Famous Unholy Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Unholy poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous unholy poems. These examples illustrate what a famous unholy poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Robert William Service
Though Virtue hurt you Vice is nice;
Aye, Parson says it's wrong,
Yet for my pleasing I'll suffice
With Women, Wine and Song.
But though it be with jocund glee
my tavern voice is ringing,
Had I to chuck on of the three,
By gad! I'd give up singing.
Bu not the vine. What draught divine
Could better souse my throttle?
God never meant that mellow wine
Should languish in...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Lee Masters
If you in the village think that my work was a good one,
Who closed the saloons and stopped all playing at cards,
And haled old Daisy Fraser before Justice Arnett,
In many a crusade to purge the people of sin;
Why do you let the milliner's daughter Dora,
And the worthless son of Benjamin Pantier,
Nightly make my grave their unholy pillow?...Read more of this...
by
Edgar Allan Poe
Kind solace in a dying hour!
Such, father, is not (now) my theme-
I will not madly deem that power
Of Earth may shrive me of the sin
Unearthly pride hath revell'd in-
I have no time to dote or dream:
You call it hope- that fire of fire!
It is but agony of desire:
If I can hope- Oh God! I can-
Its fount is holier- more...Read more of this...
by
James Wright
for J.L.D.
Why should we do this? What good is it to us? Above all,
how can we do such a thing? How can it possibly be done?
--Freud
1.
My name is James A. Wright, and I was born
Twenty-five miles from this infected grave,
In Martins Ferry, Ohio, where one slave
To Hazel-Atlas Glass became my father.
He tried to teach me kindness. I return
Only...Read more of this...
by
Dorothy Parker
Ghosts of all my lovely sins,
Who attend too well my pillow,
Gay the wanton rain begins;
Hide the limp and tearful willow.
Turn aside your eyes and ears,
Trail away your robes of sorrow,
You shall have my further years-
You shall walk with me tomorrow.
I am sister to the rain;
Fey and sudden and unholy,
Petulant at the windowpane,
Quickly lost, remembered slowly.
I have lived with shades,...Read more of this...
by
John Milton
Hence, loathed Melancholy,
............Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born
In Stygian cave forlorn
............'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights
unholy!
Find out some uncouth cell,
............Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-raven sings;
............There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks,
As ragged as thy locks,
............In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.
But come, thou Goddess fair and free,
In heaven yclept Euphrosyne,
And by men heart-easing Mirth;
Whom lovely...Read more of this...
by
Jane Kenyon
1FROM THE NURSERY
When I was born, you waited
behind a pile of linen in the nursery,
and when we were alone, you lay down
on top of me, pressing
the bile of desolation into every pore.
And from that day on
everything under the sun and moon
made me sad -- even the yellow
wooden beads that slid and spun
along...Read more of this...
by
Lucy Maud Montgomery
I feel
Very much
Like taking
Its unholy perpetrators
By the hair
Of their heads
(If they have any hair)
And dragging them around
A few times,
And then cutting them
Into small, irregular pieces
And burying them
In the depths of the blue sea.
They are without form
And void,/ Or at least
The stuff they/ produce
Is./ They are too lazy
To hunt up rhymes;
And that
Is all
That is the matter with them....Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
And wherefore have they come, this warlike band,
That o'er the ocean many a weary day
Have tossed; and now beside Suakim's Bay,
With faces stern and resolute, do stand,
Waking the desert's echoes with the drum --
Men of Australia, wherefore have ye come?
To keep the Puppet Khedive on the throne,
To strike a blow for tyranny...Read more of this...
by
Rabindranath Tagore
O Fool, try to carry thyself upon thy own shoulders!
O beggar, to come beg at thy own door!
Leave all thy burdens on his hands who can bear all,
and never look behind in regret.
Thy desire at once puts out the light from the lamp it touches with its breath.
It is unholy---take not thy gifts through...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Moore
Oh, where's the slave so lowly,
Condemn'd to chains unholy,
Who, could he burst
His bonds at first,
Would pine beneath them slowly?
What soul, whose wrongs degrade it,
Would wait till time decay'd it,
When thus its wing
At once may spring
To the throne of Him who made it?
Farewell, Erin, -- farewell, all,
Who live to...Read more of this...
by
Amy Lowell
Now what in the name of the sun and the stars
Is the meaning of this most unholy of wars?
Do men find life so full of humour and joy
That for want of excitement they smash up the toy?
