Famous Unmade Poems by Famous Poets

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

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A Wreath To The Fish

...e your shining birthsuit,
never to spend your inheritance of thin coins?
And who is the stream, who lolls all day
in an unmade bed, living on nothing but weather,
singing, a little mad in the head,
opening her apron to shells, carcasses, crabs,
eyeglasses, the lines of fisherman begging for
news from the interior-oh, who are these lines
that link a big sky to a small stream
that go down for great things:
the cold muscle of the trout,
the shinning scrawl of the eel in a diffic...Read more of this...
by Willard, Nancy


After Us

...billions of years.
We talked and talked.

Then a drop of rain fell
into the sound hole of the guitar, another
onto the unmade bed. And after us,
the rain will cease or it will go on falling,
even upon itself....Read more of this...
by Wanek, Connie

Contemplations

...h,
137 Because they're bigger and their bodies stronger?
138 Nay, they shall darken, perish, fade and die,
139 And when unmade, so ever shall they lie.
140 But man was made for endless immortality. 

21 

141 Under the cooling shadow of a stately Elm
142 Close sate I by a goodly River's side,
143 Where gliding streams the Rocks did overwhelm.
144 A lonely place, with pleasures dignifi'd.
145 I once that lov'd the shady woods so well,
146 Now thought the rivers did the trees e...Read more of this...
by Bradstreet, Anne

Iceland First Seen

...may be of a king whose name was the turning of fight;
Or the staff of some wise of the world that many things made and unmade,
Or the ring of a woman maybe whose woe is grown wealth and delight.
No wheat and no wine grows above it, no orchard for blossom and shade; 
The few ships that sail by its blackness but deem it the mouth of a grave;
Yet sure when the world shall awaken, this too shall be mighty to save.

Or rather, O land, if a marvel it seemeth that men ever sought
T...Read more of this...
by Morris, William

Inferno (English)

...ore I ended." 
 I, who looked in vain 
 For human semblance in that bestial shade, 
 Made answer, "Misery here hath all unmade, 
 It may be, that thou wast on earth, for nought 
 Recalls thee to me. But thyself shalt tell 
 The sins that scourged thee to this foul resort, 
 That more displeasing not the scope of Hell 
 Can likely yield, though greater pains may lie 
 More deep." 
 And he to me, "Thy city, so high 
 With envious hates that swells, that now the sack 
 Bursts, a...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante


Inferno Canto03

...e disfatta . 

Behind that banner trailed so long a file 
of people-I should never have believed 
that death could have unmade so many souls. 


Poscia ch'io v'ebbi alcun riconosciuto, 
vidi e conobbi l'ombra di colui 
che fece per viltade il gran rifiuto . 

After I had identified a few, 
I saw and recognized the shade of him 
who made, through cowardice, the great refusal. 


Incontanente intesi e certo fui 
che questa era la setta d'i cattivi, 
a Dio spiacenti e a' nemici ...Read more of this...
by Alighieri, Dante

My Mothers Body

...h 

my fingers tearing at the flimsy curtain 
of time which is and isn't and will be 
the stuff of which we're made and unmade. 

In sleep the other night I met you, seventeen 
your first nasty marriage just annulled, 
thin from your abortion, clutching a book 

against your cheek and trying to look 
older, trying to took middle class, 
trying for a job at Wanamaker's, 

dressing for parties in cast off 
stage costumes of your sisters. Your eyes 
were hazy with dreams. You di...Read more of this...
by Piercy, Marge

Religio Laici

...d found that one first principle must be:
But what, or who, that Universal He;
Whether some soul incompassing this ball
Unmade, unmov'd; yet making, moving all;
Or various atoms' interfering dance
Leapt into form (the noble work of chance;)
Or this great all was from eternity;
Not even the Stagirite himself could see;
And Epicurus guess'd as well as he:
As blindly grop'd they for a future state;
As rashly judg'd of Providence and Fate:
But least of all could their endeavours ...Read more of this...
by Dryden, John

Siena

...o sea
Earth heard, earth knew her, that this was she.)
"Ricorditi.

"Love made me of all things fairest thing,
And Hate unmade me; this knows he
Who with God's sacerdotal ring
Enringed mine hand, espousing me."
Yea, in thy myriad-mooded woe,
Yea, Mother, hast thou not said so?
Have not our hearts within us stirred,
O thou most holiest, at thy word?
Have we not heard?

As this dead tragic land that she
Found deadly, such was time to thee;
Years passed thee withering in the red...Read more of this...
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles

The Beginning

...
You were in the dolls of my childhood's games; and when with
clay I made the image of my god every morning, I made the unmade
you then.
You were enshrined with our household deity, in his worship
I worshipped you.
In all my hopes and my loves, in my life, in the life of my
mother you have lived.
In the lap of the deathless Spirit who rules our home you have
been nursed for ages.
When in girlhood my heart was opening its petals, you hovered
as a fragrance about it.
Your tende...Read more of this...
by Tagore, Rabindranath

The Dreamer The Sleep

...L’orage qui s’attarde, le lit d?fait 

Yves Bonnefoy

Here am I, lying lacklustre in an unmade bed

A Sunday in December while all Leeds lies in around me 

In the silent streets, frost on roof slates, gas fires

And kettles whistle as I read Bonnefoy on the eternal.

Too tired to fantasize, unsummoned images float by,

Feebly I snatch at them to comply with the muse’s dictum: write.

The streets of fifties summers, kali from the corner shop,

...Read more of this...
by Tebb, Barry

The Plaid Dress

...nce high judgments given here in haste; 
The recurring checker of the serious breach of taste?

No more uncoloured than unmade,
I fear, can be this garment that I may not doff;
Confession does not strip it off,
To send me homeward eased and bare;

All through the formal, unoffending evening, under the clean
Bright hair,
Lining the subtle gown. . .it is not seen, 
But it is there....Read more of this...
by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

The Slow Nature

...-side;
And stood; and you heard the wind-swept sedge
And the rippling Froom; till she cried:

"O my chamber's untidied, unmade my bed,
Though the day has begun to wear!
'What a slovenly hussif!' it will be said,
When they all go up my stair!"

She disappeared; and the joker stood
Depressed by his neighbor's doom,
And amazed that a wife struck to widowhood
Thought first of her unkempt room.

But a fortnight thence she could take no food,
And she pined in a slow decay;
While Ki...Read more of this...
by Hardy, Thomas

White Flock

...se's hooves.

What? And you don't want to sleep,
In a year could you forget
Me, nor are you used to find
Empty and unmade your bed?

Not with you then do I speak
Through sharp cries of hunting birds,
Not in your eyes do I look
From white pages full of words?

Why you circle, like a thief
At the quiet habitat?
Or recall the verdict and
Wait for me alive like that?

I'm asleep. In dense dark, moon
Threw a blade just like a dart.
There is knocking. In this way...Read more of this...
by Akhmatova, Anna

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