Famous Unseemly Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Stans Puer ad Mensam

by Sir Walter Raleigh
 Attend my words, my gentle knave, 
And you shall learn from me 
How boys at dinner may behave 
With due propriety. 

Guard well your hands: two things have been 
Unfitly used by some; 
The trencher for a tambourine, 
The table for a drum. 

We could not lead a pleasant life, 
And 'twould be finished soon, 
If peas were eaten...Read more of this...

Sight

by Dorothy Parker
 Unseemly are the open eyes
That watch the midnight sheep,
That look upon the secret skies
Nor close, abashed, in sleep;

That see the dawn drag in, unbidden,
To birth another day-
Oh, better far their gaze were hidden
Below the decent clay....Read more of this...

A Winter Daybreak Above Vence

by James Wright
 The night's drifts
Pile up below me and behind my back,
Slide down the hill, rise again, and build
Eerie little dunes on the roof of the house.
In the valley below me,
Miles between me and the town of St.-Jeannet,
The road lamps glow.
They are so cold, they might as well be dark.
Trucks and cars
Cough and drone down there between the golden
Coffins of greenhouses,...Read more of this...

Mike

by Robert William Service
 My lead dog Mike was like a bear;
I reckon he was grizzly bred,
For when he reared up in the air
Ho over-topped me by a head.
He'd cuff me with his hefty paws,
Jest like a puppy actin' cute,
And I would swear: by Gosh! he was
The world's most mighty malemute.

But oh the grub that dog could eat!
Yet he was never belly-tight;
It almost...Read more of this...

A Confession To A Friend In Trouble

by Thomas Hardy
 Your troubles shrink not, though I feel them less
 Here, far away, than when I tarried near;
I even smile old smiles--with listlessness--
 Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere.

A thought too strange to house within my brain
 Haunting its outer precincts I discern:
 --That I will not show zeal again to learn
Your griefs, and, sharing them, renew my...Read more of this...

Two Sonnets In Memory

by Edna St. Vincent Millay
 (Nicola Sacco -- Bartolomeo Vanzetti)
Executed August 23, 1927


I

As men have loved their lovers in times past
And sung their wit, their virtue and their grace,
So have we loved sweet Justice to the last,
That now lies here in an unseemly place.
The child will quit the cradle and grow wise
And stare on beauty till his senses drown;
Yet shall be seen no more...Read more of this...

My Cicely

by Thomas Hardy
 "ALIVE?"--And I leapt in my wonder,
Was faint of my joyance,
And grasses and grove shone in garments
Of glory to me.

"She lives, in a plenteous well-being,
To-day as aforehand;
The dead bore the name--though a rare one--
The name that bore she."

She lived ... I, afar in the city
Of frenzy-led factions,
Had squandered green years and maturer
In bowing the knee

To Baals illusive and specious,
Till chance...Read more of this...

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