Famous Unwholesome Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Unwholesome poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous unwholesome poems. These examples illustrate what a famous unwholesome poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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...flashing eye—no more a sonorous voice or springy step;
Now some slave’s eye, voice, hands, step,
A drunkard’s breath, unwholesome eater’s face, venerealee’s flesh,
Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous,
Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination,
Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams,
Words babble, hearing and touch callous,
No brain, no heart left—no magnetism of sex;
Such, from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence,
Such a r...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...nock chose it -- packed away
Near a Bay --
By the Sewage rendered fetid, by the sewer
Made impure,
By the Sunderbunds unwholesome, by the swamp
Moist and damp;
And the City and the Viceroy, as we see,
Don't agree.
Once, two hundered years ago, the trader came
Meek and tame.
Where his timid foot first halted, there he stayed,
Till mere trade
Grew to Empire, and he sent his armies forth
South and North
Till the country from Peshawur to Ceylon
Was his own.
Thus the midda...Read more of this...
by
Kipling, Rudyard
...ppe, it is said, was one;
The other, then, was Alciphron.
‘Come, come! why should we stand beneath?’
This hollow tree’s unwholesome breath?’
Said Alciphron, ‘here’s not a blade
Of grass or moss, and scanty shade.
Come; it is just the hour to rove
In the lone dingle shepherds love;
There, straight and tall, the hazel twig
Divides the crook?ed rock-held fig,
O’er the blue pebbles where the rill
In winter runs and may run still.
Come then, while fresh and calm the air,
And while...Read more of this...
by
Landor, Walter Savage
...here was a word for me to say
That I said not;
And in the past there was another day
That I forgot:
A dreary, cold, unwholesome day,
Racked overhead,—
As if the world were turning the wrong way,
And the sun dead:
A day that comes back well enough
Now he is gone.
What then? Has memory no other stuff
To seize upon?
Wherever he may wander now
In his despair,
Would he be more contented in the slough
If all were there?
And yet he brought a kind of light
Into the r...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...or you the destiny decreed,
Irrevocable quite. Yes, I looked on.
Ah! little did you think that any one
To this unwholesome gloom could knowledge bring
That Joss a kaiser was, and Zeno king.
You spoke just now—but why?—too late to plead.
The forfeit's due and hope should all be dead.
Incurables! For you I am the grave.
Oh, miserable men! that naught can save.
Yes, Sigismond a kaiser is, and you
A king, O Ladisläus!—it is true.
You thought of Go...Read more of this...
by
Hugo, Victor
...h no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.
Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual ...Read more of this...
by
Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)
...ho give little of the much which they have - and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.
And there are those who have little and give it all.
These are the believers in life and the bounty of life, and their coffer is never empty.
There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism.
And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, ...Read more of this...
by
Gibran, Kahlil
...'rate blood
The old corruption reigns,
And, mingling with the crooked flood,
Wanders through all our veins.]
[Wild and unwholesome as the root
Will all the branches be;
How can we hope for living fruit
From such a deadly tree?
What mortal power from things unclean
Can pure productions bring?
Who can command a vital stream
From an infected spring?]
Yet, mighty God! thy wondrous love
Can make our nature clean,
While Christ and grace prevail above
The tempter, death, and sin....Read more of this...
by
Watts, Isaac
...man can sit there safe: the cannon pours
Thorough the walls untight and bullet showers,
The neighbourhood ill, and an unwholesome seat,
So at the first salute resolves retreat,
And swore that he would never more dwell there
Until the city put it in repair.
So he in front, his garrison in rear,
March straight to Chatham to increase the fear.
There our sick ships unrigged in summer lay
Like moulting fowl, a weak and easy prey,
For whose strong bulk earth scarce could...Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...Upon the vulgar croud.
Unheeded, and unknown,
To some bleak wilderness she flies;
And seated on a moss-clad stone,
Unwholesome vapours round her rise,
And hang their mischiefs on her brow;
The ruffian winds, her limbs expose;
Still, still, her heart disdains to bow,
She cherishes her woes.
NOW FAMINE spreads her sable wings;
INGRATITUDE insults her pangs;
While from a thousand eager fangs,
Madd'ning she flies;The recreant crew
With taunting smiles her steps pu...Read more of this...
by
Robinson, Mary Darby
...
The shape of the shamed and angry stairs, trod by sneaking footsteps;
The shape of the sly settee, and the adulterous unwholesome couple;
The shape of the gambling-board with its devilish winnings and losings;
The shape of the step-ladder for the convicted and sentenced murderer, the murderer with
haggard
face and pinion’d arms,
The sheriff at hand with his deputies, the silent and white-lipp’d crowd, the dangling of
the
rope.
The shapes arise!
Shapes of doors givi...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...amp thing that creeps and crawls
Went wobble-wobble on the walls.
Faint odours of departed cheese,
Blown on the dank, unwholesome breeze,
Awoke the never ending sneeze.
Strange pictures decked the arras drear,
Strange characters of woe and fear,
The humbugs of the social sphere.
One showed a vain and noisy prig,
That shouted empty words and big
At him that nodded in a wig.
And one, a dotard grim and gray,
Who wasteth childhood's happy day
In work more profitless than ...Read more of this...
by
Carroll, Lewis
...ing along the tunnel, step by step,
He winked his prying torch with patching glare
From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.
Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know,
A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed;
And he, exploring fifty feet below
The rosy gloom of battle overhead.
Tripping, he grapped the wall; saw someone lie
Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug,
And stooped to give the sleeper's arm a tug.
"I'm looking for headquarters." No reply...Read more of this...
by
Sassoon, Siegfried
...of the foot depending from the sun,
(Give, summer, over), the cemented skin,
The actions' end.
All, men my madmen, the unwholesome wind
With whistler's cough contages, time on track
Shapes in a cinder death; love for his trick,
Happy Cadaver's hunger as you take
The kissproof world....Read more of this...
by
Thomas, Dylan
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