Famous Unintelligible Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Departure

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 It was not like your great and gracious ways! 
Do you, that have naught other to lament, 
Never, my Love, repent 
Of how, that July afternoon, 
You went,
With sudden, unintelligible phrase, 
And frighten'd eye, 
Upon your journey of so many days 
Without a single kiss, or a good-bye? 
I knew, indeed, that you were parting soon; 
And so we...Read more of this...

Dream Song 132: A Small Dream

by John Berryman
 A Small Dream

It was only a small dream of the Golden World,
now you trot off to bed. I'll turn the machine off,
you've danced & trickt us enough.
Unintelligible whines & imprecations, hurled
from the second floor, fail to impress your mother
and I am the only other

and I say go to bed! We'll meet tomorrow,
acres of threats dissolve into a smile,
you'll be...Read more of this...

Javanese Dancers

by Arthur Symons
 Twitched strings, the clang of metal, beaten drums, 
Dull, shrill, continuous, disquieting: 
And now the stealthy dancer comes 
Undulantly with cat-like steps that cling; 

Smiling between her painted lids a smile, 
Motionless, unintelligible, she twines 
Her fingers into mazy lines, 
The scarves across her fingers twine the while. 

One, two, three, four glide forth, and, to and fro, 
Delicately...Read more of this...

The Apparitions

by William Butler Yeats
 Because there is safety in derision
I talked about an apparition,
I took no trouble to convince,
Or seem plausible to a man of sense.
Distrustful of thar popular eye
Whether it be bold or sly.
Fifteen apparitions have I seen;
The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger.

I have found nothing half so good
As my long-planned half solitude,
Where I can sit up half the night
With some...Read more of this...

Hauntings

by Rupert Brooke
 In the grey tumult of these after years
Oft silence falls; the incessant wranglers part;
And less-than-echoes of remembered tears
Hush all the loud confusion of the heart;
And a shade, through the toss'd ranks of mirth and crying
Hungers, and pains, and each dull passionate mood, --
Quite lost, and all but all forgot, undying,
Comes back the ecstasy of your quietude.

So a poor ghost,...Read more of this...

Poetry

by Marianne Moore
 I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all 
 this fiddle.
 Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one 
 discovers in
 it after all, a place for the genuine.
 Hands that can grasp, eyes
 that can dilate, hair that can rise
 if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation...Read more of this...

The Arrival of the Bee Box

by Sylvia Plath
I ordered this, clean wood box 
Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift. 
I would say it was the coffin of a midget 
Or a square baby 
Were there not such a din in it. 

The box is locked, it is dangerous. 
I have to live with it overnight 
And I can't keep away from it. 
There...Read more of this...

The Shield of Achilles

by Wystan Hugh (W H) Auden
 She looked over his shoulderFor vines and olive trees,Marble well-governed citiesAnd ships upon untamed seas,But there on the shining metalHis hands had put insteadAn artificial wildernessAnd a sky like lead. A plain without a feature, bare and brown,No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,Yet, congregated on its blankness, stoodAn unintelligible multitude,A...Read more of this...

Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey

by William Wordsworth
Five years have passed; five summers, with the length 
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.  Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I...Read more of this...

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