Famous Unalterable Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Coloring Book

...,
a dog and bone.
The paper is cheap, easily torn.
A coloring book's authority is derived
from its heavy black lines
as unalterable as the ten commandments
within which minor decisions are possible:
the dog black and white,
the kitten gray.
Under the picture we find a few words,
a title, perhaps a narrative,
a psalm or sermon.
But nowhere do we come upon
a blank page where we might justify
the careless way we scribbled
when we were tired and sad
and could bear no more....Read more of this...
by Wanek, Connie


Cousin Nancy

...hey knew that it was modern.

Upon the glazen shelves kept watch
Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith,
The army of unalterable law....Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

Dolor

...manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale h...Read more of this...
by Roethke, Theodore

El Nudo (The Knot)

...ts,Life’s Furies rent their coupled handsAnd wearied your powerful fingers, Ananké… Ananké: Goddess (Greek) of Unalterable Necessity...Read more of this...
by Agustini, Delmira

End of Another Home Holiday

...
III

  The moon lies back and reddens.
  In the valley, a corncrake calls
        Monotonously,
  With a piteous, unalterable plaint, that deadens
        My confident activity:
  With a hoarse, insistent request that falls
        Unweariedly, unweariedly,
        Asking something more of me,
            Yet more of me!...Read more of this...
by Lawrence, D. H.


Lucifer in Starlight

...stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law....Read more of this...
by Meredith, George

Old King Cole

...nd each accoutred with a curse, 
The friends of Old King Cole, by twos, 
And fours, and sevens, and elevens,
Pronounced unalterable views 
Of doings that were not of heaven’s. 

And having learned again whereby 
Their baleful zeal had come about, 
King Cole met many a wrathful eye
So kindly that its wrath went out— 
Or partly out. Say what they would, 
He seemed the more to court their candor; 
But never told what kind of good 
Was in Alexis and Evander.

And Old King Cole, w...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Sonnet LXIX

...T LXIX. Erano i capei d' oro all' aura sparsi. HE PAINTS THE BEAUTIES OF LAURA, PROTESTING HIS UNALTERABLE LOVE.  Loose to the breeze her golden tresses flow'dWildly in thousand mazy ringlets blown,And from her eyes unconquer'd glances shone,Those glances now so sparingly bestow'd.And tr...Read more of this...
by Petrarch, Francesco

Testament

...o has a place
To go, and something to do.
Don't muck up my face

With wax and powder and rouge
As one would prettify
An unalterable fact
To give bitterness the lie.

Admit the native earth
My body is and will be,
Admit its freedom and
Its changeability.

Dress me in the clothes
I wore in the day's round.
Lay me in a wooden box.
Put the box in the ground.

4.
Beneath this stone a Berry is planted
In his home land, as he wanted.

He has come to the gathering of his kin,
Among w...Read more of this...
by Berry, Wendell

The Book of Annandale

...ph and the magic of the soul, 
Unspeakably revealed, that finally 
Had reconciled the grim probationing 
Of wisdom with unalterable faith, 
But she could feel—not knowing what it was,
For the sheer freedom of it—a new joy 
That humanized the latent wizardry 
Of his prophetic voice and put for it 
The man within the music. 

So it came
To pass, like many a long-compelled emprise 
That with its first accomplishment almost 
Annihilates its own severity, 
That she could find, whe...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

The Horsemen

...ssed at the earth; 
as we leaned out of the window 
in that moment when the first light
streaked, joyous, out of the unalterable street... 

Then, tuned to the immanent choir of the grassland, 
untangling from the sea -

Then, stripped to the last detail, from her sinewed skin, 
disheveled in the light, one aria from the immaculate concertina -

before her rebirth
a tongue licked through the core of my soul


ii
Strange men in dark garments 
riding in slow, w...Read more of this...
by Nwakanma, Obi

The Shrubbery Written in a Time of Affliction

...ders quiv'ring to the breeze,
Might sooth a soul less hurt than mine,
And please, if any thing could please.

But fix'd unalterable care
Foregoes not what she feels within,
Shows the same sadness ev'rywhere,
And slights the season and the scene.

For all that pleas'd in wood or lawn,
While peace possess'd these silent bow'rs,
Her animating smile withdrawn,
Has lost its beauties and its pow'rs.

The saint or moralist should tread
This moss-grown alley, musing, slow;
They seek,...Read more of this...
by Cowper, William

The Valley of the Shadow

...r made no noise. 

There were slaves who dragged the shackles of a precedent unbroken, 
Demonstrating the fulfilment of unalterable schemes, 
Which had been, before the cradle, Time’s inexorable tenants 
Of what were now the dusty ruins of their father’s dreams.
There were these, and there were many who had stumbled up to manhood,
Where they saw too late the road they should have taken long ago: 
There were thwarted clerks and fiddlers in the Valley of the Shadow, 
The commem...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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