Famous Wrenched Poems by Famous Poets

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

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To make Ones Toilette -- after Death

by Emily Dickinson
 To make One's Toilette -- after Death
Has made the Toilette cool
Of only Taste we cared to please
Is difficult, and still --

That's easier -- than Braid the Hair --
And make the Bodice gay --
When eyes that fondled it are wrenched
By Decalogues -- away --...Read more of this...

Who In The Hell Is Tom Jones?

by Charles Bukowski
 I was shacked with a
24 year old girl from
New York City for
two weeks- about
the time of the garbage
strike out there, and
one night my 34 year 
old woman arrived and
she said, "I want to see
my rival." she did
and then she said, "o,
you're a cute little thing!"
next I knew there was a 
screech of wildcats-
such screaming and scratch-
ing, wounded animal moans,
blood...Read more of this...

The Cross-Roads

by Amy Lowell
 A bullet through his heart at dawn. On 
the table a letter signed
with a woman's name. A wind that goes howling round the 
house,
and weeping as in shame. Cold November dawn peeping through 
the windows,
cold dawn creeping over the floor, creeping up his cold legs,
creeping over his cold body, creeping across his cold face.
A glaze of thin yellow sunlight...Read more of this...

The Levelled Churchyard

by Thomas Hardy
 "O passenger, pray list and catch 
 Our sighs and piteous groans, 
Half stifled in this jumbled patch 
 Of wrenched memorial stones! 

"We late-lamented, resting here, 
 Are mixed to human jam, 
And each to each exclaims in fear, 
 'I know not which I am!' 

"The wicked people have annexed 
 The verses on the good; 
A...Read more of this...

Yvytot

by Eugene Field
 Where wail the waters in their flaw
A spectre wanders to and fro,
And evermore that ghostly shore
Bemoans the heir of Yvytot.

Sometimes, when, like a fleecy pall,
The mists upon the waters fall,
Across the main float shadows twain
That do not heed the spectre's call.

The king his son of Yvytot
Stood once and saw the waters go
Boiling around with hissing sound
The sullen phantom rocks...Read more of this...

The Palace

by Rudyard Kipling
 When I was a King and a Mason -- a Master proven and skilled --
I cleared me ground for a Palace such as a King should build.
I decreed and dug down to my levels. Presently, under the silt,
I came on the wreck of a Palace such as a King had built.

There was no worth in the fashion -- there...Read more of this...

Malay Song

by Adela Florence Cory Nicolson
   When first I loved, I gave my very soul
   Utterly unreserved to Love's control,
   But Love deceived me, wrenched my youth away
   And made the gold of life for ever grey.
   Long I lived lonely, yet I tried in vain
   With any other Joy to stifle pain;
...Read more of this...

Dead Boy

by John Crowe Ransom
 The little cousin is dead, by foul subtraction,
A green bough from Virginia's aged tree,
And none of the county kin like the transaction,
Nor some of the world of outer dark, like me.

A boy not beautiful, nor good, nor clever,
A black cloud full of storms too hot for keeping,
A sword beneath his mother's heart—yet never
Woman bewept her babe as this is...Read more of this...

The English Flag

by Rudyard Kipling
 Above the portico a flag-staff, bearing the Union Jack,
remained fluttering in the flames for some time, but ultimately
when it fell the crowds rent the air with shouts,
and seemed to see significance in the incident. -- DAILY PAPERS.


Winds of the World, give answer! They are whimpering to and fro --
And what should they know of England who only England know?...Read more of this...

The Confessional

by Robert Browning
 [SPAIN.]

I.

It is a lie---their Priests, their Pope,
Their Saints, their ... all they fear or hope
Are lies, and lies---there! through my door
And ceiling, there! and walls and floor,
There, lies, they lie---shall still be hurled
Till spite of them I reach the world!

II.

You think Priests just and holy men!
Before they put me in this den
I was a human creature too,
With flesh and...Read more of this...

The Last Hero

by G K Chesterton
 The wind blew out from Bergen, from the dawning to the day
There was a wreck of trees, a fall of towers, a score of miles away
And drifted like a livid leaf I go before the tide
Spewed out of house and stable, beggared of flag and bride
The heavens are bowed about my head, raging like seraph wars
With rains that might...Read more of this...

The Old Issue

by Rudyard Kipling
 Here is nothing new nor aught unproven," say the Trumpets,
 "Many feet have worn it and the road is old indeed.
"It is the King--the King we schooled aforetime! "
 (Trumpets in the marshes-in the eyot at Runnymede!)

"Here is neither haste, nor hate, nor anger," peal the Trumpets,
 "Pardon for his penitence or pity for his fall.
"It is the King!"--inexorable...Read more of this...

The Convent Threshold

by Christina Rossetti
 There's blood between us, love, my love,
There's father's blood, there's brother's blood,
And blood's a bar I cannot pass.
I choose the stairs that mount above,
Stair after golden sky-ward stair,
To city and to sea of glass.
My lily feet are soiled with mud,
With scarlet mud which tells a tale
Of hope that was, of guilt that was,
Of love that shall not yet avail;
Alas,...Read more of this...

