief like mine?
They gave me vinegar mingled with gall,
But more with malice: yet, w...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
...riar John, what manner world is this?
I see well that there something is amiss;
Ye look as though the wood were full of thieves.
Sit down anon, and tell me what your grieve* is, *grievance, grief
And it shall be amended, if I may."
"I have," quoth he, "had a despite to-day,
God *yielde you,* adown in your village, *reward you
That in this world is none so poor a page,
That would not have abominatioun
Of that I have received in your town:
And yet ne grieveth me nothing...Read more of this...
by
Levis, Larry
...Center of my city, a small square bordered
With palm trees, olives, cypresses, a square
Where no one gathered, not even thieves or lovers.
It was a place which no longer had any purpose,
But held itself aloof, I thought, the way
A deaf aunt might, from opinions, styles, gossip.
I liked it there. It was completely lifeless,
Sad & clear in what seemed always a perfect,
Windless noon. I saw it first as a child,
Looking down at it from that as yet
Unvandalized, ...Read more of this...
by
Chaucer, Geoffrey
... *the only true poverty is sin*
Juvenal saith of povert' merrily:
The poore man, when he goes by the way
Before the thieves he may sing and play 13
Povert' is hateful good,14 and, as I guess,
A full great *bringer out of business;* *deliver from trouble*
A great amender eke of sapience
To him that ta...Read more of this...
by
Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...een leaves,
By warm winds deflower'd,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wing¨¨d thieves.
Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awaken'd flowers¡ª
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.
Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
Chorus hymeneal,
Or triumphal ch...Read more of this...
by
Shakespeare, William
...d, black chaos comes again.
"Fie, fie, fond love, thou art so full of fear
As one with treasure laden, hemm'd with thieves;
Trifles, unwitnessed with eye or ear,
Thy coward heart with false bethinking grieves."
Even at this word she hears a merry horn,
Whereat she leaps that was but late forlorn.
As falcon to the lure, away she flies;
The grass stoops not, she treads on it so light;
And in her haste unfortunately spies
The foul boar's conquest on her fair deligh...Read more of this...
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