Famous Unstrung Poems by Famous Poets

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

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Two Views Of A Cadaver Room

by Sylvia Plath
 (1)

The day she visited the dissecting room
They had four men laid out, black as burnt turkey,
Already half unstrung. A vinegary fume
Of the death vats clung to them;
The white-smocked boys started working.
The head of his cadaver had caved in,
And she could scarcely make out anything
In that rubble of skull plates and old leather.
A sallow piece of string held it together.

In...Read more of this...

Dream Song 25: Henry edged decidedly made up stories

by John Berryman
 Henry, edged, decidedly, made up stories
lighting the past of Henry, of his glorious
present, and his hoaries,
all the bight heals he tamped-” -”Euphoria,
Mr Bones, euphoria. Fate clobber all.
-”Hand me back my crawl,

condign Heaven. Tighten into a ball
elongate & valved Henry. Tuck him peace.
Render him sightless,
or ruin at high rate his crampon focus,
wipe out his need. Reduce him to the rest...Read more of this...

173. Elegy on Stella

by Robert Burns
 STRAIT is the spot and green the sod
 From whence my sorrows flow;
And soundly sleeps the ever dear
 Inhabitant below.


Pardon my transport, gentle shade,
 While o’er the turf I bow;
Thy earthy house is circumscrib’d,
 And solitary now.


Not one poor stone to tell thy name,
 Or make thy virtues known:
But what avails to me-to thee,
 The sculpture of a stone?


I’ll...Read more of this...

Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte

by George (Lord) Byron
 I 
'Tis done -- but yesterday a King! 
And arm'd with Kings to strive -- 
And now thou art a nameless thing: 
So abject -- yet alive! 
Is this the man of thousand thrones, 
Who strew'd our earth with hostile bones, 
And can he thus survive? 
Since he, miscall'd the Morning Star, 
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so...Read more of this...

Sunshine through a Cobwebbed Window

by Amy Lowell
 What charm is yours, you faded old-world tapestries,
Of outworn, childish mysteries,
Vague pageants woven on a web of dream!
And we, pushing and fighting in the turbid stream
Of modern life, find solace in your tarnished broideries.
Old lichened halls, sun-shaded by huge cedar-trees,
The layered branches horizontal stretched, like Japanese
Dark-banded prints. Carven cathedrals, on a sky
Of faintest colour, where the gothic spires fly
And...Read more of this...

Cupid Sleeping

by Mary Darby Robinson
 [Inscribed to Her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire.]


CLOSE in a woodbine's tangled shade, 
The BLOOMING GOD asleep was laid; 
His brows with mossy roses crown'd; 
His golden darts lay scatter'd round; 
To shade his auburn, curled head, 
A purple canopy was spread, 
Which gently with the breezes play'd, 
And shed around a soften'd shade. 
Upon his downy smiling cheek,...Read more of this...

Silentium Amoris

by Oscar Wilde
 As often-times the too resplendent sun
Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon
Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won
A single ballad from the nightingale,
So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail,
And all my sweetest singing out of tune.

And as at dawn across the level mead
On wings impetuous some wind will come,
And with its too harsh kisses break the...Read more of this...

Lesbos

by Sylvia Plath
 Viciousness in the kitchen!
The potatoes hiss.
It is all Hollywood, windowless,
The fluorescent light wincing on and off like a terrible migraine,
Coy paper strips for doors --
Stage curtains, a widow's frizz.
And I, love, am a pathological liar,
And my child -- look at her, face down on the floor,
Little unstrung puppet, kicking to disappear --
Why she is schizophrenic,
Her face is red and...Read more of this...

Denial

by George Herbert
 When my devotions could not pierce 
Thy silent ears; 
Then was my heart broken, as was my verse: 
My breast was full of fears 
And disorder: 

My bent thoughts, like a brittle bow, 
Did fly asunder: 
Each took his way; some would to pleasures go, 
Some to the wars and thunder 
Of alarms. 

As good go any where, they...Read more of this...

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