Famous Unfair Poems by Famous Poets

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

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An Almost Made Up Poem

by Charles Bukowski
 I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny
blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny
they are small, and the fountain is in France
where you wrote me that last letter and
I answered and never heard from you again.
you used to write insane poems about
ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper case, and you
knew famous artists and most of them
were your...Read more of this...

Voltaire at Ferney

by Wystan Hugh (W H) Auden
Perfectly happy now, he looked at his estate.
An exile making watches glanced up as he passed
And went on working; where a hospital was rising fast,
A joiner touched his cap; an agent came to tell
Some of the trees he'd planted were progressing well.
The white alps glittered. It was summer. He was very great.

Far off in Paris where his enemies
Whsipered that he...Read more of this...

Sonnet V

by William Shakespeare
 Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel:
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter and confounds him there;
Sap cheque'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'ersnow'd and bareness every where:
Then, were not summer's distillation left,
A liquid prisoner...Read more of this...

Named

by Stephen Dunn
 He'd spent his life trying to control the names
  people gave him;
oh the unfair and the accurate equally hurt.

Just recently he'd been a son-of-a-*****
  and sweetheart in the same day,
and once again knew what antonyms

love and control are, and how comforting
  it must be to have a business card -
Manager, Specialist - and believe what it...Read more of this...

The Rebel Surprise Near Tamai

by William Topaz McGonagall
 'Twas on the 22nd of March, in the year 1885,
That the Arabs rushed like a mountain torrent in full drive,
And quickly attacked General M'Neill's transport-zereba,
But in a short time they were forced to withdraw. 

And in the suddenness of surprise the men were carried away,
Also camels, mules, and horses were thrown into wild disarray,
By thousands of the Arabs that...Read more of this...

Careers

by Robert Graves
 Father is quite the greatest poet 
 That ever lived anywhere. 
You say you’re going to write great music— 
 I chose that first: it’s unfair. 
Besides, now I can’t be the greatest painter and 
 do Christ and angels, or lovely pears 
 and apples and grapes on a green dish, 
 or storms at sea, or anything...Read more of this...

For God While Sleeping

by Anne Sexton
 Sleeping in fever, I am unfair
to know just who you are:
hung up like a pig on exhibit,
the delicate wrists,
the beard drooling blood and vinegar;
hooked to your own weight,
jolting toward death under your nameplate.

Everyone in this crowd needs a bath.
I am dressed in rags.
The mother wears blue.
You grind your teeth
and with each new breath
your jaws gape and your diaper sags.
I...Read more of this...

Womens Suffrage

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Fellow men! why should the lords try to despise
And prohibit women from having the benefit of the parliamentary Franchise?
When they pay the same taxes as you and me,
I consider they ought to have the same liberty. 

And I consider if they are not allowed the same liberty,
From taxation every one of them should be set free;
And if they are...Read more of this...

Lizards And Snakes

by Anthony Hecht
 On the summer road that ran by our front porch
 Lizards and snakes came out to sun.
It was hot as a stove out there, enough to scorch
 A buzzard's foot. Still, it was fun
To lie in the dust and spy on them. Near but remote,
 They snoozed in the carriage ruts, a smile
In the set of the jaw, a...Read more of this...

Fair And Unfair

by Robert Francis
 The beautiful is fair. The just is fair.
Yet one is commonplace and one is rare,
One everywhere, one scarcely anywhere.

So fair unfair a world. Had we the wit
To use the surplus for the deficit,
We'd make a fairer fairer world of it....Read more of this...

Guinevere at Her Fireside

by Dorothy Parker
 A nobler king had never breath-
I say it now, and said it then.
Who weds with such is wed till death
And wedded stays in Heaven. Amen.

(And oh, the shirts of linen-lawn,
And all the armor, tagged and tied,
And church on Sundays, dusk and dawn.
And bed a thing to kneel beside!)

The bravest one stood tall above
The rest, and watched me as a...Read more of this...

Blind Mans Buff

by William Blake
 When silver snow decks Susan's clothes,
And jewel hangs at th' shepherd's nose,
The blushing bank is all my care,
With hearth so red, and walls so fair;
`Heap the sea-coal, come, heap it higher,
The oaken log lay on the fire.'
The well-wash'd stools, a circling row,
With lad and lass, how fair the show!
The merry can of nut-brown ale,
The laughing jest, the love-sick tale,
Till,...Read more of this...

Glasgow

by William Topaz McGonagall
 Beautiful city of Glasgow, with your streets so neat and clean,
Your stateley mansions, and beautiful Green!
Likewise your beautiful bridges across the River Clyde,
And on your bonnie banks I would like to reside. 

Chorus --

Then away to the west -- to the beautiful west!
To the fair city of Glasgow that I like the best,
Where the River Clyde rolls on to...Read more of this...

The Man Who Could Write

by Rudyard Kipling
 Boanerges Blitzen, servant of the Queen,
Is a dismal failure -- is a Might-have-been.
In a luckless moment he discovered men
Rise to high position through a ready pen.

Boanerges Blitzen argued therefore -- "I,
With the selfsame weapon, can attain as high."
Only he did not possess when he made the trial,
Wicked wit of C-lv-n, irony of L--l.

[Men who spar with Government need, to...Read more of this...

No Brigadier throughout the Year

by Emily Dickinson
 No Brigadier throughout the Year
So civic as the Jay --
A Neighbor and a Warrior too
With shrill felicity
Pursuing Winds that censure us
A February Day,
The Brother of the Universe
Was never blown away --
The Snow and he are intimate --
I've often seem them play
When Heaven looked upon us all
With such severity
I felt apology were due
To an insulted sky
Whose pompous frown was Nutriment
To...Read more of this...

Send No Money

by Philip Larkin
 Standing under the fobbed
Impendent belly of Time
Tell me the truth, I said,
Teach me the way things go.
All the other lads there
Were itching to have a bash,
But I thought wanting unfair:
It and finding out clash.

So he patted my head, booming Boy,
There's no green in your eye:
Sit here and watch the hail
Of occurence clobber life out
To a shape no one sees...Read more of this...

The biggest defeat

by Ehsan Sehgal
"Do not create things that make some-one doubtful and show wrong direction.
No matter you are doing that in good sense, but you are making yourself, untrusted, miner and bad person. Placing or setting the seeds of doubts in the mind of your friends, your lover or any person means you are pushing them away from your own relationships. In this...Read more of this...

Sonnet V: Those Hours That With Gentle Work Did Frame

by William Shakespeare
 Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter, and confounds him there;
Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness every where:
Then were not summer's distillation left,
A liquid prisoner...Read more of this...

Our Souls Are Mirrors

by Rupi Kaur
god must have kneaded you and i
from the same dough
rolled us out as one on the baking sheet
must have suddenly realized
how unfair it was
to put that much magic in one person
and sadly split that dough in two
how else is it that
when i look in the mirror
i am looking at you
when you breathe
my own lungs fill with air
that we just met...Read more of this...

Sonnet 5: Those hours that with gentle work did frame

by William Shakespeare
 Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel;
For never-resting Time leads summer on
To hideous winter and confounds him there,
Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o'ersnowed and bareness everywhere.
Then, were not summer's distillation left
A liquid prisoner pent...Read more of this...

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