Famous Unread Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Unread poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous unread poems. These examples illustrate what a famous unread poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Service, Robert William
...better men than I
I've seen pass on;
Their pay-off when they die;
--Oblivion.
And so I mock at fame,
With books unread;
No monument I claim
When I am dead;
Contented as I see
My cottage thatch
That my last goal should be
--A cabbage patch....Read more of this...
by
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
...s been,
So on my waning years you cast the glory
Of youth and pleasure, for a little hour;
And life again seems like an unread story,
And joy and hope both stir me with their power.
Can blooming June be fond of bleak December?
I dare not wait to hear my heart reply.
I will forget the question-and remember
Alone the priceless feast spread for mine eye,
That radiant hair that flows across the pillows,
Like shimmering sunbeams over drifts of snow;
Those heaving breasts,...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...h a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.
The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke
no word
But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, ...Read more of this...
by
Austin, Alfred
...e, the touch, the tone;
His home is nigh,—but there,
See from the hearth his figure fled,
The pen unrais’d, the page unread,
Untenanted the chair!
Vainly the beechen boughs have made
A fresh green canopy of shade,
Vainly the peacocks stray;
While Carlo, with despondent gait,
Wonders how long affairs of State
Will keep his lord away.
Here most we miss the guide, the friend;
Back to the churchyard let me wend,
And, by the posied mound,
Lingering where late s...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...br>
I have their books, I love their names,
And yet alas! they head,
With Lawrence, Joyce and Henry James,
My Roster of Unread.
I think it would be very well
If I commit a crime,
And get put in a prison cell
And not allowed to rhyme;
Yet given all these worthy books
According to my need,
I now caress with loving looks,
But never, never read....Read more of this...
by
Byron, George (Lord)
...ess of sorrow and of awe
On that neglected turf and quiet stone,
With name no clearer than the names unknown,
Which lay unread around it; and asked
The Gardener of that ground, why it might be
That for this plant strangers his memory tasked
Through the thick deaths of half a century;
And thus he answered—"Well, I do not know
Why frequent travellers turn to pilgrims so;
He died before my day of sextonship,
And I had not the digging of this grave."
And is this all? I though...Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...ats reminds us.
Insistently the morning traffic hums
As I sip my tea, list calls to make,
Sigh in frustration at unread books.
For solace I look at cards of Haworth
Moorland vistas of unending paths
Cloudscapes only a Constable could paint
High Withens in a gale, the sloping village street.
How? When? Why?
‘The truth’ - if such an entity exists -
Is that I want to run away....Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...Dusting my books I spent a busy day:
Not ancient toes, time-hallowed and unread,
but modern volumes, classics in their way,
whose makers now are numbered with the dead;
Men of a generation more than mine,
With whom I tattled, battled and drank wine.
I worshipped them, rejoiced in their success,
Grudging them not the gold that goes with fame.
I thought them near-immortal, I confess,
And naught could dim the glory of each...Read more of this...
by
Ingelow, Jean
...u bettered so, or more secure
Thou, and thy destinies?
And if thou searchest, and art made to fear
Facing of unread riddles dark and hard,
And mastering not their majesty austere,
Their meaning locked and barred:
How would it make the weight and wonder less,
If, lifted from immortal shoulders down,
The worlds were cast on seas of emptiness
In realms without a crown.
And (if there were no God) were left to rue
Dominion of the air and of the f...Read more of this...
by
Jennings, Elizabeth
...,
She like a girl dreaming of childhood,
All men elsewhere - it is as if they wait
Some new event: the book he holds unread,
Her eyes fixed on the shadows overhead.
Tossed up like flotsam from a former passion,
How cool they lie. They hardly ever touch,
Or if they do, it is like a confession
Of having little feeling - or too much.
Chastity faces them, a destination
For which their whole lives were a preparation.
Strangely apart, yet strangely clos...Read more of this...
by
Bronte, Charlotte
...day,
Come to the hearth awhile;
The wind so wildly sweeps away,
The clouds so darkly pile.
That open book has lain, unread,
For hours upon your knee;
You've never smiled nor turned your head
What can you, sister, see ? '
' Come hither, Jane, look down the field;
How dense a mist creeps on !
The path, the hedge, are both concealed,
Ev'n the white gate is gone;
No landscape through the fog I trace,
No hill with pastures green;
All featureless is nature's face,
All masked ...Read more of this...
by
Levine, Philip
...ming back
the way a swallow does with unerring grace
and foreknowledge because all of this
was prophesied in the final, unread book
of the Midrash and because I have to
grow up and because it pleases me....Read more of this...
by
Matthew, John
...d white collar brawl
The sleepless night stretches ahead
There’s no space for a fly to crawl
The morning paper is still unread.
You who sleep standing
Don’t drool on his shirt
It will cost him a lot of spending
If you pour on him all your dirt.
Plastic bags, umbrellas, Tiffin
The rack is full and the seats overflow
What is that smell Peter Griffin?
Is it the Sewri sewers overflowing?
Beware of pickers of pockets
Who surround and slash with knife
Careful of your arm...Read more of this...
by
Lowell, Amy
...careless grasp of transient interest,
Stand books we can but dimly see, their charm
Much greater that their titles are unread;
While on a level with the dusty floor
Others are ranged in orderly confusion,
And we must stoop in painful posture while
We read their names and learn their histories.
The little gallery winds round about
The middle of a most secluded room,
Midway between the ceiling and the floor.
A type of those high thoughts, which while we read
Hover betw...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, George
...self shall live till human Time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb
Unread forever. This is life to come, --
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, -- be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusio...Read more of this...
by
Service, Robert William
...d us, made us laugh and weep?
Come, let us crown him where he sits apart."
Then, with his picture spurned, his book unread,
His song unsung, they found their Dreamer -- dead....Read more of this...
by
St Vincent Millay, Edna
...ver these chance dust and ashes,
Weep not me, my friend!
Me, by no means dead
In that hour, but surely
When this book, unread,
Rots to earth obscurely,
And no more to any breast,
Close against the clamorous swelling
Of the thing there is no telling,
Are these pages pressed!
When this book is mould,
And a book of many
Waiting to be sold
For a casual penny,
In a little open case,
In a street unclean and cluttered,
Where a heavy mud is spattered
From the passing drays,
Strang...Read more of this...
by
Frost, Robert
...br> What is it you want?
I'll put you out with Anne. Be good or go."
"You don't mean you will sign that thing unread?"
"Make yourself useful then, and read it for me.
Isn't it something I have seen before?"
"You'll find it is. Let your friend look at it."
"Yes, but all that takes time, and I'm as much
In haste to get it over with as you.
But read it, read it. That's right, draw the curtain:
Half the time I don't know what's troubling me.Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...gaping frames beneath a bannered
Street-wide invitation to a "Housing Consultation Initiative"
Flapping desultory and unread
Where last year ‘Beeston in Bloom’ was up instead....Read more of this...
by
Tebb, Barry
...s Milosz commands "All your griefs,
My sad ones, are in vain" but offering
In recompense soaring sonatas which remain unread
Untranslated, relegated to the reserve stock
Of the Institut Fran?ais, along with Fargue,
Jacob and Larbaud while all those Bloodaxe deadheads
Blossom and bloom round poetry’s tomb
Where still there’s room for Ursula’s
Queen’s Medal for Poetry, lacklustre poetaster
From Harry Chamber’s Press at Peterloo –
That Augean stable has too much ****
...Read more of this...
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