Famous Winced Poems by Famous Poets

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

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I Years had been from Home

by Emily Dickinson
 I Years had been from Home
And now before the Door
I dared not enter, lest a Face
I never saw before

Stare solid into mine
And ask my Business there --
"My Business but a Life I left
Was such remaining there?"

I leaned upon the Awe --
I lingered with Before --
The Second like an Ocean rolled
And broke against my ear --

I laughed a crumbling Laugh
That...Read more of this...

Crow and the Sea

by Ted Hughes
He tried ignoring the sea 
But it was bigger than death, just as it was bigger than life. 

He tried talking to the sea 
But his brain shuttered and his eyes winced from it as from open flame. 

He tried sympathy for the sea 
But it shouldered him off - as a dead thing shoulders you off. 

He tried hating...Read more of this...

I. M. R. T. Hamilton Bruce (1846-1899)

by William Ernest Henley
 Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the...Read more of this...

Invictus

by William Ernest Henley
 Out of the night that covers me, 
 Black as the Pit from pole to pole, 
I thank whatever gods may be 
 For my unconquerable soul. 

In the fell clutch of circumstance 
 I have not winced nor cried aloud. 
Under the bludgeonings of chance 
 My head is bloody, but unbowed. 

Beyond this place of wrath and...Read more of this...

The Craftsman

by Rudyard Kipling
 Once, after long-drawn revel at The Mermaid,
He to the overbearing Boanerges
Jonson, uttered (if half of it were liquor,
 Blessed be the vintage!)

Saying how, at an alehouse under Cotswold,
He had made sure of his very Cleopatra,
Drunk with enormous, salvation-con temning
 Love for a tinker.

How, while he hid from Sir Thomas's keepers,
Crouched in a ditch and drenched by the midnight
Dews, he...Read more of this...

Modern Love XXI: We Three Are

by George Meredith
 We three are on the cedar-shadowed lawn; 
My friend being third. He who at love once laughed, 
Is in the weak rib by a fatal shaft 
Struck through, and tells his passion's bashful dawn 
And radiant culmination, glorious crown, 
When 'this' she said: went 'thus': most wondrous she. 
Our eyes grow white, encountering that we are three, 
Forgetful; then...Read more of this...

My Cuckoo Clock

by Robert William Service
 I bought a cuckoo clock
 And glad was I
To hear its tick and tock,
 Its dulcet cry.
But Jones, whose wife is young
 And pretty too,
Winced when that bird gave tongue:
 Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

I have a lady friend
 Whom I would wed,
For dalliance should end
 In bridal bed.
Until the thought occurred:
 Can she be true?
And then I heard that bird:
 Cuckoo!...Read more of this...

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