I cannot go to school today!

by Shel Silverstein
"I cannot go to school today"
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
"I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.

My mouth is wet, my throat is dry.
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox.

And there's one more - that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?
My leg is...Read more of this...

Lincoln

by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Hurt was the nation with a mighty wound,
And all her ways were filled with clam'rous sound.
Wailed loud the South with unremitting grief,
And wept the North that could not find relief.
Then madness joined its harshest tone to strife:
A minor note swelled in the song of life.
'Till, stirring with the love that filled his breast,
But still, unflinching at the right's behest,
Grave Lincoln...Read more of this...

Prof. vere de blaw

by Eugene Field
 Achievin' sech distinction with his moddel tabble dote
Ez to make his Red Hoss Mountain restauraw a place uv note,
Our old friend Casey innovated somewhat round the place,
In hopes he would ameliorate the sufferin's uv the race;
'Nd uv the many features Casey managed to import
The most important wuz a Steenway gran' pianny-fort,
An' bein' there wuz nobody could play upon the...Read more of this...

The Arsenal at Springfield

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
THIS is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling  
Like a huge organ rise the burnished arms; 
But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing 
Startles the villages with strange alarms. 

Ah! what a sound will rise how wild and dreary 5 
When the death-angel touches those swift keys! 
What loud lament and dismal Miserere 
Will mingle with their awful...Read more of this...

Aunt Imogen

by Edwin Arlington Robinson
 Aunt Imogen was coming, and therefore 
The children—Jane, Sylvester, and Young George— 
Were eyes and ears; for there was only one 
Aunt Imogen to them in the whole world, 
And she was in it only for four weeks
In fifty-two. But those great bites of time 
Made all September a Queen’s Festival; 
And they would strive, informally, to make 
The...Read more of this...

The Norsemen (From Narrative and Legendary Poems )

by John Greenleaf Whittier
 GIFT from the cold and silent Past! 
A relic to the present cast, 
Left on the ever-changing strand 
Of shifting and unstable sand, 
Which wastes beneath the steady chime 
And beating of the waves of Time! 
Who from its bed of primal rock 
First wrenched thy dark, unshapely block? 
Whose hand, of curious skill untaught, 
Thy rude and savage...Read more of this...

The Derelict

by Rudyard Kipling
 And reports the derelict Mary Pollock still at sea.
 SHIPPING NEWS.


 I was the staunchest of our fleet
 Till the sea rose beneath our feet
Unheralded, in hatred past all measure.
 Into his pits he stamped my crew,
 Buffeted, blinded, bound and threw,
Bidding me eyeless wait upon his pleasure.

 Man made me, and my will
 Is to my maker still,
Whom...Read more of this...

The Illinois Village

by Vachel Lindsay
 O you who lose the art of hope, 
Whose temples seem to shrine a lie, 
Whose sidewalks are but stones of fear, 
Who weep that Liberty must die, 
Turn to the little prairie towns, 
Your higher hope shall yet begin. 
On every side awaits you there 
Some gate where glory enters in. 

Yet when I see the flocks of...Read more of this...

To A Mountain Daisy

by Robert Burns
 ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH, IN APRIL, 1786

Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r,
Thou's met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure
Thy slender stem:
To spare thee now is past my pow'r,
Thou bonie gem.

Alas! it's no thy neebor sweet,
The bonie lark, companion meet,
Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet,
Wi' spreckled breast!
When upward-springing, blithe, to greet
The purpling east.

Cauld blew...Read more of this...

Monologue At 3 AM

by Sylvia Plath
 Better that every fiber crack 
and fury make head, 
blood drenching vivid 
couch, carpet, floor 
and the snake-figured almanac 
vouching you are 
a million green counties from here, 

than to sit mute, twitching so 
under prickling stars, 
with stare, with curse 
blackening the time 
goodbyes were said, trains let go, 
and I, great magnanimous fool, thus wrenched from 
my...Read more of this...

The Fiddling Wood

by Stephen Vincent Benet
 Gods, what a black, fierce day! The clouds were iron, 
Wrenched to strange, rugged shapes; the red sun winked 
Over the rough crest of the hairy wood 
In angry scorn; the grey road twisted, kinked, 
Like a sick serpent, seeming to environ 
The trees with magic. All the wood was still -- 

Cracked, crannied pines bent like malicious cripples...Read more of this...

A Years Burden -- 1870

by Algernon Charles Swinburne
 Fire and wild light of hope and doubt and fear,
Wind of swift change, and clouds and hours that veer
As the storm shifts of the tempestuous year;
Cry wellaway, but well befall the right.

Hope sits yet hiding her war-wearied eyes,
Doubt sets her forehead earthward and denies,
But fear brought hand to hand with danger dies,
Dies and is burnt up in the fire...Read more of this...

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