Fifteen millions of soldiers with popguns and horses
All bent upon killing, because their "of courses"
Are not quite the same. All these men by...Read more of this...
by
Siegfried Sassoon
Darkness: the rain sluiced down; the mire was deep;
It was past twelve on a mid-winter night,
When peaceful folk in beds lay snug asleep;
There, with much work to do before the light,
We lugged our clay-sucked boots as best we might
Along the trench; sometimes a bullet sang,
And droning shells burst with a hollow bang;
We...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Moore
By that Lake, whose gloomy shore
Sky-lark never warbles o'er,
Where the cliff hangs high and steep,
Young Saint Kevin stole to sleep.
"Here, at least," he calmly said,
"Woman ne'er shall find my bed."
Ah! the good Saint little knew
What that wily sex can do.
'Twas from Kathleen's eyes he flew --
Eyes of most unholy blue!
She...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Original and actual sin confessed.
Lord, I am vile, conceived in sin;
And born unholy and unclean;
Sprung from the man whose guilty fall
Corrupts the race, and taints us all.
Soon as we draw our infant breath,
The seeds of sin grow up for death;
Thy law demands a perfect heart,
But we're defiled in every part.
[Great God, create my heart anew,
And form my spirit pure...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Moore
The Ghost of Miltiades came at night,
And he stood by the bed of the Benthamite,
And he said, in a voice, that thrill'd the frame,
"If ever the sound of Marathon's name
Hath fir'd they blood or flush'd thy brow,
Lover of Liberty, rise thee now!"
The Benthamite, yawning, left his bed --
Away to the Stock Exchange he sped,
And he found the Scrip of...Read more of this...
by
Allen Ginsberg
I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look for the sunset over the box house hills and cry.
Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Could he have made Priscilla share
The paradise that he had planned,
Llewellyn would have loved his wife
As well as any in the land.
Could he have made Priscilla cease
To goad him for what God left out,
Llewellyn would have been as mild
As any we have read about.
Could all have been as all was not,
Llewellyn...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
A state of nature and of grace.
1 Cor. 6:10,11.
Not the malicious or profane,
The wanton or the proud,
Nor thieves, nor sland'rers, shall obtain
Tue kingdom of our God.
Surprising grace! and such were we
By nature and by sin,
Heirs of immortal misery,
Unholy and unclean.
But we are washed in Jesus' blood,
We're pardoned through his name;
And the good Spirit of our God
Has sanctified our...Read more of this...
by
Isaac Watts
Christ our wisdom, righteousness, etc.
1 Cor. 1:30.
How heavy is the night
That hangs upon our eyes,
Till Christ with his reviving light
Over our souls arise!
Our guilty spirits dread
To meet the wrath of Heav'n;
But, in his righteousness arrayed,
We see our sins forgiv'n.
Unholy and impure
Are all our thoughts and ways;
His hands infected nature cure
With sanctifying grace.
The powers of hell agree
To hold our...Read more of this...
by
George Meredith
Yet it was plain she struggled, and that salt
Of righteous feeling made her pitiful.
Poor twisting worm, so queenly beautiful!
Where came the cleft between us? whose the fault?
My tears are on thee, that have rarely dropped
As balm for any bitter wound of mine:
My breast will open for thee at a sign!
But, no: we...Read more of this...
by
Andrew Barton Paterson
On Western plains, where shade is not,
'Neath summer skies of cloudless blue,
Where all is dry and all is hot,
There stands the town of Dandaloo --
A township where life's total sum
Is sleep, diversified with rum.
Its grass-grown streets with dust are deep;
'Twere vain endeavour to express
The dreamless silence of its sleep,
Its wide,...Read more of this...
by
Robert Francis
Lingo of birds was easier than lingo of peasants-
they were elusive, though, the birds, for excellent reasons.
He thought of Virgil, Virgil who wasn't there to chat with.
History he never forgave for letting Latin
lapse into Italian, a renegade jabbering
musical enough but not enough to call music
So he conversed with stones, imperial and papal.
Even the preposterous popes he could condone
a moment...Read more of this...
by
Thomas Moore
St. Senanus
"On! haste, and leave this sacred isle,
Unholy bark, ere morning smile;
For on thy deck, though dark it be,
A female form I see;
And I have sworn this sainted sod
Shall ne'er by woman's feet by trod!"
The Lady
"Oh! Father, send not hence my bark
Through wintry winds and billows dark,
I come, with humble heart,...Read more of this...
by
Heather McHugh
Too volatile, am I?too voluble?too much a word-person?
I blame the soup:I'm a primordially
stirred person.
Two pronouns and a vehicle was Icarus with wings.
The apparatus of his selves made an ab-
surd person.
The sound I make is sympathy's:sad dogs are tied afar.
But howling I become an ever more un-
heard person.
I need a hundred more of you to make a likelihood.
The mirror's not...Read more of this...
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