Famous Unmarked Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Unmarked poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous unmarked poems. These examples illustrate what a famous unmarked poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...ore my door I see;
On wings of fire and steeds of steam
The world's great wonders come to me,
And holier signs, unmarked before,
Of Love to seek and Power to save,—
The righting of the wronged and poor,
The man evolving from the slave;
And life, no longer chance or fate,
Safe in the gracious Fatherhood.
I fold o'er-wearied hands and wait,
In full assurance of the good.
And well the waiting time must be,
Though brief or long its granted day...Read more of this...
by
Hacker, Marilyn
...ned the iron key in the rusted lock
(it came, like a detective-story clue,
in a manila envelope, postmarked
elsewhere, unmarked otherwise) while you
stood behind me in the midday heat.
Somnolent shudders marked our progress. Two
horses grazed on a roof across the street.
You didn't believe me until you turned around.
They were both old, one mottled gray, one white.
Past the kitchen's russet dark, we found
bookshelves on both sides of the fireplace:
Verl...Read more of this...
by
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
...SHINES the last age the next with hope is seen
To-day slinks poorly off unmarked between:
Future or Past no richer secret folds
O friendless Present! than thy bosom holds. ...Read more of this...
by
Ingelow, Jean
...re a cure for doubt, regret, delay—
Let my lost pathway go—what aileth me?—
There is a better way.
What though unmarked the happy workman toil,
And break unthanked of man the stubborn clod?
It is enough, for sacred is the soil,
Dear are the hills of God.
Far better in its place the lowliest bird
Should sing aright to Him the lowliest song,
Than that a seraph strayed should take the word
And sing His glory wrong.
Friend, it is time to work. I s...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...s a landscape will not die alone.
Those you castigated never forgave.
Omitted you as casually as passing an unmarked grave,
Armitage, I name you, a blackguard and a knave,
Who knows no more of poetry than McGonagall the brave,
Yet tops the list of Faber’s ‘Best Poets of Our Age’.
Longley gave you just ten lines in ‘Irish Poets Now’
Most missed you out entirely for the troubles you gave
Accusing like Zola those poetic whores
Who sold themselves to fash...Read more of this...
by
Masters, Edgar Lee
...ouse ever heard, and wrote
A brief that won the praise of Justice Breese--
How does it happen, tell me,
That I lie here unmarked, forgotten,
While Chase Henry, the town drunkard,
Has a marble block, topped by an urn,
Wherein Nature, in a mood ironical,
Has sown a flowering seed?...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...tropolis; and now expecting
Each hour their great adventurer, from the search
Of foreign worlds: He through the midst unmarked,
In show plebeian Angel militant
Of lowest order, passed; and from the door
Of that Plutonian hall, invisible
Ascended his high throne; which, under state
Of richest texture spread, at the upper end
Was placed in regal lustre. Down a while
He sat, and round about him saw unseen:
At last, as from a cloud, his fulgent head
And shape star-...Read more of this...
by
Milton, John
...the regions round, and with them came
From Nazareth the son of Joseph deemed
To the flood Jordan—came as then obscure,
Unmarked, unknown. But him the Baptist soon
Descried, divinely warned, and witness bore
As to his worthier, and would have resigned
To him his heavenly office. Nor was long
His witness unconfirmed: on him baptized
Heaven opened, and in likeness of a Dove
The Spirit descended, while the Father's voice
From Heaven pronounced him his beloved Son.
T...Read more of this...
by
Whittier, John Greenleaf
...the fields wherein they fought.
Another guest that winter night
Flashed back from lustrous eyes the light.
Unmarked by time, and yet not young,
The honeyed music of her tongue
And words of meekness scarcely told
A nature passionate and bold,
Strong, self-concentred, spurning guide,
Its milder features dwarded beside
Her unbent will's majestic pride.
She sat among us, at the test,
A not unfeared, half-welcome guest,
Rebuking with her cultured phrase
...Read more of this...
by
Field, Eugene
...ere is pain,
And there is peace, God wot,--
And these dear three do live again
In sweet forget-me-not.
'T is to an unmarked grave to-day
That I should love to go,--
Whether he wore the blue or gray,
What need that we should know?
"He loved a woman," let us say,
And on that sacred spot,
To woman's love, that lives for aye,
We'll strew forget-me-not.
1887....Read more of this...
by
Hacker, Marilyn
...r>
The absence and the priviledge of gender
confound in him, soprano, clumsy, frail.
Not neuter—neutral human, and unmarked,
the younger brother in the fairy tale
except, boys shouted "Jew!" across the park
at him when he was coming home from school.
The book that he just read, about the war,
the partisans, is less a terrible
and thrilling story, more a warning, more
a code, and he must puzzle out the code.
He has short hair, a red sweatshirt. They know
som...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Richard
...If rain had rhythm, it would not be Latin.
Children do not wave as we drive out.
Like these graves ours may go unmarked.
Can we be satisfied when dead
with daffodils for stones? These Indians--
whatever they once loved or used for God--
the hill--the river--the bay burned by the moon--
they knew that when you die you lose your name....Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...o lift him up there!
His neck like an iron pole,
hard as Newcastle,
his heart as stiff as beeswax,
his legs swollen and unmarked,
his other limbs still growing.
All of it heavy!
That dead weight that would have been his fault
. He should have known!
In the first place who builds up such ugliness?
I think of this man saying . . .
Look! Here's the price to do it
plus the cost of the raw materials
and if it took him three or four days
to do it, then, they'd ...Read more of this...
by
Bronte, Charlotte
...t band of crystals bright,
Her hasty touch untied.
It slips adown her silken dress,
Falls glittering at her feet;
Unmarked it falls, for she no less
Pursues her labour sweet.
The very loveliest hour that shines,
Is in that deep blue sky;
The golden sun of June declines,
It has not caught her eye.
The cheerful lawn, and unclosed gate,
The white road, far away,
In vain for her light footsteps wait,
She comes not forth to-day.
There is an open door of gl...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...ug, lay beside your mother,
‘In death as in life together,’ - what parody lies hidden
Beneath the marble chips of the unmarked grave?
Where is the cross of weathered wood and stapled names?
The thirty roses that you left had withered on the stem,
The weeds had spread and spread and you yourself
Were paler than the dead.
There may be little time or time enough for ills
We have to bear for others with our own. Madness
Seems our calling, yours and mine, speaki...Read more of this...
by
McGough, Roger
...an
Be it sunshine or rain.'
And that snowman still stands
Though my father is gone
Out there in the garden
Like an unmarked gravestone.
Staring up at the house
Gross and misshapen
As if waiting for something
Bad to happen.
For as the years pass
And I grow older
When summers seem short
And winters colder.
The snowmen I envy
As I watch children play
Are the ones that are made
And then fade away....Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the most unnameable lust returns.
Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention
the furniture you have placed under the sun.
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
Twice I have so simply declar...Read more of this...
by
Sexton, Anne
...Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.
Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
Twice I have so simply dec...Read more of this...
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